There are several dozen doctrines which will never be compromised as long as I am pastor of this church. One of those doctrines would be in regard to the Bible we use in our services and in the preacher’s study. Someone might reply saying that the version we use is not a matter of doctrine – it’s our practice. No! The Bible we use is definitely one of our doctrines, and we practice what we believe.
I went on line the other day, asking Google to give me a list of English versions of the Bible. I was amazed and appalled as I glanced through a couple of the articles it gave me. Wikipedia, for example, gave me a list and description of 104 English versions of the complete Bible. Yes, I counted, but I didn’t add the various renditions of the New Testament only.
Why does our church only use one of the 400-year-old King James Versions of the Bible? Isn’t that a little narrow-minded? Why not use the American Standard, the English Standard Version, or the New King James like some professed fundamental churches? Why not use the Living Bible, the NIV, or Today’s English Version, like many of the evangelical churches. What’s wrong with the Amplified Bible, the emphasized Bible, Reach out, drop down or kicked out Bible? Why don’t we study from the intellectual’s Bible’s, like Moffitt’s, Young’s, Weymouth’s or Phillip’s? Does it really matter which Bible we use? Absolutely!!!
To begin with this afternoon I’d like make a short comparison. Matthew 5:20 – “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The New English Bible – “I tell you, unless you show yourselves far better men than the Pharisees and the doctors of the law, you can never enter the kingdom of Heaven.” I believe that there is a huge difference between “better men” and “righteous men.” Mark 5:6 – “But when he (the demon possessed man) saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him.” The New International Version – “When the demon-possessed man saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him.” John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Today’s English Version – “Before the world was created, the Word already existed; he was with God, he was the same as God.” Again, there is an eternal difference between the being God and being just the same as God. John 6:47 – “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” Revised Standard Version – “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.” Believes what? “The devils also believe and tremble,” because they don’t possess eternal life. Romans 8:28 – “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” The Jerusalem Bible – “We know that by turning everything to their good, God co-operates with all those who live for him, with all those that he has called according to his purpose.” The Living Bible – same verse, “And we know that all that happens to us is working for our good if we love God and are fitting into His plans.” I Timothy 3:16 – “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” The Phillips Translation – “No one would deny that this religion of ours is a tremendous mystery, resting as it does on the one who showed himself as a human being.” ESV – “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh….” Rather than “God was manifest in the flesh,” nearly all the modern translations, say simply “he.” II Timothy 3:16 – “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” American Standard Version – “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction for instruction in righteousness.” Most modern versions leave room to question what is and what isn’t inspired of God. I John 5:7 – “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.“ The ESV simply says – “For there are three that agree” – which three?
If nothing more, in looking at these we should be convinced that something is rotten in Christendom. And if we read the same passages in all these versions could easily have 8 or 10 different statements. Can we call all these versions an improvement in the study of God’s word? Some really think that variety is helpful. But do you think that God is so confused that He couldn’t really say what wanted to say?
A few years ago a noted televangelist had a debate with a leading Muslim. The purpose of the debate was to establish who had the genuine word of God. The Islamic leader presented a weak argument for the Koran, and the Christian demolished it. But then that Muslim lifted up a King James Bible, and then another version and another, and another. He said, “How can the Bible be the Book of God?” These all claim to be your Bible, but they all say different things. You Christians don’t know what the Bible really is, do you?” The TV preacher at that point had no reply. I am not boasting, but I believe that I do have a reply.
I am convinced that all the multitude of versions is a tool of Satan. Each new version which comes out, says that it is an improvement, contradicting its predecessors. The end result is that some people who really want the Truth are utterly confused. They are left to their own devices in choosing which version to use. They are left to rationalistic arguments and religious humanism. All the new versions don’t help the cause of Christ, they hurt it.
It is safe to say that God wrote only One Bible.
Over a period of 400 hundred years, God moved dozens of men to record His Holy Word. “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Shortly after the death of the Apostle John, early Christians were convinced that they had the Bible. And they loved their Bibles more than 99% of modern Christians – the proof was evident. Can you imagine spending your every Sunday for a year writing out a copy of the Bible for yourself? Can you picture yourself making a secret room in your house in order to hide your Bible from those who were seeking to destroy it? Would you be willing to be crucified, shot or beheaded, just to make sure that your family still had a Bible to read? The saints of God in the past loved their Bibles enough to pay a year’s wages in order to own a copy. Would you pay $50,000 for a copy of the Word of God? That cost was due at the time to the absence of the printing press. Every copy had to be painstakingly copied by hand, requiring enormous amounts of time, and meticulous proof-readers. David said, “More to be desired is [thy word] than gold, yea than much fine gold.” Do you think that people with such a love for God’s Word would permit it to be copied incorrectly? Humanly speaking, and leaving out God and His promises, it would be very unlikely.
