Continued:Presuppositionalism and KJV Onlyism

Here is another Messianic prophesy that has been all messed up in the mvs.

Haggai 2:7 The Desire of all nations

One of my favorite hymns, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, has the line "O come Desire of nations, come." Handel’s beautiful work, The Messiah, also has this line in one of the hymns taken from the King James Bible. "And the Desire of all nations shall come. But who may abide the day of His coming? For He is like a refiner's fire."

This line comes from Haggai 2:6,7: "For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land: And I will shake all nations, and THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts."

There are also references to this event in the New Testament. The book of Hebrews says in 12:26: "Whose voice then shook the earth; but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven." Again, in Hebrews 10:37 we read: "For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry."

Matthew Henry comments on Haggai 2:6-7:

"He shall come as the desire of all nations — desirable to all nations, for in him shall all the families of the earth be blessed with the best of blessings — long expected and desired by the good people in all nations, that had any intelligence from the Old-Testament predictions concerning him."

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on Haggai 2:7

“So Hebrews 12:26, which quotes this passage; the apostle compares the heavier punishment which awaits the disobedient under the New Testament with that which met such under the Old Testament. At the establishment of the Sinaitic covenant, only the earth was shaken to introduce it, but now heaven and earth and all things are to be shaken, all kingdoms that stand in the way of Messiah's kingdom, "which cannot be shaken," are to be upturned. Paul condenses together the two verses of Haggai 2:6-7 and 2:21-22, implying that it was one and the same shaking, of which the former verses of Haggai denote the beginning, the latter the end."

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown continue: "There is scarcely a prophecy of Messiah in the Old Testament which does not, to some extent at least, refer to His second coming."

"While the Jews as a nation desired Him not, the Gentiles, who are plainly pointed out by "all nations," accepted Him; and so to them He was peculiarly desirable. The "good tidings of great joy" were "to all people" (Luke 2:10). The Jews, and those in the adjoining nations instructed by them, looked for Shiloh to come unto whom the gathering of the people was to be, from Jacob's prophecy (Genesis 49:10). The early patriarchs, Job (Job 19:25-27) and Abraham (John 8:56), desired Him."

"fill this house with glory-- As the first temple was filled with the cloud of glory, the symbol of God, so this second temple was filled with the "glory" of God (John 1:14) veiled in the flesh at Christ's first coming, when He entered it and performed miracles there ; but that "glory" is to be revealed at His second coming, AS THIS PROPHECY IN ITS ULTERIOR REFERENCE FORETELLS." (Caps are mine)

John Gill comments on Haggai 2:6-7 (Caps are mine):"and the desire of all nations shall come; NOT THE DESIRABLE THINGS OF ALL NATIONS, or them with them, as their gold and silver; and which is the sense of Jarchi, Kimchi, and Aben Ezra; but this is contrary to the syntax of the words, to the context of Haggai 2:8, and to facts; ... but one far more glorious and excellent, is intended, EVEN THE MESSIAH, in whom all nations of the earth were to be blessed;... HIS PERSONAL COMING; his spiritual coming; his coming to take vengeance on the Jews; and HIS LAST COMING, of which some understand the words particularly."

John Calvin remarks on Haggai 2:6-7 "But we may understand what he says of Christ, Come shall the desire of all nations, and I will fill this house with glory. We indeed know that Christ was the expectation of the whole world, according to what is said by Isaiah. And it may be properly said, that when the desire of all nations shall come, that is, when Christ shall be manifested, in whom the wishes of all ought to center, the glory of the second Temple shall then be illustrious."

Other Bible versions that agree with the King James Holy Bible "and the desire of all nations shall come" are the Bishop's Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1587, Green's interlinear and Modern KJV 1998, Darby, Douay 1950, the 1936 Hebrew Publishing Company translation into English, the Spanish Reina Valera 1960 (el Deseado de todas las naciones vendrá), the Italian Diodati 1602, Webster’s 1833 translation, the KJV 21st Century Version, and Third Millenium Bible.

The NIV is pretty good here with "and the desired of all nations will come."

