MULTIPLE VERSIONS MEANS LESS READING (Continued)
Burton (Let�s Weigh the Evidence) references I Corinthians 14:33, �For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints,� when he asks a reasonable question. �THE BIBLE SAYS: �For God is not the author of confusion...� If God isn�t ... Then who is?????????�
This is a reasonable question. It may be strongly asked, but it is a reasonable question.
I have about forty different Bible versions and translations in my study. I have considered taking all of these to the next Bible Conference I speak in and place them all, one on top of the other, into a rather large stack. While stacking these, I would mention the name of each translations. Then, looking at the stack I would intone, �Look at this �Tower of Babel.�
To prove my point I would then call people from the audience and ask them, on cue, to read John 3:16. All at the same time. To anyone hearing this, who believed that one �version� was as good as another, I would paraphrase Satan�s question to Eve, �Yea, What in the world hath God said?�
This is the kind of confusion that has been brought into the churches of the day. We have so many versions that we have no version. Satan has done a wondrous act; he has caused �Bible� churches to stop congregational reading of the Bible. Most of the congregation doesn�t even bother to bring a Bible to church.
Why should they? Often their Bible doesn�t say the same thing that the preacher�s Bible says. Often their Bible doesn�t say the same thing as the Sunday School Quarterly says. The Bible, in our fundamental churches, has become an unnecessary Book!
We have been so intent, as a �church world,� on producing Bible�s that the unsaved will read that we�ve succeeded in stopping the saved from reading God�s Word!
Reynolds (Modern Bible Versions Are Dangerous) speaks of the subtle message of many of the newer English language translations. �...just think of the uncertainty which results when some verses are in the Bibles, some are in with brackets around them, and some are missing completely.�
We have reached a Satanic doctrine when we authorize �Bibles� which are in the business of tearing down faith in the Scripture. These Bibles, and even my trusty old 1909 Scofield Reference Bible, carry footnotes and margin entries which allege that the Bible�s we carry in our hearts are not worthy of our faith. They, we are told, are Bibles riddled with error. It is only the grace and mercy of men that we can know what to trust and what to shun.
Folks, I got a little message for you. If it says, Authorized Version - the Time and God Honored Bible based on the Traditional Text - the words we can trust start on page one and continue on to the maps at the back!
God said it! That settles it! I don�t care what is in the margin notes, or if the Rev. Dr. Fiddle, D.D., teaches against faith in it, trust the Words of God. Now, I know that the King James Bible is only a translation. I know that. But, folks, it is a translation which is faithful to the God inspired and preserved Words of the Traditional Text. The King James Bible is God�s Word for the English speaking people.
I is one and I know. The Spirit tells me so. History tells me so. The saving grace of God tells me so!
The modern language versions are based, nearly every single one of them, on an eclectic text of men who have not the faith to believe that God could, or would, preserve His Own message. That seems to me an insult to God and a lack of respect for His Words! I don�t want the hands of men like this serving me a spiritual meal. I might just get poisoned in the process!
Dr. Fuller (Which Bible) argues for less confusion when reading the Scripture in our churches.
�Uniformity in expressing the sacred language of the one God is highly essential. It would be confusion, no order, if we did not maintain uniformity of Bible language in our church services, in our colleges and in the memory work of our children. �For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.��
This �uniformity� should reside in the actual Words of God, translated into the English in an English speaking church. To demand the use of a version based on a false text is to feed spiritual poison to the congregation. We want, we need, the pure Words of God.
The little tract, �Correcting the King James Bible,� makes an important point. �The preacher or teacher who corrects the authorized Bible causes the sincere Christian to wonder when he reads the Bible if he is reading truth or not. ...This will dampen his zeal for Bible study.�
A preacher who is constantly challenging the words of the translation is probably just trying to show his own intelligence. �I am able to correct what the translators got wrong.� There are exceptions. There really are places where a word might have changed in meaning. For this reason I encourage you to get a copy of �The Defined King James Bible.�
This Bible edition has the text from the King James Bible. Any place where there might be question as to what a word might mean, the editors have given a modern meaning in the footnotes. There are no �commentary notes,� I�d like to see them!, just an updating of the so called, �old and hard to understand words.�
This is the Bible edition I use while typing out these studies.
Remember, folks, the important thing is really the Words of God. These are the basis which underlies the King James Bible. This is not the basis which underlies the newer English language translations.
In �True or False,� Fuller looks at those newer translations. He sees that in these �...use has been made of [the] margin to insinuate suspicion and distrust in countless particulars as to the authenticity of the Text. ...Thus the door has been set wide open for universal mistrust of the Truth of Scripture to enter.�
Fuller could have made the same statement about many editions of the Bible which says, �King James Version� on the title page. These notes calling into question the veracity of God�s Words have become insidious.
