Comedy and the Critical Text

How many times have you come across this from mockers of the traditional text, King James Version?

>Hey, if the King James was good enough for the apostle Paul, it's good enough for us :).

"I am hip jokester."

I'm convinced lately that 90% of anti-KJV types have just exited snake handling fundamentalist churches their uncles made them attend; the other 10% are liberal scholars.

The dark army of the Jesuits marches on

R. Scott Clark has apparently been appointed the front man to deflect a flurry of publicly made charges that his institution - Westminster Seminary California - has not only been infiltrated by Jesuits, but is friendly to counter-Reformation Jesuit tactics and strategy. Unfortunately for WSC and Mr. Clark he is not sounding very believable. He is also making his situation worse by deleting comments to his post made by people who have inside information and are naming names. (Mr. Clark, do you really think nobody ever sees comments that you delete?) One commenter linked to this article which Dr. Clark was not eager for anybody to read (this commenter was also naming names). The default sacerdotalism of Mr. Clark and his institution has come from somewhere. Overall, the battle for these Protestant institutions was lost when they all got down on their knees to the Jesuits and accepted their Romanist/Alexandrian 'bibles'. Personally I'm content to just watch them as they sink further and further into the hell and Beast system they so seem to desire to be a part of.

Listen to how these people speak and think

Seminaries walk the careful line of being an academic institution and being a ministry for the church - to produce men with scholarship and men who are able to preach effectively to their sheep.

Do you hear the juvenile vanity when he writes "their sheep"? Anyway, the sheep metaphor applies to the Shepherd which is Jesus Christ, not yon doofus taught by doofuses in some doofus seminary.

When did Christianity become a matter of "men" preaching to "sheep"?

Do you know how to read? You can't be a common dope and be a follower of Jesus Christ. You also can't be passive in a "pew"... That's not how you develop understanding of the faith. You have to engage the Word of God and engage doctrine and practice. As by regeneration by the Word and the Spirit you find yourself in battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. As a prophet, a priest, and a king. Who taught you anything else?

It's the system of the Beast to think anything else.

Dead-soul academic Christians

Another dead-soul academic Christian makes a scene ("See me! It's about me! Look at me!"), gets other dead-soul academic Christians to gossip and argue about him ad nauseam, it comes to a head, he's either triumphantly voted in to stay, or he is outrageously voted to be kicked out (!) - the drama of the academic Christians! - then moves on to a post at a more maturely-corrupted institution happy to have him.

If a Spurgeon, a Pink, a Bunyan - a Calvin, a Zwingli - showed up at one of these asinine 'seminaries' they'd be either mocked to the point of leaving, or they'd be set-up on false charges and kicked off for not being shallow. The Village of Morality can't exist with non-shallow individuals in their environments.

If you want to encounter non-academic Christianity read Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. See how a man of God, who was a real teacher of God's elect, carried himself in his words and understanding. And it's not a small fact that he had a clue that the Word of God is something you don't treat as play-doh.

As for the current dead-soul academic Christians... They are having fun for now masquerading as CHRISTIANITY CENTRAL, and currently getting away with it; but they can't help but expose their dead-soul asinine selves in their every thought, word, and deed.

When it comes down to it

When it comes down to it...to death....being close to death...as a Christian....I can tell myself that God knows what is in my heart; and I can ask myself: can God trust me? I can answer: Yes, God can trust me. I'm trustworthy towards my God. Not every Christian can say that. Many Christians are hypocrites, silently or openly. Many are always playing games with God's truth (usually knowingly). They can't be trusted by God. I know I can be trusted by God. God can trust me. Love for God is the most difficultly cultivated; faith and hope coming sooner, carrying one most of the way. In the end though, when it comes down to it, I can give myself....my nothingness.....my faith, my hope, my love to God......and know that God can trust me. Trust me in His Kingdom. He has to be able to trust me (and He knows what is in my heart), and He can trust me.

