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It
is tragic that Christians today have allowed tradition to make the word of God
of none effect. Those traditions are the result of centuries of apostatizing
during which the Enlightened principles of Greek
philosophy displaced faith as the foundation of our mental processes. That
foundation of Reason in turn produced the Western civilization that has so
blinded 99% of the church it hasn’t even an inkling
that it is apostate. In fact, it is statistically probable that you and every
born-again Christian you admire as a dedicated and fervent servant of Christ
are carnal to the core. You think that’s going a bit
too far? If you are still able to view Christianity from a Biblical
perspective, how would you describe a church in which the vast majority does not believe the unleavened
word of God exists anywhere on earth? In fact, that majority group constantly
derides the minority group for the sole reason that the minority group by faith
accepts God’s Biblical definition of word
of God, Bible, and Scripture as
His preserved, inspired, and inerrant word. Shockingly, the majority group has rejected
God’s definition and, without authority,
redefined Bible to mean
“corrupt translation.” I say shockingly
because the Bible says: he that believeth
not God hath made him a liar (1 Jn 5:10). This unbelief
is why many Christians pretend to “correct” their Bible versions by
consulting Greek and Hebrew dictionaries. I say pretend because even
the most respected theologians and language experts have been unable, after using
more sophisticated methods for well over a century, to produce an uncorrupt
Bible version that doesn’t need constant “correcting” by rank amateurs who
pretend they’re more capable than the experts.
Pagan philosophy has done its work in the
church. That’s why other doctrines I’ve addressed in this book generate more
interest and discussion than does the only topic God Almighty magnifies even
above His holy name (Ps 138:2b). The Bible gets lots of lip service but
Christians no longer magnify it above the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth – the only name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved
(Ac 4:10,12). This is not a minor issue. The Bible is the sole bedrock
and source of our faith and doctrine; there is nothing else. The word of God is
such a fundamental necessity that I believe the Bible version issue to be the
single most blatant and shocking indicator of the sad state of the modern
church. Because the word of God is a prerequisite to discernment, when a
Christian continually uses Reason instead of discernment he is either a baby or
an apostate; there are no other choices.
Why did God tell us our foes would
be our fellow Christians (Mt 10:36; Ps 55:12-15)? Because the true
threat is carnal-minded Christians who conceal their enmity against God (Ro
8:7) with sheep’s clothing. The unsaved have never defeated Christians in
any battle of any kind – we’ve always defeated ourselves with leaven in our own
camp. Because of the rampant false doctrine in our ranks about the Holy Bible,
modern preachers who believe in “higher textual criticism” are sending us into
battle armed with the corrupt word of man rather than with the Sword of the
Lord. Even many of those who use the King James Bible do so without faith because they do not
believe it is the inspired word of God. The most obvious indicator of modern
unbelief is the practical denial of the existence of the word of God. Back in
the 1800s “higher textual criticism” was supposed to help the church by arming it with “more reliable” Bible versions.
But we know by its fruit that it has
done the opposite: Millions of Christians now think the inspired, inerrant word
of God does not exist in any Bible version on earth! That has resulted in more
Christians never mastering the Bible because it’s a waste of time studying
something you can’t trust. And faithful Christians who properly quote Scripture
are increasingly confronted by haughty brethren who change the subject, dodge
the issue, and “correct” them by turning to Greek and Hebrew dictionaries in
the back of a concordance.
If you are already knowledgeable about
this issue you have been carefully analyzing my choice of words in order to
evaluate exactly what I mean when I say word of God, Bible, and Scripture.
I’ll make it easy for you: The Authorized 1611 King James Bible is without a
doubt the word of God. By that I mean God selected every word in it –
even the words in italics. The King James Bible is today the inspired-by-God,
infallible, inerrant, holy word of God with no contradictions or falsehoods of
any kind. No other Bible version or book or manuscript
available today is the word of God – they are all corrupt. That includes the
New King James Version and the Textus Receptus.
Most people when referring to the Bible
as the word of God capitalize the w in word to make it a proper
noun. I don’t. I frequently ignore man’s rules of grammar and spelling in order
to conform to the word of God. In the Bible, Word of God is given a
capital W when it is used as one of the names of the Lord Jesus Christ (Jn 1:1,14; Re 19:13).
When the Bible does not capitalize the w in word of God, it is
referring to the words in the Book themselves (He 4:12; 1 Pe 1:23,25; 2:2). (By the way,
if you do a word study in the Bible you’ll find that the things it says about
the word of God it also says about Jesus Christ. I cannot overstress the
importance of the word of God.)
When I say God selected every word in the
Authorized Version I am certainly aware that God used fallible sinners like
Moses, Isaiah, the King James translators, Jeremiah, and Paul to record His
word, but unlike most Christians I do not stray from the fact that it is the
word of God. I give Him all the credit and glory. Other people
try to compare Paul with the King James translators and use the fact that Paul
was the bigger sinner (1 Ti 1:15) in order to “prove” God wouldn’t use a
clay vessel like Paul to produce His word. But I will not waste your time in a
discussion of God’s word by talking about the number of sins different men
may have committed.
When
I say “Bible version” in reference to any of the unauthorized versions, I use
the term merely for ease of communication. If I were to use a more accurate and
appropriate term like “worthless piece of trash” some people might be
distracted wondering if I’m using “trash” as a euphemism, and I’m trying to
answer questions – not cause them.
It is sad I had to define “word of God”,
“Bible”, and “Scripture”, but the shocking reality is we are surrounded by
apostates whose blindness makes them act like inconsistent airheads. For
example, it frustrates me when Christians mindlessly refer to the Bible, no
matter what version, as “the word of God” (although they usually capitalize the
w), or “Scripture”, or “Bible”, or “Holy Bible”, when they do not
believe it is the word of God as defined in His word! According to God
when we say “word of God” or “Scripture” we are supposed to be referring to
something preserved, inspired, infallible, inerrant, not the word of men, but
as it is in truth, the word of God (1 Th 2:13).
What kind of idiot would refer to a corrupt Bible version as the “word of God”?
Don’t they ever examine themselves when in prayer with God? Don’t they confess
their daily use of blasphemy and profanity? God defines profanity as taking
something holy – like His word – and treating it as common or base (Ezek
22:26; 44:23; Le 19:12). Therefore, when they use the term “God’s word” for
a book they do not believe is the true word of God it is blasphemy and
profanity. And when they dare to override God’s definition of His word it is
effrontery of a kind that shocks and offends mature, knowledgeable Christians
who have even a general understanding of authority. If they had any respect for
God and His word they’d be careful when talking about their fallible Bible
versions to only use words like “version”, “translation”, “word of man”,
“pseudo Scripture”, “pseudo Bible”, “leavened, unpreserved word”, “text”, etc.
They should never misuse the very words God has assigned to His inspired,
infallible, holy word. And then when they force what they call “the Word of
God” to kneel down and humbly submit to the overriding authority of a
concordance – something even they know is of human origin – they commit more
blasphemy and prove by their works they are humanists who glorify Reason over
revelation. According to Ps 138:2b and Mt 12:32 Christians should be
more careful with what they say about the word of God than about how they use
the Lord’s name. What, you didn’t know that!?
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There is the right way – the Scriptural
way – to look for the true word of God, and there are wrong ways (all wrong
ways are based on philosophy) to choose a Bible version. First, since without
faith it is impossible to please Him (He 11:6),
we must start by believing God exists and by believing what He has said about
His word. Second, God says we are to know them by their fruits, as in a
corrupt tree does not bring forth good fruit. Therefore if we find a Bible
version with no errors or contradictions we may safely discern that the
Tree from which that pure fruit came wasn’t the Apostle Paul, or Wescott and Hort, or the King
James translators – it was God. And if we find a Bible version having errors
and inconsistencies, we may safely discern that leavened fruit did not
come from God, it came from man, and it should not be referred to as the
word of God, the Bible, or Scripture.
The problem with what I’ve just said is
it requires and is built upon faith in God. That is a blatant violation
of the one supreme fundamental necessity of philosophy: Religious faith is not
allowed to be involved in mental processes; only Reason can be used; only the
scientific method can be used. Today’s Christian wants to be accepted in a
secular society of unsaved people so he demonstrates the “seriousness” and
“validity” of his scholarship by shunning spiritual discernment in favor of
Natural Reason in direct violation of 1 Co 2:14. If you are not in
agreement with what I’ve just said (and most Christians do not agree), it is
unlikely that this chapter will help you; because without faith you can’t
please God (He 11:6), and He will not allow you to understand reality (Lk 24:45; 1 Co 1:19,20)
because anything you do that is based on science instead of faith is a sin against
Him (Ro 14:23b).
Many of you Christians have doubts – for
various reasons – about the Christianity you see around you. But you tend to
think that so many Christian leaders and scholars over the centuries who built
the huge system that is Christianity today couldn’t be wrong. How can all those
people who took courses like Ancient Middle Eastern Architecture 101, Dead
Language Studies 201, Mastering Church Economics 301, and The Mechanics of
Successful Preaching Techniques 201 be wrong? And how can you know
they’re wrong? I maintain that Christians would have better spent their time
digging a leach field for a septic tank than taking those courses. I say that
because those courses had a negative effect on their relationship with the Lord
Jesus Christ; digging a ditch does not. How do I know that? Because
I know the Bible.
In order to have the mind of Christ, to
have spiritual discernment so you can judge all things (1 Co 2:14-16),
you must go by the spiritual words in the Bible (1 Co 2:13; Jn 6:63; 14:23-26). Think of it this way: If you
know the Bible, there is no authoritative information source about Christianity
you haven’t read; you know all the pertinent material that was and is
available to all preachers and scholars in history. Any doctrines they’ve ever
come up with were supposed to have come solely from the Bible because there
is nothing else. The Bible alone will show you the truth of Ps
119:97-100. That’s how you can know and be sure they are wrong.
They all know the Bible, too, don’t they?
No, they’ve only read and studied it. But they do not believe anything they’ve
studied is the word of God as defined by God in His word. That lack of faith
caused God to not open their understanding, therefore
they never outgrew the Natural man’s carnality we all must deal with when we
get saved. That carnal Reason prevented them from gaining more understanding
than all their preachers and professors. Indeed, it caused them to agree
with the foolish wisdom of men who contradict God by saying, “You’ll know them
by their roots; we must go back to the old Hebrew and Greek manuscripts to find
the truth because it sure isn’t in any Bible we have today.” They think – quite
logically – that the older manuscripts were subjected to the corrupting
influence of men for a shorter period of time and therefore probably contain
fewer introduced errors. That ridiculous idea came from philosophy via the
Antiquarians. How can I call something so logical ridiculous? Because as a
servant of Jesus Christ I’m not allowed to depend on Reason – I’m to depend on
revelation. (That sentence sums up this book.) Their logic is secular and completely
ignores God and what He said He’d do with His word. They therefore cannot
apply the fact that the Bible says the word of God is eternal. That means
it is not affected or corrupted by time, tides, or fallible men. So they fail
to follow Christ’s example by applying the significance He gave the present
tense of “am” in Mt 22:31,32 to the present
tense of “is” in 2 Ti 3:15,16.
Let’s now examine the Hebrew and Greek
manuscripts that scholars and preachers would like you to revere.
Many Christians assume, because their preachers often confidently correct the word of God by quoting “the original Greek”, that the original Greek manuscripts exist. They don’t; it’s a myth. The original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic/Chaldean manuscripts – also called “the originals”, also called “the original autographs” – do not exist. And neither do any copies of the originals. In fact, for well over the last one thousand five hundred years no preacher, pewster, scholar, archeologist, or Bible translator has ever laid eyes on the originals or direct copies of the originals.
What
does exist? Thousands of scraps, bits, pages, pieces, and
fragments of old Bible versions ranging in date from the fourth to the
thirteenth centuries. Why do I call them Bible “versions” instead of
“Bibles” or Bible “manuscripts”? Because they are all different, they all say
different things. It is from among these different versions that scholars pick
and choose manuscripts and bits of pages they like and dislike, often using the
same subjective criteria Christians use today when they walk into a huge
bookstore to decide which Bible version they prefer. If it weren’t for the
differences in these thousands of old, crumbling remnants and bits of pages of
paper, parchment, papyrus, and vellum, scholars wouldn’t be able to loosely
categorize and group the manuscripts into families. There are two main families
involved in the Bible version debate.
The
first group or family is the largest (it contains 90 to 95% of the old
manuscripts) and is the least popular among scholars and preachers. (Remember,
even though the word manuscripts is most often
used, it refers to and includes all the single pages, partial scraps of pages,
and portions of chapters and books.) Because it is the largest group, this
family is called the Majority Text. It is also commonly called the Received
Text, or Textus Receptus,
because it includes the bulk of what we have “received” from antiquity. The Textus Receptus is a corrupt
family of rotten Bible remnants because of the errors it contains.
