THOSE �OLD� KJV WORDS (Continued)
When we consider the �problems� with those �old KJV words,� we are actually considering a �problem� within ourselves. The problem is not those words; it is our reactions to those words.
Unlike the newer versions, the Authorized (King James) Bible is translated from the Traditional Text. The purpose of the translation committee was to present an English equivalent of those Words. In doing so they were faithful to this text because they believed that God had both inspired and preserved the Words He intended for man to understand.
Cloud (Dynamic Equivalency - A Frightful Influence on Fundamental Translation Work) says that, �The error lies in failing to understand that the Bible is not a churchy book but a heavenly book! The terms used in the Bible were not conceived by man, but given by inspiration of God!�
What Cloud was talking about, of course, was the use of paraphrase in translation work. But, I believe that the concept carries over into the general purpose of many of the modern versions. The stated reason for them is often that they are intended to make the Bible easier to understand.
There are things in the Bible that are beyond our comprehension. God intended for us to study His Words (II Timothy 2:15). The important part, here, is to study His Words. The modern English language versions are primarily translated from an eclectic base which has been cobbled together by men whose only real area of agreement is that God either could not, or did not, preserve His Words. Many of them would even argue that He did not inspire those Words; they argue that He only inspired the general concept.
This is where the paraphrase, such as Taylor�s �Living Bible� and the �New International Version� come in. They, and several others, make no pretense of being word for word translations, even of what I believe to be an inferior Greek base. They seek to give a �dynamic equivalency� which is a paraphrase intended to give �the original flavor of the words,� without resorting to word for word translation work.
Cloud mentions this as well. �...dynamic equivalency seeks to avoid the use of traditional ecclesiastical terms in translating the Bible.� On the down side of this tendency is the truth that a paraphrase is inevitably a commentary on what the translator feels that the text probably meant, or meant to him to be more specific, rather than a translation of what God has said.
Further down, we also have the absurdity of a sometimes accurate translation which misses the meaning of the original Words. �Publican� is normally translated as �tax collector� in the modern versions. This is a correct translation. But, it has not the flavor of the original meaning. This is an instance where the �religious sounding� word has more authenticity than the simple translation.
A tax collector, in the New Testament times, was one who had joined with the occupying forces which had subjugated the land. They were considered a traitorous group of persons who were more interested in cooperating with Rome than in living as pious Jews. Also, quite often, they were somewhat shady in their interpretations of the tax laws. All in all, our concept of �tax collector� has little to do with the antipathy in which the publican was held.
The idea of the Dynamic Equivalency (Paraphrase) translation is a method which seems to seek the make the Bible attractive to the unsaved. These are those who are spiritually dead! The Living Words are of little interest to those who are dead in their trespasses and sin. These are at moral odds with the things of God. They are of their father, the devil.
The Words of Life, from the Author of Life, are not something to which the unsaved are likely to be attracted. Since they are opposed, by the fact of their sin nature, to the things of God, and will not hearken to His Voice, the only way to make a �Bible� which is attractive to them is to remove the power of God, His very Words, from them.
But, in doing this those versions have taken the deeper meanings of God�s Revelation from that Revelation at the expense of the Child of God who has been made spiritually alive - or quickened.
The great slide in public morality, not to mention the power of the churches in public discourse, in the past fifty, or so, years since the King James Bible, which is faithful to the preserved Words of God, has been proscribed by even many Fundamentalist churches and schools, gives ample evidence to the lack of Spiritual Power in these newer versions made to appeal to the masses. The lack of the Words of God underlying these newer versions has seen a lack in the Power of God from the words which are therein.
Cloud also mentions II Peter 3:16 where Peter says that there are some things which are �hard to understand.� God never, as many modern critics allege, told us to put our minds in neutral and just become brain drugged. We are to �Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.� (II Timothy 2:15)
Two words need to be heeded from that verse. �Study� and �workman� do not denote a lazy attitude. We are not to simply read our Sunday School quarterlies; we are to engage ourselves in a study of the Words of God.
