To a (I assume) young girl
Learn about the Reformation. The battle for the Masoretic and Received Texts (the pure and whole - received - Word of God) was won in the 16th century. The reformers won that battle at great price. They gave of their lives. The counter-Reformation made the Word of God the main battleline. The forces of darkness knew that if they could put doubt in the minds of God's people regarding the authority of the Word of God then people would put their authority in the word of man. This was what the Jesuits of the counter-Reformation sought to do and they were defeated by God's own. Then a slight historical interlude (the devil always has the long view) and the same dark forces got their victory in the 19th century with nary a shot fired.
This is about God's preservation of his Word. It's also about the famine of the end times. It's also about authority. Is your authority God or is your authority man?
When I hold the Authorized - King James - Version (any of the sound Reformation era translations of the Masoretic and Received texts) I have God's perfectly preserved Word. I have real authority. The Bible received by the universal Church of which Christ is King. The Bible fought for and defended through time and tyranny and martyrdom. Kept available by God's own for God's own.
Notice all projects to make a modern translation of the Masoretic and Received texts today deviates (such as the New King James Version and the Holman Christian Standard)? That is God-ordained as well. The famine of the end times is real. God hardens. God puts stumblingblocks in front of people. His own, though, know the voice of the Shepherd.
Don't throw away what God has preserved for you. Don't fear and revere man and the mocking of man. Fear God only, not man. It is the beginning of wisdom.
[The above was written in response to a girl on her blog. She was repeating what James White had taught her regarding the Word of God.]
3 Comments:
I like this, Rob, and it is true. However, if you villainize those who differ with you on this matter, you consign at least 3/4ths of the elect to condemnation.
I agree also that a dire famine is seizing the church, due to the attack on the Word of God, and the loss of people's confidence that we truly have it.
If you try to make the correct text the touchstone of doctrinal orthodoxy, righteousness, and saving faith, you subvert the true touchstone, which is justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Yes, we know this by the Scripture alone, and therein is the dilemma, for this attack on it is dire. The task is to win the Lord's people back by cogent argument and winsome style. You won't do it by bitter reviling.
Steve
Hi, Steve. You're a great voice on this foundational issue. In my follow-up to the girl at her blog I did hit on the themes you mention here. I mean, my conscience pulls me in that direction too when I interact with somebody like the person my post was directed to.
OK, I just read my follow up over there:
http://truthbased.blogspot.com/2009/01/kjv-only.html
and I only hit on the theme mentioned a little in the very last paragraph.
Still, in all these little instances and encounters I think it all falls out well in the fullness of time.
We have a difficult, narrow edge to walk on this subject, don't we? The Word of God is foundational, the corruption of it is progressive, we know we ourselves read corrupt versions when we didn't know the issues, and it had effect, yet we also know that the pure and whole Word of God is the standard and authority and to be defended until the return of the King.
Steve, if you're still here, next time you are debating the Septuagint issues, and someone like Tim V. accuses you of being a conspiracy theorist quote him these words from John Owen:
http://electofgod.blogspot.com/2008/12/john-owen-kjv-only-conspiracy-theorist.html
Owen has a chapter dedicated to the Septuagint in his Biblical Theology.
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