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In
general, the minority of Christians who prefer the corrupt Textus
Receptus family do so because they’ve been told the
King James Bible came from the Textus Receptus, and because the Textus Receptus doesn’t have as many errors as the competing
family of Bible versions. The former is wrong; the latter is correct but
irrelevant. The King James Bible did not come from the Textus Receptus because the Textus Receptus grouping did not
exist in 1611. Not until more than two centuries after the AV1611 came out did
men began to save old bits of paper when they came across them instead of just
using them as insulation. Many even began searching for them as they became
convinced God had not preserved His word and they had to probe antiquity
in order to uncover lost wisdom. As they found more and more remnants they
invented families and decided to put the manuscripts used by the King James
translators into the Textus Receptus
because they didn’t have as many errors or the same kinds of errors as those in
the competing family. But the real reason we know the Authorized King James
Version did not come from the Textus Receptus is because the King James does not agree with
any manuscript in the Textus Receptus.
In fact, the KJV has readings in it that do not appear in any manuscript in
any family on earth.
Many
Christians consider the Authorized Version to be a member of the Textus Receptus family because
carnal Reason will not allow them to accept, believe, and apply 1 Ti 1:4
and Mt 7:20. They think it’s clever to establish family trees by
inventing manuscript genealogies in order to examine the roots.
That’s why they call them manuscript families. They expose themselves as
faithless Bible rejecters every time they open their mouths.
The
competing family of manuscripts is small; it has but 5% of the existing
remnants. Since many of these have been linked to Alexandria, Egypt, a large
center of learning in the old days, this family is called the Alexandrian
Text. This is the popular group and it is used for the vast majority of modern
Bible versions. What appeals to most scholars about this family is that its
scraps are older than those of the Textus Receptus. (Remember, as noted earlier, age does not
apply to things that are eternal like the word of God.)
The
two big stars in the Alexandrian family are the Sinai and the Vatican
manuscripts. The Sinai manuscript got its name because it was found in a bundle
of trash in a monastery near (what is guessed to be) Mt. Sinai. The Vatican
manuscript is owned by the Vatican. In spite of the belief that greater age is
supposed to equate to fewer errors, this family contains more errors
than the younger Textus Receptus.
(Not that it matters; it is errors that matter, not
the number of errors.)
Even
though it is called the Textus Receptus and the Alexandrian Text, there is no one
text. All of the various manuscripts within each family differ from each other.
Another reason I often refer to these old manuscripts as different Bible versions
is to emphasize that when someone says “the Textus Receptus” you have no idea what specific scraps he’s really
referring to. Preachers downplay the number of errors, contradictions, and
differences among the elements of the manuscript families in an attempt to get
you to think some authoritative, unified, and cohesive “text” exists. So they
like to speak of percentages of differences because it sounds better than the
actual numbers when speaking about the word of God. To give you an idea how
different the manuscripts or versions are, let’s look at an interesting
statistic: Even manuscripts within the same family (which means those
manuscripts that are considered to be “in agreement” with each other) average
six to ten differences per chapter – and there are 1,189 chapters! Some
of those differences are generally considered to be “minor” as long as they
have no significant impact on the meaning or context of the chapter.
We’ll
shortly examine some of those errors in order to verify that they are errors
indeed, but so far I hope you’re beginning to understand that the position of
the majority of preachers, pewsters, and scholars who
do not believe God has made His holy word available to His church today is
based firmly on Reason and Logic, not revelation and faith. And they are
revealed to be hypocrites by the deceitful way they handle the verses in the
Bible that define the word of God and that say God has preserved His inspired
word for us. One preacher (whose pewsters assured me
he strongly believed the King James was the word of God) was using all the
rhetoric with me in a private conversation in which I was questioning him about
his doctrinal beliefs. He was saying vague stuff like: “I believe this old
black Book from cover to cover, and I even believe the cover”; “I believe the
King James Version is the word of God and is the only version Christians should
use.” When I pinned him down he admitted that because the Textus
Receptus is corrupt, he thinks the King James is
corrupt, and he believed only the lost original autographs were inspired and
infallible. God made them disappear, he said, in order to prevent the idolatry
of worshipping a book. He believes God wants errors in our Bible
versions for the same reason. When I asked him about the verses that say the
word of God exists today he said he believes it does exist – God has it with
Him in heaven. (Not according to God: Dt
30:10-14.) He confided that he was telling me things he kept from his
congregation because many of them couldn’t handle the truth; it would destroy
their faith – they needed to think they held the word of God in their
hands. I was able to get that information out of him because he is an honorable
man and would not lie when I forced him to give me specific answers. Another
reason he openly admitted his true stance is the sad fact that his beliefs are
not considered to be heresy by the vast majority of educated Christians – they
all believe essentially the same thing.
So,
to get back to the textual families, which is better,
the Alexandrian or the Textus Receptus
family? Carnally speaking you can take your pick; it’s all subjective – like
choosing a candy bar. Biblically speaking, though, they are both nothing but
trash and should be used as kitty litter. Any moron can quote “a little leaven
leavens the whole lump”, but carnal Christians don’t know how to apply the
Scriptures to real life. So they run around proclaiming their leavened family
of manuscripts is “older and more reliable” and is “recommended by scholars.”
Their opponents counter by saying their own leavened family has fewer errors
and was used by all Protestants until recently. Both of them are defending and
promoting rotten fruit – only the degree of rottenness differs.
God
does not produce or preserve leaven when it comes to His word. When people say
God inspired the originals and then man corrupted them over the centuries, you
may safely ignore them because they are ignoring God. It’s His word and
He’s the one Who deliberately made all the impressive
statements about it; He’s the one Who said He’d preserve it and judge us by it.
So don’t ever, ever leave Him out of a Bible discussion. The reason
the old manuscripts are nothing but decaying remnants is they are rejected by
God as nothing but error-filled leaven. And it is reassuring that God has
rejected them, because it shows He is not the exaggerating bungler Who
said He’d preserve His word but failed to do so that most Christians think He
is. Therefore, because apostate scholars have grouped the old manuscripts
according to what Reason taught them was appropriate, it is appropriate for
faithful followers of Jesus Christ to glorify Him by using revelation and faith
to do the same thing in a more helpful and descriptive way. Since all
manuscripts of both families are corrupt, and since that corruption is the
single most important and relevant characteristic about them, all
manuscripts of both families are grouped together and classified as the
“E.R.R.O.R. Manuscripts.” ERROR is an acronym that serves as a reminder of what
we’re talking about when we say things like “original Greek” and “Textus Receptus.” It means
Existing Remnants of Rotten Old Rejects.
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Now
when you hear people say things like, “This family of manuscripts is more
reliable”, you’ll realize they only said that because they can’t say it is
free of errors. They are all ERROR manuscripts. The Textus Receptus should be called
the Textus Rejectus.
When
your preacher says, “According to the Greek (or Hebrew) text this word in our
‘Bibles’ really should be…” is he referring to the ERROR
manuscripts? No, but he is allowing you to think he is: he has never
even seen one of the thousands of scraps of the ERROR
manuscripts and couldn’t read them if he did because they are written in dead
languages. The Hebrew that God’s people spoke is a dead language now; no
society or group of people speaks it any more. The Hebrew spoken today is
different. The same is true for the Greek of the New Testament. It’s a
dead-language dialect even the Greeks don’t speak today. I need to explain the
dead-language texts before we get to what your preacher uses.
The
ERROR manuscripts consist of thousands of
dead-language (mostly Hebrew and Greek) manuscripts. The sheer number of them
is intimidating. They differ from each other in many places. In many other
places they agree with each other. In some places it’s anybody’s guess. The ERRORists
are the men who comb through these old remnants and try to figure out which of
the various readings for a verse might be more likely to be the correct one.
An
ERRORist,
for example, goes through a bunch (not all) of the ERROR
manuscripts and picks this reading for some verse while rejecting other
readings for the same verse. His editing is based on many things including
religious and personal bias. In many cases he has great latitude when deciding
which wording to select. His job is to turn thousands of differing ERROR
manuscripts into one dead-language Bible text. In other words, he writes down
what he thinks God “meant” to say. He has to contend with an average of six to
ten variants per chapter and try to decide which one, if any, he is going to
use. In some cases when he doesn’t think a verse looks genuine, he skips the
verse. When he has every word in every verse just the way he thinks it should
be he publishes it in the Greek dead language as Smith’s Greek Text. But
Mr. Jones examines Smith’s book and can’t believe how bad it is. Jones thinks
Smith should have used some remnants he ignored, should have selected a
different variant to be the reading of a verse, should have given more weight
to manuscript age, or to completeness, or to marginal notes in the manuscripts,
etc. So Jones publishes his own Greek New Testament called Jones’ Greek
Text. A few years later both men look back at their works and are not happy
with them. So they revise them and publish second editions. All four editions
remain available because different Bible version committees have different
likes and dislikes.
When
Brown takes a look at Smith’s Greek Text, Second Edition, he shakes his
head in amused disdain. Smith chose to use Parchment Fragment 225 for the first
part of a certain verse, and Brown thinks he should have used p46 or maybe even
B for the entire verse. Brown also sees that Smith used Db, H, P, and 436 for a
certain reading and never took into consideration the radically different but
fairly clear reading in K. True, the reading doesn’t appear in many manuscripts
but its clarity alone ought to give it some weight! He also knows Smith
graduated from school back before 0208 had been dug up, and even though many
scholars reject the validity of 0208, one of those who supports it is Brown’s
own venerable dead-language professor. That would explain why Smith’s
translation of a certain word was so typically ambiguous.
But
according to Miller, Brown can be very opinionated. When Miller worked with him
on the Brown-Miller Greek New Testament, Miller was fairly young and
inexperienced. As a result he allowed Brown to bully him into accepting certain
readings that Miller considered to be based too much on Brown’s social agenda,
had too little manuscript evidence, and were misleading at best and deceitful
at worst. In fact, had it not been for the fact that the text was Miller’s
first opportunity to be published and to earn some good money he’d have quit
the project. Years later Miller published his own Greek New Testament
that he honestly believed to be far superior to the Brown-Miller Text.
It was never half as popular as the Brown-Miller Text because Brown was
an ass kisser and had all the right contacts. It always irritated Miller that
the Brown-Miller Text was used for about 25% of the New Testament in one
well-financed Bible version and almost 20% of another very popular version that
really only did well because the publisher’s marketing people spent too much of
the funding on slick packaging and advertising and not enough on committee
work.
There
are hundreds of ERRORists
who often produce multiple editions. Each edition is different from all the
others, which means there are hundreds of dead-language texts and each one is
its own unique Bible version. That in itself is proof there is no such thing as
“the Greek text” or “the Hebrew text.” There are hundreds of
them, they are all subjective, and they are all different. And new ones are
popping up all the time. The ERRORists
who churn out these texts do not believe any of their finished works is the
inspired word of God; they know better – they see too many ERRORs
to believe otherwise.
So
when you hear someone refer to “the Greek” or “the Greek text” you’ll know he
is referring to one of the hundreds of modern books published by the ERRORists.
Therefore you should always for the sake of accuracy ask which Greek
text is being referred to. Is it the Brown-Miller Greek New Testament or
the Second Edition of Smith’s Greek Text, or is the reference to
portions of a number of different works? And when you hear someone correct the
Bible by saying “the original Greek says…” you’ll now know the originals don’t
exist, that copies of the originals don’t exist, that he should have said “The
Brown-Miller text claims fragment 0208 of the ERROR
manuscripts says…”, that he probably doesn’t know as much about the Bible
version issue as you now do, and that he is an insecure, pompous gas bag
spreading blasphemy about the living word of the living God.
Modern
Bible version committees never look at the actual ERROR
manuscripts. They pick whatever Hebrew and Greek texts –
published by ERRORists
such as Brown and Miller – appeal to them and translate from those. Translating
a dead language is not easy.
The
translators are the men who take the dead-language texts published by various ERRORists
and try to find out what the dead Hebrew and Greek words mean and what different
ways they were used. For example if a dead-language reading said, “You’re
kidding me!” they’d try to find enough ancient writings to study in order to
figure out what kidding meant. Eventually they’d figure out it meant baby
goat. So they’d translate it as, “You’re treating me like a young animal!”
and publish it in a Bible version called The Revered Version. A later
translating committee would decide the context had more to do with stupidity or
ignorance and would translate it as, “You’re treating me as if I were as stupid
as a young goat!” They’d publish it as The New Revered Version. Another
publisher’s translating committee would utilize previously ignored old writings
and, thinking it had a better idea of the true meaning of the passage, publish
it in their The New Light Bible as, “Just as a goat gives birth, you’re
causing an idea to be born in my mind.” Later another publisher would jump into
the lucrative Bible market by hiring a multi-national translation committee and
publish The Global Standard Version which rendered the verse as, “You’re
being as playful with me as a baby goat!” It is important to understand that
all of these attempts to determine the word meaning would be added to Hebrew
dictionaries – and Christians who innocently believed these dictionary
definitions were authoritative would later select one of these definitions to
“prove” other Bible versions that selected one of the other definitions were
“wrong.” Go look up a few words in Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and you’ll see
they often have several disparate “definitions” from which to choose.