I could argue that you are doing the above right here. But, folks, this is my study. It is good to use such as this. But studies and commentaries can never take the place of studying the Words from the source. Read, reread, and study your own Bible. Pray before, during, and after you do so, that the Spirit of God will illumine your own souls with His teachings. We seek an audience with Him as we sit at His feet, hearing His Words from His Own Text.
This is a Biblical principle. God�s command to mankind in Genesis three was that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. This principle is one of the reasons that we understand theft, or gambling, to be wrong. These are attempts to bypass the command of God that we work. By the same token, God has commanded that the Christian study the Words of God. Indeed, we can not call ourselves �faithful Christians� if we fail to study His Words to the best of our abilities.
Any attempt to lessen the Message of God, in the name of making that Message easier to understand, when the reality is to remove the force of that message, is surely as much of a ruse to circumvent the commands of God as are the above examples.
In our next session we are going to consider the �thee�s and thou�s� of the King James Bible.
8 February 2008
THOSE �OLD� KJV WORDS (Continued)
When considering those �old� KJV words, we probably should have started with the �thee� and �thou� consideration rather than ending this section with them.. Those words seem to highlight the distaste some have for the King James Bible. �How can I read it when all those thee�s and thou�s just confuse me,� is the often repeated claim.
However, as Asvitt (Getting the Most Out Of Your KJV), among others, has noted. These words are actually a help in understanding the meaning of the Scriptural passages. �...consider the use of thee and thou. ... Thee, thou, thy, and thine are all singular, while you, ye, and your are always plural in the King James Version.�
Asvitt then cites three verses to make his point.
�Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again.� (John 3:7) �Jesus addresses Nicodemus (thee) and says �Ye (plural) must be born again.��
This verse is really indicative of salvation. Each sinner who receives Jesus as Savior is saved individually. Even in a great crowd, such as some of the city wide revivals, each one born again is born again individually. Yes, individual salvation is of the individual. But, all who would be saved must come the same way. You must be saved. All of you must be saved. This isn�t a contradiction; it is an expansion on the topic.
�And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.� (Luke 22:31-32) �The �you� indicates that Satan is to sift all the disciples, and the �thee� reveals that Jesus had prayed for Simon Peter in particular.�
I would believe that Jesus had prayed for all of the disciples. But, while He was speaking with Peter He made that individual, personal, connection. In like manner, there may be thousands, millions, of persons worshiping God at the same instant. Yet, in His infinite greatness, He is able to have personal communion with each individually.
�But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.� (Matthew 6:6-7)
�The King James Version stands alone in making the distinction between private and public prayer.� �Thee� and �Thou� pray secretly. �Ye� should not pray repetitiously in public prayer. Note that Jesus repeated His private prayer (Matthew 26:44) at least three times..
I think that this would also be a good place to mention the use of italics in the King James Bible. The translating committee of the Authorized Version, the King James Bible, tried to make as literal a translation as was possible. They avoided paraphrase whenever possible. There were times, however, when they felt it necessary to add certain words to make the sense clear. Whenever this was done they set apart those added words by making them in italics. In this way the reader could make his own determination as to those words.
I might add that nearly none of the modern English language translations will make a distinction when they use paraphrase, some like the NIV are nearly completely paraphrase, or when they have added words to make the meaning clearer.
It is also necessary to point out that the King James Bible was not universally accepted by the English speaking people when it was first introduced in the 1600's. Fuller (Which Bible?) speaks in defense of the King James Bible as to this point.
�Ever since the Revised Version was printed, it has met with strong opposition. Its devotees reply that the King James met opposition when it was first published. There is a vast difference, however. Only one name of prominence can be cited as an opponent of the King James Version at its birth. The Queen, all the Church of England - all the Protestant world - was for it. On the other hand, royal authority twice refused to associate itself with the project of revision [of the Scripture in the 1881 Hort and Westcott revision], as did also the northern half of the Church of England, the Episcopal Church of North America, besides a host of students and scholars of authority.�
It should also be noted that the opposition which the King James Bible did meet was over a translation of God�s Words. The underlying text was never questioned as it is being questioned today in the modern versions. This is a vast difference!
