Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Good evening. Welcome to our services tonight here at Faithful Word Baptist Church.
It's good to see everyone here on this Wednesday night. If you would all please take your seats.
And we'll begin with our congregational singing this evening. Let's go to hymn number 404 in your songbooks.
Hymn number 404, When the Battle's Over, number 404.
It begins, Amaya, Soldier of the Cross, number 404.
Sing it out all together now.
Hymn number 404, Amaya, Soldier of the Cross, the Father of the Lamb.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown. Yes, we shall wear a crown. Yes, we shall wear a crown.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown in the new Jerusalem.
Wear a crown, wear a crown, wear a bright and shining crown.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown in the new Jerusalem.
Most kindly, tearing to the skies, the Father lives the years.
All others, love to win the prize and sail with what he sees.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown. Yes, we shall wear a crown. Yes, we shall wear a crown.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown in the new Jerusalem.
Wear a crown, wear a crown, wear a bright and shining crown.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown in the new Jerusalem.
I must fight in battle, breaking free, my perfect war.
I'll bear the toil and cure the pain, supported by my word.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown. Yes, we shall wear a crown. Yes, we shall wear a crown.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown in the new Jerusalem.
Wear a crown, wear a crown, wear a bright and shining crown.
And when the battle's over, we shall wear a crown in the new Jerusalem.
Thank you, Father, for giving us this opportunity to come together and to hear the word of God preached and to sing songs in your name.
I pray that you would just bless all aspects of the service, that you would fill us all with your Holy Spirit,
and that we would be better Christians after the service. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Amen. Hymn number 216 is next.
Surely, goodness and mercy, hymn number 216.
The pilgrim was I, and the wandering, hymn number 216.
Let's sing it out on this first verse together.
Our pilgrim was I and the wandering.
In the cold light of sin I did cry.
Where Jesus the bright shepherd found me.
And now I am my life before.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me.
All the days, all the days of my life.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me.
All the days, all the days of my life.
In whose door if my soul when I carry.
He giveth me strength if I dare.
He leads me beside the still waters.
He guards me each step of the way.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me.
All the days, all the days of my life.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me.
All the days, all the days of my life.
And walk through the port of Sun Valley.
My Savior will walk with me there.
And safely his great hand will be near.
To the mansions he's come to prepare.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me.
All the days, all the days of my life.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me.
All the days, all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
And I shall feast at the table spread from here.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me.
All the days, all the days of my life.
All right, this time we'll go through our announcements together.
If you don't have a bulletin, slip up your hand nice and high.
We'll get to you with one.
On the inside we have our service time.
Sunday mornings at 10.30 is our preaching service.
Sunday nights at 6.
Wednesday nights at 7 is our Bible study.
Now, normally we'd be preaching through the book of Ezekiel,
but tonight is going to be a special sermon on the King James Bible.
And so we've got our friend, Pastor Jonathan Shelley, here with some of his church members.
And so I'm going to be preaching that subject instead tonight.
So we'll pick up with Ezekiel 12 next Wednesday night.
And then we've got the soul winning times listed there below,
as well as salvations and baptisms.
What a cool picture on the right there, isn't that?
So that is just a group of children in Sierra Leone.
And we had our group of 17 soul winners over there.
And not only do they do a lot of personal soul winning,
just, you know, walking up and down the streets, door to door,
but also they got to preach in schools to gigantic crowds like this.
And so they preached to thousands and thousands of students.
We didn't count any of those salvations because, you know,
they don't really talk to them one on one.
But through actually talking to people one on one and giving the gospel,
they were able to see over 500 people saved over the course of that couple weeks in Sierra Leone.
And so great job for them.
And then below that, the church picnic is coming up on Saturday, November 20th.
And that's going to be a lunch thing this time, usually this in the evening.
But this year it's going to start at noon.
And so we provide all the meat.
And so we provide the burgers, the hot dogs, the drinks.
And then we just ask that you bring a side dish or dessert.
If you don't bring anything, it's no problem.
But it's just we'd like people to bring stuff.
And then on the back, we've got the note about the bridal shower.
All the ladies and girls are invited to attend.
That's this Saturday right here from two to four thirty.
And if you could please RSVP to Grace Young at the number provided and then below that.
And that's also a potluck thing.
And then below that is the note about the portraits for the yearbook.
We've got the chili potluck coming up on Sunday evening, not this Sunday, but October 31st.
And then that's about it for announcements.
So let's go ahead and count up the soul winning for the past few days.
So going back to Monday, anything from Monday?
I don't know. My pen is. Oh, wait. I got a pen.
Anything from Monday? Okay.
Okay. Anything else from Monday?
And then what about Tuesday? Anything from Tuesday?
Okay. All right.
And then what about today? Wednesday? Anything from today?