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If
you were to go up to the group of men who just finished a translation of the
Old Testament for a modern Bible version and ask one of them how they did it,
this is what he’d tell you. And remember, this is the accepted method:
“The
generally accepted starting place for a translation of the Old Testament is to
consult the various Masoretic Hebrew texts. One of
the popular older versions of the Masoretic text is
the ben Asher text. But some scholars agree
with Daniel Bomberg that the ben
Asher text is not what it should be, so they begin their Old Testament
translation work with Bomberg’s revision of the Asher
text. Later, Jacob ben Chayim
published his own respected work because he considered none of the other works
to be accurate renditions of the “true” Old Testament. Then Rudolph Kittel published two different editions of ben Chayim’s work six years apart
because he felt even his own first edition should be changed. Paul Kahle then published his own version that relied heavily on
one of ben Asher’s older works.
“Ah,
decisions, decisions, my boy! That’s what our job is – to make informed
decisions. With eleven years, off and on, of Bible translating work, I’m one of
the senior translators on this particular committee, and, boy, could I tell you
some stories! Anyway, of all the hundreds of texts produced by the ERRORist
scholars, we decided to use the Daniel Bomberg text.
However, the Bomberg text could use some help so we
also selected readings from the Stuttgart Hebrew Edition, which you don’t hear
much about anymore. We also borrowed passages from the Septuagint Greek
translation of older Hebrew texts, as well as the Latin Vulgate text,
which was popular for years in the Roman Catholic Church. However, we felt it
was necessary to change some of the readings on our own based on some
new stuff we read in a book about the latest findings in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“At
times, when we felt a better reading would result if we inserted different
vowels into the ancient Hebrew from those used by the revisers of the Masoretic texts, we went ahead and
followed our instincts. Other parts we changed based on some old translations
whose antiquity we felt deserved some respect. But, not always happy with the
previous sources, we also chose readings from the following Hebrew texts whose
differences from each other gave us great discretionary latitude: the Aquila,
the Symmachus and Theodotian,
the Syriac Peshitta, the Targums, and the Juxta Hebraica. We also used various Hebrew dictionaries and
books about the origins of languages. Sometimes where we could not decide what
reading should be used and had no real preference, we solicited inputs from
scholars we consider to be competent and who are in doctrinal agreement with
us. During our work we were always conscious of the presence of the Holy
Spirit. We also found that the ERRORist
work called the Samaritan Pentateuch contained some words and verses we
preferred to use. And at times we felt compelled to reject the body of the text
itself and instead use scribal marginal notes in our verses. In order to help
figure out obscure meanings we looked up how the verse was translated in other
modern Bible versions in English as well as in foreign languages. And to
achieve clarity we sometimes added words not in the texts we consulted because
our opinions are just as good as those of other people. And sometimes we made
changes to verses in order to avoid copyright infringement and the accompanying
legal battles with the publishers and owners of other modern Bible versions.
“Because
we who make up the modern Bible version committees base the versions we produce
on the disputed works of the ERRORists
rather than upon the ERROR manuscripts themselves,
we believe it is prudent and even necessary to pick and choose, consult,
compare, debate, decide, revise, reject, and rewrite in order to best utilize
the above sources so we can produce and market a top-notch product that will be
appealing to you consumers – all at a reasonable price.
“In
some places in your version you may notice a verse is missing. That is because
we decided the verse probably wasn’t in the original autographs. So we removed
the verse and skipped the verse number in order to conform to the numbering
system adopted centuries ago and which the four-century dominance of the
Authorized 1611 King James Version established as the verse numbering system.
In fact, the King James somehow became the standard by which all Bible
versions are measured. For example, because of the influence of the King James
Version for so many centuries, we don’t always take corrupt verses out of our
version – which really irritates us. But this is a consumer-driven industry and
ignorant laymen are the ones whose money we’re after when we make a new
translation. We learned from the outcry raised by Christian consumers when the
RSV came out to be very careful. When Christians noticed their precious fairy
tale about Jesus saying to the fictitious woman caught in adultery, “He that is
without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” wasn’t in the text of
the RSV but was buried in a footnote, they went into a fit. It seems they not
only objected to the myth being removed but also to the way the footnote was worded!
The footnote made it clear that even though a few Greek manuscripts do include
the information from John 7:53 through John 8:11, those trashy manuscripts
don’t agree on whether to insert the “wives’ tale” (as we call it) here or at
the end of John’s gospel or at the end of Luke 21. The footnote also offended
the redneck sensitivities of those ignorant Bible believers from the Coca-Cola
belt because it made it clear that even the wording of the story varies
radically in the few manuscripts in which it appears! The publishers won’t let
us word things that way anymore. And they won’t let us start John 8 with verse
12 anymore, except in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation. We can
bracket the fairy tale, but it stays in the text. And we can say in the
footnote that John 7:53-8:11 isn’t in the “best” or “oldest” or “most reliable”
manuscripts, but only the cheaper, pulp-paper Bible versions can get away with
the full footnote because they target a different type of consumer. About the
only place this information is openly and freely taught any more is in Bible
schools because the average layman simply doesn’t have the capacity to handle
the truth. You see, we think some guy invented the whole “cast a stone at her”
story for unknown reasons and wrote it in an ancient Bible version. Then some
other guy who’d probably heard the story or read it in that manuscript stuck
what he could remember of the story in another manuscript – but he put it in a
different place. We think the story caught on only because it was popular.
That’s why we don’t think the incident ever happened at all.
“All
of this will help you understand why we also feel a pressing urgency to
translate everything into English words that are both current and simple. Our
marketing people tell us most people like looking up words in a Hebrew
or Greek lexicon because, even if they don’t learn anything, it makes them feel
sophisticated and smart. But they don’t want to have to look up words in
an English dictionary because it makes them feel stupid! God forbid they
should improve their vocabulary! Admittedly though, a lot of us translators
wouldn’t have a job if Christians could handle even simple, basic English. I
mean, if they could handle English they’d all buy the Authorized Version
instead of whining that they always have to look up in the dictionary what
“thee” and “thou” mean. In this racket we have to walk a fine line: We have to
dumb down our product to the level of the consumer while at the same time
flattering them by making it appear sophisticated. Marketing research shows
that gimmicks like full-color maps, study aids, concordances, red-letter
editions, etc., are more often than not what sells
Bibles. We hate the marketing people because each Bible version we work on has
a larger percentage of its budget assigned to fluff. But that’s what sells. And
we’re in the business of selling.”
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And
that is how a Bible version is made. As you can see, it is anything but an
exact science. There is no authoritative Greek or Hebrew text. And the
definitions in the Greek and Hebrew dictionaries are themselves merely
collections of sincere – but often wildly diverse – attempts over the years by
many different men to figure out how words might have been used back when they
were parts of a living language. That is why as faithful Christians mature they
eventually realize the whole “scholarship” routine is nothing but ever learning
and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. So they deliberately and
prayerfully reject science/knowledge and by faith begin looking for the true
word of God by its fruit – inerrancy – rather than by its roots in antiquity. I
am reminded of a big-name preacher who by all accounts is a man of integrity
who loves the Lord and prominently uses the King James but doesn’t believe it
is the word of God. He was invited to be an honorary member of a Bible
translation committee a few years ago. (This story is hearsay from a member of
his congregation.) The project was to produce a modern version based on the Textus Receptus. The preacher
became so disillusioned and disgusted with what went on he resigned from the
committee.
One
of the big reasons so many preachers and pewsters
become jaded, cynical, hypocrites is they do not
believe the word of God exists. And the more they use the dead languages as
correcting authorities over the living word of God, the phonier they become. Which brings us back to what your preacher uses when he corrects
God.
The
Bible version your preacher holds in his hand is the result of the best
scholarship money can buy. The ERRORists
have spent much time and energy becoming experts on the ERROR
manuscripts and the dead languages. They’ve brought all their considerable
expertise to bear in the production of their Hebrew Old Testament texts and
their Greek New Testament texts. Your preacher isn’t qualified to even touch
the hem of the ERRORists’
garments. That’s why he’ll never even dream of publishing his own dead-language
text.
The
same is true of the Bible translators: They have spent much time and energy
becoming experts in their field. They’ve forgotten more about the dead
languages and the mechanics of translating them than your preacher ever learned
from his assignments in his Dead Languages 101 course – even if he managed to
get decent grades when he turned in his homework to his teacher. That’s why no
publisher would ever dream of hiring your preacher to translate the next Bible
version.
Your
preacher went shopping one day and bought a Bible version. The expert
translators who put that Bible version together made informed choices about
which Hebrew and Greek texts to use. Then they combed through many, many
volumes of other works in order to refine both the underlying texts and the
actual English words that appear in each verse in the Bible version. Your
preacher liked their work enough as a consumer he paid to have it.
But
your preacher isn’t smart enough to know how dumb he is. So he thinks his Dead
Languages 101 homework assignments made him a better-qualified expert on the
dead languages and on translation work than the men who devote their lives to
that work. He wants to strut his stuff by correcting
the experts. But because he doesn’t really know his rear end from a hole in the
ground he needs what I call a layman’s aid.
Many
kinds of layman’s aids are published. All of them are designed to give some
basic information. Some of the more popular ones are Greek and Hebrew lexicons,
concordances, and interlinear Bibles. Some interlinear Bibles compare different
Bible versions with each other. Others compare an English version with Greek
and Hebrew texts. These may contain notes about which ERROR
manuscript fragment was used and about variations in other fragments.
Concordances and interlinears tend to be popular among
laymen such as preachers and pewsters because they
are quick and easy to use.
If
your preacher went to Bible school he may have kept one of the books they made
him buy. If that is too complicated for him he probably bought an interlinear,
a concordance, or some other basic, easy-to-use dictionary.
Here’s
what he does. If he gets his sermons from some of the published sermons, they
often tell him which words in his Bible version to correct. These corrections
are almost always because denominational doctrine doesn’t like certain words in
the version. If he prepares his own sermons, he won’t correct his Bible version
as often because he doesn’t know what to correct. If he does correct the Bible
in sermons of his own making you can often tell because his correction is a
stupid, pompous waste of your time. For example, one preacher pointed out that
the English word “conscience” is formed by “con” (with) and “science”
(knowledge). He then pointed out that the Greek word for conscience is “suneidesis”, which is formed by the Greek “sun” (with) and
the Greek “eidesis”(knowledge)!
Notice that the church is not edified by that kind of drivel. But they’re not
trying to help you; they’re trying to make you think they’re smart. All they
accomplish, however, is to prove they are in way over their heads and have no
business shepherding a flock.
But
it’s when they correct their Bible version (no matter what version it is) by
saying, “This is an unfortunate translation; the real Hebrew meaning for this
word is…” that they reveal themselves to be unbelievers and fools. Unbelievers
because they don’t believe the word of God exists, and fools because they think
you’re going to accept them as more qualified in the ERROR
manuscripts and in the nuances of translating than the paid professionals! The
very fact that your preacher thinks he can spend three and a half minutes in
the dictionary section of his concordance and come away knowing more than
entire translation committees is the height of folly, and it proves he is
incompetent. He does not understand language in general, dead languages in
particular, dictionaries, or why the Hebrew and Greek dictionary in the back of
his concordance often has a very broad selection of definitions from which to
choose. What, does he really think the translators of his Bible version weren’t
aware of those other choices? Can he get any more stupid?! Your preacher would
be more impressive if he quoted other Bible versions by saying something like,
“This ‘young animal’ in our version was translated as ‘baby goat’ in the Global
Standard Version. I respect the expertise of both translators but I think ‘baby
goat’ fits with the context and with our denominational doctrine better.” If he
limits himself to quoting other versions at least he’s quoting the work
of experts instead of “correcting” the work of experts.
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You
can’t take a layman’s aid and Dead Languages 101 and out expert the experts.
All you can do is make yourself look like a pompous, bungling, foolish Bible
rejecter. But that’s why layman’s aids are published (in addition to making
money); they are so you can make up your own Bible version and be your own
authority. You don’t have to accept the ERROR
manuscripts, the ERRORists,
the translators, the Bible versions, or the preachers as authorities; all you
have to do is what seems right to you…like everybody else does.
