You say, I don't believe God leads anybody.
In all our ways acknowledge them and they'll direct thy paths.
God led an unsaved king to issue a decree to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem because
the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of waters he turneth it
whithersoever he will.
God can use even unsaved people to perform his will.
God could lead people who translated the King James Bible and begged God for three hours
a day for three years before they even started translating that they would translate it properly.
Translate it correctly.
Okay, and I mean if you study the history of the King James Bible it's amazing.
But that's not even the point.
The point is that we have God's word today preserved.
It can be in any language.
It can be in English.
It can be in another language.
But guess what?
If the King James Bible is right, which I believe from the top of my head to the bottom
of my feet, then if another language Bible says something different, it's wrong.
And I'm not talking about differences in language and differences in grammar and differences
in auxiliary words and pronouns.
I'm talking about a difference in what it says, that it actually says something different.
Now it's interesting because I was in Romania and when I was in Romania, I want to use this
just to illustrate the point of what I'm talking about.
When I was in Romania, I had never been to Romania.
I didn't know I was going to Romania.
I ended up staying with somebody and they said we're going to Romania for a week.
I said, oh, okay, cool.
That'd be neat.
Because I was staying in Germany at the time.
So we went to Romania.
I didn't speak any Romanian.
But Romanian is a lot like Spanish and I spoke Spanish.
And so I started picking it up right away.
It was making a lot of sense to me right away because it's so similar to Spanish.
And I went to church and I sang the hymns and didn't understand the sermon.
But I asked the missionary, I said, I want to buy a Bible.
I said, because I want to learn how to speak Romanian.
So I want to have the Bible and I can memorize some Bible and it'll help me learn the language
and read the Bible.
And I said, is the Bible in Romanian, is it like the King James Version?
Is it the right Bible or is it, you know, which Bible is right?
Which version is right in Romanian?
Because I knew in English there's a bunch of versions.
So I said, well, which version is right in Romanian?
He said, well, there's two versions in Romanian.
He said one of them is the Romanian Orthodox Version by the Orthodox Church in Romania.
And he said the other one is called the Cornalescu Bible and there was a man named Cornalescu
who translated it.
And he said, this is what all the Baptists and Pentecostals use in Romania.
All Baptists, Pentecostals, those types of religions.
He said they use this one.
He said the Orthodox Church uses this Orthodox Version.
And he said, I said, well, so this is the right one then, the Cornalescu one.
He said, well, he said it's right about 80% of the time.
Now that's not a very high percentage at all, okay?
That means every five verses I'm reading something wrong.
Now I'm not saying that's what the percentage is.
I'm saying that's what he told me.
So you can see what my reaction to that was.
80%.
He said 80% of the time it's right.
He said the other 20% it's like the NIV.
He said it goes with the Westcott and Hort, you know, critical Greek text.
It's like one of the modern perversions.
He said, so I just preach out of the good parts of it and when I get to the parts that
are wrong I just correct it.
And I'm thinking to myself, you know, that doesn't sound good if you're correct and every
five verses, you know, that's terrible.
So I said, well, what about this Orthodox Version?
I said, is that one even worse?
And he said, no.
He said, actually, from when I read the Orthodox Version, he said it seems to line up completely
with the King James Bible.
And I'm thinking, okay, well then why are you using this other one?
And by the way, since then I've studied and I've read both the New Testament and both
versions, okay, and I've discovered that the Orthodox Bible is dead on with the King James
Bible.
I mean, I think I found a few discrepancies, but I mean, we're talking about it was 99.99%.
I mean, it was right there with the King James.
And everything I was looking up was right.
And everything I looked up in this Cornelescu one was wrong.
It was saying Joseph was Jesus' father, you know, that kind of stuff.
Over here it's saying, Joseph and his mother marveled in the Romanian Orthodox Version,
in the Cornelescu it's saying his father and mother.
And I'm going through it, I'm looking at it later on.
But let's go back to the conversation I was having with the missionary.
I said, well, wait a minute, if you're saying this one lines up more with the King James
than this other one that all the Baptists are using, I said, why don't you use this
one that's the right one?
Why don't you use the right one?
Why are you using this other one?
And he said, well, we don't use it for a couple of reasons.
He said, number one, you have to go to the Romanian Orthodox bookstore to buy it.
That was reason number one.
He said number two, number two, he said, it has this introduction at the beginning that
like praises the Orthodox Church.
I'm like, okay, you know, I'm hoping that the next reason is better, you know.
And then he says, and then number three, he said, it has a lot of archaic words in
it.
And I'm like, boy, that sounds kind of like the King James Bible, you know.
And in reality, since I've studied, it's not archaic.
It uses like the same wording as the newer Romanian one, the Cornelescu.
I mean, the word order is a little different, but it's, I'll put it this way, it's less
archaic than the King James.
And we read that just fine.
And so does my three year old reads, it's fine.
But anyway, and he said, and the fourth reason why is because it has the apocryphal books.
He said, they're not mixed in.
He said, they're not mixed in with it though.
They're in a separate section in between the testaments, in between Old and New Testament
labeled apocrypha in the middle.
They're not interspersed like in a Catholic Bible.
They're just in the center in a special section between the testaments.
And he said, it's just too confusing to people to tell them, you know, don't read that introduction
and don't read the apocrypha, you know, so, so basically he said, we just use this one
cause this, he said, plus, you know, this is what all the Baptists use, you know, is
this Cornelescu one, which is like a totally modern, you know, NIV type corruption worse
than the New King James.
I'll put it that way.
I don't even think that the New King James doesn't even call Joseph Jesus' father.
I mean, it has, it has a lot of other wicked things in it, but this one was even more so.