Okay.
Anything else from today?
All right. Very good. Keep up the great work on soul winning.
And with that, let's sing our next song. Come lead us.
All right. You should find Psalm 81 in the front of your hymnals.
If you don't have an insert, please raise your hand.
Psalm 81. Sing aloud unto God our strength.
Sing aloud unto God our strength.
Amen to your hymnals now.
Let's turn to hymn number 461.
461. Resting in His promise.
Hymn number 461.
All my sins were laid on Jesus.
Hymn number 461.
It might be unfamiliar, so if you know it, please sing it out.
If you don't, let's learn it together.
Hymn number 461.
All right, this time we'll pass our offering plates around.
As the plates go around, let's turn our Bibles to Isaiah 59.
Isaiah chapter 59.
And as we always do, we'll read the entire chapter, beginning in verse number 1.
Isaiah chapter 59.
Follow along silently with brother Dan as he reads.
Isaiah 59, beginning in verse number 1.
Isaiah chapter 59, the Bible reads,
Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,
neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God,
and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity.
Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth.
They trust in vanity and speak lies.
They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice eggs and weave the spider's webs.
He that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
Their webs shall not become garments,
neither shall they cover themselves with their works.
Their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.
Wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings.
They have made them crooked paths.
Whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us.
We wait for the light, but behold obscurity.
For brightness, but we walk in darkness.
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes.
We stumble at noonday as in the night.
We are in desolate places as dead men.
We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves.
We look for judgment, but there is none.
For salvation, but it is far off from us.
For our transgressions are multiplied before thee,
and our sins testify against us, for our transgressions are with us.
And as for our iniquities, we know them.
In transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away from our God,
speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood,
and judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off.
For truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
Yea, truth faileth.
And he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey,
and the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.
And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor,
therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteousness it sustained him.
For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head,
and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.
According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries,
recompense to his enemies, to the islands he will repay recompense.
So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun,
when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him,
and the redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord.
As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord.
My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth,
shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed,
nor out of the mouth of thy seed, seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever.
Lord, thank you for allowing us to gather together today,
and Lord, I ask that you would be with Pastor that he can show us your word,
and that we may be edified. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Amen. Tonight I'm preaching on the subject of the King James Bible,
and specifically I want to talk about the preservation of God's Word.
And we talk a lot about the inspiration of God's Word,
the fact that this is not just a man-made book,
where men sat down and wrote down according to their own opinions,
or what they wanted the Bible to say,
but rather the Bible says that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
The Scripture came not in old time by the will of man,
but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
And so we know that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and so that means that it is God-breathed, God-spake the Word.
Over and over again, when we talk about men like David writing the Book of Psalms,
or Isaiah the prophet, as we just looked at,
Jesus will quote this, or the apostles will quote this as,
Well spake the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David the prophet.
Or well spake the Holy Ghost by the mouth of Isaiah the prophet.
So these men were often a mouthpiece of God,
God used men to write the Bible or to speak the words that would be written down in the Bible,
and so we realize that the Bible is divinely inspired, it's the Word of God.
The Apostle Paul said that when you received the Word of God, which you heard of us,
you received it not as the Word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God,
which effectually worketh also in you that believe.
And so the divine inspiration of Scripture is so important to realize
that the Bible is the Word of God, but without the doctrine of preservation,
inspiration doesn't really do us a lot of good, does it?
I mean, how much good would it do me to know that long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away,
some book was divinely inspired, but unfortunately it's been lost, it's been changed,
it's been altered, it's been corrupted, but it doesn't really do me any good
unless in 2021 I have access to that divinely inspired document.
You know, I love the inspiration of God's Word
because I know that I have access today to that divinely inspired Word,
but if it was just in some distant land far away long ago, what good does that do me?
No good at all.
And what sense would it make for God to go through the trouble of inspiring His Word
if He's not going to preserve it?
Think about how much went into the Bible being composed.
The Bible wasn't just a matter of one guy sitting down and writing it or even a handful of guys.
It wasn't even written in one generation.
The Bible was written over the course of about 1,500 years and written by lots of different authors.
You don't even know how many authors because most of the Bible is written anonymously.
So holy men of God, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,
you've got a multitude of authors, you've got it being written in three different languages,
you've got it written over the course of 1,600 years,
all so that it could just be lost after a couple hundred years.
And that's why we need scholars and archaeologists to dig it up and recreate it and reconstruct the text.
Give me a break.
You know, if God's going to go through the trouble of revealing His Word over the course of 1,600 years
through all of these various authors in all of these miraculous ways
and providentially allow it all to be compiled into the Bible,
I'm pretty sure that He can also preserve His Word
so that what was written through divine inspiration could be transmitted to us today
and that what we have today is the same thing that He inspired.