In our next session we will begin to take a look at the King James Bible, itself.
15 February 2008
THE KING JAMES VERSION
It is not the purpose of this study to provide a complete history of the making of the King James (The Authorized) Bible. However, since the King James Bible is nearly the only edition currently on the market which is based upon the Traditional Text we will take a short look at it. I expect that this overview will encompass two sessions.
Also, since this session is more concerned with history, my comments will be shorter and, sometimes, nonexistent as I am prepared to show history rather than engage in didactic exposition. Anything I would say beyond the observed facts would generally serve only to cloud the discussion.
Gilmour (Memoirs Called Gospels) has rightly described the situation of the King James Bible. �Although the Authorized Version has the best right to be called �the English Bible� because of its profound effect on both the English language and Religion, such a title can belong to no one translation. It is more accurate to speak of �the Bible in English.��
Although I use the term, �King James Bible,� I am fully aware the even the King James is not a �Bible� in the literally used sense of Scripture. The Bible is that Book authored by the Spirit of God via inspiration and through the various human instruments used to produce copies of those divinely inspired and preserved Words.
The King James Bible is not, itself, inspired. Any inspiration which we might claim for it is only a derived inspiration from the use of the Traditional Text which is an edition of the divinely inspired text. The following is my reasoning on this subject. It is taken from �The Tree at Marah,� a sermon listed in our sermon index.
�I do know that God could have only given full inspiration to one set of writings - the Words of the originals. After all, He is a God of Power; He is not a God of absurdity. If God did, indeed, give His Word perfect and established forever, inspired in the words of the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, it had to be perfect.
�It could only remain perfect in exact copies of those originals. To allege that this perfection was moved from these Words to the words of any translation, even the KJB, is to say that God was mistaken in His assertion that the original inspiration was perfect. I am not ready to say that God was mistaken!
�The only other possible argument I could see, to claim inspiration for the King James Bible, would be that He had inspired the words of the KJB as well. Again absurdity raises its reasonable head. To inspire the KJB in such a way is to say that God had decided on an ending program for His first stab at an eternal Word.
�Again, this would bring into question as to whether or not God had made a mistake in His first try at a Scripture that was �...settled in Heaven.� (Psalm 119:89)
�This also begs the question of how long our KJB would remain as the Word of God.
�This throws our entire concept of inspiration into turmoil. We have ripped from our faith that upon which our faith is founded: The Unalterable Word of God.
�Not only that but we are suddenly presented with a God Who is not the Unchanging One. He is become a vacillating Sovereign Whose pronouncements we can only trust for we know not how long. What is to become of the promise of our eternal salvation if God would change His mind on so important a factor as His very message to us?
�Worse still!, this sort of occurrence would bring into question the entire cosmology of Who we understand God to be. We understand God to be The God of Eternity. If He would choose to do away with His promise of an eternal Word in a time-centric manner, where does this place our understanding of Heaven, and of Hell, and of the very nature of God, Himself?
�No! No! No! The King James Bible, for all that I love and revere it, can never be the completely unalterable, eternal, inspired Word of God. What a travesty it is that anyone would ever suggest that this is so!�
Also, we cannot refer to the King James Bible as a �preserved Word.� There have been several editions of the King James Bible. It is true that most of these editions were only concerned with corrections in spelling and punctuation. Still, there have been those slightly differing editions. But, we must also note than in none of these editions was the base text, the Traditional Text, ever set aside. The King James Bible, nearly alone among those editions available in our day of an English language version, has followed the faith position of that 1611 translation committee: The Words of God have been preserved.
The basic tenet among nearly every other edition on the market today of English language versions is that the pure Words of God were �lost� to humanity for over one thousand years. It is only through the brilliance of man that those �lost� Words of God have been nearly recovered. I say �nearly recovered� because this is the highest claim of the modern Bible critic.
Hills comments on the text of the King James Bible. �The original tongues referred to in the title [title page of the King James Bible] were the [then] current printed Hebrew Bible for the Old Testament and Beza�s printed Greek New Testament for the New. The �former translations� mentioned there include not only the five previous English versions ... But also the Douai Version, the Latin version of Tremellius and Beza, and several Spanish, French, and Italian [versions].� The King James Bible is mainly, though, a revision of the English versions which go before it; it does retain the influence of Tyndale.