Miles Coverdale 1535 gives the same idea with: " the comforte of all Heithen shall come"

God's Word to the Nations version 1995 - "and the one whom all the nations desire will come." This gives the same sense as that found in the King James Bible.

Rotherham's Emphasized Bible 1902 also reads similar to the King James Bible - "and the delight of all the nations, shall come in."

However things begin to go awry in the NKJV with its: "and THEY shall come to the Desire of All Nations." This is incorrect because it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is coming to us; not we who are not going to Him.

But with the NASB, RSV, NRSV, ESV, Holman Standard, and the Jehovah Witness New World Translation everything has changed, and this is no longer a prophecy about Christ at all. The NASB reads: "And I am going to shake all the nations and THEY WILL COME WITH THE WEALTH of all nations."

The Message - "And I'll shake down all the godless nations. They'll bring bushels of wealth and I will fill this Temple with splendor. GOD of the Angel-Armies says so."

The RSV, NRSV, ESV (2001 English Standard Version) and the 2004 Holman Standard all unite in reading: "and I will shake all nations so that THE TREASURES OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME IN, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts." Again, any prophesy about the return of Christ has been eliminated from this passage.


The word used here for "desire" - #2532 khem-daw - does not mean "wealth", as the NASB says, nor "treasures" as the ESV, RSV, NET and Holman have it. The correct meaning refers not to THEY who will come, but to Christ, the Messiah, and the Desire of all nations. The NASB has only once translated this word as "wealth", and yet has the same word rendered as "desire" in Daniel 11:37 - "he will show no regard for... the desire of women".

This noun "desire" comes from the verb "to desire" # 2530 and is used in 1 Samuel 9:20 referring to the first king over Israel, when Samuel said to Saul "and on whom is all the DESIRE of Israel?." It is used again in Isaiah 53:2: "and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should DESIRE him." The Isaiah passage clearly refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, at His first coming in the flesh.

The same verb is used in Genesis 3:6 where the woman saw that the tree "was a tree to be desired to make one wise", and in Psalm 19:10 where the judgments of the LORD are described as "more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold."

The King James Bible is right, as always, and the statement by scholarly experts such as James White, who now works for the NASB committee, that we need to compare all versions to get an accurate sense of the meaning, is utter nonsense and results in total confusion.

Will Kinney

 

Here is a Third example of changed doctrine regarding the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus.

Isaiah 66:5 But He shall appear to your joy

There are literally hundreds of examples of how the New KJV has changed the meaning of the Scriptures as found in the King James Bible. One of these hundreds of examples is found in Isaiah 66:5.

There we read: "Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word; Your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the LORD be glorified: BUT HE SHALL APPEAR TO YOUR JOY, and they shall be ashamed."

This is the reading of not only the KJB but also the Spanish Reina Valera of 1569 (42 years before the KJB), the subsequent Spanish versions of 1602, 1909 and 1960, the Geneva Bible of 1599, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible of 1902, Daniel Webster's 1833 translation, Green's interlinear translation 1985 and Modern KJV 1998, the Jewish translation of the Hebrew Publishing Company 1936, the Third Millenium Bible and the KJV 21st Century Version.

However a host of modern versions, including the NKJV, give a very different meaning to this passage of Scripture. The NKJV, along with the NASB, NIV, RSV, ESV, and Holman Standard, says: "Who cast you out for my name's sake, said, 'Let the LORD be glorified, THAT WE MAY SEE YOUR JOY'. But they shall be ashamed."

Again, the good Doctor Daniel Wallace and his NET version render this verse: “so that we might witness your joy.” Then Wallace significantly remarks in his footnotes: "The point of this statement is unclear."

Well, Duh. Sure it's unclear NOW. You just changed the whole meaning of the verse!

What happened to the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is the true meaning "But He shall appear to your joy" or "That We may see your joy"?

The verb used here is # 7200 variously translated as "to see, to appear, to provide". It is a very common verb, but this particular instance is what is called a Niphal participle. It is only found three times in this particular form and the other two both refer to God or the Lord. Genesis 12:7 "the LORD who appeared unto him"; Genesis 35:1 "God that appeared unto thee", and here in Isaiah 66:5 "but he shall appear to your joy."