Hills (Believing Bible Study) says that, �Far from promoting an interest in believing Bible Study among young people, these modern versions are much more likely to spread doubt and unbelief. For they all rest upon a foundation of naturalistic New Testament textual criticism.�
An so, quite often, do the textual notes in our King James Bibles.
There was a great split among churches early in the twentieth century. Some churches said that the Bible was the Word of God. Some churches said that the Bible contains the Word of God. Those who argued that the Bible was the Word of God were the precursor to the Fundamentalist churches. Those who argued that the Bible only contained the Word of God were the precursor to the Liberals of today.
Having lost faith in the veracity of the Words of God, the liberal churches moved further from the Book. They began to teach that the Bible only contained the �God Story� whereby the ancients searched to find their place in the cosmos. The Bible became an outdated book, only useful for the inspiring stories.
The power of God was lost and the eternal salvation of God was ignored for the teaching of how to live life in the here and now.
And, now the Fundamentalists are beginning to argue that the Scripture has only been preserved in the concept. In other words, the Bible contains, rather than is, the Word of God.
What a slippery slope
We begin to slide
When we say
The Words of God
Do not abide!
Folks, the very souls, humanly speaking, of our children and our children�s children, are at risk as we retreat from the sure foundation of the certain Words of God! The church, infected with the false texts of the faithless, has already lost her power. We are poised to lose a generation, and more!, as we cast doubt upon the very Words of God.
We�ve even let the infection of doubtful men infect our very Bibles in the center column reference.
PASTOR: Preach the Word and rebuke the doubt. The Words of God stand! Let not the doubt of man infect the House of God.
Denton (Should We Use Strange Bibles) has well noted the result of the churches turning their backs on the sure Words of God. �The introduction of the �revised� versions, based upon the �revised Greek� has produced a world full of infidels, agnostics and God-haters.�
Since the advent of the doubt building newer English language Bibles, and the doubt building center column notes of far too many King James Bible�s, the church has lost her power even in the world at large. Once respected, the Christian life style is now hated and attacked at every turn. Churches, medium sized churches, that I know once ran three hundred and more in Sunday School now struggle to reach sixty. Small churches of one hundred now can barely hope to reach two dozen. We have banished God�s Word from our churches and can�t understand why He doesn�t bless!
In our rush to produce �a Bible that the unsaved will read,� we have produced a weak Bible that even the saved are not reading.
Where we once proclaimed ourselves as a �God fearing nation,� we now find a nation that needs to be scared of the judgements of God!
Adam turned his back on God in the Garden. Have not we turned our backs on Him in refusing to pay heed to His Word. Have we not sewed fig leaves of false righteousness in uplifting the eclectic texts of man while despising the Traditional Text of God.
Dr. David Otis Fuller (True or False) summed up the current situation in our churches.
�...it would unsettle the minds of thousands, as to which was the Word of God - the old translation or the new. What a door it would open for the workings of infidelity, or the temptations of Satan? What a gloom, too, it would cast over the minds of many of God�s saints to have those passages which had been applied to their souls translated a different way...�
The date on the copy of Dr. Fuller�s book that I used in this study is 1973. In the ensuing one third of a century, how true his words have proven to be. Satan dances with glee on the rotting corpses of many of our once strong houses of worship. Even the Christian, is so many cases, feels that he can not trust the Book.
Bible colleges and �Fundamental� universities have done their part, like the �preacher training schools� of old during the �fundamentalist/modernist fiasco, they have instilled doubt rather than faith. It is a sad commentary that just a few weeks ago I asked a brother pastor where he stood on the translation issue. He didn�t even know there was an issue!
Good Grief! The very text of the Bible is called into question and a trained pastor is not aware of the fact?!
We need more pastors, who will train more Christians, who will send their children to schools and colleges which will teach them that we have a Book we can trust! We have a Book which God inspired! We have a Book which God has preserved!
As the old song said, �I have an anchor that holds my soul!� There is no question mark at the end of that sentence. We have an anchor; that anchor is the God inspired, God blessed, God preserved, God empowered, miracle Book of the Ages.
We have The, singular and emphatic, Bible!
There are those who argue that in order to give a living faith to persons in today�s world, they must be given a Bible in modern speech. I was questioned by a lady in church a few weeks ago as to why I would want to read �Shakespear,� when there were modern speech Bible�s available.
