OUT
WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW
David Norris David Norris
is Editor of Dayspring Magazine from the UK. His entry into our journal
is a real blessing, as he brings a perspective from Great Britain which is badly
needed. David's English is, of course, very British. So, if you see
a spelling or word usage which is not what you are used to, please realize that
our readers in the UK likewise marvel at our strange slang and spelling here in
the USA. David can be reached at possibly the simplest UK address I
have seen in years: David Norris
Dayspring Magazine
PO Box 22
Cannock, Staffs
WS12 4HR E-Mail to: DAVIDNORRIS@pen-fellow.freeserve.co.uk
That is a great improvement over "Harryhop over the bridge
and up the paddy by Trevorpane," right? :-)
Out with the
old, in with the new! You must have heard of them. They have penetrated
every area of our lives. In the street we see them, they cannot be missed in their
‘designer’ clothes, rushing about, clasping a mobile phone as though
an ear would drop off without it. At work we meet them, they appear on television.
You find them in industry, politics, education, everywhere. Who are
they? They are the ‘modernisers’. They speak in ‘sound bytes’,
care desperately about ‘image’, and their ‘doctors’ deal in
‘spin’ not health. They surround themselves with ‘enforcers’
to keep everyone ‘on-message’, and are obsessive in their agendas, objectives,
strategy. With religious zeal they proclaim their message, the old must go, the
new is here! These people are addicted to change as an end in itself. Intoxicated,
they cannot get enough change. Change is the cure-all, the panacea for all ills.
Sad to say, a similar scourge has invaded circles where once the authentic
biblical Gospel was once consistently and fearlessly preached. What happens in
the world at large soon finds its counterpart in the professing Church. The leaders
of groups of Churches that once bore clear testimony to the authentic biblical
Gospel have jumped aboard this crazy carousel. Dizzy with exhilaration they drive
out everything deemed by them to be past its sell-by date. If it is old it must
go. New forms of worship with music that apes the godless sensuality
of pop music are introduced to prevent youngsters show-ing the church a clean
pair of heels; the Gospel, or what is left of it, is to be ‘communicated’
no longer proclaimed; old standards have long since been abandoned along with
words like ‘worldliness’; the old and trusted Authorised Version has
suddenly and inexplicably become incomprehensible to everyone, although it has
served God’s people well for nigh on 400 years; long-held views of Genesis
1-3 have been jettisoned in order to gain access and respect in academic circles.
‘Traditionalists’, and all who seek to retain the trusted basic beliefs
of their forefathers, who speak about the ‘old Gospel’, who retain the
ancient land-marks, are often seen as obstacles to progress, spiritual Luddites,
dinosaurs, obstinate, ignorant, narrow-minded and intolerant bigots. Were
this trend just a matter of words and customs, there would be no real argument.
Such discussion would disappear as quickly as it arose, it would evaporate as
the mist of early morning. Tradition for the sake of tradition is not the argument,
anymore than is change for the sake of change. There is often little point in
bringing reasoned argument, minds are already closed. The modernisers among us
are not simply up-dating an outmoded approach, casting off a worn-out garment,
but they are making changes that re-define the Christian Gospel. They have an
agenda which they are determined to push through at any cost. This movement is
at this moment changing the character of denominations and church associations
that have long been the bastions of Gospel truth, places where one could at one
time always be sure to find food for the soul. Serious cause for concern are the
quiet doctrinal changes implied and the unsound assumptions underlying this lemming
rush over the cliffs of change. No change in practice or behaviour
takes place that is not precisely reflected in a change of belief at some point.