Jamison, Faucett and Brown comment: They cast you out for my name's sake - excommunicate, as if too polluted to worship with them. So in Christ's first sojourn on earth. So it shall be again in the last times, when the believing shall be few (Luke 18:8). Let the Lord be glorified - the mocking challenge of the persecutors, as if their violence towards you was from zeal for God. "He shall appear to your joy," --giving you "joy" instead of your "rebuke"

John Gill comments: "but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed: that is, the Lord shall appear, either in a providential way, as he did for the Christians at Jerusalem... or else this may respect the second coming, the glorious appearance of Christ, which will be to the joy of those believing Jews, and of all his people; since he will appear to their salvation, and they shall appear with him in glory, and see him as he is, (Hebrews 9:28) (Colossians 3:4) (1 John 3:2) , and to the shame, confusion, and destruction of those that have pierced him, despised and rejected him, and persecuted his people."

John Calvin remarks: "But he will be seen to your joy. As if he had said, “God, by his coming, will cause believers to know that they have not hoped in vain; for he will appear for the advantage of believers, and for the destruction of those who maintain that he will appear as the defender of wickedness, of which he will be the severe avenger. The former shall enjoy gladness and consolation, while the latter shall be ashamed and shall blush, for they shall quickly feel that the judgment of God, which they now laugh at, is at hand.”

I believe this verse has a great deal of application to the Bible version issue being fought today. "Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word; Your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the LORD be glorified: but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed."

We who really believe God has given us an inerrant, complete, preserved and inspired Holy Bible, and tremble at His words, are called ignorant fanatics, church dividers and members of a Cult, from which we need to repent.

Those who deny there is any Bible or Hebrew or Greek text that is the inerrant word of God actually think they are the ones who are glorifying God by promoting a multitude of conflicting, and admittedly non-inspired bible versions, while ridiculing our position on the King James Holy Bible. .

There are two camps in this battle for an inerrant Bible. There are thousands upon thousands of Christians who believe God has kept His promises to preserve His pure, inspired words and that He has done so in the King James Holy Bible for the last 400 years. And then there are those who SAY the Bible is the inspired word of God, but when closely examined, will admit the "originals" no longer exist. They then will tell you what they really believe: "No Bible is 100 percent correct; All translations have errors; The correct text is...; I think a better rendering would be..." yada, yada, yada. Every man does that which is right in his own eyes, and submits to no final, written word of God.

The battle lines are clearly drawn and you cannot sit on the fence. By the grace of God, may we be found among those who tremble at His word. We have God's promise that He will appear to our joy, and they shall be ashamed.

Stick with the old King James Bible and you will not go wrong.

Will Kinney

 

This thread is the second thread discussing this topic. 35 total pages of discussion is more than sufficient. This thread will be closed sometime this evening. If you feel the need to add to the discussion, please do so promptly.

 

OK, Ed. Here you go. This also addresses the issue of "softening down" the sins in the modern versions.


Fornication or immorality - Sodomites or something else?

Something very serious is taking place in the modern translations of the Bible, and most people are either unaware or unconcerned about it. The unchanging standards of God’s holy words are subtly and purposely being altered to fit the modern lifestyle. No longer are certain sins clearly condemned in God’s holy Book, and we can see the absence of absolutes both in society and in the church.

Some words are powerful and very descriptive. Others are mushy and vague, and have little impact on our conscience. Take the word fornication. Webster’s 1999 defines this word as “voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons, or two persons not married to each other.”

It is not an archaic word, and though many may not know its meaning, you still see and hear the term in newspapers and movies. The world will not name this as a sin, because they do not consider it to be a sin.

Only the Bible teaches that fornication is a sin. The word “fornication” is found in the KJB 44 times. In the NKJV, the number is down to 21 times, the NAS has it 8 times, but in the NIV and the Holman Standard the word is not found at all. (0 times).

I have gone out into the streets and talked to teenagers and asked them to give me some examples of what sin is. Usually they say things like stealing, beating up on girls, and murder. I then ask them if having sex before marriage is a sin. Invariably, I have been told, “No”, or “Not as long as no one gets hurt.” This is the world’s standard. It is the morality of the natural man.