What Hills is saying is that the King James Bible was based on the text of history. But, other streams were considered. The Douai Version, printed several years before the King James Bible was translated, contained much of the Alexandrian themes which are in the newer English language versions. The 1611 committee considered these words are not sufficiently authentic.
Bynum (Use the Bible God Uses) agrees with the words of Hills.
�Even though the KJV only goes back to 16ll, nevertheless it is based upon the text and versions which preceded it. These texts and manuscripts are the ones that Bible believers have used down through the ages. It is a known fact that 85% to 95% of all ancient manuscripts are in basic agreement with the KJV, but not with the modern versions.�
Hills elaborates upon the textual stream of the King James Bible.
�The translators that produced the King James Version relied mainly, it seems, on the later editions of Beza�s Greek New Testament, especially his 4th edition (1588-9). But also they frequently consulted the editions of Erasmus and Stephanus and the Complutensian Polyglot. According to Scrivener (1884) [The Authorized Version of the Bible] out of 252 passages in which these sources differ sufficiently to affect the English rendering, the King James Version agrees with Beza and Stephanus 113 times, with the Stephanus against Beza 59 times, and 80 times with Erasmus, or the Complutensian, or the Latin Vulgate against Beza and Stephanus. Hence the King James Version ought to be regarded not merely as a translation of the Textus Receptus but also as an independent variety of the Textus Receptus.�
I include this citation because there are many who, not knowing about the ability of the men on the Translation Committee of the 1611 volume, would argue that these men simply copied the text of someone else. Not true. These men, scholars in every sense of the word, were meticulously careful in their handling of what they knew to be the very Words of God preserved for all eternity.
Hills further argued that �The King James (Authorized) Version is an accurate translation of the Textus Receptus. On it God has placed the stamp of His approval through the long and continued usage of English-speaking believers. Hence it should be used and defended by Bible-believing Christians.�
The men on the translating committee of the King James Bible were well aware that they were handling holy things when they sought to give the English speaker a true and faithful rendition of the Words of God in the native tongue of the masses. They did not simply say, �Here it is. We are the experts and we are right.� This extended into the italics which we see in the King James Bible.
In as much as was possible, the translating committee of the King James Bible tried to present a word-for-word rendition in English of the original Words from Greek, Hebrew, and in a small measure, Aramaic. Whenever this committee would add words for the sake of clarity they would set their own words off in italics so that the reader would understand that these were the words of men.
Hills, again, speaks of the thousands of notes which the translators of the KJB put with it. These gave more literal meanings, variant readings, and alterative translations. This displays the care which the translators gave to their work.
Finally, Hills makes mention of the marginal notes of the King James Bible. �As the marginal notes indicate, the King James translators did not regard their work as perfect or inspired, but they did consider it to be a trustworthy reproduction of God�s Holy Word...�
In our next session we will look at some of those revisions of the King James Bible about which I spoke earlier in this session.
22 February 2008
THE KING JAMES VERSION (Continued)
Many times those of us who use the King James Bible are asked, �What edition are your using?� as a sort of condemnation that we are not using one of the modern English language editions. It is such a silly question. All, every single one, of the �editions� of the King James Bible are based on the Traditional Text. This is the Authority from which the King James Bible is derived. It is a Bible Translation based on faith in the power of God to both inspire and preserved His Own Word. It is a Bible Translation based on faith that God has never lost control of, or withheld from His Own churches and Children, His pure Words.
The modern English language editions are based, nearly every single one of them, on the argument that the pure text of God�s Words was lost in time. It is only through the efforts of the minds and acumen of human beings that we have even the approximation of those originally inspired words in our day.
Choose ye this day, to badly paraphrase Joshua, whom ye will serve. Whether it be the God of love and power or the men of human frailty. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord and His preserved, inspired, Words.
