(Preached Sunday evening, 30 May 2002
I remember an old preacher I once knew who would begin his radio broadcast with, �Greetings in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.� He would then stand up on his toes and preach. I�m not going to try that! I�m so big that I�d probably break all my toes with that much weight on them.
But, I can say, �Greetings in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.�
As you look up here tonight, you are probably asking yourself, �What�s the fat guy doing up there?� �Do you think that platform is strong enough to hold him?� �I forgot my glasses. How many people are up there to preach?�
Well, Im not really going to preach. That�ll soon be evident!
Most of you know that I am scheduled to speak at the Dean Burgon Meetings this summer. I thought that I�d give you a little hint of just what it is that the Burgon Society is all about. The motto of the DBS is: DEFENDING THE TRADITIONAL TEXT.
Let us look first of all to the Words of Scripture. II Timothy 3:16 says, �All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.�
All Scripture is given by inspiration. We are living in a time when there are so many competing versions, each claiming to be nearer to the originals as well as easier to understand than the others, that we are drowning in a sea of pseudo Scripture. The first thing we must decide is just what is the True Scripture, or if we even have the possibility of having that True Word from God.
I won�t really be giving a sermon tonight. I�ll be sort of presenting a white paper on that very subject.
I quote the verse from II Timothy because it is important to know that God really did inspire His Word. The Bible is not an every day Book. It is not simply a series of sacred stories that lead us in our spiritual journey, whatever those phrases may mean! The Bible is not even a simple guide book for us to follow to find the Face of God. In honest reality the Bible contains the very Words which God has given to mankind. As such it deserves our full respect and attention.
With that in mind, we move forward.
There really is a difference in the base text which underlies the King James Bible and that of the Modern Translations. The KJB and the newer translations spring from different source documents. They really do. I didn�t always believe that. I believed that all the translations were simply like commentaries on the same Greek base. I was wrong!
By the way, had I been right I still would have been wrong. The purpose of a translation of Scripture is to convey the Word of God to a hearer who is not familiar with the original tongues. It should not comment upon those Words; it should present those Words.
God is perfectly capable of commenting upon His Own Words if those translating committees will forgo their own pride long enough to allow Him to do so! That is one of the purposes that the Holy Spirit indwells each of the believers.
To illustrate the problem of these competing base texts, turn to page 1069 in you Scofield Reference Bible. For those of you who don�t have Scofield�s, how�d that happen?
Seriously, almost any edition of Scripture will suffice. The text I am referencing is Mark 16:9-20.
In almost all of your Bibles you will notice that a notation has been added. Those notes will say that the oldest and best manuscripts omit these verses. In the Scofield there is a reference to Irenaeus that we will make rather large note of later. For now we note that the inference that these several verses are not part of the Inspired Scriptural record could present a bit of a problem for Bible believers.
Why are these verses in the Bible if they should not be? What other verses should we disbelieve if these several sneaked in? What happened to God�s supposed providential oversight of the Scripture? If the Bible is faulty at this point, might it not also be faulty at other points? This is a real, serious, problem! Our eternal destines are tied to this Book. Can we trust It, or can we not trust it?
I�m just going to give a real quick overview of this situation.
In the early to mid-1800's a man named Constantine Tischendorf was searching all over Europe and the Near East trying to find old copies of the Scripture. In a Roman Catholic monastery near Sinai he noticed that the monks were burning old copies of parchments for warmth. He looked and was appalled to find that these were old copies of the Scripture. Through some negotiations he managed to gain control of these manuscripts. They were among the oldest discovered up to that time.
This is the known as the Sinaiticus manuscript. It is one of those oldest and best which were spoken of above. David Brown, in Old Tricks. Missing Verses & Dirty Little Secrets!, has rightly noted that �Many transcript errors, such as missing words, and repeated sentences are found throughout it (the Sinaiticus).� As a matter of plain fact there is evidence that as many as ten differing sets of hands have made corrections upon this ancient manuscript. Far from being the one of the oldest and best, this manuscript may be one of the oldest but it also gives ample evidence to being one of the worst!
The other well know, oldest and best, is the Vaticanus. It was found in the Vatican Library about the time of the Reformation. It should be noted that both of these, the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus, contain the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament.
This, the Apocrypha, was also in the original King James Bible but was placed, in the KJB, between the testaments and plainly identified as non-canonical - as not part of the Scripture. It was there to be read for background. It was read and revered as a history, or as a spiritual book much in the same sense as we would read Pilgrim�s Progress today. A Christian classic, to be sure; but hardly confused with True Scripture.