And I'm listening to him.
I'm thinking, you know, this isn't right.
This doesn't make sense at all.
So then that's, like I said, I went back, I studied it, I learned, I started to study
Romanian.
I started attending a Romanian Baptist church in Sacramento for several months.
I would go in the evening.
The services were four hours long.
How's that?
You know, I'm preaching four hours a night by the way, but anyway, no, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, four hour services and I used to go, I think it was on Thursday night, I
would go and sit there for four hours and listen and I was learning and meeting people
so that I could learn how to speak Romanian.
And as I studied and looked at it and studied and I figured it out, I realized that they
are using the totally wrong Bible.
And these are independent fundamental Baptist missionaries that are King James only that
are totally using the wrong Bible just because everybody else is.
And in fact, I just got an email from a guy today about this very issue because he had
contacted me because he was a missionary in Romania and I wrote to him and said, I don't
understand why people are using this other, instead of using the orthodox version.
Because you see, the orthodox versions, the reason that they line up with the King James
is because they are from the east and they spoke Greek so they have to receive Greek
texts that they have used all along.
So the eastern orthodoxy has used Bibles throughout history that were basically lining up with
the King James.
Whereas the Catholic in the west was using the Vulgate and the Catholic manuscripts were
the NIV and so forth come back.
And this man wrote to me and he said this, because I said, why don't they use the orthodox?
I said, if somebody is so worried about all these, and I didn't like the big introduction
in the front or the apocryphal books in the middle or having to buy it from a guy with
a beard that's a foot long, because when I bought my, not that I'm against anybody
having a beard that's a foot long, that's okay, but I walked into the Romanian orthodox
bookstore and the guy had a beard down to here and he was wearing these long black flowing
robes, you know what an orthodox guy looks like, and, what was my point?
And basically I said, you know, if they are so worried about that, why don't they just
get a printing press and just print paperbacks of it or something that are basically just
the text, just the Bible, just Genesis to Revelation, just the 66th verse, or make New
Testaments and make Bibles and just print them out, you know?
Why not?
And he said to me this, he wrote back to me and he said, well, he said, yeah, you know,
there are places that are better in the orthodox version, but he said, here's the problem.
He said, the problem is that it's just kind of become the tradition that this is what
all the Baptists and all the Pentecostals and all, anybody who's a non-orthodox, people
come out of the orthodox, they don't use the orthodox Bible, and he said, I'm afraid
that if I tell somebody who used to be orthodox, hey, your Bible was actually right.
He's like, that could do so much damage to their faith.
And I'm just thinking, I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.
He said, it's going to, basically it's going to confuse them or something for him to say,
what I'm actually preaching out of for the last eight years, actually your orthodox Bible
was right and this stupid one that I've been preaching out of is actually totally wrong.
That's going to shake their faith.
Okay, well just keep preaching the wrong one then, because you'd hate to confuse them.
You know, maybe there wouldn't be any confusion if people would just stand up and just say
what they believe and say right's right and wrong's wrong.
There's nothing confusing about saying that the Bible that they used in Romania for centuries,
for hundreds of years, yes, the orthodox religion teaches work salvation, but they did have
the right Bible and so that's what we're going to preach.
We're not going to preach from some idiot Cornelescu's burning in hell for twisting
God's word, because Cornelescu's in hell if he took out verses and Cornelescu's in hell
if he said that Joseph is Jesus' father, because that's what people in hell believe,
not what people in heaven.
And so I'm not going to use a Bible that was translated by somebody who went to hell for
twisting the Bible.
That's why his part was blotted out.
Oh, but the orthodox version, you know, you can't use it because you're going to confuse
people, because you're going to tell them you're a Baptist, but you use an orthodox
Bible.
So what?
This Bible was made by the Church of England.
I'm not Church of England, I'm a Baptist, but it's still God's word.
So what?
You say, oh, but you can't use a Bible that says orthodox on the cover.
You know what?
I don't care what you put on the cover of this book.
It's God's word.
You could draw a stick figure on the front of it and call it whatever.
You could call it whatever you want.
You could call it the King James version, or you could call it the Stephen Anderson
version, or you could call it whatever you want to call it.
The words between the cover are God's word.
But you see, people are confused.
People are mixed up.
They care more about what man thinks than what God thinks.
That's the bottom line.
They care that some phony Baptist who believes you could lose your salvation, like almost
every Baptist church in Romania preaches and teaches.
Because I've been to Romania, and basically that's why I quit going to that Romanian
Baptist church in Sacramento.
The pastor was saved, but about three-quarters of the people in his church thought you could
lose your salvation in that Romanian Baptist church in Sacramento.
And as I talk to people, I start realizing these people aren't saved.
Some of them were saved, but the majority of them were not saved and said you could
lose your salvation.
And they said I was saved, and then I lost it, and then I got saved again.
And this is what these Romanians are preaching over there, these bunch of Baptists who are
using a false Bible, preaching that you can lose your salvation, preaching repent of your
sins, salvation, and then an American missionary goes over there and wants to fit in with them.
And in order to fit in, uses their phony Bible.
If you want to fit in in America, you use the NIV.
And if you want to fit in in Mexico, you use the 1960 version.
And if you want to fit in in Phoenix, you use the NIV or the Living Bible or Good News
for Modern Man.
But you know what?
I don't want to fit in.
I want to do right.
And if I'm in America, I'm going to preach out of the King James Bible.
If I'm in Mexico, I'm preaching out of the old reign of Valera Antigua.
I'm not preaching out of some modern book from the 60s that takes out hell and takes
out all these things.
And if I'm in Romania, I'm going to use that Romanian Orthodox Bible because I'm not using
a Bible that's not from the received Greek text.