In the name of modernity, relevance, a gentle and almost imperceptible
drift is underway – it cannot be done quickly lest someone notice what is
going on! At first the old creeds and confessions remain, but in the end doctrine
catches up with practice and within the space of a generation apostasy will have
replaced truth. Wake up! Wake up, if you are asleep in the pew, what is going
on in your pulpit? Ashamed of the old truths, old lies are being dressed in contemporary
garb – take care to look at the label before you buy! We are facing a movement
in the direction of two distinct definitions of the Gospel. The sooner this is
recognised the better, for then we can all go our separate ways. When
leaders, pastors, and elders look on helplessly as the young forsake them for
the more exciting world of charismatics and neo-evangelicals, they realise something
must be done to stem the flow of what is their life-blood. Changes are made on
the basis, if you cannot beat them, join them. They use a new Bible, then so must
we, but one that is not too perverse! They have new song book, then we must have
one that is similar, but one our more staid members will still be able to stomach.
Devoid of the spiritual power that wakens the dead, lacking the eye-salve that
makes blind eyes to see, other ways and means must be sought to make the Gospel
attractive and relevant to outsiders. Whilst the goats are entertained to death
on the road to hell, the sheep remain unfed on the pathway to heaven. But then,
this is nothing new: "If the gospel does not attract men, nothing will; I mean,
nothing which can do them good. Personally, I have no reason to doubt the attractiveness
of the old, old gospel; but I am assured that some of my brethren, who faithfully
preach the gospel of Christ, do not find the people flocking about them. ...Why
is this? Whence this distaste for the ordinary services of the sanctuary?
I believe that the answer, in some measure, lies in a direction little suspected.
There has been a growing pandering to sensationalism; and, as this wretched appetite
increases in fury the more it is gratified, it is at last found to be impossible
to meet its demands. Those who have introduced all sorts of attractions into their
services have themselves to blame if people forsake their more sober teachings,
and demand more and more of the noisy and the singular." from C.H. Spurgeon's
lecture 'The Evils of the Present Time' in An All-Round Ministry. What
is the matter? Is the beauty of the Lord Jesus no longer enough to attract? Do
men no longer see Christ in those who profess His Name? Those who have looked
full in His wonderful face will indeed find the things of earth growing strangely
dim in the light of His glory and grace. This seems to have been reversed and
perverted, are then the things of this world to be introduced to attract men to
Christ? This is unbelievable treachery. Let us be ever mindful that only those
whose consciences have been awakened to the awfulness of personal sin and guilt
will repent and turn, only those whose hearts God has touched will find beauty
enough in Christ to trust Him alone, to love Him, and become His forever.
What is required of those who preach the Gospel to the lost is not innovation
but faithfulness to God’s Word and a life that reflects the glory and grace
of our Saviour. One of the main reasons given for change is that the
language of our Authorised Version (King James) of the Bible and of many traditional
hymns is said to be antiquated and difficult to understand. Whilst the initiated
may understand it, outsiders do not. This is said to hinder their understanding
of the Gospel and give an impression of an irrelevant and outmoded message. These
are usually lame excuses, often repeatedly babbled by those who have never stopped
to consider seriously what it is they are saying. One gets the same answer every
time the ‘replay’ button is pressed. Expressed in today’s accessible
English, this means we need to improve our 'communication skills' and review our
'client image'! English is becoming so difficult, all these new words! Sentences
with no verb! Youngsters who facetiously claim they need an English degree in
order to understand the Authorised Version of the Bible and our beautiful English
hymns, despite laying claim to a string of GCSE's and A-levels, are either being
a little less than candid or have genuine reason to sue their local education
authority. To suggest this form of English belongs to a bygone era and is no longer
intelligible to the young, still less relevant, is to insult them. What
is particularly disturbing is the spirit in which some of these criticisms are
being made. Some hymns have unquestionably outlived their usefulness and have
quietly and thankfully disappeared. No one need sing hymns with which they do
not feel comfortable, for whatever reason; but the vicious debunking of the authors
of some of our best-loved hymns is quite another matter. The sheer arrogance of
some of the scorn is at times breathtaking. It would almost seem that there are
those who, like naughty boys looking for rude words in the dictionary, flick through
the pages of the old hymn books for the next amusing line. “Here is a good
one – ‘Let some droppings fall on me, ho, ho, ho!’ ” It is
intolerable that so many giants of the faith who have bequeathed to us such a
rich legacy in music and hymns should now be made the targets of mockery and figures
of fun by spiritual pygmies. Lines about ‘droppings falling’, ‘failing
waters from broken cisterns’, ‘parting asunder giving inward pain’,
are trivialities that can easily, and indeed have been tastefully remedied in
some hymnbooks. In the case of hymns, we are not dealing with holy writ.