In the 1881 English Revised Version, a new text was chosen to replace the Traditional Text of Scripture. It was basically a text founded on the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus. These were the primary source documents.
It should be noted that the translating committee of the King James Bible had access to these type of readings. The Douay-Rheims Catholic edition is several years earlier than the KJB and used this type of text stream quite freely.
As a matter of plain fact, it could be argued - without too much exaggeration, that the newer translation, which are almost exclusively based on the Hort-Westcott standard, are Catholic bibles.
Now, if the Sinaiticus were not discovered until over two centuries after the KJB was translated, how can I say that these readings were available to the translation committee? Mention was made above to the Douay-Rheims. Reference could also be made to the Latin Vulgate of Jerome.
If these were in vogue, why did not the translators of the King James make use of them? There are (again according to Brown) around 5,255 manuscripts, and portions such as the writings of the Church Fathers, Lexicons, etc., available for us today. Only about 45 of these, less than 1%, are of the Alexandrian family. Of the rest there is near total agreement with the Textus Receptus base of the King James. The translators of the King James simply accepted what God had protected.
There are a few ancient manuscripts which disagree with the Traditional Text. But, there are so few as to be called aberrations. To my mind the Alexandrian Text, with less than 1% of the total, should also be viewed as aberration! There were several sources available of these aberrations before the Sinaiticus or Vaticanus came to light.
The sheer weight of the testimony to the TR presented a real problem to Dr.�s Hort and Westcott as they led the 1881 Revision Committee to jettison the TR. �How come almost everything we have is from the TR perspective?.� was a problematic question to this duo.
By the way, did you catch that phrase, Revision Committee? The commission given this committee was only to revise the King James Bible. Instead they choose to edit an entirely new text and produce an entirely new Bible. That lack of dedication to their sworn duties seems to speak volumes to me!
The two Dr.�s, Hort and Westcott, came up with a real neat bit of, as near as I can tell, complete fiction to explain the preponderance of Textus Receptus type readings available. If it is not fiction it is certainly wishful thinking. There is not a witness in all of history, with the exception of the fertile minds of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort., that this ever happened. None. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Ain�t nothin� atal� there.
What was their fiction? Simply this, they taught that there was a great church council around 300 A. D. At this supposed council it was decided to edit all of the Scriptures available. All of them! Thereafter, of course, the only portions being copied would be from this officially edited text.
Only two texts, you guessed it, the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus were able to escape the destruction. These two were the only two, pre-revisionist texts that were available. So taught Dr. Hort and Dr. Westcott. Even though these two texts differ among themselves over three thousand times in the Gospel�s alone, they were considered to be the only copies of the pure text of the Scripture. In Revision Revised, Burgon says that it would be easier to find two consecutive verses that disagree between these two than it would be to find two consecutive verses that agree together.
But, right here in the tag end of the Book of Mark, the bogus texts have a problem. Remember, the end of Mark had to come in the great 300 A. D. Official Church Revision, of which history is completely silent, if it were added to the TR texts. That is why the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus do not contain this portion. They are a pure text made prior to the insertion of this section of Scripture. That is what we are told - even, it seems, by one of my hero�s of the faith, Dr. C. I. Scofield.
That is why I find it interesting that there was a �church father� named Irenaeus who lived about 140 - 202 A. D. Among his writings, look it up in The Anti-Nicene Fathers, if you�d like, he wrote this: �Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: �So then, after the lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God.�
If the theories of Westcott and Hort, which are the basis for almost all of the modern translations, are true, then Irenaeus was a great prophet in that he wrote Mark 16:19 in a letter almost one hundred years before it was inserted in �The Great Church council Revision of 300 A. D.�
It should also be noted that Irenaeus know Polycarp who was a student of the Apostle John. You think Irenaeus might just have known what he was talking about when he talked of Scripture? ...maybe just a little bit?
The thing, however, that bothers me the most about the rational behind the newer translations is this quotation from Bruce Metzger. It is found on the first page of the forward to the New Revised Edition:
The King James Version has serious defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of biblical studies and the discovery of many biblical manuscripts more ancient than those which the King James Version was based on made it apparent that these defects were so many as to call for revision.
First of all, in all of the new discoveries, there has not been a single discovery of new readings which were not available to the King James translators.