The word “morality” comes from the Latin meaning “usage or custom”. Morals are relative, very flexible; they vary from one person or nation to the next. Morals are not absolute and unchanging. The word fornication, on the other hand has a definite meaning describing a particular act, and this act is forbidden by God and called a sin.

The NKJV, NAS, Holman Standard, and NIV have substituted the word “immorality” for the word fornication. I ask you, What is immorality? You will get many different definitions and your morality may not be the same as mine. See, what I mean? The absolute standard has disappeared.

Let’s look at some examples. 1 Corinthians 5:1, 9-11, mention “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. . . I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world...not to keep company if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator. . .”

The older English Bibles like Tyndale, Bishop's Bible, Geneva, Darby, Revised Version, and the ASV all had “fornicators”, but the NAS, Holman, NIV, and NKJV have either, “immoral person” or “sexually immoral”. Again, what exactly is immoral? Those children who are being brought up using the NIV as their bible, can say to their parents, “Bobby and I aren’t doing anything immoral Mom, we love each other. The bible doesn’t teach that sex outside of marriage is wrong, only if it is immoral. That is just your old fashioned standard, it is not mine.”

Does this seem far fetched to you? Let’s look at some actual quotes from some of the Christian leaders of today. In Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson’s book called, “Honest”, he states on page 118, “nothing can of itself always be labeled as ‘wrong’. One cannot, for instance, start from the position sex relations before marriage or divorce are wrong or sinful in themselves. They may be 99 cases or even in 100 cases out of 100, but they are not intrinsically so, for the only intrinsic evil is lack of love.”

Or let's take the book, “Called to Responsible Freedom”, published by the Natonal Council of Churches. On page 11, young people are told, “In the personal individual sense, then, what justifies and sanctifies sexuality is not the external marital status of the people before the law but rather what they feel toward each other in their hearts. Measured in such a way, holding hands can be very wrong indeed, while intimate sex play can be right and good.”

I believe these organizations use the NIV because it does not contradict their beliefs about what constitutes morality. If we can make a Bible version that has wider appeal to apostate churches, we can sell more bibles.

There used to be only one verse in the Bible that said it was not good to even touch a woman, who is not your own wife, in a sexual manner. I’ve heard of Christian fathers quoting the verse to young men who came to the door to pick up their dates for the evening. The verse is found in I Cor. 7:1, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” The word is “to touch”, and in the context, it means to touch in an inappropriate sexual way. But the NIV has changed this to: “It is good for a man not to marry.” There is no possible way the Greek can be translated this way; it teaches an error that contradicts other Scriptures, and the admonition about not improperly touching a woman is removed is one smooth stroke.

Another sin that has been grealty toned down or else eliminated is the sin of sodomy. According to Webster’s 1999 dictionary, sodomy is “anal or oral copulation with a member of the same sex”. The word “sodomite” is found 5 times in the King James Bible. Deut. 23:17, “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.” The word is also in 1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46, and 2 Kings 23:7.

It is very interesting to see how modern bible translators gradually change the meaning of certain words. It often is done subtly and gradually. They say modern scholarship has shown this word to really mean something else, and all those older Bibles were wrong.

This word was translated all 5 times as sodomite by the Jewish translations into English of 1917 and 1936 put out by the Jewish Publication Society and the Hebrew Publishing Company of America, and by the modern Hebrew Names Version.

It is a pretty good guess that these native Hebrew speakers are a little more familiar with their own language than many modern bible translators here in the United States, don’t you think?

The word is also rendered as sodomites by the Geneva Bible, Darby’s, Webster’s 1833, Third Millenium Bible, KJV 21st Century, Spanish Reina Valera 1909 - 1995 (sodomitas), Lamsa's 1933 translation of the Syriac Peshitta, the Revised Version of 1881 and the ASV of 1901. The Modern Greek Bible translation of the Old Testament also reads sodomitas - Sodomites, as do the Portuguese Almeida Actualizada, La Biblia de Las Américas 1986, the Amplified Bible 1982, and Green’s interlinear of 2000.