Now,
let me make something clear about manuscripts and Bible versions. In general,
all Bible versions on earth, except for the King James Bible, are faithful,
accurate, scholarly translations of the ERRORists’
dead-language texts. Differences between Bible versions are due mainly to the
translators’ selections among the many available ERRORist
texts, and in small part due to perfectly justifiable latitude in the
translation of various words and the clarification of meaning. When those
versions say the story about the woman caught in adultery isn’t in most
manuscripts, they aren’t lying. And when people say there are readings in the
King James Bible that don’t appear in any manuscript on earth, they aren’t
lying. The King James is not a faithful, accurate, scholarly translation of the
Textus Receptus or of any
manuscript on earth. And when people tell you the ERROR
manuscripts are full of errors, and the Bible versions that come from them
faithfully and accurately preserve those errors, they are absolutely correct.
But when they
say the King James came from the corrupt Textus Receptus, the King James contains errors, the King James is
not the word of God, and the word of God does not exist on earth, they do err,
knowing neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.
It
is important to note the majority of Christians known as defenders of the King
James Bible are not defending it as the word of God as defined by God.
They are defending the King James as the least corrupt version. Here is what
one of these prominent “King James only” proponents has to say: “God’s
preservation of the New Testament text was not miraculous…The scribes and
printers who produced the copies…were not inspired…Hence there are some New
Testament passages in which the true reading cannot be determined…the Textus Receptus disagrees with
the Traditional [Majority] text…the several editions of the Textus
Receptus differ from each other and from
the King James Version. And…the case is the same with the Old Testament
text.” He then goes on: “Admittedly this venerable [Authorized] version is not
absolutely perfect…should the need for…a new English version
ever arise…ensure that only the [KJV] be revised and not the underlying
Hebrew and Greek text.” (In other words he wants the less corrupt Textus Receptus to not be
replaced or mixed with the more corrupt Alexandrian text.)
Another
defender of the Authorized Version says, “The object of the following chapters
is to demonstrate that the Received Text underlying the King James Version more
faithfully preserves [than does the Alexandrian Text] the inspired
revelation…We do not say the King James Version is infallible. There are
changes that could be and should be profitably made.”
OK,
we’ve established that the ERRORists
don’t respect their own work as authoritative. We’ve seen that the translators
respect neither the work of the ERRORists
nor their own work as authoritative. We’ve seen that many in the “King James
only” group teach that the KJV they use is not the word of God. And we’ve seen
that preachers and pewsters don’t respect anything as
authoritative because they go to and fro with their layman’s aids fearlessly
contradicting and foolishly “correcting” everything. And we’ve established that
they do this because of unbelief; they do not believe the word of God exists.
They do not believe there is an authoritative Bible in existence that can correct
them and their doctrines.
What
do I know that they don’t know? I know they are going about this Bible version
stuff backwards because of their unbelief. How do I know that? Because the Bible tells me so. But it only told me that
when, through faith, I believed God and He opened my understanding. It’s very
simple; any unsaved moron can understand my position. But they cannot believe
it.
Let’s
examine the fruit of the Bible versions instead of foolishly trying to
know them by going back to their roots.
When Christian
unbelievers in the existence of the word of God want to spread their
hypocritical belief, they often use science. Let’s look at how they “prove” the
Bible is not the word of God:
Le
11:6 And the
hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
For
many generations scholars howled with laughter at this verse because modern man
knew rabbits don’t chew their cud – they don’t even have a cud! Believers sat
in grim-faced stony silence, faithfully trusting, hoping the word of God was
somehow correct. If you read an older (fifteen or twenty years) book on raising
rabbits, it will tell you to clean out their cages frequently in order to
prevent the disgusting creatures from eating their own shitballs.
Newer books, however, will tell you man has now discovered that rabbits chew
their cud. They don’t regurgitate it like cows, sheep, and goats; they poop it
in soft, egg-shaped masses. Remembering where they deposited them, rabbits
return later, consume the nutritious nodules again, and then deposit the true
waste as the smaller, rounder, harder pellets that Bible-rejecting assholes no
longer bring up as “proof”! What a Book! How did we know rabbits chew
their cud? Because it’s in the Authorized Version! (The fact that it’s also in
the unauthorized versions is not helpful – that just means it’s either true or
not true.) So the next time you see a pile of rabbit shit, laugh and tell your
family it’s a fitting monument to unbelief; it’s not wisdom from a dumb ass (2
Pe 2:16), it’s wisdom from a hare’s ass.
Nu
25:9 And those
that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand.
1
Co 10:8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell
in one day three and twenty thousand.
A
national Christian publication a few years ago ran a major article entitled, Inerrancy:
The Bible is the Word of God. The article included a section showing that all
Bible versions have errors. Nu 25:9, which says twenty-four thousand died in
the plague, is contradicted, the Christian author claimed, by the number in 1
Co 10:8. The scholar missed the fact that Nu 25:9 is a total number,
while 1 Co 10:8 tells how many died in one day.
The
article went on to say all Bible versions are just versions and not the
“Word of God.” (Yes, the W was capitalized. A lot of Christians who
haven’t learned from God’s Authorized Version to pay attention to every little
detail miss things like that.) It said (correctly) all Greek and Hebrew texts
in existence have contradictions and errors. It also said (incorrectly) only
the “original autographs” were inspired and inerrant, and thank God they no
longer exist because He doesn’t want anybody worshipping a book by thinking
it’s His inspired word! It never did explain how the Bible is the word
of God if the word of God no longer exists, but as the Nu 25:9/1 Co 10:8
“proof” shows, if you mess with God’s word, He’ll mess with your brain.
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I think you are beginning to see what the Bible
version issue is all about. It’s about the Authorized 1611 King James Bible.
That’s it; if the King James Bible didn’t exist there wouldn’t be a single
saint who believed God’s word still exists – just as pure as the King said it
would be. Earlier I said the Bible has the same things to say about both the
Word of God and His word. The Bible says, “…the stone which the builders
disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word
…And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be
snared, and be taken” (1 Pe 2:8; Is 8:15).
With
that in mind, let’s see how born-again Christian scholars do when they dare to
open their mouths and utter words against the word of God that they’ll hear
again at Judgment. These are the kinds of “errors” people find only in the KJV:
(For other KJV “errors” not covered in this chapter see Bible versions
in the Index.)
Ge
1:1 In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Ge
2:1 Thus the
heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
You don’t have
to go far to find places in the Authorized Version that modern scholars think
are errors. Ge 1:1 says heaven and Ge 2:1 says heavens. Modern scholars have
changed Ge 1:1 to say heavens to make
it agree with Ge 2:1 in every modern copyrighted
Bible version, including the New King James Version. They did so because they
were taught in Sunday school that Ge 1:1 is a broad
statement introducing the seven-day creation of Ge
1:3 through Ge 2:3. And since Ge
2:1 and 2:4 say heavens, and since we know there are three
heavens (2 Co 12:2), the singular heaven of Ge 1:1 seemed wrong to them. And they are unlikely to ever
change their modern versions back to heaven because there is too much
Bible study required on their part in order to straighten out their doctrines.
Because this topic was covered in detail in chapter D4 I’ll just make a
statement about translation committees: As expert as they are at the ins and
outs of translation work, they – like most Enlightened Christians – don’t know
much about the Lord God or His magnificent word.
All men who
have ever blasphemed the Authorized Bible have always been losers who failed to
prove an error exists. But that doesn’t stop people from foolishly teaching
that the word of God doesn’t exist anywhere on earth today.
Ac
7:45 Which also our fathers that came after
brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our
fathers, unto the days of David;
This verse
brings us to another problem caused by Reason: How could Jesus have led
the Jews across the Jordan into the Promised Land many centuries before He was
born? All modern Bible versions, including the New King James, have changed Ac
7:45 to say Joshua, even though Dt
31:3a and b say both Jesus and Joshua were involved in the crossing.
So where’s the error in the King James? And since the Bible gives Jesus Christ
more glory and credit than Joshua for the crossing (Dt
31:6,8,20,21; 32:12), how can the modern versions
claim to be more trustworthy and more accurate when they ignore the Scriptures
that glorify our King and instead exalt man?
Note: Be
careful if you go buy a King James Version. The publishers will deceitfully
call some of them Authorized Versions without letting you know they’ve changed
some of the words, some of the spelling, and some of the capitalization. A good
indicator is Ac 7:45; if they’ve changed it to Joshua they’ve usually
messed with the rest of it, too. If it says Jesus, it’s correct. Another
clue that they’ve messed with the Authorized Version is 2 Ti 3:17. If
the old spelling of throughly has been
modernized to thoroughly it’s because some fool dared to go through the
word of God and mess with it. Don’t get me wrong; the Bible shows that communication
is the object of language – not spelling and grammar. But when somebody messes
with the jots and tittles God put in His word and then lies by calling
it a King James Bible it is an indication of how full his intestines are.
Anyway, those two verses are usually the first ones to be changed in the rare
instances that publishers mess with the KJV. If they are correct in your Bible
you’ve got a good one.
Now we move on
to errors in all the versions man produced. These errors conclusively
prove modern versions absolutely cannot be called the word of God. I avoid
examples that prey on your ignorance. For example, if you read some of the
typical stuff put out by defenders of the KJV you’ll be given arguments like
this:
“The New
International Version attacks the deity of Christ in Romans 14:10,12, while the King James makes it clear that Jesus Christ
is God.”
KJV
Ro 14:10 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why
dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
KJV
Ro 14:12 So then every one of us shall give account of
himself to God.
NIV
Ro 14:10 You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on
your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.
NIV
Ro 14:12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
If you were to
read that you might get all mad at the NIV. But we are not looking for differences
between versions when searching for the true word of God; we are looking for errors.
Those who point to the above verses as proof of the unsuitability of the modern
versions, for example, hope you’ll never read a book that uses their same
argument to prove the KJV attacks the deity of Christ in places like Ti 2:13
and 2 Pe 1:1 by making it less clear that Christ is
God:
KJV
Ti 2:13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour
Jesus Christ;
NIV Ti 2:13 while we wait for the blessed hope –
the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
KJV
2 Pe 1:1 Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of
Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through
the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus
Christ:
NIV
2 Pe 1:1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus
Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our
God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:
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The same type
of argument is made by many proponents of the KJV to show how the unauthorized
versions “attack” the Lordship of Christ. They’ll show you verses in the King
James that say “Lord Jesus” when those same verses in other versions merely say
“Jesus.” But they won’t show you the verses in the King James that say “Jesus”
when those same verses in modern versions say “Lord Jesus.” That kind of
argument not only proves nothing, it looks deceitful. So keep that in mind as
we look for real errors in Bible versions.
I’m going to
use five versions in this quest for errors, the Authorized 1611 King James
Version, the New International Version, the New King James Version, the
Revised Standard Version, and the New American Standard Version. I believe they
are good representations of what people are using out there. If you use some
unauthorized version other than the ones here, don’t despair; you’ll find many
of these same errors in your version because it, too, is merely the work of
fallible scholars who did their best to accurately translate the errors of the
corrupt ERROR manuscripts into yet
another rendition of the same old leaven. Because of what God has taught us
about His word we need to find but one error in a version to eliminate it from
our search for His Book.
KJV
Is 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the
nations!
KJV
Re 22:16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the
churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning
star.
There
is no problem with the above verses; the identity of each person is clear.
NIV
Is 14:12 How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You
have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
NIV
Re 22:16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the
churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning
Star.”
Here the NIV
has God contradicting Himself as to who is the morning star. Is there a
conspiracy? No, the translators are good men doing the best they can with the ERROR
manuscripts. Some will not view this as a significant error, but all will agree
the reading in the KJV is superior.
It’s time for a
pop quiz: Who killed Goliath? Let’s consult the KJV to see if your answer (David)
is correct:
KJV
1 Sa 17:4,51 And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines,
named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span…Therefore
David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out
of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when
the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.
KJV
2 Sa 21:19 And there was again a battle in Gob with
the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim,
a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath
the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like
a weaver’s beam.
KJV
1 Ch 20:5 And there was war again with the
Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite,
whose spear staff was like a weaver’s beam.
There is no
problem in the above verses about who killed Goliath. Every schoolboy knows
David did. But let’s now consult the modern versions to see who they say killed
Goliath:
NAS
1 Sa 17:4,51 Then a champion came out from the armies of the Philistines named
Goliath, from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span…Then David ran and
stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and
killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their
champion was dead, they fled.
NAS
2 Sa 21:19 And there was war with the Philistines
again at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the
Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gitite,
the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.
NAS
1 Ch 20:5 And there was war with the Philistines
again, and Elhanan the son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite,
the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.
The modern
versions (except for the NKJV) have all three verses contradicting each
other. The first says David killed Goliath, the second says Elhanan is the one
who killed Goliath, and the third says Elhanan actually killed Goliath’s
brother. With three contradictions of this kind we have established one thing
beyond a shadow of a doubt – this version is not the word of God because
it contains an error. We can’t prove which verse is wrong, but we do know they
all cannot be right. Think about this: Those who worship the ERROR
manuscripts as authorities, and those who use layman’s aids to “correct” the
Bible, and those who use a modern version because they think it is “more
reliable” and “more accurate” have no manuscript authority to say who
killed Goliath! The ERROR manuscripts and the
modern fruit/versions that come from them have just as much evidence to say
Elhanan killed Goliath as they do David. Do you know why the majority of
preachers and pewsters – those who revere the ERROR
manuscripts and use unauthorized versions – do not go
around preaching that, according to their versions, we shouldn’t be
dogmatically saying David killed Goliath?