Second, if Mr. Metzger�s words were true, it would mean that God had allowed, or been unable to prevent, His Word to be lost to His Own church for over one thousand years. It would mean that the Reformers had bogus Bibles. It would mean that all of the revivals of the past ten centuries were founded on false texts in false Bibles.
That doesn�t sound like the God I serve. It doesn�t sound like the faith which is founded in the revealed Word of God.
We can trust the King James, the Authorized, Bible because it is founded upon the text of antiquity.
While the other two, the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus, are called the �oldest and best,� they can not even lay claim to being either! That they are not the best is, I believe, not even open to serious question. The facts of their errors, additions, and omissions, disprove them.
Nor do I believe that they really are the oldest witnesses to the Autographs. There are ancient translations, the Syrian Peshitta, for instance, translated around 150 A. D., which follows the same basic text line as does the Textus Receptus. That is over 150 years before the unholy duo of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. The Old Latin (Pre Vulgate of Jerome), another TR type text, dates from the same period.
It has been argued by quite a few that these two Bibles (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) are part of the fifty commissioned by the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine saw his �great vision� about 312 A. D. He commissioned Esubias to make these fifty copies to place in the newly �federalized� state churches.
That in itself gives me pause. What was it that the various churches gave up when they accepted Rome as their patron and protector? Should not there have been Someone Else in those positions.
I, and many others, see this - the time when the churches symbolically bowed the knee to the Roman Emperor to accept his protection, as the true beginning of the Roman Catholic Church.
I might note that the �cross� which was in Constantine�s vision, resembled more an Egyptian Ankh than the Cross of Calvary. There are many things from the Egyptian, and the Babylonian, religions which have found their way into the Catholic church. From the confessional, to the order of nuns, to the veneration of the �Queen of Heaven,� these have their genesis in Babylonian cults and later flowed through Egypt.
If that were true it would explain why the Vaticanus does not contain any of Revelation - the Great Whore of Babylon being described in Its prophecies, or why it cuts off the Book of Hebrews at Hebrews 9:14, thus excluding the tenth chapter which speaks of the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Yet, we are expected to believe that God had allowed His Own Inspired text to be hidden for one thousand years only to flow forth from these polluted aquifers.
How fortunate we are that the Catholic Church, that institution which railed so strongly against anyone having a copy of the Scripture in his or her own tongue that they killed and burned at the stake any who would attempt to provide this precious Word to the populace. We are indeed fortunate that this institution provided copies, one from a monasteries� burning barrel and one from the back of her own library, to lead us back to the Pure Word of God.
Fortunate, indeed!
By the way, lest anyone thing that I�m Catholic Bashing, I am really not. I know all about the abuses of the Lutheran�s of Germany, and even of the Calvinist�s in Geneva. But, no where can I find any Protestant churches persecuting those who sought to bring the Bible to the common man in his own language.
Besides, we are Baptists. We predate both the Roman and the Reformation Churches. We�ve been on the unhappy end of most of the persecutions!
I could spend time and note Church Fathers who wrote the Scripture in their letters and tracts. It is said that one could reconstruct the entire Bible with just the writings of these �Fathers.� The Bible so constructed could be the King James Bible! I could give you many more examples of Church Fathers who read, and wrote, and trusted the last several verses of Mark�s Gospel, for instance.
We have a Word that is True. We have a Word that is Sure. We have a Word that is God energized, and God written, and God protected, and God given, and God blessed and God Preserved, and... What more do we need? We have the Word of God. We can hold this Book aloft and say, with sincerity and complete accuracy, �Thus saith the Lord.�
And, you know what? He did!
Ain�t it great? Ain�t it wonderful? Ain�t it awe-inspiring? But, ain�t it giving us a real duty!
When I went into the Army I was required to pledge to �Protect and defend the Constitution of the United State,� among a few other things. As an aside, it is too bad that Federal Judges don�t have the same compulsion. But, it seems to me that they�d rather change the Constitution so it can meet their preconceived notions.
I was real flattered that the government had such faith in me that they gave me that charge and duty. �Course I wasn�t the only one to agree. There were over half a million of us just in Viet Nam at this time.
�Protect and defend.� You know, we really looked to that Constitution to protect and defend us! That Constitution provided the mechanism that gave us the bullets and vehicles we needed. That Constitution gave us the comrades in arms who backed us up.