Nevertheless, this is not really what the discussion is all about, hence
the fatuous arguments. Even more reprehensible is the doctrinal mutilation and
literary butchery wrought upon many of our well-loved hymns. What have they done
to the lovely hymn ‘Just as I am’? The first line ‘But that Thy
blood was shed for me’ now reads ‘But that You died to set me free’.
No one can seriously be expected to believe that the omission of reference to
the blood of Christ is done solely in the interest of removing 'thee and thou'.
These rabid iconoclasts should take note of what the Scriptures say about the
scornful and mockers. “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
account thereof in the day of judgment” Matthew 12:36 In keeping
with the mood and drift of the modernising movement, the introduction here in
the UK of Mission Praise and its imitations shows a preference for mediocrity,
and the noise and emptiness of the world. Whilst some of the older hymns are still
to be found there, the new introductions demonstrate all the monotonous banality
of a TV commercial ditty – anyone for cornflakes? Some of these pseudo pop
songs are plainly pretentious rubbish, - as for example ‘When I feel the
touch’ - bad music, devoid of any Gospel, just trashy. It seems gone are
the days when a congregation could raise the roof with Cwm Rhonnda. What Church
can still manage to sing in four part harmony these days? Screech to the happy-clappy
sound of guitar chords over a walking bass and that is appealing to the young
on their own terms. The Gospel has its own demands, those who would find God come
on His terms not on their own. Surely this reveals why this new mood is very much
a new Gospel? Many things are conveniently forgotten when considering
the nature and usage of modern English. Everyday language can be full of trendy
vocabulary understood only by the initiated, full of confusing jargon and incomprehensible
idioms. There is the specialist language belonging to a particular trade, profession,
or area of knowledge. What a range of new words has grown up around the computer,
with few complaints! One should not assume that, because the language is modern,
it is necessarily easier to understand. Anyone in the least acquainted with modern
literature will know that much of it is notoriously difficult to read and the
language is often anything but beautiful. It is also strangely paradoxical that
the more a language is simplified, the less clear it can become. Clarity gives
place to ambiguity and imprecision. Part of the wonder of the Authorised Version
is its simplicity, precision, and clarity. It is more than a touch arrogant, and
not supported by experience, to suppose that 17th century English, or that of
the AV, is beyond the linguistic ability of the young or even foreign readers
of English. When we turn to the Scriptures, we are on different ground,
for they are the revealed, inspired, preserved Word of God and are not the words
of men. Many have been misled into thinking that the argument surrounding the
use of the Authorised Version is one of ancient texts and language, when in fact
the real issues lie elsewhere. As long as our attention is diverted and channelled
in the wrong direction, the real questions will go unasked and unanswered. What
we should be asking ourselves is where the unadulterated Word of God is to be
found today, something the Bible itself will tell us. Can I be sure the book I
have in my hand is in truth word for word the infallible, perfect, sufficient
Word of the Most High? Some seem to be saying in not so many words that I cannot
be sure. The first shift instigated by the modernisers concerns the nature of
the Scriptures available to me, the Bible I hold in my hands. Attack
the Scriptures after this manner and our access to the divine revelation of God’s
sovereign redemptive purposes in Christ is immediately weakened or even severed.
The reason for this is that with such an imperfect Bible in our hands, we can
never be sure whether what we are reading in any precise place is indeed exactly
what God said. Once we move away from a high view of Scripture, we have left the
firm ground of faith and are already knee deep in the shifting sands of unbelief
and sinking fast. We are playing into the hands of scholarship that is itself
no longer subservient to Scripture. Soon all the teachings of the Bible will be
judged on this basis not only, as hitherto, by what the Bible teaches about itself.