The Modern KJV 1998, as well as the Living Bible and the 2003 Updated Bible Version render this word as homosexual, and not as "shrine prostitute".

The first major version to change this to "male cult prostitutes" was the liberal RSV of 1952. Then in 1972, the NASB translated this word as sodomite in 1 Kings 22:46, but the other four times changed it to “shrine prostitutes”. The 1995 NASB update still has Sodomite this one time. The NIV, ESV, and Holman Standard have "shrine prostitutes" in all five verses.

Mrs. Ripplinger, who wrote New Age Bible Versions, remarks that while a teacher and counsellor at one of America’s largest universities, she had often seen sodomites on campus but never a shrine prostitute.

A sodomite may think his sin is not condemned by Scripture, because he is no shrine prostitute. The NKJV has translated all five instances as “perverted person”. What exactly is a perverted person? Is that someone who eats ketchup sandwiches? What might be one man’s perversion is another’s proper behaviour. You see, how vague and undefined the term "perverted person" is?

The last Scripture I want to look at is 1 Corinthians 6:9, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. . .shall inherit the kingdom of God.” To “abuse” is to use in an unnatural or harmful way.

“Mankind” is the kind or type that is a man, being used by another man. These are terms for the general two classes of sodomites. The NASB begins to tone it down by saying, “effeminate nor homosexuals”. Homosexual is a neutral word. There is no sense of wrong doing with the strict definition of a homosexual. But "abusers of themselves with mankind" shows that this is an unnatural and destructive activity.

The NKJV has “homosexuals (with a footnote saying, That is, catamites). Do you know what a catamite is? Then the NKJV continues with sodomites. The NIV has, “Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual OFFENDERS”. Now, a sodomite can think to himself, "Well I’m not in this list because I’m not a prostitute, and a homosexual offender is someone who rapes little kids or forces himself on someone, and I don’t do those things".

I was once talking to a radio talk show host and pointed out this verse in the NIV. He said, You know, you can even look at the NIV as meaning “those who offend homosexuals”.

There are many homosexual churches springing up around our country, some with 2 or 3 thousand members. Guess which version of the bible they use. That’s right, the ever popular NIV. If we can make the word of God more vague, less defined, and less condemning, then we can appeal to a wider audience and sell more bibles.

I hope you will prayerfully consider these examples and see how God’s holy words are being changed by the modern versions, and go back to the old King James Bible, where you will find rest for your souls and the pure words of God’s absolute truth. Thank you and God bless you.

Will

 

The word of God is infallible. It just doesn't lie in an English translation.</font>[/QUOTE]Hi gb, this sounds very nice and religious, but would you mind telling us EXACTLY where we can get a copy of this infallible word of God in both the Old and New Testaments?

Just give it a specific name and we will rush right out and get a copy so we can compare it to all the other versions and translations.

Or are you trying to make us think you actually believe something you really don't?

Give it a name and tell us where we can purchase a copy, please. Thanks.

By the way, where did you ever get this idea that a translation cannot be the inerrant words of God? Certainly not from the Bible. So did they teach you this at some seminary or something? Do you have a verse or an example from the Bible itself that teaches that "no translation can be inerrant"???

Will

 

Will,
You can never address in any logical manner how any translation can be infalliible. There are mistakes and/or differences between the very editions that the Oxford publishers put out and the Cambridge puts out. If your separate publishing companies can't publish the same KJV Bible than obviously it has mistakes in it.
God makes no mistakes. Only God is perfect. Every translation has mistakes. Translations are made by man. Man is fallible, and fallible man makes fallible translations, including the KJV. The Bible is preserved only in the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. Nothing you can say or do can ever change that fact.
DHK

 

gb, you're mocking the word of God. Have you bothered to check out how many other Bible versions correctly translate this word as bowels?

Have you bothered to look the word up in an English Dictionary to see what other meanings it has?

Are you aware of the fact that the King James Bible and many others have translated the specific Greek word that is used there literally as "bowels", because that is EXACTLY WHAT IT MEANS in Greek, and that even the nasb, niv have the word bowels in them in other places?