It’s because tradition is more of an authority
in their lives than either their “Holy Bible” or their precious dead-language
texts!
Blasphemous
incongruities like that do not bother Christians who have no faith in God and
His word. They’ve never spent five minutes looking for the inspired and
infallible word of God because they don’t believe it exists. They are
unbelievers. That’s why the errors we’re talking about in the ERROR
manuscripts do not bother them. And, not knowing the
word of God still exists, when they go shopping for a Bible version they want a
modern version that “more accurately” preserves the errors and mindless
inconsistencies of the ERROR manuscripts; they
actually think the corrupt ERROR manuscripts are the
“most trustworthy” source of God’s incorruptible truth on earth.
Let’s see if
these modern unbelieving born-again Christians got the “faithful” translations
they were looking for. Notice the words in italics in the KJV in 2 Sa 21:19. They are in italics because the translators added
them under the inspiration of God. Those words are not in the Textus Receptus or any of the
other ERROR manuscript families.
Therefore, those who use the NIV and the other unauthorized versions (except
for the NKJV) actually do have versions that accurately and
faithfully preserve the corruption of the dead-language manuscripts. Yes, their
versions are corrupt garbage and are not inspired by God, but
from the perspective of humanistic scientific scholarship they are
faithful translations of ERROR. God gave them what
they wanted, but sent leanness into their soul (Ps 106:15). In other
words, they are hoist on their own petard.
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The
fact that the Authorized King James is not a faithful translation of any
manuscript or family of manuscripts turns out to be good.
Anything that is different from the ERROR
manuscripts at least has a chance of being the word of God. Remember, we can’t
use differences to prove something is not the word of God; we have to
find errors. All of the differences only prove the King James is different
from the Textus Receptus,
and things that are different are not the same. The Textus
Receptus contradicts itself on who killed Goliath
just like the modern versions do. So we know the Textus
Receptus is not the word of God. The fact that
the King James alone does not contradict itself in these verses doesn’t prove
the King James is the word of God, but at least it’s still in the
running because nothing it says – in italics or in regular type – has so far
proven to be incorrect. ERROR manuscript worshippers
will always try to get you to think anything the King James says that is different
from the ERROR manuscripts is an
error. But why, you ask, would any Christian in his right mind want a
translation of corrupt manuscripts? That’s just it, they aren’t in their right
mind; they’re in their carnal mind. It’s their pagan Greek religious doctrine
talking; they are assuming no book on earth came from God because they
have faith in Reason. They are humanists who ignore what God said He’d do with
His word, and who blindly accept the proven corruption of the dead-language
remnants as an “authority.” They are sinning because they are neither acting
out of faith nor glorifying God in accordance with His word. And when they
incorrectly Reason with you that Bible version arguments like mine – that are
based on the premise that God and His word do exist in accordance with His word
– are based on circular Reasoning, you should point out that you’d never turn
your back on God by using their philosophy-based arguments. Point out to them
that your argument is based on faith – not Reason. Your faith is in God
and His word, and if they don’t like those pearls of wisdom they have your
permission to go root in the mud, return to their vomit, or bark at garbage
trucks. Let them know they have no hope of impressing you or God with their
blasphemy and profanity. Our hope and our lives are based on God’s revelation;
theirs are based on Reason from the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge.
In order to
illustrate how and why Christians use differences between the Authorized
Version and the ERROR manuscripts, I’ll
relate an incident that happened when I paid a visit to a church up north.
After the service when the pewsters had gone, the
preacher, the deacons, and I hung around and had a free-flowing conversation
about matters Christian. When they learned my beliefs about the Bible version
issue it became the topic. The preacher quickly fell silent because it was
evident he knew almost nothing about the issue. One of the deacons, however,
was very vocal in his insistence that the word of God (as defined by God) no
longer exists. When I countered by saying the KJV alone had no errors, he said
it most certainly did have errors and he could prove it. As always, I called
his bluff. Unlike the vast majority of Christians he did not respond to
my challenge by saying, “Ah, well, I don’t know of any off the top of my head,
but I read somewhere that it does have errors.” He said, “Open your Bible to Ro 8:1.”
Ro
8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
“The second
half of the verse,” he continued “that is, everything after Christ Jesus,
has no manuscript authority; it doesn’t appear in any manuscript on earth. The
King James translators simply added it. And they even neglected to admit they
added it by putting it in italics.”
I looked at it
for a moment and said, “Look at verse 4.”
Ro
8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
“Are you saying,”
I asked, “the second half of verse 4, everything after in us, is an
error?”
“No, it’s
correct in verse 4, but it’s wrong in verse 1.”
“Are you saying
you think we are condemned if we walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit?”
“No, the information
in verse 1 is doctrinally true. I’m just saying the second half of the verse
shouldn’t be there because it has no manuscript authority.”
Let’s
analyze this deacon:
1) This
is a minor point, but for the sake of accuracy I’ll mention it: He was wrong
about it not being in any manuscripts. It is missing from most Bible
versions (such as the NIV), but the footnote in the NIV, for example, says,
“Some later manuscripts” add: who do not live according to the sinful nature
but according to the Spirit. Why did I say it was a minor point? Isn’t this
a big victory for the KJV? Doesn’t the fact that it does have manuscript
authority cause us KJVers to breathe a sigh of
relief? Negative! We couldn’t care less what some worthless piece of trash
manuscript says or doesn’t say. The ERROR
manuscripts are not authorities! The only Christian manuscript on earth
with any authority is also the one with absolute authority: God’s
Authorized 1611 King James Bible.
2) This
deacon has the same problem most brainwashed-by-the-world Christians have: He
stupidly accepts old corrupt dead-language manuscripts as “authorities” over
the incorruptible living word of God! Did anyone ever point at him and
order, “You will worship the ERROR manuscripts as
authoritative.”? No, he just Naturally assumed they
should be the authority because that’s the way faithless morons always treat
them.
3) Because
he wrongly accepts the ERROR manuscripts as
authoritative, and because he does have a basic understanding of authority, he
thinks anything that differs from the ERROR
manuscripts is wrong. In order to become a good Christian he needs to make the
infallible word of God the authority and eliminate the ERROR
manuscripts from his thinking. Then his basic understanding of authority could
blossom and he’d really become adamant about the inspired errorless authority
of the AV1611 as he realized anything that differs from the AV1611 is
wrong because the AV1611 alone is the word of
God.
4) If
this guy were a wise Christian who walked circumspectly he’d be very careful about
bad-mouthing something that even might be God’s Holy Bible. For example,
even though he thinks he is correct about no manuscript authority for Ro
8:1, and even though he thinks the AV1611 is not the word of God, and
even though he thinks the word of God doesn’t exist, he ought to have at
least enough belief in and fear of God to keep his mouth shut just on the off
chance that God really is as great as He says He is.
5) Because
he does not fear God, however, he has opened his foolish mouth and gotten himself
in trouble: At Judgment he will be asked why he thought it was his Christian
duty to God to try to convince me the word of God did not exist. He tried to
get me to trust in the lie that no Bible on earth is the word of God. If
you examine the context of Je 28:15,16 you’ll
realize the deacon’s error is more egregious than that of Hananiah.
Hananiah incorrectly thought the disagreeable message
delivered by a mere fallible mortal they all grew up playing hide and seek with
– Jeremiah – wasn’t the word of God, and he tried to convince others it wasn’t.
Because of God’s authority, and because He demands absolute submission to His
word, God says in v.16 Hananiah was teaching witchcraft!
Once you’ve reviewed the context of the passage to verify that I’m correct,
think about the deacon’s sin relative to Hananiah’s: Hananiah tried to convince Christians what Jeremiah
said wasn’t the word of God. The deacon tried to convince me that nothing
is the word of God! Talk about witchcraft – can you think of anything more wicked
than undermining the one and only foundation for all of Christianity?! If the
Bible is not the word of God Christianity ceases being The True Religion and
becomes just another religion.
6) When
the Lord said a man’s foes shall be they of his own household (Mt
10:36), He was stating a reality found numerous times throughout His Bible. If
you try to convince other Christians that the word of God does not exist, does
God consider you a friend or a foe? Hmm?
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After you study
this chapter and get yourself a KJV and start studying it, you will find things
in the KJV that seem wrong or contradictory. That will shake you up a bit and
you’ll try to find a solution to the “problem.” After finding a number of
solutions to different “problems” you’ll get better at evaluating “problems”
and will see how most of them could possibly be explained. For example, one of
the “problems” in all Bible versions is the amount of water held in the molten
sea; was it two thousand or three thousand baths? Also, since the circumference
of a circle is pi times the diameter, and 3.14 times a ten cubit diameter does
not equal thirty cubits, isn’t this a provable error in the Bible?
1 Ki 7:23 And he made a molten sea,
ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and
his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it
round about.
1 Ki 7:26 And it was an hand
breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with
flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths.
2 Ch 4:5 And
the thickness of it was an handbreadth, and the brim of it like the work
of the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies; and it received and held
three thousand baths.
I don’t know
the answers. But I do know some simple possibilities. Let’s tackle the
mathematics first. The container was an handbreadth
thick. That is thought to be roughly three inches. We know it had a brim around
it like the brim of a cup, which means it could have flared out and down an
unknown amount. We do not know where the thirty-cubit line was that compassed
it: It could have been outside, or somewhere on the flared cup brim, or at the
top inside edge of the brim, or down the inside some unknown distance to be a
“fill to here” line or a “refill when level drops to here” line. Given the
endless possibilities for how steeply sloped the bowl was along with all the
above possibilities, we’ll never be able to figure out exactly what it looked
like. But if you play with the numbers for a few of the possibilities like I
did, you’ll find the circumference in the Bible is neither too big nor too
small. We do know one thing for sure; the Lord knew some Christians would use
this as an excuse to reject the authority of His word. No problem: He always
intended His word to be a stumbling stone and a rock of offence to those of
little faith.
What if the
container held three thousand baths when filled to the brim, or when filled to
the “fill to here” line? And if it held three thousand when at the brim
couldn’t it have held two thousand when at the “fill to here” line? What if the
brim was three thousand and the “refill when level drops to here” line was two
thousand? I don’t think we need to expand on that any further, so let’s look at
another “error” in the Bible.
2 Sa 24:9 …and there were in Israel eight hundred thousand
valiant men that drew the sword; and the men of Judah were five hundred
thousand men.
1 Ch 21:5 …And they
of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred
thousand men that drew sword: and Judah was four hundred threescore and
ten thousand men that drew sword.
Some people
point to these verses and say 800,000 men in Israel is not the same as
1,100,000 men, and 500,000 men in Judah is not the same as 470,000 men. A
Christian who does not believe the word of God exists
will, for some strange reason, look for ways to find errors in God’s word, and
the differences in numbers are convenient targets. The man of faith, however,
starts out accepting the fact that every single thing in the Bible is true. Therefore,
when he reads these two verses, he thinks, “Whoa! What is this?” – just like anybody would. On the surface he sees the same
“error” as the infidel. But he faithfully digs deeper and realizes that a
closet with 12 shoes in it can be said to have 6 pairs of shoes and it
can be said to have two pairs of white shoes. In other words, the
more qualifiers you add to something the smaller the numbers generally
get. Notice that of the two sets of numbers for Israel and Judah, both times
when the number is smaller it also has more qualifiers attached to it. I love
the consistency of God’s Book, don’t you? Obviously, “valiant men that drew the sword”
could have meant seasoned veterans, and “men that drew the sword” could include
veterans and new recruits with no combat experience. And just plain “men” could
include even more categories such as civilians, reservists, noncombatants, etc.
(Note: This example only applies to the KJV because some of the modern versions
do not have the qualifiers and therefore make these verses look like errors.
Stick with God’s word and you’ll have no problems.)
That’s the way
a Bible believer reads the Book. If we accept the fact that God knows what He’s
doing we’ll be very careful to find some way He could be right. If we fail to
do that and blithely assume He didn’t preserve His holy word like He said He
would, we’ll find out at Judgment He really does exalt His word above His name.
Now we shall
continue looking at specific errors in modern Bible versions. And in every
single case we are going to compare those unauthorized verses with the
Authorized Version in order to prove it is not corrupt in those same places.
That will not prove the AV1611 is the word of God; it will only prove all the
others aren’t. Then, realizing the King James Bible is the only possibility
left to be the true word of God, we are going to draw on the fact that we only
started looking for the word of God in the first place because we accepted by
faith that it exists, and we are by faith going to accept the AV1611 as God’s
word given to us by the Authority of the King Himself.