Spurgeon quote

"[T]he offending of human nature is sometimes the first step towards bringing it to bow itself before God." - Charles Spurgeon

He's referring to the doctrines of grace, or five points of Calvinism, that so assault fallen man's sense of what is 'right' or even 'logical'...

Spurgeon sometimes gives the impression of a middle eastern wise man or poet. I mean, there's a poet in swashbuckling Persion dress somewhere in there. Something like that...

To a Dispensationalist

Read the last two paragraphs if anything...

These aren’t shallow or worthless debates, it should be stated. When I read your words somewhere above where you mentioned the Covenant of Redemption in a tone approaching mocking it really effected me because as a believer engaged in spiritual warfare - real warfare that is truly dangerous at times - I get my assurance and my practical connection to the plan of redemption in that Covenant of Redemption made between the Father and the Son (and no the Holy Spirit’s role is not neglected by Reformed theologians - two of the greatest Reformed theologians both being known as theologians of the Holy Spirit, that being John Calvin and John Owen). That is the law that transcends anything the world or the devil can throw at me. It is the reality of my citizenship in God’s Kingdom.

Now, I know when you wrote what you wrote that it is from current lack of understanding, but still. There is a hardheadedness in Dispensationalists I’ve encountered that is more in the juvenile/petulant realm than it should be. It’s like your defending ‘not being wrong’ rather than allowing yourselves to be teachable. As I said, there aren’t too many examples of Federal Theology Christians ‘developing in understanding’ into Dispensationalists. And we who once were dispensationalists had to be teachable, or, maybe better put, we had to value the truth above our own vanity and worldly pride. I’ve been in many arguments with Mr. Berkhof, for instance, and he’s won 9 out of 10 of them. Or more. Not infant baptism, not regarding certain points of the Sinai Covenant, but I can’t think of many things where I havn’t been eventually won over.

Understanding is seeing the parts in relation to the whole. Dispensationalism is alot of parts with no relation to the whole. Once you are able to see Federal Theology - the power of Reformed Theology - by seeing the whole and hence the parts in relation to the whole you get a real sense of the whole armor of God in all its harmony and unity and strength.

The fruits of Dispensationalism are shallow and worse. Against the system of the Beast (as strong in the world today as it was during the tyranny of Rome 500 years ago) Dispensationalism is cardboard armor. Christians need the same armor the reformers and everyday Christians had during the times of the Reformation when the darkness of the tyranny of the Roman Beast was overpowered by the light of the Word of God.

From the ritual files...

Note to R. Scott Clark: infant baptism is not a Reformed distinctive.

John Calvin on Critical Text scholars

"[F]or the blindness under which they labour is almost invariably accompanied with vain pride and stubbornness. Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation. Hence, they do not conceive of him in the character in which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness has devised."

- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.4.1.

On that Milton quote

In this Milton quote there is a shocking reminder:

"Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather..."

To think we - people in general - are born innocent and that we have to be protected from the world as much as possible so that we can maintain our innocence is about as non-Christian an understanding of the state of man as one can have. (It's how the Village of Morality Christians think of themselves though.)

Church Christians are a shallow lot for a reason. They've had their "innocence" protected.

This is not how Christian men and women are made. This is not how soldiers of Christ are developed.

J. (for Jehovah) Calvin

When Gail Riplinger (that intellectual sudra - or, anti-Romanist layperson - with no seminary degree enabling her to understand not only the first but the second in the series of "See it and Say it in Greek!" which makes one the equal of an AV1611 translator) joked - yes, merely joked - that her initials "G. A." referred to "God and" Riplinger regarding the authorship of her book New Age Bible Versions (by the way, with no seminary degree she is still - unbelievably - able to discern liberal abomination with regards to the corrupting of the Word of God, something seminary boys manifestly are not able to discern); anyway, when she jokingly said this the Critical Text genius-scholars almost giggled themselves into comas, mocking such a statement.

Do you think they'll giggle at and mock this? -

"I will venture boldly to declare what I think of this work, acknowledging it to be God's work rather than mine."