We were soldiers. But we were parts, each of us, in what was one of the strongest battle groups in the history of the world. Individually we might not have been much. But, put us together and Oh, Boy!, what we could have done if the government had just unleashed us!
It is the same way with this Book. We are each individual soldiers of the Cross. Some are better prepared than others. Some have more motivation than others. But, each of us are backed by the Word of the Eternal God. God has unleashed us. He has commissioned us. He has given us marching orders.
So what has happened? Too many of us have gone back to the barracks and shied from the battle.
We protect and defend the Scripture? It may appear that way, sometimes, but it ain�t happening! This Word is our protection against the wiles and weapons of the enemy. Satan seeks to destroy our witness!
The problem with these �Alexandrian� manuscripts dates back to an early �theologian� by the name of Origen. Origen is recognized as a great Scriptural critic - not in the matter of being critical, but in study.
Maybe we should revise our opinion and admit that Origen really was critical! If he were alive today his theology would put him real near the Jehovah Witness cult. This is especially true in their teaching that nothing in Scripture will run contrary to human reasoning. If Origen was, or one of his disciples in the Scriptorium in Alexandria were, copying a portion of Scripture and found a section which did not agree with his theological bent, he simply �corrected� the passage.
The final arbitrator of the Scripture became not what God had said. It was what Origen believed that God had meant to say! This is the same philosophy behind the paraphrases such as the NIV.
A paraphrase is not a word-for-word equivalence. It is, in the Bible versions, the taking of a phrase from one language and putting those thoughts into another language as though it had been originally written in that second language.
That is the way that we get �translations,� such as one made for some people in the South Pacific, which say that Jesus is The Great White Chicken which takes away the sins of the world.
�But,� the translators argue, �The people can understand this. They wouldn�t know what a Lamb is.� That sounds very good, doesn�t it? But, when one is studying about this �Great White Chicken,� does he gain an understanding of the meekness and the obedience of the Son toward the Father? As he studies this �Great White Chicken,� does one see the great picture of the Old Testament sacrificial system which prefigures the death of Christ on the Cross?
We assume that God wrote what He meant and meant what He wrote. To surmise otherwise is to present a picture of a God Who is vacillating and indecisive, to propagate a Deity Who is time-centric with His words and intents rather than eternal, to see Him Who made the universe and all that is within as sloppy and careless in His Work and Words. That is not the Self-Portrait which God presented of Himself in the Word He has given to man. This is not the picture of the Father which Jesus gave to the world. (John 14:9)
Admittedly this is an extreme illustration. But, this is the danger when the Scripture is translated by the whims of a thought-for-thought dynamic equivalency rather than a word-for-word fidelity as was done, as much as possible, by the King James translators.
One way in which this fidelity of the KJB translators is shown is though their use of italics. This was the translators way of letting the readers know which words had been added for clarities sake by the translator. Can you find these same admissions in the NIV? Or the NASV? Or the RSV? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Add to this the fact that the NIV, and the others, use a Hort and Westcott type of base text and you�ve got a real problem. You�ve been called to a war and your supply of ammunition is faulty!
Back in the teens and twenties of the twentieth century, the great Fundamentalist vs. Modernist debate was centered in Scripture. The Fundamentalist held up his King James Bible and said, �This is the Word of God.� The Modernist held up his Revised edition and said, �This contains the Word of God.�
Did you note that subtle difference? We, the Biblicist (I prefer that term over �Fundamentalist� because, sadly, not all Fundamentalists are Biblicists. But, I do tend to use the terms interchangeably.) believe that God has not inspired His Word in vain. Inspiration was not an exercise as a flight of fancy. God not only inspired, He preserved. His Word is True and Faithful and we can believe it from cover to cover and from top to bottom.
And, if we don�t accept this... Well, it makes no difference! The Bible is The True and Faithful Word of God because God made it so! God acts in history. Man merely recognizes the fact.
A wise man once said, �God said it. I believe it. That settles it!� A wiser man corrected him. �God said it. That settles it whether I believe it or not!� We stand on a, no!, we stand on THE Sure Word of God - a Settled in Heaven and on Earth for eternity Scripture!
The Modernist, and those who follow the Hort and Westcott text can not say the same thing. Their basic premise is that God was either unwilling or unable to protect and preserve His Word. Thus, we have �a near consensus� that the word we have is �substantially the words which the autographs might have had.� Their Bibles �contain� the Word of God.