RSV
Mt 5:22 But I say to you that every
one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever
insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’
shall be liable to the hell of fire.
RSV
Mk 3:5 And he looked around at them with anger,
grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your
hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
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As you can see,
the RSV (and the NAS and NIV) makes Jesus a sinner because He got angry with
His brethren. This contradicts the places that tell us Christ was sinless. We
accept by faith that Christ was sinless, and that same faith proves this to be
another error from a corrupt tree.
KJV
Mt 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry
with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and
whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in
danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger
of hell fire.
KJV
Mk 3:5 And when he had looked round about on them with
anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith
unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he
stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
The KJV’s
“without a cause” in Mt 5:22 keeps Christ from becoming a sinner in Mk 3:5.
NAS
Mk 1:2,3 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER
BEFORE YOUR FACE, WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY; THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE
WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.’ ”
That makes you
think the quote comes from Isaiah, doesn’t it? Most versions, like the NIV, are
up front about this error; they have a footnote that admits the first half of
the quote is actually from Mal 3:1, not Is
40:3. As you’ll see, God knew the quote wasn’t just from Isaiah and He got
it right in His Book:
KJV
Mk 1:2,3 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I
send my messenger before thy face, which shall
prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
If “accuracy”
in a Bible version means “faithful to the corrupt Hebrew and Greek
manuscripts”, and if “accuracy” is what you want, buy yourself a version God
didn’t authorize. But if God’s truth is what you want stick with the only Book
on earth that meets all of God’s criteria for His word.
If you were
called upon to cast out a devil and were not having any success, do you think
you’d do any praying, or do you think instead you’d follow Martin Luther’s
example and spend your time throwing waste? Yes, you’d obviously do a lot
of praying, both in preparation for the event and during it – all Christians
would. (Even Martin Luther would if he were ever confronted with a real devil
instead of a fairy tale of his own making.) But it is possible – if not
probable – you wouldn’t think to fast in
preparation for the event:
KJV
Mk 9:28,29 And when he was come into the house, his
disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? And he said unto
them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by
prayer and fasting.
When the Lord
told them that, they probably looked at each other and said, “No wonder we
couldn’t do it – we didn’t fast!” But look at what the NIV, RSV, and NAS would
have you believe:
NAS
Mk 9:28,29 And when He had come into the house,
His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not cast it
out?” And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”
Presumably we
are from that account supposed to think the disciples looked at each other and
said, “Of all the things we tried we never thought to pray!” You also
might want to compare the KJV with the other versions in 1 Co 7:5; Ac 10:30;
and Mt 17:21, which all omit fasting. It is so important to
be weak to the flesh and mighty in spirit.
OK, it’s pop
quiz time again: According to God, why did people with infirmities lie around the
pool called Bethesda near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem? You don’t know? Let’s
consult the NIV, RSV, and NAS:
NIV
Jn 5:3 Here a great number of disabled people used to
lie – the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
NIV Jn 5:4 [Nothing,
nada, zippo, zilch, goose egg, empty space, skipped
verse, brackets, or footnotes.]
NIV
Jn 5:5 One who was there had been an invalid for
thirty-eight years.
NIV
Jn 5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned
that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want
to get well?”
NIV
Jn 5:7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to
help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in,
someone else goes down ahead of me.”
What made the
water “stir”? A crocodile? Why did they all want to
get into the water? Was it so they could be mercifully killed by the croc? Why
was it useless to be second, third, or fourth into the water? Did the croc fill
up on his first victim and go away? This is another of those places that bugs
scholars. They think the whole business is just a crock, but they dare not
leave the answer to the questions completely out of the Bible even though the
“best” of the corrupt manuscripts don’t contain the answers. They either skip the verse and put it in a footnote, or they put
it in brackets and tell you in a footnote why it really shouldn’t be there. God
just laughs because He arranged history so the numbering system for verses used
at the time the KJV came out would become the authoritative standard all
over the world until the end of time. Therefore any translator who wants to
subtract from the word of God has to contend with the fact that skipping
numbers makes it look like he has in fact taken away from the words of the book
of this prophecy.
KJV
Jn 5:3 In these lay a great
multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of
the water.
KJV
Jn 5:4 For an angel went down at a certain season
into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling
of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
KJV
Jn 5:5 And a certain man was
there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.
Thank God for
His word: Were it not for the King James Bible we’d probably be up to our asses
in crocodile theories. Missing verses may not be provable errors but they do
prove the KJV is the version to study.
NAS
Jn 7:8,10 “Go up to the
feast yourselves: I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet
fully come.”…But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself
also went up, not publicly, but as it were, in secret.
KJV
Jn 7:8,10 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet
unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come…But when his brethren were
gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in
secret.
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The omission of
the first yet (or bracketing or footnoting it) in the NIV, NAS, and RSV
makes Jesus a liar. I was speaking with a Christian acquaintance (who was a
nice guy) one time and noticed he was carrying his NAS around. I pointed out to
him that his version makes Christ a liar and showed him the verse. He was
shocked. When I told him the King James is not corrupt and doesn’t make Christ
a liar, he was amazed because he knew nothing about the Bible version issue and
assumed they were pretty much all translations from pure Greek and Hebrew
manuscripts. I let him compare my KJV in this and in other places. He was
genuinely stunned that such corruption existed right under his nose all these years
that he’d not been aware of. He had lots of questions and I had lots of answers
that seemed to make sense to him. But wisely he told me he’d look into it on
his own. When I saw him a week later he was a changed man and would barely
speak with me. It seems his brother is a preacher who had taken some theology
courses at a “Bible” school. My acquaintance had called his brother long
distance and presented him with some of what I’d shown him. They spent over an
hour on the phone during which my acquaintance learned a great deal. He found
out the word of God does not exist. He learned the NAS is the only version he
should use because that’s what the Bible school taught. He learned the King
James is full of errors (although his brother couldn’t – and hasn’t – come up
with even one). He learned there is a small, deluded group within Christianity
that believes the word of God does exist, and that the KJV – a mere human
version – is it. And he apparently got quite an earful because after he
finished berating me he looked me in the eyes and told me he felt sorry for me
and would pray for me because I’m in bondage to Satan. It was the last time he
really spoke with me.
Next question
on our pop quiz: Is there a prerequisite for baptism, or should we just baptize
anyone who gets in line? Let’s again consult the NAS, NIV, and RSV.
RSV
Ac 8:36 And as they went along the road they came to
some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What is to prevent my
being baptized?”
RSV
Ac 8:37 [Blank, footnote, or brackets]
RSV
Ac 8:38 And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they
both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.
According to
this, anyone, including infants, may be baptized because there is no profession
of faith in Christ required. But let’s see if that’s what God says:
KJV
Ac 8:36 And as they went on their way, they
came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what
doth hinder me to be baptized?
KJV
Ac 8:37 And Philip said, If thou believest
with all thine heart, thou mayest.
And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God.
KJV
Ac 8:38 And he commanded the chariot to stand still:
and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he
baptized him.
Verse 37 is an
excellent example of the biggest problem modern translation committees have
with the King James Bible: It has thou, believest,
thine, and mayest
all in one sentence and is sure to send preachers and pewsters
scampering for their English dictionaries in an attempt to decipher the meaning
of this “difficult” old formal English verse!
The Bible says
godliness is good and godliness is gain because God rewards godliness (1 Ti
4:8; 6:6; Ps 19:11). The NKJV, NAS, and RSV, however, contradict
that:
NKJV
1 Ti 6:5 useless wranglings of corrupt minds and
destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself.
In His word,
God says not only is godliness a means of gain (Mt 6:33), but worldly
gain is not a sign of God rewarding godliness:
KJV
1 Ti 6:5 Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds,
and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such
withdraw thyself.
While we’re in
1 Ti 6 let me try to illustrate the importance and value of having the true
word of God. All modern versions contradict the King James in 1 Ti 6:10. The
verse has no value when looking into the Bible version issue because neither
rendering can be proven to be correct or incorrect – they are merely differences:
KJV
1 Ti 6:10 For the love
of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have
erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
NKJV
1 Ti 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for
which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced
themselves through with many sorrows.
But after
you realize every word in the King James was deliberately and carefully
selected by God for a reason, you begin to follow the words, like trails of
breadcrumbs, through the Bible. For example, I wondered how the love of money
could be the root of all evil. How could the
love of money have been behind Cain’s slaying of Abel? I then noticed
the love of money in Ezek 28 and wondered if there was a connection.
Then the word evil jumped out at me in Is
45:7. And I wondered if the word coveted in 1 Ti 6:10, which was
obviously linked with the love of money being the root of all evil, had
anything to do with 1 Sa 15:23 because the two
are linked by Co 3:5. Why was covetousness also idolatry and rebellion?
Was it because of authority and Who and What God is?
What did this have to do with Jn 8:44
and 1 Jn 3:8? And how could Lucifer have slain
the immortal Lamb? All of this happened over a number of years and involved
many word studies in the Bible. It taught me a lot about authority, rebellion,
covetousness, and obedience, etc. The same word studies might cause you to
conclude the evil God created in Is 45:7 was covetousness, which is what I
thought at first. But covetousness itself is always a sin. And the evil
God created is more of a temptation, something that may or may not lead to sin.
Equality fits the bill nicely because it may tempt us to covet without our
actually yielding to the temptation to covet.
That’s an
example of how we are to handle the word and meditate on it. And that is how it
multiplies itself and goes from being one loaf of Bread to being unlimited
loaves of Bread. The problem with the unauthorized versions is there is no
trail of breadcrumbs leading through the Bible because the words didn’t
come from God; they came from men. Therefore there is no way you can trust any
conclusion you make based on word studies. That’s a major reason modern
Christianity has been unable to learn the stuff covered in The Age of Reason.
Once you
understand all of this you’ll know any word in any Bible version or old
manuscript that merely differs from the King James Version is wrong.
If the KJV says, “He looked up into the blue”, and another version says, “He
looked up into the sky”, the word sky is wrong because God
Almighty wanted it to say blue. Blue may or may not be necessary
to complete a trail of breadcrumbs when doing a word study, but it’s never
right under any circumstances to change any of God’s words.
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The following
contradictory errors are found in the NIV, RSV, and NKJV. In these
verses you’ll notice the Holy Spirit contradicting Himself. Pay
attention to what God (Spirit) wants, and to what Paul (spirit)
wants and you’ll catch the contradictions:
NKJV
Ac 19:21 When these things were accomplished, Paul purposed in the Spirit, when
he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, “After
I have been there, I must also see Rome.”
NKJV
Ac 20:22 “And see, now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the
things that will happen to me there,
NKJV
Ac 21:4 And finding disciples, we stayed there seven
days. They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem.
NKJV
Ac 21:11 When he had come to us, he took Paul’s belt, bound his own
hands and feet, and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘So shall the Jews at
Jerusalem bind the man that owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of
the Gentiles.’ ”
The King James
Bible, on the other hand, is not leavened with errors and contradictions.
KJV
Ac 19:21 After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the
spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem,
saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.
KJV
Ac 20:22 And now,
behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that
shall befall me there:
KJV
Ac 21:4 And finding
disciples, we tarried there seven days: who said to Paul through the Spirit,
that he should not go up to Jerusalem.
KJV
Ac 21:11 And when he was come unto us, he took Paul’s
girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith
the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands
of the Gentiles.
In the King
James God doesn’t contradict Himself, and we learn that Paul was out of the
will of God when he went to Jerusalem. The modern versions only succeed in
showing how corrupt they are.
The above
examples were chosen because they represent the kinds of errors found in the ERROR
manuscripts and in the modern Bible translations that come from them. In a
search for the true word of God the examples help us understand some things:
●
All modern versions of the Bible are products of the
Age of Reason and of democratic societies founded on Reason. They all used the
“higher textual criticism” methods that originated with Greek philosophy and
that were adopted by antiquarians.
●
All modern Bible versions are scientific because they
were produced with secular humanism and were therefore not influenced by faith,
by religion, or by anything else that is outlawed by the scientific method.
●In
general, all modern Bible versions are neutral, unbiased, accurate translations
of the corruption that leavens the Hebrew and Greek ERROR
manuscripts.
●
The NKJV is not a faithful representation of the leavened Textus Receptus family of the ERROR
manuscripts. Yes, in some places it does reproduce the errors of the Textus Receptus, but in other
places it inexplicably abandons the Textus Receptus reading and reproduces the reading that appears in
the Authorized Version. Therefore, Bible believers despise it because it
contains corruption, and scholars despise it because as a translation it is an
inconsistent compromise.