- John Calvin referring to his Institutes of the Christian Religion, in his preface to the 1545 edition

"Oh, but Calvin is..." Is what, seminary boy? Anyway, your being a respecter of persons aside, you don't even know what Calvin is because you don't read Calvin. You read secondary literature on Calvinism, and literature written about secondary literature on Calvinism. If you ever read Calvin directly you'd learn what kind of a Romanist Beast-suck you are. With your Roman Catholic Beast-approved 'bibles'. "Hey everybody! there's a new edition of the Nestle-Aland! It's got new stuff in it. It's the most authoritative up-to-date and stuff! I just got mine, yippee!!"

Maybe we should introduce Critical Text scholars to Theosophy so they'll get out of the churches and seminaries altogether?

From a forum thread where a discussion of just how Westcott and Hort were able to change the landscape so easily and how their followers continue to be so successful:

Without first understanding, at least to some extent, the superiority of the Reformation Bible (which can include the gross inferiority of the Vulgate and the utter textual decadence of the alexandrian-based versions) it is difficult to expect that a person will leave the corrupt modern versions for the King James Bible. In seeking information, they will be fighting against an avalanche of agiprop, peer pressure and the version industrial complex, with tentacles throughout public Christendom and academia, such as paid 'critical consultants' shilling for the corrupt versions. All designed all around trying to prop up the decrepit modern versions. Some will see the truth nonetheless... - Steven Avery

Of course there are other reasons as well, but I just thought the above paragraph was well-put.

Read that paragraph and ask yourself: which side of the battle line do you want to be found on when the King returns? Do you care? I get the impression most of the Critical Text champions and followers are indifferent. They are indifferent to the Word of God itself as well. It's just another text they determine the meaning of, changing it if necessary. It's not something that they value as being above them. It is beneath them. In their power. They will tell God what His revealed Word is.

This is a point that is never expressed as well and is central to the guilt of the Critical Text scholars: they spend no time warning people of Critical Text versions such as the TNIV or the Message or the New Living Translation (versions only worse in degree than the NASB and ESV and NIV, but obviously with far less shame in hiding their program of corrupting the pure and whole Word of God). These exist because of the Critical Text. The CTers though feel no responsibility to warn people of them. The fact is they are convicted by them and they avoid mention of them to avoid being convicted by them publically. Do they really think they can hide all this from God's eyes? One thinks they actually think they can. Sin is irrational to its core. The devil actually thinks he can defeat that which created him.

Translations of the Word of God are confessions of faith

If you want to expose modern day Reformed Christians who bravely identify themselves as confessional (the Westminster Standards or the Three Forms of Unity or both) yet who demand Alexandrian, Critical Text bibles that are 'play-doh' in the hands of any man who demands them to be what he wants them to be introduce them to the fact that translations of the Bible are confessions of faith. They will have to think about it for a while, looking for easy ways to refute it, but they won't be able to. (The fact is they aren't even confessional regarding their confessions of faith because they demand they be changed, and do change them, at their will as well.)

The Bible that is my confession of faith is the Authorized Version 1611. (And notice we don't change it? Liberals change it and appropriate it as they change it, but God's elect don't follow them when they do it.) The Critical Text Christians mock me for having the Authorized Version 1611 as my confession of faith. (Come to think of it they also mock me for considering the so-called pope of the Roman Beast church to be the anti-Christ even though the Westminster Confession of Faith that Reformed Christians affect to hold to as their confession states that he is.)

Critical Text Christians have Roman Catholic confessions of faith regarding their Alexandrian 'bibles.' The Spirit has yet to enable them to see the Word of God as something that is above them. It is mere play-doh in their hands.

The pedigree of the AV1611 as confession of faith compared to the poisonous Critical Text candy is similar to the pedigree of the Heidelberg Catechism or the Westminster Confession of Faith compared to the Presbyterian Confession of 1967. The fact that modern day Calvinists can see that the Confession of 1967 is watered down and corrupt doctrine yet refuse to see the same in the modern versions based on the corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts shows that when it comes down to it - the foundation of the faith that is the Word of God - they are not capable of accepting that the Word of God is something that is above them.