And so I believe that we have God's Word today and this is not a baseless belief
because the Bible is chock full of Scriptures promising that God's Word will be preserved.
So look at where you are there in Isaiah chapter 59 verse 21.
The Bible says,
He said the Word that was inspired in the days of Isaiah,
the preaching that Isaiah did where he spoke the words of God and said,
That's what henceforth means.
From now on, the Word that you are delivering Isaiah,
this revelation of the Word of God through the prophet Isaiah,
it's not going anywhere.
And that's why in 2021, I can with confidence say that the book of Isaiah that I have right here in front of me
is the same as the book of Isaiah that God inspired all those many years ago.
Now, of course, I'm reading it in English, but that doesn't matter, does it?
It's the content that matters.
It's not that the words that Isaiah preached had some kind of a magical sound to them, magical ring to them.
It was just kind of the way that the consonants and the vowels kind of played together.
No, no, no. It's the meaning.
It's the content.
It's what was being said.
And here's the thing.
Whether we're reading it in Hebrew or English, it's the same meaning, same content,
the same statements are being made, the same eternal truths are being delivered.
So this is a wonderful promise in Isaiah 59 verse 21, but it's not the only one because we have many more.
If you would turn in your Bible to 1 Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter chapter 1.
While you're turning there, I'll read for you some other scripture.
The Bible says in Proverbs chapter 30, every word of God is pure.
He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee and thou be found a liar.
So the author of Proverbs here in chapter 30, who again, it gives us his name,
but he might as well be an anonymous guy because his name's Agur, you know, the son of Jakey.
You know, we don't know who either of those people are.
But we've got the author of Proverbs writing somewhere around the time of David, Solomon, you know, roughly in that period.
He's definitely writing long after the books of Moses have been written down and other scriptures are out there.
And he's saying every word of God is pure present tense.
Every word of God is pure.
Don't add to it.
Don't diminish from it.
God's word is pure.
And then, of course, you have David in the book of Psalms saying things like God's word is exceeding pure.
Therefore, thy servant loveth it.
And then you have him saying the law of the Lord is perfect.
OK. Now, if David is praising the law of the Lord and talking about how perfect it is and how right it is and how pure it is
in the book of Psalms, you know, he's writing several hundred years after that law had been given at Mount Sinai.
But in David's time, in the book of Proverbs time, that book of the law was still pure.
It had been preserved.
It remained.
But Jesus Christ said in the New Testament that till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law until all be fulfilled.
And, of course, everything has not been yet fulfilled.
We've not yet reached the end of the world.
And so God's word has still been preserved.
And the book of the law specifically, every jot, every tittle of that Hebrew Old Testament, Jesus said that it's easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one jot or one tittle to pass from the law until all be fulfilled.
It'd be easier for the earth to cease to exist than for God's word to cease to exist.
That's some pretty strong language about the preservation of God's word.
Look down at your Bible there in 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 23, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever.
What does it mean to abide?
Abide means to stick around.
And the Bible is saying that God's word will stick around forever.
For all flesh is as grass.
Human beings are like grass.
In what sense?
All flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
So we as human beings, we're like grass.
Isn't that a blessing?
We're all grass and the glory of man.
So let's say, let's say we have some great achievement or we excel in some area.
Then it's like a little flower of the grass.
Look at me.
I did something great with my life.
It's a little flower on the grass.
And then comes the lawnmower.
Just rips it all apart.
That's what we are in the scheme of things because our life is but a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away.
But the word of the Lord endureth forever.
The word of God is not grass that sprung up in the Bible times, sprung up during the New Testament.
And then somewhere around the first, second, third, fourth, fifth century, somewhere the lawnmower came and chopped it up.
And now we need these scholars and experts and archeologists to kind of put Humpty Dumpty back together again because it's somehow been damaged.
Folks, God's word ain't broke so don't try to fix it.
We don't need to reconstruct the original text because we never stopped having God's word in the traditional text.
And what does tradition even mean anyway?
It's not corona, I promise.
What does tradition mean?
What does tradition even mean?
You know, a tradition is something that you pass down, right?
So let's say you have a tradition in your family where you eat a certain meal on Thanksgiving, you eat a certain meal on Christmas.
You know, maybe you read a certain Bible passage on certain holidays or sometimes you have other just kind of silly traditions that are unique to your family and just fun things that you do and things that wouldn't really make sense to anyone else.
But what is a tradition?
It's just something that's passed down.
Dad did it.
I do it.
My kids are going to do it.
That's a tradition.
So when we talk about the traditional text of scripture, what we mean is it's the scripture that the previous generation used and the generation before them and the generation before them.
It's something that's been passed down.