●
The Authorized 1611 King James Bible is neither a product of the Age of Reason
nor a democratic society. It was produced under one of
the last kings on earth whose life and reign were heavily influenced by his
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
●
Every place corruption exists in the ERROR
manuscripts the KJV deviates from that leaven and contains truth. There is no
manuscript support for the places where the KJV deviates from the Textus Receptus because the
wording in the KJV cannot be accounted for in any manuscript on earth, and no
earthly source has been proven to be its source. It is precisely because the
KJV is not the result of the humanistic higher textual criticism demanded by
the scientific method, and because it is not a faithful translation of any
earthly manuscript that Enlightened Christian scholars disdainfully view the
King James Bible as an inferior translation.
●
Because of the unquestioned, proven errors in all families of the ERROR
manuscripts, and because those same errors exist in all modern Bible
translations, there is not a person on earth who has looked into any of this
who believes any modern Bible version or old manuscript is the word of
God as defined by God. They aren’t all stupid; they are correct.
●
The only reason a Bible version controversy
exists is because of the AV1611. I say again: If the King James Bible did not
exist there would be no Bible version controversy. It is the only
manuscript on earth in which scholars have been unable to find provable errors.
It is the only manuscript on earth that any of God’s people believe is the true
word of God. The King James Bible is unique; there’s nothing on earth like it
that is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
●
If the KJV did not exist all of today’s ignorant
and/or apostate preachers and pewsters would be
correct in saying the true word of God does not exist on earth today.
●
Now you know why Bible believers don’t waste their
time with Greek and Hebrew lexicons: No dead-language tome has any authority
over the living word of God. Use of the Greek and Hebrew is a sure sign
of ignorance and a possible sign of apostasy.
●
The fact that all modern Bible versions, all of the Greek and Hebrew editions
of the ERROR manuscripts from
which they come, all layman’s aids used to correct the experts, and the fact
that all of the scholarly references used by the experts are copyrighted has no
significance – until you realize the Authorized Version came from God. The text
of the King James is neither owned nor controlled by man. Man’s copyright laws
protect and preserve the corruption of the other Bible versions, but for the
last four hundred years God alone has preserved the purity of the King James
Bible because it is His law. The King James is the only one that hasn’t been
preserved by man and his copyright laws.
●
Anyone who uses a modern version does not fully
understand the issue of authority.
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You may have
noticed I qualified the third point with in general. That’s because some
versions appear to have been produced with denominational bias. Let’s use the
Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation (NWT) as an example. The JWs, like
most people when attempting to “prove” that errors exist in other versions, do
not point to errors, they point to differences. For example, they
claim that the KJV and the other versions often say “LORD”
when they should say “Jehovah.” They seem to be unable to understand it is not
wrong to refer to God as “LORD” and the more general
“Lord” – those are not errors. As for the name Jehovah, the KJV accurately
records that as one of God’s many names. There is no problem and there
are no errors.
The NWT, like
all Enlightened translations, is a corrupt offspring
of the ERROR manuscripts and
contains the same evil fruit as all the other modern versions. But in their
denominational zeal to single out and promote one of God’s many names, the JWs
made their NWT even more corrupt. Take for example, 1 Ki
22:5-8. In v.5 the Christian king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, wants the pagan
king, Ahab, to ask the true God what to do. Ahab and his priests of Baal, of
course, do not worship the true God, Jehovah. (I’ll underline words for
emphasis. And remember, “LORD” with all the letters
capitalized is a specific reference to God; “Lord” with only the L capitalized
can refer either to God or to someone else.)
KJV
1 Ki 22:5 And
Jehoshaphat said unto the king of Israel, Enquire, I pray thee, at the word of
the LORD
to day.
NWT
1 Ki 22:5 However, Jehoshaphat went on to say to the
king of Israel: “Inquire, please, first of all the word of Jehovah.”
So far there is
no problem because both texts have King Jehoshaphat asking specifically for
what Jehovah says, but that is about to change.
KJV
1 Ki 22:6 Then the king of Israel gathered the
prophets together, about four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go
against Ramothgilead to battle, or shall I forbear?
And they said, Go up; for the Lord shall
deliver it into the hand of the king.
NWT
1 Ki 22:6 So the king of Israel collected the
prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them: “Shall I go
against Ramoth-gilead in war, or shall I refrain?”
And they began to say: “Go up, and Jehovah will give it into the king’s
hand.”
Obviously the
pagan priests are not in touch with the true God, and the KJV accurately uses
the generic “Lord” to reflect that their god is not the LORD.
The JW translators, however, in their zeal to change every “LORD”
to “Jehovah”, didn’t pay attention to the context and mistakenly had the
priests of Baal speaking for Jehovah.
KJV
1 Kings 22:7 And Jehoshaphat said, Is there not
here a prophet of the LORD
besides, that we might enquire of him?
NWT
1 Ki 22:7 But Jehoshaphat said: “Is there not here a
prophet of Jehovah still? Then let us inquire through him.”
These verses
both say the same thing, but the NWT has Jehoshaphat, who was just told in the
previous verse what “Jehovah” said, idiotically asking what Jehovah says. The
KJV correctly has Jehoshaphat, whose request in v.5 was ignored when he was
told what the pagan “Lord” said in v.6, insisting that the true God be
consulted.
KJV
1 Kings 22:8 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, There is yet
one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah,
by whom we may enquire of the LORD:
but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good
concerning me, but evil. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not
the king say so.
NWT
1 Ki 22:8 At that the king of Israel said to
Jehoshaphat: “There is still one man through whom to inquire of Jehovah;
but I myself certainly hate him, for he does not prophesy good things
concerning me but bad – Micaiah the son of Imlah.” However, Jehoshaphat said: “Do not let the king say
a thing like that.”
Both of these
verses say the same thing, but to be consistent and to stay in context the NWT
should have King Ahab reply, “What, are you nuts, Jehoshaphat, or are you deaf?
We just told you what Jehovah said! How many times do you have to hear it?”
Only after Ahab sent for a true prophet did the false ones begin
claiming to know what the true LORD said.
Now, I want to
point something out to you preachers who use modern versions. You were taught
to say stuff like this to your congregations: “It is not the small percentage
of errors and contradictions in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that we focus
on. We rejoice that God’s providential preservation has kept those errors to a
minimum, and we focus on the amazing degree of consistency and agreement among
the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. All of our major fundamental doctrines are
supported by the amazing consistency of the old manuscripts.” Don’t ever say
stuff like that again, brother, because it is not based on anything the
Bible says (!) and actually ignores everything the Bible does say
(!) about the word of God and its preservation and purity. You also don’t want
your congregation to catch you being a hypocrite. For example, if you ever say
David killed Goliath (2 Sa 21:19!), or that a profession of faith is required
before baptism (Ac 8:37!), or refer to Christ saying, “He that is without sin
among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (Jn
8:7!) you are hypocritically promoting doctrines not supported by the
“amazing consistency and agreement” of the old manuscripts! Didn’t you ever
stop to think? Didn’t you ever read the footnotes or notice the missing
verses in your version? You did? So you’ve known all along you were teaching
doctrines not supported by the “oldest and most reliable manuscripts”! In that
case, brother, in spite of your sweet personality, your “family values”, and
your wonderfully inspiring and emotional sermons, you are nothing but a whited sepulcher full of lip service. I’m warning you to
flee the wrath to come by repenting. Go get yourself the only Bible that
supports the teachings mentioned above, study it, learn from it what faith is,
believe it, and incorporate it into your life. Only when you’ve done that will
you be qualified to shepherd the house of God. Why did I bring up faith? I
didn’t – you did when you spouted that claptrap about being able to trust
doctrines because the majority of corrupt manuscripts agree on them! Who taught
you that agreement among several liars somehow creates reliability?
Why would you want to base your faith on known corruption? Your damning
and embarrassing inconsistencies are the result of your not having the solid
rock of the word of God as your foundation. And your inconsistencies are also
proofs that either you haven’t studied enough to be organized and consistent in
your Christianity (which would mean you are too immature to be preaching), or
you have been a whited sepulcher without knowing it
like Matt Seven. Some earnest soul searching is in order, brother.
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----------
OK, the lesson
on Bible versions is over. I am now going to tell you some things about the
generations of the word of God that I have pieced together from unreliable
history, from Scripture, and from what I’ve learned about my King and the way
He operates. As you will see, I believe and apply Ec
1:9,10 and rely on God’s consistent use of
patterns.
OLD
TESTAMENT PERIOD:
Adam
to Moses: There was no Bible. God walked in the garden
with Adam, spoke with Abraham, dined with Abraham, and fielded questions from
Abraham. These kinds of things don’t happen today and are indications that God
– because He is a Good Shepherd – dealt appropriately with His people when His
written guidance wasn’t available.
Moses
to Malachi: God had His written Old Testament “in the
works” during this roughly 1600 year period. It began roughly 2000 years before
the First Coming with Job, and lasted until the canon was closed, finalized,
and perfected with Malachi 400 years before the First Coming. What language did
God use for the Old Testament? Most people would answer Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Chaldean. They are wrong – kind of. The Old Testament was written to facilitate
God’s Old Commission. In order to do that it had to be in the
language of God’s people. That language was Hebrew because the Hebrews were
the only people God was trying to reach back then.
At times,
during the 1600 year making of the Old Testament, God’s word was temporarily
lost (2 Ki 22:5-13). How did God’s flock
manage without the Bible? I believe the Good Shepherd took care of His people
in appropriate ways. The Bible says His methods included the use of prophets
and miracles, but all the methods He used are details not necessary for us to
know.
What about the
people in the rest of the world who didn’t speak the language of God’s people
and of His Book – Hebrew? They were dogs with whom God was not concerned (Mt
10:1,5-7) because the Great Commission had not yet replaced the Old
Commission. If the Queen of Sheba, or the “wise
men” from the east, or anyone else on earth wanted to read the Bible they
needed to either read the Hebrew or get a translation made from the Hebrew.
Malachi
to Christ the Lamb: This is the so-called “Old Testament
four hundred year period of silence” between the completion of the Old
Testament canon (Malachi) and the start of the New Testament. It was a period
of “silence” because God’s people no longer heard directly from God or His
prophets and they no longer witnessed miracles. Why not? Because those things
were no longer needed
since the Old Testament Scriptures were finalized. God was now “going by the
Book.” Unfortunately, when He showed up at the First Coming He found that His
people hadn’t done a good job learning, believing, and doing His Scriptures.
NEW
TESTAMENT PERIOD:
Christ
to King James: God had His written New Testament “in the
works” during this roughly 1600 year period. This time period began roughly
2000 years before the Second Coming and lasted until the canon was closed,
finalized, and perfected with the King James Bible 400 years before the Second
Coming. What language did God use for the New Testament? Most people would
answer Greek. They are wrong – kind of. The New Testament was written to
facilitate God’s Great Commission. In order to do that it had to be in the
language of God’s people. The Great Commission now made all
nations on earth open to the gospel. That meant the Good Shepherd, in order to
properly care for His people (the whole world) under His Great Commission, had
to provide His word in the universal language of the world.
Because the
Hebrews rejected Him, the Lord rejected them, and in a symbolic gesture made
the language of those who’d rejected Him just as dead as they were without Him.
That’s why the Hebrew of the Old Testament is a dead language. The risen Saviour had His Hebrew-speaking disciples write the New
Testament in Greek because that was now the language of His people. He is
consistent and history really does repeat itself like He says it does.
Greek had been
the universal language of the world ever since Alexander the Great. For
instance, when Hannibal, a Carthaginian, traveled up the Iberian Peninsula,
across the Alps, and down into Italy during his brilliant military campaign, he
kept two Greek translators on his staff in order to communicate with the
various nationalities along the way – none of whose native tongue was Greek.
Because Greek was the universal language for so long, shouldn’t God have
written the Old Testament in Greek rather than in Hebrew in order to reach more
people? No, because of the Old Commission God did not want to reach all
people (Mt 10:5-7). If Gentiles wanted a Greek Bible version made from the
Hebrew, fine, but they would have to remember what they had was just a
translation. Only the Hebrew Scriptures were the authoritative word of God.
Yes, the New
Testament was written by Hebrews in Greek because Greek was now the language of
God’s people under the Great Commission. And the Bible says the gospel
went to the whole world (Ro 10:18; Co 1:6). But most nations rejected
the gospel. The Arabs preferred Mohammed, the Chinese took Buddha and Shing Moo, and the Spanish, Italians, and French stuck with
the “Vicar of Christ.” Only one group of people turned to the God of the Bible
– the English-speaking people. And history began to repeat itself.
In the meantime
the Roman Catholic Church had become an international “Christian” power, which
caused Latin to almost become the new universal language of the world. But
because she is a type of Mystery Babylon (carnal Christianity, Satan manifest
in the flesh), God made Latin become a dead language so His people
wouldn’t confuse Catholic Latin Bible versions with His living,
universal word. The King James Bible was a Godsend because the Bible version
business (which was necessary because neither the original autographs nor any
reliable copies of them existed) had gotten out of control and full of
corruption. In other words, just as the word of God was lost for a while during
the Old Testament, it was also temporarily lost during the New Testament
period.