Part of the problem is that many have never been taught the fundamentals
of the faith, but live all too often from a meagre diet of ‘blessed thoughts’
culled from a few isolated favourite passages. Worse still, many expecting bread
have been given a stone. It is not because people do not know about
the Bible that they are misled, it is because they do not know what is in it.
And this is where much error begins: “Do ye not therefore
err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?” Mark
12:24 Instead of answering from the Scriptures themselves, more than likely the
modernisers will refer you to the problematic area of texts and translations.
This is to put the proverbial cart before the horse. Before we do anything else
we need to determine what claims the Word of God makes for itself - and this anyone
can do whose eyes have been opened by the Spirit of God, no further qualification
other than being able to read is needed. For the genuine Bible believer there
can be no explanation of textual or any matters concerning the transmission of
the text, or of translation, that stands in contradiction to what the Bible says
about itself. Now that is taking the authority of Scripture seriously. The alternative
approach leaves us in the hands of a priestly caste of scholars saying things
about the Bible, whilst drawing upon their own wayward human reason in their understanding
of matters of textual criticism. A study of the ancient texts is certainly
a legitimate one, but it must proceed on the basis of faith, of a conviction that
what God has revealed and inspired He will preserve in its purity right through
to the translated copy I have in my hand. Nothing else will do, nothing else will
set my heart at ease, knowing that what I am reading when I pick up my Bible is
word for word the very utterance of the living God. If you do not have this confidence
in your Bible, dear preacher, quit now, stop preaching, stop sowing the seeds
of doubt and unbelief among the children of God. You are only reflecting the state
and condition of your own heart! We are not looking to see if God has kept His
promise in this biblical text or that, but how He has done so. The ‘iffers
and butters’ do not operate from a position of faith, but out of doubt –
we must check and see if what God has said is true! What we are being
encouraged to believe by some is that as only the manuscripts actually produced
by the original Scripture writers, prophets and apostles, were inspired, and these
have long since disappeared, so the copies of them we now possess cannot possibly
be inspired and are therefore subject to error. If this is true, bin your Bibles
they are flawed, we have all been deceived, the Bible we have cannot possibly
be God’s Word. It means that God, although having inspired the originals
to ensure perfect accuracy, has then done little or nothing to keep His promise
to preserve His Word. That such a shift has taken place can be demonstrated
by a comparison of The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, republished by C.
H. Spurgeon in 1855, with the Strict Baptist Affirmation of Faith 1966. In this
newer Confession inspiration is limited to “the very words of the original
Scriptures” [emphasis ours]. In the 1689 Confession we are given a vital
assurance, ominously absent from the 1966 Affirmation, (what then is being affirmed?),
that the Old and New Testaments in Hebrew and Greek “being immediately inspired
by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore
authentic.” Think for a minute, someone writes down ‘God is love’,
but the second I copy this out word for word and produce an identical copy, it
somehow becomes an uninspired text. Or if I change the same expression into another
language does inspiration likewise disappear? A child can see there is no difference
whatever. When normally intelligent people come with reasoning that
is so plainly stupid, it can only be that either what little sense they had has
left them, or that they have something else in mind than is at first apparent.
That we need to look at matters concerning the text no one would deny,
but we shall get no where near showing the Bible to be God’s Word, if we
already assume before we start that God has not perfectly preserved His Word in
the manuscripts available to us. Our trust is in the One who inspired the Bible
also to preserve it and to guarantee that the book we hold in our hands is His
infallible Word. Worms is remembered for its Diet and Luther’s
brave stand, but in 1526 around 6000 copies of a small Bible were printed there.
They were about the size of a small hymn book. This was Tyndale's New Testament.