Doctrine is the armor of God

When we continually search works of Christian doctrine - as God's elect - we are drawn by the fact that doctrine is the armor of God. We're looking for sound armor, and for explication and elucidation of sound armor. We value sound armor.

This famous John Owen quote I've had in the right-hand margin gets at it:

"When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth - when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us - when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts - when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for - then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men." - John Owen

Doctrine is practical. It effects the believer internally. To be God-centered rather than man-centered for instance is an effect of doctrine on one internally. Again I speak of God's elect who have the Spirit and can discern true doctrine and be affected by it.

When a false teacher argues, for instance, for works righteousness (under whatever name or guise) they are arguing for walking onto the battlefield wearing wax armor and carrying a cardboard shield and sword.

They are also arguing in favor of the continued internal tyranny of vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will which are the chains the devil keeps fallen man in in the bondage and darkness of his kingdom.

Bad doctrine feeds and keeps alive the Old Man nature.

False teachers play down the significance of doctrinal debates and arguments and 'hair-splitting' and so forth, even in the midst of engaging in it, because they know it effects, at practical levels, internal states and status.

Atheists and liberals desperately protect their beliefs from trial, not so Christians

"He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd virtue, unexcersied and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary."
-- JOHN MILTON

You can't make this stuff up

It would be difficult to make up this post and the comments that follow it. The apostasy and the famine for the Word of God on full display, in all its wickedness and shallowness and all around deadness. (One guy who responded with indignation that the New Living Translation would be criticized by another Critical Text priest - yes Jesuits taking shots at Jesuits; call the Pope! - has a blog titled 'New Leaven', which title he gets from one of the Critical Text modern versions, and which means: new satanic filth for modern times!)

If you are a real Christian get an Authorized, King James Version. Learn to read it by reading it. Don't expect the Word of God to read itself, and don't allow shallow academics full of the spirit of the devil to read it for you. Know the voice of the Shepherd and hew to it. The time between the first and second coming of Christ has never been a time for screwing around. Get serious. Cast off your fear and reverence of man and fear God only. It is the beginning of wisdom.

Ahh, now he wants to light me on fire

Here's a good example of a churchian fool who thinks he and his 'church' control whether God's own become born again and see the truth rather than the Holy Spirit doing it.

Notice also how he can only sit back and express 'concerns.'

It's because he's not a part of it. He's a formalist, ritualist, moralist (and default sacerdotalist). He doesn't even care about people becoming born again by the Word and the Spirit and then having the discernment to see the truth of the five solas and so on. What does he care? He's a churchian, not a Christian.

Put childish things away, and become men

Two comments from the ever-useful PuritanBoard showing how mainstream Christians have been dissuaded from the true faith by false teachers:

While Christian mysticism is highly suspect when it comes to theology, I do know a lot of believers who got trapped in it for a while (as I was). In those circles, Brother Lawrence, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, are all popular names as are Amy Carmichael, A. W. Tozer and Oswald Chambers. While the first group are more catholic in their approach, they all seem to have one thing in common and that is some "deeper life" relationship with Christ that is only attainable by doing something. (i.e. closing yourself in up in a room and fasting and praying for days, separating yourself from people and the world in order to become more spiritual, etc.

As I see it, it is nothing more than works salvation and/or sanctification (depending on which group you are involved with).

This was written by a woman who has been made a moderator at that forum (which means she is deemed 'safe' doctrinally). Notice how she has to put down the biblical practices of fasting and praying by connecting it up with "closing yourself up in a room" - scary!...and weird! Does the Bible say close yourself up in a room when you fast and pray? Methinks no it does not. I mean, there is a passage about going into your closet, and so on, but that doesn't play on the subject of fasting and praying in some general way. But you know, the modern versions based on the corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts have deleted references to fasting in connection with prayer, so for the mainstream Village of Morality Christians it's a mute point anyway.