The same goes for the �Fundamentalist� who studies, preaches, and teaches from the polluted pools of pseudo scripture which offer not Life Giving Water from the Throne of God, but only a pale reflection, a mixture of grog from tarnished documents of hidden parentage and antiquity.
That is definitely the sort of thing to which I want to tie the eternal destiny of my immortal soul. NO! I want God�s Word. I want to know, not hope, not guess, not conjecture, not surmise, not even simply �trust,� I want to KNOW that I have the Word�s of God in my hand! I do! The King James Bible is a faithful rendition in the English of the preserved Word of God!
With such I am able, with conviction and truth to declare: This is the Word - the very Word - which God gave to mankind!
This being true, and it is!, there are two types of response which should be made by those in this room tonight.
First, if you are a Christian you need to decide that you can trust your Bible. I know; you already knew you could. If that is true, what have you done about it? Talk is cheap. Actions prove the existence of your belief. When is the last time you witnessed to a friend, or an enemy, or a complete stranger, about the Love of Jesus Christ?
For most of us this is a very hard thing to do. I don�t mind saying that watching the Cubs is almost the same as seeing major league baseball. I don�t even mind saying how hot the day is, or how wet. I can even get personal and admit that I used to be fat before I gained all this weight.
But, to witness to someone - face-to-face, that Jesus Christ died on a Cross so that they might have an eternal home in an eternal heaven... That I seem to have trouble with. The old nature seems to rear up and grab me by the throat. The words just don�t want to come out!
You got the same problem? Well, try to find a way to get over it. Just like I�ll try to find a way to diet. In the meantime, while you�re struggling with the need to witness verses the compulsion to not witness, how about being a Commando for the Lord. This is easy. It can even be fun. Just pick up a bunch of tracts. Keep them in really good shape so that people will take them. Now, just don�t give one to anybody.
Really! Don�t gave any away. Just let people find them. Put one on the restaurant table along with the tip. Not instead of the tip! No need getting the waitress upset with Christ when she finds the tract.
Put one on the shelf at the grocery store - maybe with some coupons.
Leave one behind in the men�s room. Now, you ladies can just ignore that last one!
I think you�re getting the idea. Pick good tracts, ones that might catch your eye. Then use them. That is what they are intended for!
Sure, some people are going to throw them away. Some people aren�t going to read them. But, even if only one in ten, or one in ten thousand for most of us, even if only a few read the tracts, isn�t that more people getting the Gospel Message than are doing so right now?
In a few weeks or months - you might need to go slowly, you can try to actually give them away by hand. To the clerk at the gas station. To the teller at the bank. To the person behind the counter at Chez Golden Arches. Most of them will be glad to get something to read during their break. Curiosity will get the ball rolling. Well, that and the Holy Spirit. He tends to help a little, doesn�t He!
Don�t forget to add a dollop of prayer!
One thing: With the tracts make sure that they are stamped on the back with the name of this church. People will have questions. They will need to know where to go to find the answers. For the most part, in these post-Christian days when things spiritual (at least things Christian) are proscribed in most areas, people will not be familiar with the Bible. The pastor will be more than happy to open the Word with them. Some people will be saved. These need to know where they can go to be taught the things of God.
Now, to those of you who are not yet Christians... Don�t feel bad if you are in that camp. All of us were until we met the Lord. It is the natural condition of humankind. But, you need to do something about it. Some day you will stand before the Jesus about Whom this Book speaks. What are you going to say?
If you were to die tonight, and by the way that happens, where would you be tomorrow? Not where would your body be. Where would YOU be? Within each of us is that knowledge, we just can�t escape it!, that this world, this life, is not all. There is more. There is a sequel to each of our life stories. What will yours be?
We don�t hear much preaching on Hell today. That doesn�t mean that it does not exist. It is a horrible thing about which to speculate. Hell. Eternal separation from God, from our loved ones who�ve gone on before, from all that is good and pure and right in this universe. Hell.
I could talk all night about the glories of Heaven. But, you know most of them. You know that Heaven is a glorious place.
But, Hell... It is real. It is waiting. This Book, given from God, Himself, will lead you to life. It will lead you to Heaven.
So, too, is the Savior waiting. For you. You are not too bad. Jesus knew all that there was know about you - the good and the bad, even the ugly! - when He died for your sins nearly two thousand years ago. He calls you to Himself, tonight.
You are also not too good to need this salvation. Else why would Jesus have died for you sins? But, you knew this.
Jesus calls you tonight.
Come to Him.