Although the Authorised Version is a translation in its own right, Tyndale laid
a foundation upon which the translators of the AV were able to build. Here for
the first time was a Bible easily understood by ordinary people. This was a direct
fulfillment of Tyndale's boast to a cleric that one day “the boy who drives
the plough shall know more of the Bible than do you.” These words are often
used to justify new translations. The stated aim of many modern Bible
translators of producing a Bible ‘in the language of the people’ - not
quite what Tyndale said - in the belief that they will therefore understand it
better is misconceived. First, it is worth pointing out that something that can
be understood by everyone is not necessarily written in the way those same people
normally speak to each other every day. Second, there is no virtue in deliberately
using obscure language, but the suggestion seems to be that if only people were
able to read and understand the language of the Bible, somehow they could be persuaded
to accept the Gospel, or, modern language makes the Gospel more accessible to
them. We would deny that the Authorised Version is as inaccessible as the modernisers
make out; also, the Bible gives us a very different reason as to why unbelievers
will not understand the Bible, whatever the translation! “But
if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this
world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the
glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 What could be clearer than that? If people do not understand
the Word of God, it is because their minds are blinded by Satan. We need to pray
that such will be delivered and that God will grant them the illumination of His
Spirit that they may read and understand. The clamour for modern versions
reflects a changed view as to the nature of the Bible itself, how sinners respond
to the Gospel, and of the way in which we should approach God, consequently also
of our understanding of the Christian Gospel itself. God speaks through
His Word to the mind of man in a human language that is clear and understandable;
but more than this, His Word pierces to the very deepest recesses of the human
heart, exposing all that is there, convincing of sin, calling for repentance and
faith in Christ. It is “... quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two
edged 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 Those translations that dilute and pervert the Word of God will do
no such thing, no promise of God rests upon them. Not enjoying the blessing or
approval of God they can, and often are comfortably read by those who wish to
remain undisturbed on the road to hell. Isaac Watts, it is said, read
the biblical languages without difficulty as a child. John Bunyan said he never
mastered either Hebrew or Greek, but that he was enabled by the Holy Spirit to
understand the Word of God. Without such divine illumination neither man could
have profited themselves from the Scriptures and then have been a blessing to
others. Without such divine illumination neither man would have been able to fulfil
the very different roles God gave to each. How poorer we would all have been without
Bunyan's writings and the hymns of Watts! All men, whatever their educational
ability or opportunity, are dependent upon the same Holy Spirit. A man may have
a string of letters after his name reaching round the globe, or an abundance of
natural intelligence that surpasses that of the greatest thinkers of our age,
but unless God dispels the natural darkness of the human heart, unless blind eyes
are made to see, the Scriptures will forever remain ‘foolishness unto him’.
Another man may be able to read and little more, yet possess wisdom of which the
wise of this world know nothing. Says the Psalmist, “I have more understanding
than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more
than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts." Psalm 119:99-100 When
a people turns its back on God, this will find expression in the culture. Language
is an immediate channel for the expression of the depravity of any people. The
baptist preacher, J.C. Philpot, made this observation shortly before the appearance
of the English Revised Version. "Instead of our good old Saxon Bible, simple and
solid, with few words obsolete, and alike majestic and beautiful, we should have
a modern English translation in pert and flippant language of the day." The idea
that one can translate the Bible readily into any spoken language on earth is
an unrealistic one. Into whatever language the Bible is translated, civilised
or primitive, without changes to the language itself, a translation coming anywhere
close to the Biblical text is all but impossible. The myth of the ‘noble
savage’ spoilt only by the onset of civilised society, dreamt up by the infidel
philosopher, Rousseau, stands the truth on its head. The cultures
of primitive tribes do not present us with unspoilt human beings, they are degraded
cultures to which their often unspeakable practices and customs bear ample testimony.
