Page 119
about five percent of all known Greek
manuscripts. These manuscripts not only differ from the faithful Majority
Text on which the King James Bible is based, they also differ from each other in
thousands of instances. How these texts rose to prominence among modern
"scholars", theologians, and even in the halls of pseudo-fundamentalist colleges
and universities certainly defies all reasonable explanation, and is without
doubt one of the greatest deceptions the devil has ever pulled
off.
Only one English Bible today comes to us from the
lineage of William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale and the exiled translators of the
Geneva Bible. Only one English Bible today can be traced back through
history, down the "trail of blood" of the martyrs and the saints of Jesus, who
gave their lives in many instances that we could have a Bible to call our
own. That Bible is the King James Bible. Every English bible
produced since 1611 is a departure from the time-honored, faithful, preserved
text of the Holy Scriptures, loved and cherished by Bible-believers through the
centuries. Every modern English bible is the product of those whose only
love is for themselves and their financial prosperity.
Theodore Letis of Edinburgh expressed this same
sentiment when he said,
"Tyndale and his translation legacy are lost on
most twentieth century readers of the English Bible. Wrose yet, there
seems to be few left to even mourn the fact. The modern reader, no longer
really interested in what the original text said, prefers to get at Biblical
mysteries by way of a new priesthood. These are the new technicians who
promise to provide the nectar of divine truth--as distilled and mediated through
them--by making ancient Near-Eastern texts speak with all the vapidity
(lifelessness, dullness, flatness) and the sterility of modern, twentieth
century, conversational English.
"The supreme example of their work is the
translation that did not blush to make bold in its earliest advertising claims
to be the beginning of a New Tradition in the...
Page 120
history of the Englished Bible. This was
a deliberate disowning of the martyr's Bible
tradition to make way for the corporate boardroom Bible.
Though it was given life by the Zondervan Corporation, the New International
Version then fell into the hands of the Harper and Row Publishers as a
result of a corporate take-over. This company, in turn, was also taken
over by Rupert murdock, the publisher of among other things the British daily
paper the Sun, notorious for its nude pin-ups. Such is the modern world of
the designer Bible.
"Modern 'bible' publishers--not to be confused
with Bible societies--are not religious organizations or missionary societies,
deserving our unexamined trust. They operate in the cold world of profit,
like any other business organization. It is not the edification of man's
soul they are after, it is their purchasing power."
The King James Bible translators hired English
language stylists to make the language of the Bible flow like music,
fascilitating Scripture memory. In fact, William Shakespeare had an
influence on the poetry of the Psalms. A tribute to him was included in
Psalm 46. If you count forty-six words down from Psalm 46:1, beginning
with "God is our refuge..." you will find the word "shake" in verse three.
Counting forty-six words up from the last word of the last verse of Psalm 46,
verse 11, (omitting the word "Selah"), you will find the word "spear."
William Shakespeare was 46-six years old in 1610 when the translation work was
completed.
Twenty thousand copies of the Authorized Version
were printed in the initial run in 1611. One Bible was designated for each
of the twenty thousand pulpits across England. These were large, beautiful
Bibles, and were known as pulpit Bibles. Beginning two years later, in
1613, the King James Bible was printed in a smaller size for the purpose of
encouraging individuals to own their own, personal copy of the Word of God for
study and for following the...
Page 121
Scripture reading in church.
It is remarkable that forty-seven of the greatest
scholars the world has ever seen, taking a total of seven years' preparation and
translation work, could improve on less than ten percent of the of the work of
one man done more than eighty years earlier. The King James Bible
translated by William Tyndale in their finished product. The New Testament
of the King James Version is almost word-for-word William Tyndale's
translation. This is not only a tribute to Tyndale and the way God so
greatly used him in giving the English-speaking world a Bible of their own; it
is also a tribute to the forty-seven translators of the Authorized Version who,
unlike the modern bible producers, left well enough alone. Nine times out
of ten they looked at Tyndale's Bible, then compared it with the hundreds and
thousands of manuscripts, versions and translations that lay before them, and
concluded, "Leave it alone. Tyndale got it right." Their wise
discernment in this matter no doubt gave rise to another proverb we are so
familiar with, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
The question has been posed, "What about another
English Bible produced from the Majority Text?" I find this humorous
because the critics and correctors of the Bible are of necessity ever inventive
in their attack on the King James Bible. For years their battle cry was,
"The King James Version is inferior. Our bibles are based on the 'oldest
and most reliable' text."
There never has been "another
English Bible produced from the Majority Text." The New King James
Version claims to be, but that claim is easily proven to be an outright
lie. Every word change in the text of the New King
James Version was taken directly from the text that produced the
Revised...
Page 122
Standard Version, the New
International Version and all the other so-called bibles, the minority text of
Wescott and Hort.
