However, if they are going to preach the Word of God today, they have to make a judgment as to which one of the many Bibles available is actually God’s Word.
If all the translations, versions, revisions, and paraphrases taught the same thing, there would be no controversy, BUT THEY DO NOT!
Illus: You could visit a church today and the preacher would ask you to turn to a certain passage and read along with him. You may open your Bible to read along, but find when he begins to read that it does not say the same thing your Bible says. In fact his sounds so different from what yours says that you may think you misunderstood the reference, so you ask you wife, “Where did he say he was reading from?” She may tell you the reference you heard, then you will realize that he is reading from a different Bible.
Yes, God’s exhortation to “Preach the Word...” is the same today as it was to Timothy years ago, but today’s pastor has to decide just which of the many versions is the Word of God. For example,
• One Bible today is specifically worded to reach the “Baby Boomer” generation. From this translation they were careful to omit the word “Hell,” because the writers know that many baby boomers do not like preachers to use that word. They become offended at it.
• One Bible is directed to young people. They have a “rap” translation just for them.
• One Bible is for the “Nerds.” This is a multimedia translation in MTV images.
We could go on and on. The liberals think this is just great, but friends, it is a shame that God’s Word is being violated for the purpose of pleasing people.
2 Peter 1:21 tells us, “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.”
It is horrifying to think that all kinds of people who have no experience in translating God’s Word are today producing Bibles.
Illus: The same thing is happening in the realm of music. Many think they can write gospel songs just because they can pick a guitar. They may write songs, but the songs may not have much gospel in them. Just because a song has catchy lyrics and a catchy tune, does not mean it lines up with God’s Word. In order to write a gospel song, one must know what God’s Word teaches.
Some of the “gospel” songs, and Bible translations, remind me of my wife’s chicken soup back in Bible College days. She would say it was chicken soup, but there was not much chicken in the soup.
Not knowing what the Bible says does not stop these people from writing the songs. Also, many who are translating these Bibles do not let the fact that they are not saying what the Holy Spirit inspired the original writers to write bother them. Just as long as they can sell them and the money rolls in, they keep on writing.
Illus: Have you ever watched a Hollywood produced movie about any Bible story or event? Often the only similarity you will find between the movie and the Bible story are some names that we recognize as being in the Bible. Most producers are not interested in portraying the scriptures accurately. They want to produce a movie that will sell -- THAT’S ALL! That is, they are in it for the money.
It would seem that many are producing books today that they call Bibles, but they have very little similarity to God’s Word.
2 Peter 1:20 tells us, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”
The liberal preacher does not care about PREACHING THE WORD OF GOD. But, if a man is a servant of the Lord, he wants to please the Lord and preach His Word. Since he knows all these translations, versions, revisions, and paraphrases do not teach the same thing, he knows they can not ALL be the Word of God. Again, he must determine which of the many translations really is God’s Word. How can he decide which is God’s Word? He has at least two things to aid him in his effort to discover which of the many Bibles available is the WORD OF GOD!
I. HE HAS HISTORY TO GUIDE HIM IN MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION
English speaking people can look back hundreds of years and see two things:
A. WHO USED THIS KING JAMES BIBLE?
For decades English speaking preachers of God’s Word came to the same conclusion. WHAT WAS THAT CONCLUSION? The King James version of the Bible was the WORD OF GOD for English speaking people. They recognized that nowhere in the King James Bible could anyone point to a passage of scripture and say that scripture:
• Robs Christ of His deity
• Denies or omits the virgin birth of Christ
• Omits the blood of Christ
• Deletes repentance (so essential to salvation)
Nowhere in the King James Bible is the Lord Jesus dishonored. They can say that every scripture honors the Lord Jesus. That is what the Bible is supposed to do!
The King James Bible was accepted in most churches up until the 60’s. Not only was it recognized by godly men, this King James Bible has proven to be sanctioned and preserved by God.
Illus: While translators have written books that dishonor God, and brag about spreading a million or two of their translations, there have been 900,000,000 copies of the King James version of the Bible spread into at least 300 foreign languages.
God has richly blessed the men who preached and taught His Word, and He has preserved His Word.
B. WHAT WERE THE RESULTS OF USING THIS KING JAMES BIBLE?
Isa. 55:11 says, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void.…” God has commanded His men to preach His Word, and promised that it would not return void. The measure of the success of God’s Word was once based on two things, SALVATION and CHANGED LIVES! Today, success is measured by the number in ATTENDANCE! Often the way we go about building large congregations has nothing to do with the Word of God.