Hills (The King James Version Defended) admits that there have been corrections of spellings, obsolete words, and modern punctuation made several times on the King James Version.
The base text, the Traditional Text, the preserved text of God�s inspired Words, has never been brought into question among these corrections.
Gipp (The Answer Book) gives the rational for the continued use of the King James Bible given the fact that modern editions have moved from the Traditional Text as a base, and on to a more eclectic text which references very minor manuscript evidence.
�There have been many manuscripts found since 1611, but there have been no new readings found. ... The fact is, that the King James translators had all the readings available to them that modern critics have available to them today. ...although they Siniatic manuscript was discovered over 200 years after the Authorized Version was translated, its READINGS were well known to the translators through the Vatican manuscript which was discovered in 1481 and also through the Jesuit [Douai] Bible, and English translation of 1582.�
Hills has also spoken of the argument, above, of the question of �which� revision of the King James Bible is to be used.
Some argue, �If you�re going to truth the KJV, which one of the revisions are you going to trust� �This retort, however, is very weak. All the editions of the King James Version from 1611 onward are still extant and have been examined minutely by F. H. A. Scrivener and other careful scholars. Aside from printer errors, these editions differ from each other only in regard to spelling, punctuation, and, in a few places, italics. Hence any one of them may be used by a Bible-believing Christian. The fact that some of them include the Apocrypha is beside the point, since this does not affect their accuracy in the Old and New Testaments.�
I probably should make a point about the inclusion of the Apocrypha in the earlier editions of the King James Bible. It should be noted that the translators of the King James Bible did not place the Apocrypha within the Old Testament as did the Roman Catholic compilers. The Authorized edition translators placed the Apocrypha between the Testaments - clearly marked of as non-canonical.
We must remember that this was a day when there were very few �Barns and Nobel� type book stores available. Books were not all that easy to come by for the average man. The Apocrypha was read by the people of the day in which the King James Bible first appeared as a devotional work much like we today might read and revere Bunyan�s Pilgrim�s Progress. This book is not considered as Scripture to be fully trusted; doctrine is not based upon Bunyan�s work. Still, it is appreciated by many as a very good devotional book.
In point of fact, the Apocrypha was not considered to be inspired by either the translators of the King James Bible, or by any other Protestant body.
I do note, on this subject, something troubling. Almost all of the modern English language Bible translations rely very heavily on two Catholic manuscripts, B and Aleph. In the past few years, with essentially Catholic Bible texts as the base of the translations efforts, there has been an increasing tendency to place the Apocrypha into all these translations.
It is true that there were many good and Godly opponents of the King James Bible when it was first published. It is my understanding, for instance, that the Pilgrim fathers of the New England Colonies forbade passage to the King James Bible on the Mayflower. However, this disapproval was over a translation and not on the true base text of the Word of God!
James (The Corruption of the Word) notes that there is a theory of providential preservation which holds that the true text is in the Majority Text and, when the King James does not agree with this Text, it should be corrected. This citation is included to illustrate how firmly is the need to consider the base text from which any translation is made. If this text were made, nearly every single one of the modern day English language translations would fail.
A quick note. There is a volume on the market which is titled �The Majority Text.� It is not. It is another eclectic text, choosing to consider only limited amounts of evidence which the editors have considered to be their choice of what should be included in the discussion. It is not a majority of all the available evidence.
There is also a theory of providential preservation which holds that God used the translators of the King James Bible to find the True Text. These argue that when the true Majority, or any other text, would disagree with the text of the King James Bible, that the majority, or any other, would be wrong and the King James Bible right.
This is intriguing. I do believe that God did use these translators to preserve and propagate His True Text. However, there is no way that I could agree that the English text of the King James Bible can be used to correct the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the underlying text.
This view immediately above would lead to a veritable Inspiration being conferred upon the text of the King James Bible. God inspired the Words, not the writers, of His Original Autographs. To move this inspiration from these words to the King James Bible would lead one to assume that God had considered He was mistaken in His try at a Perfect Word.
Also, considering that God did inspired the Words of His Original Autographs, to switch this inspiration from those original words to the words of any other language translation is to suggest that His is capricious in His pronouncements and works.