God has seen to it that there has been for nearly
four hundred years, and will continue to be until Jesus comes, only one
authoritative English Bible--the King James Bible.
There is no need to try and produce another
standard for the English Bible. There are no fifty men in this world whom
God would use in the same way he used the King James Bible translators.
These men had the scholarship, the aid of "all principal learned men of the
kingdom," the blessings of the monarch of England, and all the resources of
every library and major college and university of their day. More
importantly, you would have an extremely difficult task in trying to find fifty
men who walk with God the way those men did. How many "scholars" do you
know of today that pray five hours every day? Most of them are too busy
telling each other how brilliant they are to spend all that time in their prayer
closet!
Another objection that is raised against the King
James Bible is this: "But people do not talk like that anymore." Neither
did they, in the days when the Lord Jesus walked the earth, speak in the
language of Moses from fifteen hundred years earlier, but they certainly read
the writings of Moses, in the language of Moses' day, and revered them as the
inspired Words of God. In fact, the English-speaking people in 1611 did
not use the English of the Authorized Version in their everyday speech.
Theodore Letis says this about that:
"The Renaissance Bible translation tradition
never attempted to put the Bible into conversational English. To these
editors fidelity to the original language texts prevailed. Thus a
deliberate archaism was perpetuated from the sixteenth century into the
twentieth century when secular communication theory took the English Bible
captive. Thus, Archbishop Trench could say in the nineteenth century, "It
is a good [thing] that the phraseology of Scripture should not be exactly that
of our common life; ...
Page 123
that it should be removed from the
vulgarities, and even the familiarities of this; just as there is a sense of
fitness which dictates that the architecture of a church should be different
from that of a house.'"
Benjamin G. Wildinson, author of Our Authorized
Bible Vindicated, said,
"The translators (of the KJV) wisely preserved
what was good in the earlier translations, with the result that the language of
our English Bible is not the language of the age in
which the translators lived, but in its grand simplicity stands out in contrast
to the ornate and often affected diction of the
time."
Let us examine for a moment the fruit of the King
James Version versus the fruit of the modern English bibles. The King
James Bible has been used in every true, heaven-sent revival in the
English-speaking world for nearly four hundred years. Countless souls have
been saved, lives have been changed, missionaries have been sent, and
Scriptural, New Testament Baptist churches have been planted through the
preaching and teaching of the King James Bible.
What about the fruit of the modern bibles?
Worldiness, apostacy, deadness, the ecumenical movement, Christian(?) rock, the
charismatic movement, Promise Keepers, acceptance of homosexuality in churches
and even in pulpits in America, confusion, pride...
Let me ask you a question, my modern
translation-toting friend. Do you have a perfect copy of the Word of
God? Do you have and hold and believe God's inspired, preserved
Book? Your honest answer has to be a resounding, "No." Stewart
Custer, Chairman of the Bible Department at Bob Jones University, has said,
"There is no perfect English Bible." Bob Jones University, by the way, is
known for its preference of the corrupt Wescott and Hort text over the Textus
Receptus and the King James Bible. Is Mr.
Custer's...
Page 124
sentiment yours? Do you believe there is no
perfect English Bible?
Only those who hold to a "King James Only"
position believe they have a perfect, preserved, inspired Bible. And Peter
Ruckman is not the first man to hold our position or our belief concerning the
Bible. We are not "Ruckmanites;" we are "Jesus-ites." We simply
believe what the Lord Jesus Christ believed. He said, "Heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my words shall not pass
away." He said, "Man...shall live...by every
word of God. He inspired David to say, "Thou shalt preserve
them (The words of the LORD) from this generation for
ever."
The King James Bible translators held our position
on the preservation of the Word of God, calling their own work an "exact
translation of the holy Scriptures in the English Tongue." They spoke of
the Scriptures as being "...so full and so perfect...a treasury of most costly
jewels...a fountain of most pure water springing up into everlasting
life."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the "Prince of
Preachers," and a Baptist, I might add, held our view on the perfection and
preservation of the Scriptures. In his sermon entitled "The Bible" first
preached in 1850, he said,
"This is the Word of God; come, search, ye
critics, and find a flaw; examine it from its Genesis to its Revelation, and
find an error. This is a vein of pure gold, unalloyed by quartz, or any
earthly substance...This is the Book untainted by any error; but it is pure
unalloyed, perfect truth. Why? Because God wrote it. Ah!
Charge God with error if ye please; tell Him that His Book is not what it ought
to be. I have heard men with prudish and mock-modesty, who would like to
alter the Bible; and (I almost blush to say it) I have heard ministers alter
God's Bible, because they were afraid of it.
"Gentlemen, pull the velvet out of your
mouths; speak God's Word; we want none of your alterations. Pity you were
not born when God lived far, far back, that you
might...