Will

 

The word bowels in English has two means: (1) the alimentary canal below the stomach, or intestine; and,(2) the depths or innermost parts.

Essentially the same thing. Other words could be used to-day and still render the "version" legitimate.

I would dispute as to whether even the current Greek or Hebrew or even Aramaic copies enjoy plenary, verbal inspiration. That designation belongs to the original manuscripts alone, and they are long gone.

Still, the concepts and principles of God's word have been preserved down through the centuries in the church and its preserved documents. Stop worshipping a book and leave that to God alone.

Cheers,

Jim

 

That is not "exactly" what it means. In fact it is doubtful that there are very few words that are "exactly" and "perfectly" translated "exactly" as the original language meant them to be. Translations always lose meaning. Meaning is lost in translation. That is a known fact. Not only are we dealing here with Old English words as Jim has already alluded to, we are dealing with a translation from one language to another. Not only are we dealing with a translation from one specific language (Greek), we are dealing with a specific dialect of that Greek (koine) as opposed to classical or modern Greek, which makes the translation even that much more difficult. Our duty and command, as per 2Tim.2:15 is to "study to show ourselves approved unto God."
My guess is that KJVO's want to avoid this direct command by stating that the KJV is infallible, and thereby excusing themselves from any study of the original languages. Thus many Baptists get a reputation of a bumbling group of half educated preachers that don't know their Bibles very well, believing in such things as Greek mythology (unicorn), and other obvious innacuracies. They just don't want seriuos study.
"If the KJV was good enough for Paul then it is good enough for me," attitude.

There are no perfect translations. The KJV translators admitted that theirs could be improved upon. So where does that leave the KJVO's. It was an admission that their translation was not infallible.
Even the word "sin" doesn't translate perfectly. Sin has many connatations. What sin meant to the Greek speaking person in the time of Christ is not necessarily what it means to someone in our culture today. That ought to be obvious by the laws that are being changed especially in our country, Canada.
In Queen Victoria's day it was sin for a woman to have her ankle's uncovered.
In many church's today it is a sin for a woman to have her knees uncovered.
In come church's today it is a sin for a woman to wear pants.
Sin is relative to culture in many cases.
So what does the Bible mean when it speaks about sin? What was sin for a Greek speaking person, in his culture?
It was sin for a Jew to sneeze in the path of an on-coming rabbi or Pharisee. Is that a sin today?

Without a study of the Greek language in its historical context, how are you going to determine the meaning of words and phrases?
DHK

 

Actually, the sodomites
i have talked to (safely on the other side of the CRT* )
didn't find thier 'position' condemned by the KJV at all.
After all, none of them lived in Sodom (assuming Sodomite = citizen
of Sodom, Cannan). No, those who want to fault the Bible can
do so regardless of the version.

(CRT = cathode ray tube, you know the computer screen before flat screens)

Having read several of her books, I think her discernment gift is weak.
Little did she realise that those Catholic men running around were practicing
shrine prostitutes (they didn't know they were). Recommend you drop her
as an argument, next time you try to sell this script (which is
otherwise fairly good).

BTW, 1 Kings 14:23 speaks of 'images' and 'groves' both of which
are 17th century euphenisms for sexual sins so vile we are not even
allowed to mention them
in a family board like this one. BTW, the nKJV carefully defines
'perverted persons' in a footnote at 1 Kings 14:24 as:
That is, those practicing sodomy and prostitution in
religious rituals.

I presuppose they can all be right, and they do teach
the same things. The challenge is for you accept my presupposition
and TALK to me about what they do mean. Knowing the Power of God
we might even get 3 truths from the KJV and 2 more from the NIV and God's sum
is 6 great truths from the one verse.

God's Written Word, like God, cannot be bound into just one
Universe or just one Book - for God is the creater of both.

My presupposition favors community; the 'God has one book' presupposition
fostors division.

BTW, speaking of division. All the great divisions of the 19th
Century (1801-1900) were among the USERS OF THE KJV. As the
rise of Athiestic governments in Russia and China in the
20th Century (1901-2000) brought persecution, there were less divisions
for shared Martyrdom heals divisions.
Thus, every Protestant denomination with over 1,000,000 ( one million)
advocates in the world - only the Moonies came from the 20th century.