This is an argument which calls into question our entire view of just Who God is in reality. We believe Him to be the God of Eternity. If this is so, He will not change His Word, or His Words. If, however, He is not the God of eternity, we can not be certain of any of His Words, including those relating to our salvation and even of our temporal lives. This argument would make God to be time-centric in His eternal dealings with mankind.
His veritable eternity is then called into question!
Again, God inspired the Words of His Original Autographs. To make a sort of double inspiration of both those words and any translation is to suggest that He has, somehow, made perfection to be either more perfect, or has changed the base of His perfection.
These is a simple contradiction in terms. God is the God of power, not of absurdity in that He would contradict Himself. This type of argument would leave our physical, moral, and spiritual lives awash in a sea of uncertainty. We would be unsure that His Eternal Word to us would not be amended at a later date in time.
The fact is that God has given us a word in English which we can trust only because it is His Eternal Words which have been filtered to accommodate our physical ears. It is that base text, the Traditional Text, which is of real importance. The value of the King James Bible lies in its fidelity to the truly inspired and preserved Words of God.
This fact is true only because of the goodness of the Lord to us. He has preserved His True Text so that we may find His true message in a language we can understand. The English language edition is not that originally inspired Text. It is, however, a true reflection of that Text. This can be true only so far as those English words are an accurate representation of those Original, Eternal Words.
In our next session we will consider the obvious fact that Satan hates the pure Scripture of God.
29 February 2008
SATAN HATES SCRIPTURE
The greatest danger to the counterfeiter�s art is the bank teller who can determine correctly which bills are valid and which bills are bogus. Satan knows full well that his days have been weighed in the balance�s of God�s determinative will and found wanting. His end is assured. He has been a defeated foe since the events of Calvary.
Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible) sees that �Satan desires to be worshiped. He has the ability to counterfeit God�s action, and definitely will be involved actively in attempting to destroy God�s Word and / or replace our confidence in that Word, while seeking to replace it with his own �version.��
Satan understands that the Scripture is the gift from God to humanity. Satan understands that in the pages of the Scripture is the knowledge about God, and God�s means of salvation, given to humanity. Satan understands that the pages of the Scripture give the story of sin and salvation - and of the plan for humanity to escape the chains of sin by which Satan has bound mankind since the days of Adam.
Satan has a real desire to destroy the Scripture. That failing, Satan is content with destroying mankind�s reliance upon the Words of God. Moorman (The Authorized Version) sees the fingerprint of Satanic deception on the multiplicity of �versions� in our day. Moorman argues that Satan used to try to burn the Bibles; now he floods the market with versions.
How would more versions of the Bible be a detriment to the Words of God being published in the world? There are several things to be considered at this juncture.
One of these things is that most of the newer English language versions are translated from a heart of unbelief. This is a harsh thing to say; I understand that. But, the truth of the matter is that the rational, at least one of the rational�s, for the newer versions is the belief that the Words of God were not fully preserved. �Advances in archeology,� we are told, �have given us new insights on what the original manuscripts of the Scripture might have said. These discoveries have allowed us to correct errors in the manuscript evidence which was used for the King James Version.�
That sounds very good. Even evolutionary. But what we are not told is that in all of the new discoveries of the past 400 years there have been no new readings found. All of the manuscript evidence which is available in our time was also available, the readings available, in the time of the King James translating committee. The repeated truth is that between 85% and 95% of all the manuscript evidence still supports the base from which the King James Bible was translated.
The only real difference is that the modern critic agrees with the 5% to 15%. He dismisses the great bulk of the evidence as tainted and argues that he has restored the true text. Hidden within this argument is that this would mean that the true text of God�s Word was withheld from His churches and people for over a thousand years. This is that which I call unbelief.
If the true base of Scripture is hidden, this is a Satanic victory.
The multiplicity of versions also leads to confusion. The only real agreement among all the modern English language versions is that the King James is wrong. The King James Bible needs to be replaced by the modern scholarship of man, we are told. But, there isn�t a single replacement. I have over forty different versions in my study. If I were of a mind to do so I could probably pick and choose over the many until I found one that seemed to agree with my preconceptions.
