Sword Scripture Text Conference

As I posted in the BV/T Forum, I just arrived at home and am exhausted. We left Chickamauga, GA at 6:00 CST - drove to Walls, MS (just south of Memphis, TN) - I met up with our college teams and coached a basketball game and watched our ladies play volleyball against Tri-State Baptist College. We then drove home to the Little Rock area.

I'll give you as much info as I can tomorrow after church.

Good night!:sleeping_2:

 

Dr. Norris Belcher – “Shut Up! You Don’t Speak Greek!”

1 Cor 2:9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. (KJV)

• “You can trust the King James Bible; it is the Word of God.”
• A man that takes Greek classes has an internal thought that he can now correct the Bible.
• “Why are we not teaching our church members Greek?”
• There are probably no more than two men alive today who would be qualified to sit on the KJV translation committee. The men on the translation committee were fluent in the classic languages.
• With one version, God is the authority; with many versions, man becomes the arbitrator of God's Word.
• I Cor. 1:10 – Different speech causes divisions – the Tower of Babel.

Dr. Belcher was not speaking out against textual critics in this message. He was speaking directly to IFB preachers who have the habit of “correcting” the Bible. They make statements like, “A better word here would be….” His point was that, men who make such statements often have no Greek knowledge other than what they’ve read in a Strong’s Concordance.

He was pointing out the inconsistency in saying that we believe we have the inspired, preserved Word of God in our hands and then go about correcting it or improving upon it by going to the Greek. He was asserting that you can’t have it both ways. Either the KJV is the Word of God or it isn’t.

He was in no way mocking or making fun of those who have had Greek. In fact, his college has a Greek class. As I spoke to him Friday morning, he explained that he stresses to his students that a rudimentary knowledge of the Greek language is simply a tool to be used in understanding tenses and such. It is not to be used to think that a year or two of Greek makes you smarter than God. If we believe that God preserved His Word in the KJV, we need to trust what He says as He has said it.

 

You're exactly right. This fact always troubled me while reading that book.

 

While there were 1611 editions for sale at the conference, my guess is very few, if any, carried them in with them as their primary Bible. The emphasis was not the KJV1611; it was the KJV as it is today.

I don't believe so. I pretty much summed up the conference already. It was a blessing an encouragement to me. I picked up several good books. Some on the textual debate and some on various other topics.