Now, here's where this is coming from.
Second Maccabees, and let me just tell you right now, the Apocrypha is trash.
It's complete trash.
Well, I think it's good for historical reading.
And it's good for nothing.
It is the most worthless literature ever written in the history of mankind, okay?
So don't even think for one second that the Apocrypha is somehow valuable or important.
Now, some people would try to say, like, well, you know, it's included in the King James
version because they thought it was scripture.
No, wrong.
Because it's included in the King James Bible between the testaments in a special
section labeled at the top of every page, Apocrypha, okay?
So it's not like it's in a Catholic Bible where they put it with the biblical text,
where they put the parts in with Daniel, they put the parts in with Ezra, because a
lot of the Apocrypha is parts of books that are added later, and those will be in
that section, you know, the story of Belle and the Dragon, Susanna, and the Song of
the Three Holy Children.
None of that stuff is included in the Book of Daniel and the King James or included
in the relevant portions of Ezra or anywhere else.
It's in a special section called Apocrypha, and if you even look at the notes that they
write in there, they sometimes criticize it, oh, this is corrupt here, or this guy's
clearly imitating Solomon, he's a poser, you know, they didn't use that word, but
that's basically what they're saying.
And so if you look at, because keep in mind, the King James Bible is being printed
and published and overseen by King James and the Church of England, and obviously
they have a team of, you know, 54 expert, scholar, translator, linguist guys, but the
thing is overseen by the Church of England.
Well, the Church of England had a statement of faith at that time called the 39 Articles
of the Church of England, and the 39 Articles of the Church of England specifically say,
the ones that were enforced in 1611, specifically say, no doctrine shall be derived from
these 14 books called Apocrypha.
These are basically saying, these are not the word of God, because all scriptures given
by inspiration of God is profitable for what?
Doctrine.
It specifically says, in the Articles of the Church of England, these books, no doctrine
shall be based on any of these books, and they can only be used for like historical
reading or moral reading, something like that, like, you know, it could be profitable
to read it just for like the historical value or the moral value, but that it's
not scripture.
That's what they believed.
That's what they said in their statement of faith, and so it has never been thought
of as part of the King James Bible, as part of the text of the scripture.
They translated it because they're kind of weaning people off of the Catholic Church.
They're weaning people off of those books, so they're translating them so that
people can still read them and see what's there, because, you know, it's sort of like
when the missionary, William Carey, went to India, and he's translating the Bible
into their language, translating it into Bengali and other Indian languages.
He also translated the Hindu scriptures into their language too.
Why would a Baptist missionary translate the Hindu scriptures into their language,
so he could show them how stupid it was, and so that he could show them, you guys
aren't even following your own scripture.
Your religion doesn't even follow your own scripture.
You don't even know what your own religion is, so he's like, here, let me tell you
what you guys even believe, so that then I can tell you why you're wrong.
You know, so that's the only reason why the 1611 edition of the King James has
that in there is because they're weaning people off of it, and so they're showing
them like, here it is.
Don't base any doctrine on it.
You can read it if you want.
They're basically just kind of easing them out of it and weaning them off of that stuff,
and you know, you have to translate it into English so that people can see what garbage
it is, and you know, I really like the fact that the King James translators translated
the Apocrypha because then you can't blame how bad it is on a bad translation, you
know, because the King James translators are great, so I mean, it's not that it's
a bad translation.
It's just that the Apocrypha is just so lame.
I can't even read one chapter of the Apocrypha without just being like, are you serious?
It's such a cheap imitation.
Like anybody who actually knows the Bible, who actually reads the Bible and then reads
the Apocrypha, they're just going to be like, what is this?
Because it's just, it's not the same.
It's not the same quality, and it's the exact same translators, King James translators,
so you can't blame the translation.
It just isn't any good, and you say, well, it's good for historical, or really, that's
funny because it's constantly contradicting the Bible and contradicting historical fact
like like, how about this in Judith one one in the Apocrypha?
It talks about when Nebuchadnezzar rained over Assyria in Nineveh.
That'd be like if we said, you know, in the days when President Trump ruled Canada
from Ottawa, you understand what I'm saying?
Like they're taking a very famous world leader, putting him in the wrong capital ruling over
the wrong country.
Yeah, I really care what the Book of Judith says.
And by the way, these Apocryphal books of the Maccabees, they don't even claim
to be the word of God.
They actually disparage themselves.
They're just these Jewish fables.
They're junk.
They're not quoted by Jesus Christ.
And the apostles are quoting the Bible.
They don't quote this stuff.
So in Maccabees, here's what here's what Maccabees claims happened, of course, written
hundreds of years after Ezra and Nehemiah, hundreds of years after Ezra and Nehemiah.
All of a sudden, this second Maccabees, I forget which chapter it's in, but it pulls out
this story of, oh, Jeremiah, the prophet hid the Ark of the Covenant in a cave and
then pulled it out later.
That's funny because Jeremiah is the guy that told us it's not even going to be a thing
in the actual word of God.
And then you've got this Apocryphal book claiming, oh, yeah, you know, Jeremiah
hid it in a cave and whatever.
So why didn't Ezra talk about that?
Why didn't Nehemiah talk about it?
Why didn't any actual Bible books talk about that?
Why did this fake imitation, fraud book be the only one to talk about it?
I'll tell you why, because it's a made up story that was made up hundreds and
hundreds of years later because it didn't happen.
I'm sure Ron Wyatt loves that story, but I don't know about you, but, you know, to me,
I'm going to base what I believe on what the Bible says.
And I would completely discard anything that the Maccabees says because it's not
historically accurate.
It's not even good literature.
It's it's got theological problems, historical problems.
It conflicts with the Bible.
I think that the articles of the Church of England were wrong when they said it's good
moral teaching and good literature because it's not.
It's just junk.
It should be thrown in the trash.
That's what I think is good for nothing, really, truly nothing.
A lot of people claim like, oh, it fills in the gap, you know, in the 400 years
of silence from God.
There were not 400 years of silence from God.
Other books fill that gap.
The Book of Daniel fills that gap.
And, you know, we have everything we need right here in the Bible.
There's nothing missing.
It's all everything we need is right here.