That is a real problem. When there are so many standards that there is no Standard, what are we to believe? It becomes to easy to depart from a reliance upon the pure Words of God and to begin to use the �versions� to bolster the idiosyncracies of man. I have been told several times that there are �thousands� of instances where the King James Bible is mistaken. Could it not be just as certain, more so with a faith in a preserved Scripture, that there are thousands of times that the modern versions are wrong?
The many versions give a cacophony of voices. What did God say? I couldn�t hear Him for the din.
The modern day English language versions also make a mistake in their perceived audience. They often state that the intent is to make a Bible which the masses will be willing to read. I suppose that this is the reason that so many more are reading Bible�s in our day than they were fifty years ago when the King James Bible was the singular Standard.
The truth is that the masses, by and large, are unsaved. They will not want to hear the voice of God. That is why the Christian is called to take the message, with prayer to the Spirit of God, out to those masses. People in sin are opposed to the Words of God. If they are reading a �version,� it probably is not completely the Words of God that are contained within that version. You might recall that Satan did not brush aside the Words of God in the Garden. Satan simply put his own �spin� on those Words.
The multiplicity of versions also lends itself to less Bible memory work. When the pastor reads from the NASV, and the congregation has the NIV, while the Sunday School teachers use the Living Bible Paraphrase, what is the standard for memorization? David said, �Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.� (Psalm 119:11) If the Word is hid, whether by a closed Bible or too many competing voices among open versions, what do we hide in our hearts? How is our purity of life affected by the lack of God�s Words in our minds and hearts?
Consequently, I do believe that it is true: Satan has allowed so many competing versions and translations to flood the market that we have the Words of God hidden from us under a fog of witnesses. Truth is marketed in a situational manner to a world gripped in a culture of situational ethics.
Gipp has also seen that Satan�s hatred for the Bible causes him to place unholy hands upon the Words of God. �...Satan cannot afford to allow the Holy Scriptures to be unmolested. He will obviously be heard to be its loudest textual critic and will attempt to eliminate God�s true Word while replacing it with his own Satanic counterfeit.�
That has been the case, as we have seen in earlier chapters considering the pure Words of God as opposed to the eclectic texts of man which have replaced those Words as the base of almost all of the modern English language versions.
When the primary emphasis upon a translation is to correct that which God has not preserved, we are presented with a Bible whose underlying concept is based in unbelief in the power and goodness of God. Can such a �bible� be trusted with the eternal destiny of our eternal souls?
When sinful man chooses to �restore� what God has seemingly laid aside, what is to be our response? Are we to accept that man is more righteous than is God? Nay! Such a construct of conceit is not of faith; it is of unbelief! The entire basis of our relationship with God, through Christ, lies in faith. Let us not place faith in a colander which would drain the Living Waters of God�s Eternal Words from our souls!
Fuller (Which Bible) has noted other attempts to adulterate the Scriptural message.
�There have been many attempts to adulterate and to destroy the Holy Scriptures, and every age has witnessed such assaults. As early as the second century such writes as Irenaeus describe attempts of heretics to corrupt the inspired records, and during periods of Roman persecution imperial decrees demanded the surrender and destruction of the copies cherished by many of the Lord�s people. In the Reformation period the Church of Rome sought to maintain its dominant position by buy burning not only the copies of the Bible, but also those who recognized the supreme authority of God�s Word.�
Through all of these assaults the Words of God continued to blaze a path of Light for those souls who trusted the God of those Words. Even today we are beginning to see more and more citizens of Heaven who continue to return to the English language Bible which is based on the God preserved Traditional Text.
Again, I�ve mentioned this before but need to say it again: We do not consider the King James Bible as inspired of itself. Our affection for this venerable edition lies in the fact that the translating committee was composed of men of faith who treated the Words of God as far superior to the words of man. This edition is based on the God inspired and God preserved Traditional Text.
In our next session we will consider some of the ways in which we see Satan attacking the Christian over this doctrine of Bible Preservation.