Here are the largest churches in the USofA and their approximate date
of birth (bible in parens):
(data in this list - the rank is from TIME ALMANAC 2006,
the date and Bible are from Ed's head:

1. RCC = roman catholic church, 1054 /11th century/ (Latin Vulgate)
2. SBC = Southern Baptist Convention /19th century/ (KJV)
3. United Methodist Church - united in the 20th century from
--------- divisions in: /19th century/ (KJV)
4. Church of God in Christ /19th century/ (KJV)
5. Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints (Mormon)
----- /19th century/ (KJV)

6. ELCA = Evangelical Lutheran Church in America - /19th century/ (KJV)
7. National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc - /19th century/ (KJV)
8. National Baptist Convention of AmMerica, Inc. - /19th century/ (KJV)
9. Presbyertian Church /16th century/ predates KJV
10. Assemblies of God - /19th century/ (KJV) as baptists, but
---- in the 10th century they got Pentacostalism from the KJV

11. LCMS = Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod /19th century/ (KJV)

Most of the American Denominations used thier variant understanding
of the KJV to split.

In repetition:
The Presupposition that 'God has one book' causes DIVISION.
The Presupposition that 'God has many books' can be used for unity.

 

A TV minister I watch tonight made a statement that I cant quote nor will I try to. he said to this extent all English versions of the Bible being good for scripture as long as it makes sense if it doesn't make sense don't use it. Then he went on to tell how he let's preacher's in his church he may not agree with. He does this because he doesn't want to stand before God and have to answer to why he held back a servant of the Lord.

Ron Phillips 1-11-06 on channel 378 NRB DirectTV 9:00pm est

 

Just a two cent thought. I always wonder why opponents of a perfect translation always state that only the originals are perfect and we no longer have them. How can we know they are perfect if we no longer have them or anything to compare them to even if we did?

Doesn't it all fall back upon faith in God? Even if we had the "originals" we would still have to have faith in God that they were indeed perfectly wrtten by a human and the only way we could truly know is if the Holy Spirit, God Himself pressed upon our heart that it was perfect.

When it comes to translations I let the Spirit speak and guide me and I personally after much study and consideration have decided to place my faith in God's word as preserved in the KJB. I don't know of any doctrine whether great or small that is tainted in any way in the KJB. Nit pick at if you want but what Christian doctrine is made questionable because of the KJB or even without refferencing the Greek and Hebrew?

God Bless!

 

God has preserved His Word in the original languages. But if God did not protect His Words in the process of translation, then the whole protection of His Words becomes useless, because the actual beneficiaries of His Words used to read them in the common, contemporary languages. God is not so silly as human beings deviously or unknowingly imagine. Therefore we must accept and believe that God has intervened even in the translation, with His providence to preserve His Words. This doesn't mean that any specific translation is perfect, but God worked with a certain translation. I don't think Isaiah or Elijah was perfect but they were men of God whom we can trust. In case of the translation, God has left us with certains jobs to continue with His Words, for the elaboration of the Words or for the update of Languages.
I trust what Moses did for Torah and what Ezra did for the rest of Tanak, and likewise, Daniel Bomberg-Ben Chayyim for MT, and Erasmus-Stephanus for TR, then King James Version which has defended His Words for 4 centuries. If there was not KJV, such powerful protection of His Words would not be possible.
Any Bible based on MT-TR, if they have the same belief and doctrinal interpretations as KJV have, should be viewed under the umbrella of KJV, because they alone could not survive all the criticism if there had existed no KJV

I think Will Kinney pointed out some important differences which show the difference in viewing the Words of God. In my view, MV's are straining at gnats and swallowing the camels, even though KJV may have gnats, indeed.

JPS translation on Daniel 9:26 shows the ignorance of Hebrew Grammar by Jews, when they lack the faith. I would contempt the poor Hebrew grammar by the Hebrew people when they don't know about their Masiach.

Again, I would like to point out that there is no other version better than KJV which available in English.

 

This was a fascinating thread. I got into this subject a few years ago as the result of studying evolution.