But look at her last sentence. Such an absolute non-understanding of sanctification. The devil in Reformed churches has given up on corrupting the doctrine of justification by faith alone (though the Federal Visionists are currently actually making a new attempt at that I should say), so the devil decided he would teach a false doctrine of sanctification in the Reformed churches to make up for the clear understanding of faith alone the Calvinists have, for the most part.

Effort is necessary at two areas of the order of salvation: conversion and sanctification (what is called active, progressive sanctification to distinguish it from definitive sanctification). No effort is necessary for regeneration, justification, adoption, etc. Effort is necessary for conversion and sanctification. Conversion requires learning what one is to repent of and what one is to have faith IN. It involves making efforts to understand God's plan, his Word, doctrine, etc. Sanctification requires efforts (otherwise Bunyan's Christian - from Pilgrim's Progress - could have just stayed home). The parable of the talents gets at effort in sanctification. Jesus' entire teaching on awakening and loving your enemy and all the rest involves effort in sanctification. God doesn't regenerate you for you to then sit on your butt and do nothing. Once regenerated you have the ability to do good works and to effect effort in your sanctification. You are no longer dead in sin and dead asleep with no power to do anything but rebel from God with your every thought, word, and deed.

Here's a second comment from the same thread:

I cannot directly answer your question about those particular "saints", but I would like to add a general comment.

Mysticism is defined as follows:

mys·ti·cism (mst-szm) n.
1.a. Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God.
b. The experience of such communion as described by mystics.
2. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.

mysticism - definition of mysticism by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

So, if this is an accurate definition of mysticism, then anyone who is a mystic is NOT a Christian. Several things about mysticism are anti-christian:

1. The belief in immediate consciousness of God, rather than mediated consciousness of God. God has exalted His Word above all of His Name, and therefore, anyone seeking to be conscious about God without a mediated revelation of the content of such consciousness is in rebellion.

2. The belief that such realities are "beyond intellectual apprehension" and therefore "accessible by subjective experience." God's Word is a clear Word: it is NOT "beyond intellectual apprehension". Man may refuse to hear it because he doesn't like it, but the point is that he knows what it says. Man is the image of God. As such, he was created in knowledge, with the capacity to intellectually apprehend propositions revealed by God. If this were not the case, there would be no such a thing as logic, or conscience, or truth. All would be subjected to man's experience of the divine. This is the basic idea of liberalism: deny the image of God, and make god the subject of our own experiences.


This is why mystics reject the propositions revealed by God in the Scripture. One, for instance, being justification by God's grace, through the work of Christ, received by faith alone. l don't think that the doctrine of justification is their basic problem. Rather, the basic problem I would identify is their refusal to accept what God created them to be, and how God mediates His messages to men.

Notice in his point #1 he has a total lack of understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in the mystical union between Christ and believers (to put it in Thomas Boston's phrase). Now notice also the arrogance of the man (young man? I don't know) in affecting a teaching pose and tone in his words. This is the product of the shallowness of Reformed environments and of the devil's influence in corrupting the Word of God and instilling a fear and reverence of man above the fear of God alone.

His point #2 is a straw man taking off his lack of understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in the union between Christ and believers.

They call themselves Calvinists, but they've obviously never read Calvin's Institutes, certainly not Book 3. It's the basic shallowness and juvenile nature of the culture of academia. They've never put childish things away because they've yet to become men of God.

Careful unsuspecting newbie, you are in the territory of the dark army...

An unsuspecting newbie at the JesuitBoard (excuse me, PuritanBoard) has posted a link to C. S. Lewis quotes. I find the page to be an exceptional choice of quotes; here it is.

Now watch the scholars at the JesuitBoard (excuse me, PuritanBoard) carp the baby out with the bathwater and 'counsel' and 'admonish' and display 'grave reservations' and call for all to be 'careful' regarding Lewis.