Those early Bibles taught the doctrines which our church teaches today. For all practical purposes those people were “Baptists” although most didn’t carry our name. But very quickly trouble began to arise in several different parts of the Mediterranean world. To quote Irenaeus, who was trained under Polycarp, who was a disciple of the Apostle John, certain people “have betaken themselves to mutilating the scriptures. They don’t acknowledge some books at all; and have curtailed the Gospel of Luke. The Epistles of Paul they assert alone are authentic but they shorten even these.” So in the very first century some people were carving up and re-writing the scriptures. And by the middle of the second century some churches were following corrupted Bibles.
Then came Constantine, the Roman politician who tried to unite and quiet everyone. He took the reigns of Rome in 331 AD. And with an iron hand he chose one Bible, demanding that everyone use it. However, the Bible version he chose was without a doubt corrupt. 150 years earlier, a man named Origin was one of the worlds’ foremost theologians. But he was not a godly man, and he wasn’t a good Bible scholar. Several poisonous heresies were systematized by Origin. He believed, for example, that the Lord Jesus was a created being, not the infinite God. One of the disciples of Origin was man named Eusebius, the so-called “Father of church History.” Together and with others, they edited a new Bible which omitted the deity of Christ. Constantine ordered Eusebuis to prepare 50 copies of that Bible to be used in churches of his realm. Eventually Origin’s theology was called “Arianism” – Eusebius was an Arian. They essentially believed what modern Jehovah’s Witnesses believe about Christ – and of course, the J.W.s have their own corrupt version of the Bible. They have Eusebius’ Bible. At least two of those 50 Bibles are still in existence today. One was forgotten in the bowels of the Vatican library until it was discovered in 1481. It was written between 325 and 350 AD and is called the “Vaticanus” manuscript. And then another manuscript, almost as old, was found in 1844 at a Catholic Monastery at Sinai and is called the “Sinaiticus.” These two documents, along with others like the “Alexandrian,” differed with the Bibles which the most godly churches in the world were then using at the time of their discovery. But that was just fine because these had the blessing of Constantine and they had great age. But in fact, God wrote one Bible, and sinful man, under Satanic leadership, wrote and edited another.
For about 1700 years this two-Bible system has remained in effect.
But during part of that time it became illegal to read or own the Bible in any form. The common religious denomination at that time was completely heretical. They knew the best way to keep people from knowing the truth was to keep them from God’s Word.
As a result of the policies and the persecutions of the Universal Catholic Church, only those assemblies which believed the truth, fought, and died, to keep their Bibles. They often hid in the mountains, the deserts and the wilderness. If they were caught, those Anabaptists; Waldenses, Donatists, Cathari and Paulicians, were willing to give up their lives rather than give up their Bibles. When these people were caught by the armies of the Pope, they were often slaughtered like sheep. And just like those of the first century, they said, “If I have to die because I own a Bible, I want to make sure that it really is the Book of God,” which they did. During those days, Bibles were read, copied, re-copied, memorized, used, worn-out and replaced.
But do know what happened to the Bibles of the Arians? For the most part they were ignored, sitting on dusty library shelves, like those in the Vatican. They didn’t contain enough hope or truth for people to risk their lives to defend.
Finally, the light of God mercifully pierced into the Dark Ages.
Tyndale, Luther and others, with the help of Guttenburg’s printing press, spread the Bible around the world. They translated the Hebrew and Greek into English, German, and other European languages. And what source did they use for their translation work? Like godly lawyers, they gathered copy after copy of Greek and Hebrew testaments. In some cases, after they had hundreds of copies they started comparing them. And behold, 98% agreed with each other, while less than 3% had variant readings. They had no problem knowing which manuscripts where true – it was the majority which agreed among themselves. They called it the “majority text” or the “received text” the “textus receptus.”