As they stand, their languages will hardly be suitable receptor languages for
the Word of a pure and holy God. English is often spoken today only in a degenerate
and debased form. Every book requires language appropriate to its content, a debased
language is no proper medium for the Word of God. Neither our Authorised Version
nor the translation of Martin Luther was written in a language precisely as it
was spoken by anyone in their day, and yet their beauty is that they were readily
understood by all. Both Bibles have had a wide and profound effect on their respective
languages. This has been particularly true of Luther’s Bible in Germany,
where to this day regional dialects, as distinct from ‘high German’,
are still widely spoken. The confusing and condescending vocabulary,
the convoluted grammar of many modern translations makes most of them more difficult
to read than our 1611 Authorised Version. Who can deny that the "Show me a penny"
of the AV is easily understood by a child, whereas the "Show me a denarius" of
the NKJV would need some explanation? Comment on the simplicity and beauty of
the language of the AV is often forthcoming from those with no theological axe
to grind. "The King James Bible was published in the year Shakespeare began work
on his last play, The Tempest. Both the play and the Bible are masterpieces of
English, but there is one crucial difference between them. Whereas Shakespeare
ransacked the lexicon, the King James Bible employs a bare 8000 words - God's
teaching in homely English for everyman." The Story of English, Robert McCrum,
William Cray, and Robert MacNeil, (London, 1992) Despite the obvious simplicity
of language in the AV, the objection is made that it is full of difficult terminology.
Every specialist area has its own vocabulary whether it be medicine,
engineering, linguistics, or the world of computers, why then do we make such
a fuss about the Bible? What did men ever know about justification, sanctification,
and all the other Biblical terms? The naturally unregenerate mind remains closed
and opposed to the spiritual truths these words reveal. With respect to genuinely
archaic words, their actual number in the Authorised Version is surprisingly small,
possibly something less than 200. Apart from passages where the teachings themselves
are quite complex and therefore couched in language of similar complexity, the
history, doctrine, and precepts of Scripture can be read easily by anyone. Independent
educational reading level indicators have shown time and again that the Authorised
Version is far easier to read than most modern versions and is well within the
reach even of children. The view that the AV is more difficult to read than other
versions is just not supported by the evidence. We are being asked
to accept that these changes are being made honestly and solely in the interest
of making the Gospel more readily understandable and relevant to modern men, despite
the fact that the reason why men do not turn to Christ certainly has nothing whatever
to do with 'communication' or 'image'. Much of what is being claimed by the modernisers
among us is simply untrue, and this needs to be said clearly and cogently. Either
those engaging in such loose talk are unbelievably naïve, or are so remote
from their fellow men that they cannot make a proper assessment as to what such
people understand of what they read. What is more serious is that they seem to
demonstrate an abysmal ignorance of what God’s Word says about the reason
why men do not understand the Gospel. We cannot allow ourselves the dangerous
luxury of self-deception in these matters. Some seem to have confused an ‘open
mind’ with having a hole in the head! Satan comes as an angel
of light, as a beautiful and enticing creature, rather than the repulsive character
he truly is. The new trends may be accompanied with much talk about love, meekness,
unity in the Spirit, whilst underneath ‘another Gospel’ is making its
debut. When once the end of the string is reached and further argument fails,
any remaining resistance is damned as ‘legalism’, and there are furtive
allusions to mysterious ‘Galatian’ believers who, so it is said, are
attempting to add acceptance of the Authorised Version to ‘faith alone’
in Christ. The reality is that our accusers themselves have already gone seriously
astray and are taking others with them along the road to destruction. They have
forsaken the only reliable pathway to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.
Instead of the pure Word of God we are being offered unreliable, confused
perversions, a veritable Babel of ‘bibles’, each shouting something
different. Anyone who is misguided enough to attempt to expose what is really
going on is apparently committing some new sin called ‘judging motives’.