Folks, I rarely read Shakespear. I often read the Words of God. If the so called �modern speech� Bible�s were actually faithful translations of the Words of God, the churches which use them would see the power of God. By and large, they do not.
Isaiah 55:11 says, �So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.�
The problem today has nothing to do with the Words of God. We just ain�t using them. We need to add air to our tires to keep them inflated. Old air seems to �sneak out.� We need to read the true Words of God. The blessing of tomorrow is as precious as the blessing of yesterday. We need the �Wind� of the Spirit, through the Words of God, to keep our souls inflated for travel throughout the world with the message that Jesus Christ died in time so that others might live in eternity!
I worked once with a man who said that, when he was young and somewhat rebellious, he would often take a small rock and place it under the cap on someone�s tire. When he replaced that cap to the tire stem, the tire would deflate.
Folks, we have had the small rock of doubt placed into the hearts of the public as to the veracity of the Words of God. I had this discussion with a man in the letters section of the local newspaper a few years ago. He couldn�t understand why, with all the �new discoveries� I would hold to the �outmoded� King James Bible.
First of all, those �new discoveries� mean less than nothing. There have been no new discoveries of new readings. All the readings which men use to foster doubt in our Bibles were available to the Translating Committee of the King James Bible. They were contained in the Douay Rheims Catholic Bible of 1582. That is thirty years before the King James Bible was produced.
The King James Translators just rejected what modern man wants injected.
Second, if there were a �new� textual reading discovered, this would mean that it had not been preserved. Therefore, it would not be part of God�s inspired and preserved text. A fairly simple concept to grasp, is it not!
Hills (Believing Bible Study) also makes reference to these �easier to read� versions.
�Never since the Reformation has there been a time in which the Bible has been less read and studied among Christians than today. Family worship and Bible reading have become a rarity even in professedly Christian homes. Memorization of Scripture is a thing of the past. Even converts read the Bible much less than they used to. The Scripture verses which once interlarded their testimonies are now absent ... it is only among the readers of the King James Version that due love and reverence for God�s Word may be found.�
Folks, Hills ain�t wrong!
For all the talk that the new �versions� are easier to read and understand, they are less read and far from understood are the things of God among the readers.
We, the churches and society at large, need to see the Christians go back to the Word. The pure Word. The true Word. We need to respond to God. We can�t do that if we are not reading His Word. We can�t read His Word if we reject the only translation on the market which is based on His inspired and preserved Words: The King James Bible.
No matter how faithful a translation may be, if it is not faithful to the inspired and preserved Words of God, it is not a true Bible. No matter how easy to read a rendition may be, if it is not a rendition of the inspired and preserved Words of God, it is empty reading.
�For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.� (Hebrews 4:12)
Folks, we need a real sword to do battle with a real Satan and to worship the Real Savior. I am afraid that a nice sounding shinny toy just won�t do for the intended task. It would even be dangerous. Satan ain�t playing.
Sadly, too often in our day of �easier to read,� Reader�s Digest inspired, translations based in a lack of faith, we - the Christian - can only play. We lack the real ammunition God has supplied if we are to be true participants in the Spiritual battles of the day!
Folks, trust His Words!
8 August 2008
TRUST THE WORD
As we move into this the last chapter of our study we may ask the question: If God has, indeed, preserved His Words - as is reasonable to assume if He considered those Words so important as to give them in the first place - should we not trust His Words of the Scripture?
The problem with answering this question is that there is a wide divergence of textual variation among the competing �versions.� One �expert� will argue that the NIV is the best. Another �expert� will argue that the NASB is the best. Still another will opt for the New Jerusalem Bible, or the New Revised Standard Version.
The only thing they will all agree upon is that the King James Bible is certainly the worst! The argument might be that the words are old and hard to understand. Reading those words in context will remove much of this argument. Using any reasonably good Bible dictionary, or my preference: The Defined King James Bible, will remove this argument.
There will be some arguments that there are mistranslations in the King James Bible. This is an argument without substance. The rational for submitting �mistranslation� has for the most part a bias against the text which underlies this venerable translation.
The entire argument of the last several hundred pages of this study has been to show that the Traditional Text is that which has been preserved of God. This is the correct text.
The argument of the opponents is that the Traditional Text is a flawed text which has been superceded by new discoveries of the past four hundred years. The problem I have with this assessment is two fold.
First, to argue that the Traditional Text has been superceded by new discoveries seems to presuppose that there have been new discoveries of new readings. This is just not so. All of the readings which have been unearthed in the past four centuries were available to the translating committee of the King James Bible. That these readings are found in the Roman Douay Rheims Version of 1582, nearly thirty years before the release of the King James Bible, gives ample evidence of this fact of history.