Page 125
have taught God how to write. Oh,
impudence beyond all bounds! Oh, full-blown self-conceit! To attempt
to dictate to the All-worse--to teach the Omniscient and instruct the
Eternal."
In case you were wondering which Bible Mr.
Spurgeon was talking about, there was only one English Bible in 1850, the
Authorized, King James Version.
The King James Bible is the world's all-time,
best-selling Book. There is a good reason for that. It is the Word
of God for more than four hundred million people on the earth today for whom
English is their native language. English is almost universally spoken,
and is most nations' second language where it is not the mother tongue.
That is why God's preserved Word in English, the King James Bible, has outsold
any and all other books that have ever been printed.
An ignorant Independent Baptist preacher (and all
too often, the terms "ignorant" and "Independent Baptist" are synonymous!) stood
before his people and made this statement: "I get a kick out of ths 'King James
only' crowd. Why, they do not even have the 1611. They could not
read it if they did have it. It is half German."
He cited the "several revisions" to the King James
Version over the years, concluding, with Nelson Publishers and the other critics
of God's Word, that what we have today is in actuality not the Authorized
Version of 1611, but rather the 1769 revision.
This argument, as well as all others presented
against our preserved English Bible, proves to be one hundred percent
false. Dr. William P. Grady's book, Final Authority, the most
interesting and informative book I personally have ever read on the subject of
the preservation of the King James Bible, has a listing of twenty discrepancies
between the Authorized Version printed in the year 1611 and the Authorized
Version you recently purchased, printed in the 1990's. In light of the
more than 64,000 words omitted from the New International Version, the changes
to the rest of the King...
Page 126
James Bible over the centuries are certainly
diminutive in nature.
Every change made to the King James
Bible in the so-called "revisions" was a correction of a printer's error, not a
retranslation of a mistranslation. The text of the King James Bible is
unchanged from the first printing in 1611 to this very day. It is the same
Book!
Let me give you an example of how the liberals'
lies and unbelievers' propaganda has infiltrated even our best fundamental
churches. I recently preached a meeting in a good church pastored by a
good, solid, Bible-believing pastor. The theme of the meeting was the
divine preservation of the King James Bible. On my book table I offer for
sale a reproduction of the Authorized Version of 1611. It is actually a
photographic reproduction of a 1911 edition commemorating the three hundredth
anniversary of the King James Bible. The layout is exactly the same as the
first edition. Seventeenth century spelling is kept intact. The
first word on the page through the last word on the page, on every page, is
exactly where it appeared in 1611. The chapter headings read the
same. The marginal references read the same. The only difference
between the reproduction and the genuine article, the
nearly-four-hundred-year-old first edition, is that the first edition appeared
in the old Gothic-style black letter type, while the reprint was done in Roman
type, the lettering style to which we are accustomed today. This change
was made for readability, for convenience to the reader.
The 1611 reproductions proved to be a popular
item, and several of my pastor friend's church members purchased them, and began
reading and studying them. The pastor was visibly worried. He said
to me, "Soon all of my people will be carrying those '1611's,' I
responded, "That would not be heresy, would it?" He said, "But they are
different." To which I replied, "No, they are not."
He, too, purchased one of the first edition
Bibles, and carried it with him to the meetings the rest of the week. He
saw, with the rest of his folks, that God truly has preserved His Word in
English...
Page 127
in the King James Bible, and that we do have the
Authorized Version of 1611 in a 1990's wrapper, contrary to what the modernists,
liberals, pseudo-fundamentalists and all the other liars
say.
Now, my brother and good friend was not trained to
doubt his King James Bible where he attended college, at one of the best
fundamental schools in America. He certainly does not mingle with the
crowd that spends all of its time trying to discredit the "King James only"
position. But somewhere along the line, he fell for the "party line," and
some apostate preacher deceived him into believing God had not preserved His
Word after all. Thank God, we have and hold the physical, irrefutable
evidence which proves that He did!
You might ask, "But what about those twenty
discrepancies you mentioned." Let me give you just a few examples, which
are very typical of the exhaustive list.
"...as it is written in this booke of the Covenant" (II
Kings 23:21, KJV 1611).
"...as it is written in the book of this Covenant" (II
Kings 23:21, KJV 1997).
"...of him came the chiefe rulers" (I Chronicles 5:2, KJV 1611)
"...of him came the chief ruler" (I Chronicles 5:2, KJV 1997)
"And Parbar Westward"
(I Chronicles 26:18, KJV 1611).
"At Parbar westward" (I
Chronicles 26:18, KJV 1997).
"The crowned are as the
locusts" (Nahum 3:17, KJV 1611).
"Thy crowned are as the
locusts" (Nahum 3:17, KJV 1997).
"...his wife Drusilla, which was a Jew" (Acts 24:24, KJV 1611).