If the corrupt ERROR
manuscripts indicate the word of God was missing, how did God’s flock manage
before He inspired the King James Bible? I believe the Good Shepherd took care
of His people in appropriate ways: The Bible says His methods included the use of
apostles, disciples, and miracles, but the specific methods He used are details
not necessary for us to know. However, because of the inerrancy of the King
James Bible, we know it is how our Shepherd is guiding us today.
With the King
James Bible, God once again produced His word in the language of His people.
But that’s not all He did. Because the nations of the world rejected Him, in a
symbolic gesture God made history repeat itself by making the living, universal
Greek of the New Testament a dead language. And because the Great Commission
is still in effect He made the new living English become the universal language
of the world, and He made English not just the language of the New Testament
but the language of the entire Bible – both Testaments – so the whole world
could have access to “the original English” in His Authorized 1611 King James
Bible – the only inerrant Bible manuscript on earth. How “universal” has God
made the living language of His Book in these Great Commission times?
Take China as an example because it’s about as far geographically and
culturally from the English-speaking nations as you can get: More people speak
English in China than make up the entire population of the United States.
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And that is
how, in 1611, roughly 1600 years after the New Testament began and roughly 400
years before the Second Coming, the canon closed. And that, together with the
corruption of the ERROR manuscripts, is why
all modern Bible translations around the world should be simply and easily made
from the King’s Authorized universal English Bible by translation committees
made up of people who understand English well enough to be able to handle all
of the thees and thous
in God’s word. Instead, carnal Christians armed with Reason rather than faith
go back to the dead languages God cursed in the corrupt ERROR
manuscripts in the hope that through science they’ll find the truth of the
living word!
King
James to Christ the King: This is the so-called “New Testament
four hundred year period of silence” between the completion of the canon (KJV)
and the Second Coming. It is a period of “silence” because God no longer needs
to guide us with some of His prior methods like speaking directly to us,
speaking through His prophets, and showing us miracles. Why not? Because those
things are no longer needed
since the Scriptures are finalized. God is now “going by the Book.”
Unfortunately, when He shows up at the Second Coming He’ll find that His people
haven’t done a good job learning, believing, and doing His Scriptures.
God picked a
king with His own name, James, to authoritatively finalize the canon of the
entire Bible. The AV1611 was the result (we know that by its fruit). With the
KJV God did five things: 1) He put His name on His Book. 2) He finalized the
New Testament canon in exactly the form He wanted it. 3) Because of His
commitment to His Great Commission, God formally replaced Greek with English as
the universal language of the world. 4) He changed the Old Testament Hebrew to
English so the whole world could read His word. 5) He finalized the New
Testament Scriptures in English so the whole world could read His word.
When the AV1611
was produced, English was in its infancy. In order to get His word out to the
whole world in compliance with His Great Commission, God made Great
Britain a worldwide empire almost overnight. Everywhere the empire went the
King James Bible went. Early settlers of the thirteen American colonies brought
with them their Authorized 1611 King James Bibles. When the covered wagons
rolled west one of the few books on board (often the only book) was the
Authorized Version. Nobody had dictionaries. In fact, when the AV1611 came out
English was such a new language it would be over a hundred years before English
dictionaries began appearing in society. The King James Bible, therefore, was
the standard for spelling and grammar. Christians grew up speaking “the King’s
English.”
Christian
scholars later made the mistake of imposing the dead-language Latin rules of
grammar used by the Roman Catholic Church upon the living English. Suddenly the
formal English of the word of God was no longer grammatically correct. And –
you guessed it – Enlightened scholars began saying the grammatical “errors” in
the Bible proved it wasn’t God’s perfect word. Today when speaking with
Christians and they quote Scripture, those who are of His flock and know the
Good Shepherd’s voice, can still easily tell if the King’s living English is
being used, or if a translation of the dead languages is being used.
When my wife
and I want to feed our sheep we call, “Sheep!” Out on the hills, their heads
all come up in one motion, and then they all come running. When guests give it
a try and yell, “Sheep!” nothing happens. Is it possible that one of the ways
God’s true flock will discern that the Antichrist and the false Christs are not the true King, will be the fact that when
these popular impostors quote the Bible they won’t use the King’s English?
I often use a
concordance to find verses in the Bible and to follow trails of breadcrumbs.
But I never use the dead-language section at the back of the concordance to
find what some word “really” should say. I had an introduction to the
harmfulness of the dead-language layman’s aids as a young Christian. I had learned
enough to stop using the RSV I had when I was saved, and was now using the King
James. And, like many young Christians who find out there are no errors or
contradictions in the King James Bible, I zeroed in on every seeming problem in
the Bible. One time my rock of offense was the apparent contradiction between
the turtledoves of Lk 2:24 and Le
12:6, and the turtles of Le 12:8. I didn’t see how a bird and a shell-backed reptile
could be the same thing. I needed help; my young faith was
being attacked by my mature Reason. I went to my pastor for help. He reached
back, plucked a layman’s aid from his shelves, consulted it for a moment, and
said the King James’ turtles in Le 12:8 was a mistake; the Hebrew word
meant turtledoves. He explained that the KJV we all used was just a
translation, a good one, very reliable, but mere men are fallible and that’s
how an error appeared in the King James.
I went home. My
new King James Bible was suddenly no different from my old RSV. It might have
fewer errors than the RSV, but that was just a matter of degree – it was
still corrupt (Ga 5:9; Hag 2:11-14). I
wondered why everybody seemed content to carry around a book they merely gave
lip service to when they had the authoritative truth in layman’s aids. Why
didn’t we all carry layman’s aids or, better yet, get Bibles that agreed with
the old Greek and Hebrew? I had a lot to learn and a long, long way to go. But
the Good Shepherd has ways to guide those who love Him and seek His truth: I
decided to do something Christians hate doing – look in an English dictionary.
Under turtle it said, “Archaic: a turtledove”! (The dictionary was not
completely accurate when it said archaic: Certain doves, for example,
are even today referred to by ornithologists and amateur birders as “the turtle
group.”)
Going to the
dead languages did not solve my problem; my problem was I didn’t know English!
(I am not suggesting that an English dictionary is to be used as a correcting
authority over the Bible. Any time a dictionary differs from the Bible the
dictionary is wrong.) I have since learned it is blasphemy to submit and
subject God’s holy word to the supposed correcting authority of the cursed,
corrupt, and dead ERROR manuscripts and their
accompanying layman’s aids.
People like to
say about the Bible, “I believe this Book from cover to cover, and I even
believe the cover.” I’m that way, too. But I’m not talking about the obviously
correct “Holy Bible” on the cover that other people are referring to. I’m
talking about the full title of God’s word: AUTHORIZED 1611 KING JAMES
BIBLE. Let’s see what I mean:
AUTHORIZED:
Because the issue is authority, God wanted to identify and validate which Bible
among the many versions in this New Testament era was produced under His
guiding hand. Hence, He made sure His word wasn’t
copyrighted like all of the unauthorized words of men are. Take the copyright
in the New King James Version for example: “All rights reserved. No part
of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the
publisher’s prior written permission.” God would never subject His word to
shackles of that kind.
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1611:
The KJV came out in 1611 because:
1) It
closed the canon roughly 1600 years after the writing of the New Testament
began.
2) It
was roughly 400 years prior to the Second Coming.
3) It
followed the pattern God established with the timing of the Old Testament and
the Book of Malachi.
KING:
This is God’s title and rank. It means absolute authority. God had His Book
produced under the authority of His subject, Christian King James I of Great
Britain. It was intentional that God chose to have His word produced under a
king and not under a democratic form of government.
JAMES:
On the surface King James and his son, King Charles, are types of Jesus Christ.
King James came from his kingdom in the north, Scotland, to England in
order to unite the two kingdoms, give them a new name, and build a Christian
society under one king. His mother was Mary, and his only begotten son was
wrongly sentenced to death by his own people in a democratic proceeding at a
monkey trial, and executed. His son refused to participate in the trial and
went to his death like a lamb. Our Lord sure does like types, doesn’t He?
But if you go
deeper than the surface you’ll realize it is usual for people to put their
names on the books they write, and God is no different. He has many names. It
just so happens one of His names is Jacob (Ps 24:6). Jacob
and James are the same. It’s really very simple: Just as Christ
is the translated Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah, so is James
the translated Greek word for the Hebrew name Jacob. That is why so many
Jews name their sons James after the patriarch Jacob. And that is why the
idiosyncrasies of English during the period of Queen Elizabeth and King James
have resulted in its being called “Jacobethan
English” and why building styles of the period are called “Jacobethan
architecture.” And that’s why advocates of King James II are called “Jacobites.”
So, God is
called both Messiah and Christ in His King James Bible because they
are the same, and He is called both Jacob and James in His
King James Bible because they are the same.
By the way, it
cannot be proven that it was the earthly King James who authorized the
AV1611: A fire at Whitehall in London in 1618 destroyed all of the records for
the period from 1600 to 1613. Therefore there is no proof that it was an
earthly authority that made the decree establishing the AV1611 as the
authoritative word of God. The Lord is amazing in His attention to detail,
isn’t He? Especially when something relates to His authority
and to His word.
Until the
AV1611 showed up no Bible version in history – before or after the AV1611 – was
and is believed to be the inspired word of God; the unauthorized versions were
just translations with known errors. But as people began to compare the text of
the KJV with other translations – and with the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts –
and saw that it alone had no errors, the KJV slowly began to be
recognized by Christians as the only manuscript on earth that matched God’s
description of His inspired, infallible, holy word. Writings to this effect
began appearing as early as the late 1700s. Only the original autographs and
the AV1611 have ever been accepted by any of God’s saints as Holy Writ. It was
in the 1950s when modern “scientific” textual criticism began to pump out Bible
versions that more and more Christians began to ignore the words in the Bible
that define God’s word, and to ignore the inerrancy of the text of the KJV, and
to let Reason convince them that the true word of God doesn’t exist. Ignorance
and tradition then caused them to blindly and unquestioningly accept the ERROR
manuscripts as some new kind of corrupt “Scripture” – even though doing so is
contrary to Scripture!
We know the
word of God is called bread, and we know we are supposed to eat it. Eating
leavened bread can blind us to the truth and cripple our Christian walk. If you
put that together with Ro 12:1 and then apply Mal 1:7,8,12 you’ll see that we’re having problems similar to
those afflicting God’s people in Malachi’s day. Our doctrines are so contrary
to God’s truth that Mal 2:17 also applies today. And if the book of
Malachi did close the Old Testament canon with warnings and rebukes prior to
the First Coming, and if the King James is its New Testament/Second Coming
counterpart, then it may be significant that the Lord produced the King James
for those who link it with His name (Mal 3:16), which is King
Jacob (Mal 1:14; 2:12). Finally, since discernment involves
analyzing God’s inspired words (1 Co 2:13,14; Jn
6:63; Is 28:9,10; Mal 3:18), and God rebuked His people at the First
Coming for not believing each and every one of His inspired words (Lk 24:25; Mt 22:31,32,43,44), only those who
have and believe His inspired words are capable of following and profiting from
the breadcrumb trails in His inerrant Book. Is the book of Malachi a type of
the King James Bible? It may be; the King James alone repeats history, fits the
timing, allows discernment, has God’s name and rank on it, isn’t owned by man,
isn’t democratic, isn’t a product of Enlightened higher criticism, boldly
proclaims the issue to be submission to authority, and is in the correct
language. (By that I mean the current universal language before it
was subjected by man to the correcting authority of the dead-language rules of
grammar of the Church of Rome. In other words, even the English language of the
King James was and is free from the correcting “authority” of man because it
predates the human imposition of Latin rules of grammar on modern English! No
modern version can say that; they must all submit to the governing authority of
modern grammar.) The AV1611 meets God’s rigid definitions of His word, preserves
the accuracy and validity of the present tense in 2 Ti 3:15,16, enables us to
go from blind servants to knowledgeable friends (Jn
15:15; 10:4,5), and, with Jn 12:48
in mind, allows us to also humbly and thankfully say 2 Ti 4:6-8. And,
like the original book of Malachi, the King James is an original autograph
because it is not a translation (as men of corrupt minds, and destitute
of the truth, suppose) because it doesn’t agree with any ERROR
manuscript in any family. It is a unique original.
Both God and His
word are real. He has given us His word, preserved it for us, and made it easy
to get all around the world. It is not our place to ignore His guidance
when looking for a Bible version by using philosophy as our guide. And
as His subjects we do not have the prerogative to choose which Bible version we
prefer; our duty is to obediently accept whatever pure fruit He has brought
forth.
Brethren, when
I came to you I came not with excellency of speech
and enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of faith in God and
His power: That your faith should no longer stand in the wisdom of men, but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool,
that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.