Second, the fact that the Traditional Text is assailed as �faulty� argues that this �new true text� was lost for nearly fifteen hundred years. Such an argument is to argue against a faith in the necessity of the Scripture. If God had allowed His Words to be lost in time, they cannot be the Words of eternity. As such they are not eternally important. Thus, they have little meaning, or power, for us in this day.
If it has taken the best efforts of man to reconstitute the Scripture, as God had intended that it be given to humanity, then man is more powerful than the God Who could not keep His Words to mankind. In effect, faith in the ability of man has been elevated above faith in the non ability of God!
If this be true, what need have we for the Words of God? They are become a sounding brass of uncertain tone when compared to the evolved art of the craft.
If this be true then I am wasting my time writing this tome. If this be true you are wasting your time reading this, or any, book considering the teaching of Scripture. If this be true we are wasting our time reading the very Scripture itself.
The power of the Traditional Text spawned the great spiritual awakening of the Reformation. The power of the Traditional Text was the fuel which drove every single great revival of the past four hundred years. The power of the Traditional Text is that which was used of the Spirit to speak to my soul, and yours in all probability, to call us to salvation.
The power of the newer, eclectic texts of the modern English language versions has failed to stem the rising tide of irreligion and societal breakdown of the past fifty years since these texts came to prominence among the churches of Jesus.
Therefore, as this paper has consistently argued, the Tradition Text has shown itself to be both the text of history and the Text of God.
In our world today, both in the churches and the seminaries, both in the home and in society about us, we need to have a standard Word in which mankind may place his faith. That �Standard� must be the One Standard which God has ordained.
To accept any other standard is to move outside the revealed Will of God!
Without this �Standard� we can have no way of even knowing what is His revealed Will for it is revealed in that Standard. If we refuse to consider anything wet we will never accept water!
Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible) argues the reason that so many will refuse to even consider the Traditional Text; it is pride.
�Much of the fervency against the Authorized Version is not so much due to a conscious hatred against the Book, as much as it is a show of one�s education. This fact, which is a conscious malice, is then coupled with the �flesh� or �natural man,� which may be an unconscious malice, to form a constant antagonism toward the true Word of God. This �old nature� exists in every person, even Christians. It will not change until the rapture. This nature manifests itself in an innate desire not to submit to the authority of God�
The writer of Proverbs tells us, �Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.� (Proverbs 16:18) It is not hard to notice how far the spiritual influence of the churches has fallen since they have begun to truth more on the �best efforts� of man and less on the preserving power of the loving God Who gave His Word to humanity.
It is interesting to note how the churches have begun to have less spiritual influence even as they are exerting more political power. This is especially interesting as we consider that the churches are moving more in tune, in their Biblical authority, with the Douay Rheims Version, and the textual base thereof, than they are with the King James Bible and the textual base thereof.
The Gospel of Jesus was not tied to political processes. At His trial Jesus told Pilate, �...My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.� (John 18:36)
There early church was not interested in temporal things. They were involved in the spiritual search for souls to be born into the Kingdom of God. Such Kingdom was not of this earth. Indeed, the powers of earth fought against the Kingdom of God. Then, in the early fourth century something happened to many of the churches.
Emperor Constantine decided to embrace the Christian religion. I don�t believe that he ever embraced Christ as his Savior; but he did unite his temporal claims to the name of Christianity. He first issued an edict of toleration for the churches. Then he established the churches as the �imperial� church.
The churches were no longer dependant upon Christ for protection. They now had the full protection of the state. Those �churches,� scattered about, became �The Church.� This new �Church� began to imitate Imperial Rome. Even the name became �The Roman Church,� rather than the churches of Jesus.
Constantine, looking to strengthen himself politically, even procured copies of the Scripture for the newly institutionalized Church. Of course, he wanted a Scripture which would help him to consolidate his political power. These he found in Alexandria. Later this Scripture was translated into the Latin, the political language of the temporal kingdom. This was another tie of the Church to the State.
Soon this new Roman Catholic Church began to pattern herself after the state. The pope became the �spiritual� Caesar. The �College of Cardinals� became the �spiritual� Roman Senate. Even the outlying churches were tied to Rome in a kind of �spiritual� colony cities. As Paul could appeal that he was a Roman citizen because of his birth in Tarsus, any person could seek �sanctuary� in one of the churches and remain free from the clutches of local law enforcement.
Thus, the Roman Church began to have territorial aspirations. The line between, as the old Roman Empire began to fade, the secular and the sacred began to blur with the secular often taking the ascendency.