"...his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess" (Acts 24:24, KJV 1997).
Hold the phone! The critics and the liberals
are right! The text of the King James Bible has been mutilated beyond
recognition through all those "revisions." Why, the King James Bible you
are able to buy today does not even resemble the 1611 edition.
...
Page 128
As the young people today like to say, "Yeah,
right." You can see the type of "changes" to the text the enemies of the
Word of God have to try to convince you have been made in order to discredit
your Bible.
Come on, Mr. Modern bible Advocate. Is that
the best (or worst) you can come up with? What about the complete verses missing from the text of the New International
Version, like Matthew 17:11, Matthew 17:21, Matthew 23:14, Mark 7:16,
Mark 9:44, Mark 9:46, Mark 11:26, Mark 15:28, Luke 17:36, Luke 23:17, John 5:4,
Acts 8:37, Acts 28:29, Romans 16:24, I John 5:7, not to mention the scores of
partial verses omitted, the tens of thousands of words missing or changed, and
the more than two hundred omissions of the names Jesus, Christ, and Lord in your
bible?
What about the underlying Greek texts of your
bible, the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus? You remember, the two manuscripts
that are not only vastly different from the ninety-plus percent Majority Text
evidence, but also disagree with each other more than three thousand times in
the four Books of the Gospels alone. You remember, that Sinaiticus,
manuscript rescued from the wastebasket of that Greek Orthodox monastery, which
was discovered to contain more than thirteen thousand
erasures and corrections to the text. You want to talk about
discrepancies?
It is easily verifiable and irrefutably proveable
that the text of the King James Bible has survived intact for nearly four
hundred years now. It is the same Book! The New International
Version has not survived twenty-five years without major changes and
revisions. The first edition NIV printed in England was different from the
one printed in the United States. The NIV printed in 1973 is different
from the one printed in 1978. The NIV printed in 1978 is different from
all subsequent editions printed after 1983. Now there is a
"gender-inclusive" NIV available in England, which is a deliberate mutilation of
the text of the Bible, with no manuscript evidence justifying the countless
changes to the text. It is so bad that many of the backers and users of
the New...
Page 129
International Version are rejecting the latest
edition. Thank God! Maybe there is hope for them
yet!
The Revised Standard Version, printed in 1952 and
copyrighted by the National Council of Churches of Christ, did not last
forty-five years before there was a New Revised
Standard Version. The American Standard Version of 1901 gave way to the
New American Standard Version in just seventy short
years.
There is no New King
James Version. Oh, there is a modern translation called the "New King James Version," but it is not a King
James Version at all. As we mentioned in an earlier chapter, the changes
and "improvements" to the text are all drawn from the faulty, corrupt,
unreliable texts of Wescott and Hort, the Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus.
Thomas Nelson Publishers was not satisfied with
the marginal acceptance and sales of their "New King James Version," so it has
been neatly repackaged, and equally as deceitfully labeled the "New Geneva
Bible." Just as the "New King James" is no King James, the "New Geneva
Bible" is no Geneva Bible, just a clever sales ploy slipped in on an
unsuspecting "Christian" clientele, manipulated by Bible-rejecting pastors and
publishers alike. The large, bold initials "NKJV" are emblazoned on the
carton in which the "New Geneva Bible" is packaged. New Geneva Bible? Yeah, right.
Christian friend, you do not need a new
bible. What you need is a new love, a new awe, a new reverence, a new look
at the old Book.
I do not worship a version (or a Virgin, for that
matter). I do not worship the Word of God, as there are some who would
label me a "Bibliolator." I worship the God of the Word, and I simply
choose to believe His promises concerning his Word, the same way you choose not
to believe His promises concerning His Word. He said He would preserve
it. He said He would keep it perfect. He said it would stand
forever.
In Luke 4:4 the Lord Jesus Christ said this: "Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." If my Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ commanded me to live by "every word of God," would it not
be awfully unfair of Him not to see to it that I have "every word of God" to
live by? The truth is, I can live by "every word of God" because I have,
in the King James Version of the Bible, "every word of
God."
*****
Afterword
Solomon
said in Ecclesiastes 12:13, "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole
matter." So, "let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter." The
King James, Authorized Version of 1611 is the seventh major English translation
of the Bible, "purified seven times" in the English language. Seven is
God's number of completion and perfection. When the seventh major English
translation of the Bible was published, the Word of God in English was complete;
it was perfect. Seven years were spent from the inception of the
project till the first copy was handed to King James I for his approval and
blessing. Seven separate committees pored over the text and came to a
forty-seven to nothing vote in favor of what they had produced, an "exact
translation of the holy Scriptures in the English Tongue." In verse seven
of Psalm Twelve we find God's promise of divine preservation. "Thou shalt
keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for
ever."
"The
words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth,
purified SEVEN times."