The same Bible verses are misquoted ad nauseam, whilst others are conveniently
over-looked. The natural man is blind to things spiritual but “he that is
spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (1 Corinthians
2:15). The objections are superficial and insincere, the real motive is to stop
the mouths of any critics. We do not have to be mind-readers to know what the
modernisers think on any number of issues as few let slip the opportunity to expose
us to the nonsense going on in their heads. The words of the Psalmist
come to mind: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
(Psalm 11:3) Once we become aware of what might be going on, there are a number
of things we can do. The first thing we must do is to establish the facts of the
matter and we do not do this ‘researching’, by buying and devouring
every book we can on the subject, but by going to the one place we can be sure
to find the truth of the matter, the Scriptures themselves. We must
become clear in our minds about what God Himself has said about the revelation,
inspiration, and preservation of His Word, and about the illumination of the Spirit
of God necessary to its understanding. Having done this we can then turn to any
other books we like and confidently discard any statements that violate the teaching
of the Scriptures. This requires few human skills and can be undertaken by most
Christian believers prayerfully dependent upon the Spirit of God. What we shall
discover is that down through the centuries Satan has attempted to pollute and
pervert God’s Word. He has inspired haters of Christ and the Gospel, often
clad in clerical garb, using quasi-scientific procedures and outright theft and
fraud, to produce corrupt and perverse texts. These ever-evolving texts are now
used, almost without exception, as the basis of new translations. The
effect has been to introduce doubt and confusion where once there was none. This
alone is sufficient condemnation of these novel manuscripts. A gap has been introduced
between the reader and the utterances of God, for he can never be sure that what
he is reading is truly from God. Once the question is being asked, “Hath
God said?” then Satan has achieved his end. A further effect of this whole
dreadful business is that the student of Scripture is left to the not so tender
mercies of a priestly caste of scholars, the majority of whom are unbelievers,
and among whom there may be considerable difference of opinion on any number of
points. Direct access to the oracles of God, the holy words, the unadulterated
and perfect Word of God is thus cut off . The blessing of God lies
only upon the Word of God. It is only through that Word that men and women truly
find salvation in Christ and the saints are built up in the faith. The blessing
of God does not rest upon any of the modern versions now being peddled as God’s
Word. Pastor, are you preaching from the NIV, the NASV? Then you may
just as well use the Watchtower New World Translation for if you make some comparisons,
you will find little difference on many crucial passages. Do not expect
God to bless your ministry, He has not promised to do so, nor can He do so. Brother
and sister in Christ, draw these matters to the attention of the pastor, the leaders
in your Church, seek to persuade them of better things. Point out the problems,
ply them with questions, be persistent, do not let yourself be fobbed off with
platitudes and the usual stock answers. If you are not satisfied, then you must
decide whether you should continue where the Lord has promised no blessing, or
search out the company of those seeking the instruction of the Lord in our English
Authorised Version, upon which the hand of God has rested for so many years.
There is the true Church, there is the false; there is Jerusalem, there
is Babylon. Many restrict the use of the term ‘Babylon’ to the Roman
Catholic church. Certainly she is included, but it is to be feared that when the
truth is eventually manifested, we shall all be shocked. Many whom we may of thought
of as fellow-believers will be uncovered as apostates, knowing nothing of Christ
and His Gospel. False prophets preaching a false Gospel will become increasingly
difficult to detect. “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets,
and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they
shall deceive the very elect.” Matthew 24:24 If we are being
pernickety then it is with good reason, after a lifetime of serving Christ who
would want to hear these terrible words? “I never knew you: depart from me,
ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). An apostate Church needs apostate
bibles, it will not tolerate God’s Word. We ought not to be surprised, when
many involved in producing such a perverted bible as the NIV - soft on sodomy,
lenient on lesbians - along with those ‘pastors’ who foist it on their
unsuspecting flocks, should themselves eventually turn out to have been sodomites
themselves all the time, devouring the sheep not feeding them, tearing apart their
own families. Truly an enemy hath done this. This is only the beginning,
the use of a perverted modern version is always a sign of yet worse to come. It
is the first step away from the authentic biblical Gospel. We have no choice in
the matter, the will of the Lord in this matter has been made clear to us. Should
we find ourselves in a church or fellowship where this steady drift away from
the truth is underway, it is clear what we should do. “Come out
of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not
of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered
her iniquities.” Revelation 18:4-5 “Let us go forth therefore
unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” Hebrews 13:13
David Norris
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