This became a �hold over� in the new Protestant denominations during the Reformation. From the Lutheran Church in Germany to the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, state churches began to dominate all of Europe.
And now, as we see a push to return to the Bible of the middle ages, this �new� eclectic text, we begin to see the churches exerting temporal power even as the spiritual power of the churches has weakened.
I do not see this as a coincidence.
We will return to our topic of which text we should trust, we�ve gotten a little of track, in our next session.
15 August 2008
TRUST THE WORD (Continued)
I do not claim to be a Greek scholar. I ain�t even claiming to be close to being a scholar when all the words are in English. I am able to read the words of those who are experts in the field of Biblical languages. It would seem to me that all of the evidence lies heavily on the side of the Traditional Text. Arguments must be manufactured, using human reasoning, to establish the eclectic text of man as superior to the historical text of God.
I am not a proponent of claiming that the King James Bible is inspired. It is not! To make such a claim is just bad theology in that it argues that God has cast aside His first attempt at an inspired Word as delivered in His original treatise. This not only presents a picture of a God Who is fickle in His actions, and thus untrustworthy, it also calls into question the entire structure of Christianity as it causes our view of eternity, and therefore things eternal, as subservient to the realities of time.
Untenable positions, both, if we are to gain a correct understanding of the God of the Bible!
What I am proposing is a preserved Scripture, one that was not lost to both the churches which Jesus established and the men and women he regenerated, for one thousand years. If this is my case then I must favor the King James Bible as it, nearly alone on today�s market, is established upon that inspired and preserved text, the Traditional Text.
Nonetheless, I have noticed that many writers will try to make this current controversy over translations to be one of simple scholarship. Their side, they will argue, is correct while the supporters of the Traditional Text, and derivatively the King James Bible, are decidedly unlearned.
I would not argue that there is a scholarly side to this debate. The Bible, in II Timothy 2:15, demands that the Christian study the Scripture. But, there is also the realization that this study must be Biblically, theologically, centered. If we are to study the Scripture we must know what is that Scripture. Thus, this entire debate must be theologically considered.
When we consider the majesty of God, as the Inspirer of Scripture, we must first ask if we believe that He is strong enough to protect His Message from the ravages of time and humanity. I believe that the God who originally created both man and time has that ability. He is the Master of His Own Creation.
Second, we must consider whether God would care enough about that Message to protect it. It would be philosophically unsound, and theologically unreasonable, to consider that He would not want to protect His Message to man. Consider that He loved man enough to first give that Message. Would He then count His Own Words, which were centered in His Own Love, to be so unimportant as for Him to allow that Message to be overcome by Satan?
Obviously not.
Some in this day will opt for a convenient explanation of �Concept Inspiration.� Paul argues against this in Galatians 3:16 when he notes that the promise made to Abraham was dependent upon the very tense used in God�s Words. Jesus argues against them in Matthew 5:18 when He argues that even the very parts of letters used in Scripture are protected by the preserving power of God.
Concept inspiration is simply a new argument to be used to justify the fact that the new eclectic texts are based on a concept of a lost Scripture. It sounds suspiciously like the old Modernist/Fundamentalist arguments of the early twentieth century. In that time frame the modernist, who did not accept the Words of God as binding upon faith and church polity, argued that the Scripture only contained the message of God. The fundamentalist argued that the Scripture was the Word of God.
Perhaps it is possible that much of the lost power we see in the contemporary church lies in the capitulation of so many fundamentalist�s on this point. They have adopted the modernist Bibliology while attempting to retain the Power of God.
Perhaps these should consider the eternal principles of God. Speaking of His mercy to Israel, God said, �For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another.� (Isaiah 48:11)
Sinful mankind has claimed to be able to reconstruct that which God did not preserve. This is the basis of nearly all of the modern English language versions. How sinfully prideful! Not only that, under the base of concept inspiration such is not even necessary. �We got most of it right.� What a small view of the grandeur, and a false view at that, of the majesty of God�s great gift of an inspired Word to mankind.
This is the theological basis of the debate. One side, those which accept the King James Bible and the Traditional Text which underlies its words, knows a God Who has preserved His Words to humanity. The other side, despite protestations to the contrary, does not. This second side seems to envision a God Breathed Book which - either God choose to hide it from man or God would not protect it from the onslaught of Satan - has an eternal Message which was lost for one thousand years. From this side we note that the continual upgrades of these critical texts argue that we are still left without this Pure Message even unto our own day!
In our next session we will consider the diminishing effect upon Bible study by the introduction of multitudes of new, and often contradictory, versions and translations