Illus: Churches can have a city-wide evangelistic crusade.
• They can call in a nationally known preacher
• They can call in singers who are popular across the nation
• They can spend anywhere from 300 to 500 thousand dollars to promote the crusade
• They can get as many as a thousand people to donate their time to promote the crusade
When the meeting finally begins, 30 to 50 thousand people may come out
• The popular singers get up and sing
• The popular preacher gets up and preaches a popular message from a popular version of the Bible
Then, when the crusade is over, everybody goes back to doing what they have always done. Churches who participated see very little results, if any at all.
What happened? They can look at the attendance sheet and call the crusade a booming success if they want to, but it is obvious God was nowhere around that crusade. How do we know that? If God had been there, His Word would have been there and souls would have truly been saved, and the participating churches would have been filled, and the attendance at the local bars would have dwindled.
You can ask people across this country if they were saved in such a modern-day evangelistic crusade, and every now and then you might see a hand go up. But, if you asked how many of them were saved because they heard a sermon preached from this old King James Bible, you will see hands up all over the church. Most of the saved people in churches today are there because they heard God’s man preach from this old King James Bible, and God used it to convict them of their sins and they repented of their sins and gave their hearts to the Lord.
God has promised if His Word is preached it would not return “void.” It would accomplish what God intended for it to accomplish.
How can the Christian today find the Word of God among the variety of Bibles available today? There is the historical record of men who have preached from the King James Bible, which was properly translated out of the Textus Receptus, which reveals how God has richly blessed their preaching of His Word. Not only will history guide him in finding the Word of God, also...
II. HE HAS THE ACCURACY OF THE SCRIPTURES TO GUIDE HIM
The King James Bible was accurately translated. Many of the versions, translations, revisions, and paraphrases cannot make such a claim.
A. THE KING JAMES BIBLE WAS ACCURATELY TRANSLATED
The reason we say it is the Word of God for the English speaking people is because it was properly translated from the Textus Receptus. It was translated word for word, with words of equal value, and with the same meaning, into the English language. When King James ordered our 1611 translation, he commissioned the smartest scholars of that day:
• 17 from Westminster
• 15 from Cambridge
• 15 from Oxford
These forty-seven Bible scholars were to take the Textus Receptus and translate it into the English language. They translated it word for word as the Word of God, and this Bible has caused more lives to be changed for the better than anything else on this earth.
Those scholars did not take the text of God’s Word apart to accommodate their ulterior motives and hidden agendas.
Illus: Jasper Ray, in his book, “God Wrote Only One Bible,” takes 45 Bibles and compares them to the “Textus Receptus,” to see if they are qualified to be called the Word of God. He took 162 test scriptures to see how many of them deviated from the Textus Receptus.
• In the Douay Version (Catholic Bible), 75 out of the 162 test scriptures had been changed
• In the Living New Testament 114 of the 162 test scriptures were changed
• In the Revised Version 135 of the 162 had been changed
• In the American Standard Version 135 of the 162 had been changed
• In the Good News For Modern Man paraphrase 145 of the 162 test scriptures had been changed
• In the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation 145 of the 162 had been changed
• In the New International Version (NIV), 160 of the 162 had been changed
• In the King James version of the Bible 162 of the 162 had been ACCURATELY TRANSLATED
Just for an example, in John 9:35, the King James reveals that Jesus asks a blind man, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” The NIV changes it to say, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” There is a vast difference between a man and God.
The King James says, in Matthew 9:18, “...there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him...” The NIV changed it to read, “...a ruler came and knelt before him...” There is a difference between KNEELING and WORSHIP.
Many of these translations, versions, revisions, and paraphrases rob the Lord Jesus Christ of His deity and His virgin birth.
B. MANY OF THE TRANSLATIONS WERE NOT ACCURATELY TRANSLATED FROM THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS
There are at least three things about these translations that the Lord could not be pleased with.
1. THEY USED THE WRONG MEN
When you use the WRONG MEN for a job, you get WRONG RESULTS. Many of the translators were willing to purposely leave out key truths like the virgin birth, blood, repentance, forgiveness, the Lamb of God and others.
In 1881 they came up with what they called the Revised Version of the Bible.
• In 1901 they came up with the American Revised version. (Some call it the Authorized Revised version).
• In 1952 they came up with the Revised Standard Version.
• Then between 1960 and 1972 they came along with yet another version, called the New American Revised Standard version.
Since that time, all kinds of versions, perversions, revisions, translations and paraphrases have been published. It seems like they get worse as time goes on. They used the WRONG MEN to translate these Bibles. Also, they used...