And look for annmarie to be banned by the end of July... (Unless she bows her knee to Baal to a requisite degree in the aftermath of this scandal of linking C. S. Lewis quotes...)

"Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?"

--Christian Reflections

That's a good one. The JesuitBoard moderators (excuse me, PuritanBoard moderators) will now determine 'the present' to be a dangerous cultish false teaching. Better to stick with Rome, er, Reformed orthodoxy as taught by ordained intellectuals with seminary degrees from official accredited seminaries, or strip malls if the authority is James White (Peace Be Upon Him)...

Skirting the boundaries of speaking out-of-school

Christian 'teachers' with elbow patches and vain academic titles telling Christians all about the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit only comes into contact with Christians when clerics in suit and tie are conducting ritual sessions in church buildings.

Do you feel the power?

And notice how to make his more-powerful-than-cardboard point he has to associate the Holy Spirit with Pentecostalism and hence with images of people squirming in aisles or handling snakes or doing basically what new age dupes of the devil by any other name do.

Mr. Hyde, you want to know what the Spirit is all about? Careful what you ask for (not that you are asking.) Be prepared for battle. The very thing you most desire to avoid. Battle with your old man, the world, and the devil. Anything but that.

Here's how you know you have the Spirit in you: your Old Man (that inner Adamic nature that doesn't want to die) fights back. The world gives you friction. The devil sees there is one in his kingdom no longer an unconscious slave going with the flow, so he confronts you. You find yourself in battle. A three-front war.

What did you 'do' to get into this conflict? You began to engage the Word of God as if it were something that is above you. You began to awaken and to fear God only. (This means you no longer fear and revere man.)

What does it mean to 'begin to awaken'? It means you develop within you the basic level of self-awareness that is needed to begin to be able to see yourself and your surroundings from an internal position - elevation - of observation that is not merely one 'I' in you flitting about in waking sleep and turning into other 'I's without you being aware.

No, you are not required to know the practical level of the faith to be what you are, but when you set yourself up as a teacher of Christians you need to be disabused of your nonsense by one of God's elect.

When Jesus tells you to knock he is speaking to you internally. Oh, yes, all that in the New Testament that doesn't make it into mainstream systematic theologies actually has meaning for a Christian. Yes, Jesus' teachings on awakening are actually a part of the whole "Christian thing"... Just as the teaching on spiritual warfare is, despite it too not getting it's own category in systematic theologies. The devil doesn't want those subjects having attention brought to them (which is also why the devil has successfully deleted such passages out of his Alexandrian 'bibles' that modern day Christian 'teachers' push as the real thing).

Being a Child King is Dangerous

Go to the source Calvin went to

Bigger, more important then the post below is this: classical covenant - federal - theology is apostolic biblical doctrine, and it doesn't matter if Calvin presented it whole or x, y, or z theologian presented it whole. That the Word of God presents it whole is all that matters.

Reformed Christians who adopt Federal Theology can't see other aspects and elements of it that others see as well. The practical level for instance. What mainstream Christians who adopt Federal Theology mock and wave off as mysticism (or whatever).

Remember: Calvin was a bare-foot mystic compared to modern-day mainstream self-identified Calvinists.

Just as the Celtic Christians were the best and bravest evangelists and get zero notice by the mainstream church historians there are many aspects of Christian history and doctrine that go over the head of mainstream Christians.

Doddering philosopher

R. Scott Clark is right to feel embarrassed for his colleague Paul Helm regarding Helm's incompetent take on Calvin and Covenant Theology.

Philosophers (outright like Helm, or wannabee like 99% of Reformed apologists) tend to not on-the-mark theologians make. Especially when the subject is apostolic biblical doctrine needing the Spirit to be discerned.

Read Geerhardus Vos' Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology to understand Calvin vis-a-vis things like the Covenant of Works.

But whoever has the historical sense to be able to separate the mature development of a thought from its original sprouting and does not insist that a doctrine be mature at birth, will have no difficulty in recognizing the covenant of works as an old Reformed doctrine.