There are a lot of similarities between the so-called "sciences" of evolution and textual criticism. The biggest similarity is that they violate a fundamental principle of scientific methodology -- neither one is falsifiable. The textual critics claim to be "reconstructing" the original text, but it is impossible to check whether they're right. And they change it with every new edition, so who knows?

The only thing that's for sure if you believe in textual criticism is that you just don't know the exact words of God.

I found that position untenable. I mean, I believed some pretty wild stuff, like, the son of God came as a man and died for me??? And he rose from the grave? And floated up into the air? Yikes! And the only reason I believed it was because a bible said it?

At some point it occurred to me that if I was going to put my faith in the words contained in that book, they had better be the right words.

I'm not satisfied with the fallible, errant, uncertain, ever-changing words of men. I had learned from my study of evolution that you can't trust them and their "science" so-called. I have a wife and four children -- I'm not going to teach them a bunch of words of men and claim they are the words of God Almighty.

Johnny: "Daddy, this isn't what Jesus said last year."
Me: "I know, son. BOTM Publishers changed it."
Johnny: "Who?"
Me: "Don't worry about it. Just read it."
Johnny: "But..... Yessir. So... are we changing how we pray this year?"

No, I want the pure words of God, the perfect ones, the EXACT words he delivered by inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Nothing else is good enough for my wife and kids. And nothing else will do for me, either.

 

Hi, MovieProducer, welcome to the board!

Thanks for the honest post. I, too, felt the burden of responsibility to make sure my family followed things that were true, not just because this or that crowd believed them. Last year, it caused me to look into the issue, finally with an open mind. I came to some different conclusions, however...

I found your last paragraph a little troubling. Certainly we all do want to know that the words we are reading are the exact words from the original "parchment and pen", as it were, as they were written. Unfortunately, all too many people make the mistake of turning this desire into a cocoon in which they shelter themselves from the fact of the matter, which is that there is no single text that has been preserved "word-for-word" down through the centuries. No two Greek texts in existence are completely alike in all respects.

They are, however, very much alike in their preservation of essential doctrine. You can be sure that any doctrine you've come to understand from the KJV, you will also find in today's modern versions (and much more easily, one might say, but that's a discussion for a different time). So, to answer your argument, whether your put your trust in the words of the NIV or the KJV, you will be trusting in the same thing, even if they don't use the exact same words.

By the way, the words in the KJV were also derived from textual criticism. As I said, there was no single Greek text passed down through the centuries. The KJV is mostly based on the Textus Receptus which is a collation of a number of different Greek manuscripts. Men collated these words and used their judgment to decide which words they thought were the originals, even if it wasn't called textual criticism at the time and hadn't developed as a science yet as it is now.

God bless, and I hope to see more of your posts here.

 

So you have the original autographs!!!

Can I see them!?!

 

Thank you, readmore! I just found these boards -- had no idea they were here.

One of the distinctives of this issue is that it is, in the final analysis, not subject to any scientific methodology.

There is no way to know empirically what the original documents said -- we can't see them. There is no way to know empirically that any translation is or is not faithful to any original document, since the originals are gone. The conclusions of textual criticism can never be checked for accuracy. Those who "believe in it" believe in no more than the works of men.

Think about this: no one can prove that the originals were inspired in the first place. Why would anyone believe they were? It is simply a matter of faith based on the scriptures themselves. You sure can't prove it scientifically.

And from an empirical standpoint, it is not any weirder to say that copies and translations are inspired than to say that the originals were. And at least the belief that some copies and some translations are inspired has a scriptural basis, whereas the belief that only the originals were inspired has none.

I'll trust that God protected his word miraculously by supernatural intervention or divine providence long before I believe that the best we can do is apply man-made methods to maybe nearly almost approximate what some original document might have said. I mean, if that's the best we can do, if we can't know the words of God, we're in deep yogurt.

Anyway, I've been down that road. It's full of briars and pitfalls.

 

What makes you think the originals were inspired? Can you prove it? Huh? Huh?

 

Are you being serious? If so...wow

 

Sure: what is your basis for believing that the original documents were inspired of the Holy Ghost, and can you prove that they were? If so, how?