2. THE WRONG METHOD
Rather than translate equal words to those of the original text, they started a new kind of interpretation. One wrong method used to translate some of these was called the “Critical Intuition.” I can hear someone asking, “Preacher, what is the “Critical Intuition?”
In 1881 some Anglicans used this WRONG METHOD to interpret the Word of God. This method can be compared to the phenomena called women’s intuition. That is, a woman may state a certain thing to be a fact. You ask how she knew that, and she will say it was just her intuition. And, woe be unto anyone who would doubt this “woman’s intuition.”
Listen, women’s intuition might work around the house. We do not want to question the authority of our wives, but when it comes to the Word of God, I want some real, AUTHORITATIVE AUTHORITY -- NOT INTUITION!
In their “critical intuition” they began to say:
•“We have an intuition that Moses really did not write the book of Genesis. Instead, we believe that Genesis is a compilation of writings and Moses’ name was tagged to it.”
•“We believe that the book of Isaiah is not just one document as many say it is. Actually there are two documents under the name of the prophet Isaiah.”
Illus: If that crowd had their way we would be saying, “Turn in your Bible to 2 Isaiah…”
All of this came about through “Critical Intuition.” The big question is, “Who gave anyone the authority to say God’s Word should be interpreted based on intuition?” The reason we have all these bad translations of the Bible around today is because we have the WRONG MEN and the WRONG METHODS of interpreting the scriptures. Also...
3. THEY WERE DRIVEN BY THE WRONG MOTIVE
If you listen to the men who produce these Bibles, they will tell you their motive is to produce a Bible that is easy to read and understand. That sounds like a godly motive, and it would be if they were telling the truth.
The reason all these Bibles are on the market today is because men who love to make money know the Bible is the number one seller of all books. So, if you want to make BIG MONEY, produce a new Bible. One of the modern translators let it slip. He said, “As long as there is financial gain in it, publishers will push translations, old or new.”
Go into any major Christian bookstore today and you will find shelf after shelf of different translations, versions, revisions, and paraphrases. Why? Because publishing houses are getting rich on the many versions they produce. They are not concerned about accuracy. They are concerned about PROFIT!
Publishers and translators also let us know we might as well be prepared for many more translations. One said, “A translation starts to become outdated from the moment it is completed.”
There was a day when people brought Bibles to church that had been around a long time. They had used them for years.
Illus: Someone said, “Generally when a Bible looks like it is falling apart, it belongs to a Christian who is not falling apart.”
Illus: Today we see people who have the latest, nice shiny edition. In other words, people are being trained that Bibles are like cars. The moment you buy one it becomes outdated and you need to trade it in each year for a new model.
Listen, men of God, you do not need a new Bible any more than you need a new wife!
There are some things we can’t replace, and we should not even try. The King James Bible has been properly translated and is one of the things that we do not need to replace. When it was translated, the scholars were so careful to be true to the original text that when they inserted certain words to make the text easy to read they let it be known those words were not in the original. Today we see these italicized. Our King James translation has been properly translated from the original text.
This book, this Bible, that I hold in my hands is the WORD OF GOD.
• It is not the original Word of God, but it is a translation of the original Word of God
• The translators were not inspired, but God inspired men of God in the Old and New Testaments to write as He breathed out His Word
When we say the Bible is the inspired Word of God, we are saying it is, “God breathed.”
Conclusion: Look at 2 Peter 1:19. We read, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.”
Illus: Perhaps you recall the story of a man who distributed tracts for many years on a street corner. Finally, seeing no visible results, he gave up. When he returned to the same spot two years later he saw another individual handing out Gospel leaflets as he had done. Striking up a conversation, he discovered that the man had become a Christian through a salvation tract given him on that corner about two years earlier. The convert added, “Many times I’ve come back here to find that earnest worker and thank him, but he never returned. I decided he must have died, and so I’ve taken his place!” The first man realized that his work had not been in vain. Much encouraged he went back to giving out tracts the very next day.
Keep spreading this Word. Just as often, it takes repeated blows for a sledge hammer to accomplish the work, so is it often true of men’s hard hearts. The Word of God may have to be applied often before it “breaks” a hard heart. Do not be “weary in well doing.” That next word of Scripture may be the one that will cause that sinner to repent! You have the only tool that can save him -- God’s Word!
I. HE HAS HISTORY TO GUIDE HIM IN MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION
II. HE HAS THE ACCURACY OF THE SCRIPTURES TO GUIDE HIM
