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!
This is the end of this study. Beginning with our next session I will be placing the notes from which it was written in this space. This will take a few weeks as the outline runs nearly one hundred and fifty pages.