But there was just one “intellectual” problem. The majority of the agreeing texts were not as old as the few disagreeing texts. But the reason was obvious: the Bibles of the Arians had never become popular, because from the beginning the people of God knew they were heretical. Over the centuries they basically lay undisturbed and unused, and thus they never wore out. They became the oldest copies – but only by default. They were like an old soldier, who ran from every battle and therefore was never wounded and never died. But during that same time, the true copies of God’s word were worn out and replaced, worn out and replaced.
So now we come down to today’s modern versions.
If you open an RSV, ASV, NIV or most of the new “Bibles,” take time to read the introductory remarks. Almost all will say, “This Bible is translated from the best (meaning “oldest”) manuscripts.” Some of them will actually declare what those manuscripts are. They come from those material collected by primarily two men: Brook Westcott and F.J.A. Hort.
Westcott and Hort took the few old Arian manuscripts and edited them into one Greek New Testament text. But these men were well-known for clinging to some dubious doctrinal ideas about the Bible. For example, neither man ever said that he believed that the Bible was verbally inspired. And they are on record saying that the Bible should be treated like any other book. Their work was an intellectual exercise, not a spiritual one.
The manuscripts they primarily cited were the Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and the Alexandrian – all descendants of Origin’s original Christ-denying text. Westcott and Hort called them “the best,” because they are clearly the oldest copies of Bible. But in this case oldest is definitely not the best.
Nearly all modern day versions are translated from Westcott and Hort’s corrupted text. And those two got their text from those written originally to promote the heresies of the Arians. Again, modern Arians are the Russelites, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most modern versions are varieties of the Jehovah Witness Bible – the “New World Translation.”
Almost every one of these modern versions cast doubt upon the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some omit references to the worship given to Him. Others relax the miraculous nature of His birth, or His miracles, or His resurrection. Some delete whole sections of God’s word, like the end of Gospel of Mark.
I have told you about this before, but every time I remember this I have to laugh. I was reading an article which said that the American Standard Version slurs Christ in John 9:38. In Verse 35 the Lord Jesus asked the man born blind if he believed on the Son of God. The man replied that he did, and then he fell and worshipped Jesus. This article said that the ASV has a foot note at that verse which reads: “The Greek word denotes an act of reverence, whether paid to a creature (as here) or to the Creator.” That writer then correctly pointed out that the ASV clearly attacks the deity of Christ. Well I picked up my 1929 printing of the 1901 ASV only to discover that note was not there. Was the man who wrote the article lying? Was he attempting to defame the ASV? Then I looked more closely at the copy in my hand. There is a noticeable empty space before the word “worshipped.” And at the bottom of the page there is a footnote #1 and a footnote #3, but no footnote #2. Thomas Nelson, the printer of my copy of the ASV deliberately tried to hide the fact that the original ASV really did attack the deity of my Saviour at that verse.
Which Bible Should we Use?
I believe that the King James Bible which was translated from the vast majority of manuscripts, retains the Truth of God as it was originally given. It was translated into English by 54 of the greatest Bible scholars ever to be assembled at one time. They were men equal to or superior to the “scholars” translating and renovating scripture today. For example, the chairman of the translating committee was Lancelot Andrewes. That man could read the Bible in 20 different languages. But what was more important was that he spent five hours in prayer every day. Even wicked King James respected Lancelot Andrewes. John Boys was one of the translators, at 5 years of age he could read Hebrew. At 14 he was an expert Greek Scholar. For years he spent sixteen hours a day studying Bible manuscripts. Many of the other translators were much like these two. And they all believed that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. If accuracy and strictest attention to the letter of the text be supposed to constitute an excellent version, the King James is of all versions is the most excellent. Since the year 1611 thousands more old Greek manuscripts have been unearthed. The overwhelming majority are essentially the same and agree with the King James. They do not authenticate the so-called Bibles that many people find in their liberal and neo-evangelical churches.
But the primary problem with the new translations is not in whether the translator was qualified. It is that the wrong texts have been translated. I am convinced that the God who had power to inspire scripture also has the power to preserve it. And He did so according to His promise. That preserved text in Greek is called the “Textus Receptus.”
I am 100% sure that the King James Version is the Bible which God wants us to study. One of my first criteria for judging the worth of any church is the Bible which it uses. If the Bible is worth dying for, it is also worth having in the purest form. And that is something I hold right here in my hand.