There's never been a time when it wasn't being used and preached and when souls weren't being won with this text.
That's what we mean by a traditional text.
So what's the other kind of text?
If the traditional text is the one that we've received through tradition, the one that has been passed down to us, our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers used this text, what would be the other kind of text?
Well, the other kind of text would be a text that's not a traditional text, but it's a rediscovered text.
It's a found text.
So the modern versions are not based on the traditional Hebrew text and the traditional Greek text.
Instead, they're based on something that has been unearthed, something that's been discovered, uncovered.
And wow, this is something that was unknown to the previous generation.
These are texts that were unknown perhaps in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, but oh, now we've found them.
But here's the problem with these texts that you've dug up or unearthed or uncovered and you say, well, you know, we've carbon dated them and we've checked with the experts.
We've analyzed them and we've decided that these are closer to the original.
They're older.
But the problem is you don't know where these texts came from.
You don't know the story behind these texts.
You know, you dig up some text or you find some.
I mean, look, take the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, and the Dead Sea Scrolls have nothing to do with the New Testament, absolutely nothing to do with the New Testament.
There's not a single New Testament verse in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It's all Jewish stuff and it's Old Testament stuff or just non-biblical stuff, extra biblical stuff.
But take the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, okay?
You got the Dead Sea Scrolls, but there are lots of scholars who are all really smart and have done a lot of research that have dramatically different opinions about what the Dead Sea Scrolls library even is.
I mean, you have experts and scholars saying, oh, this is the library from the temple at Jerusalem and before the temple was destroyed, you know, they took this out to this cave and hid it here and that's what this is.
And then the more mainstream view would be that it was a sect of people who'd broken away from mainstream Judaism and they had very strange and peculiar beliefs known as a Qumran sect and this was their library and these are their scriptures and there are other theories out there.
But the bottom line is nobody really knows for sure where these texts came from, where these scriptures came from, what are they?
You know, and so if you don't know where they came from, you don't really necessarily know whether these are reliable, whether they've been tampered with, whether they've been doctored, whether this represents the scripture that God was using at the time or whether this just represents maybe just a trash dump for reject scriptures.
You don't know.
You know, oh, we messed up.
These are messed up.
Let's hide these somewhere.
Let's get these out of circulation.
Who knows?
You don't know what they are.
But I'll tell you what you do know.
You know what God is doing in your generation.
You can often know what God did in the previous generation and so I would trust the word of God that Christians have been using and preaching and that's been used to get people saved and it's been used to change lives rather than just, oh, we dug this up.
We dug this up and an expert told us it's old.
A scientist said it's old.
An archaeologist said it's old and if it's old, it must be better.
But hold on a second.
Is older necessarily better?
Because even in the Apostle Paul's day, there were already people writing counterfeit scriptures of the New Testament.
You know, the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians alludes to the fact that there could be people writing epistles pretending to be the Apostle Paul.
And that's why he said that he's writing these things that you be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter as from us as at the day of Christ's hand.
You know, a letter that seems like it's coming from us could deceive you into false doctrine.
That's why at the end of that same epistle, he says, the salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle, so I write.
He said, look, you'll know it's an epistle for me because at the end of every single epistle, I write the last little salutation in my own handwriting.
You see, usually when the Apostle Paul wrote an epistle, he dictated it to someone else and they wrote it down for him like a secretary or a scribe.
That's why in Romans Chapter 16, it says, I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.
Who's Tertius?
The epistle of Tertius to the Romans?
No, it's the epistle of Paul to the Romans because Paul is the one who dictated it to Tertius.
Tertius is just a guy who writes it down.
Okay, so here's the thing.
If you're getting letters from Paul in different handwritings, because you might get one letter from Paul in Tertius' handwriting, and then you get another letter from Paul and it's in Silvanus' handwriting, and then you get another letter from Paul and it's in Timothy's handwriting, and you get another, you get a letter from Paul and it's in Sosthenes' handwriting, how do you know when it's really a letter from Paul?
So what he would do to just authenticate his letter and kind of just set people's mind at ease so that they know it's really from him is that he wrote a little salutation at the end of each letter in his own handwriting.
And that's why you'll notice that at the end of Paul's epistles, there will always be this little ending, but it's always a little bit different, okay?
Like, for example, at the end of Colossians, he says, the salutation by the hand of me, Paul.
What's he saying?
I did this with my own hand.
The salutation by the hand of me, Paul.
And what does he write in his own handwriting?
Remember my bonds, grace be with you, amen.
Everything else is written by someone else.
But he does that in his own handwriting at the end, right?
And then at the end of 1 Thessalonians, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, amen.
Just that part is written in his own handwriting.
Everything else was dictated to a scribe, to a secretary.
He doesn't want his hand to get tired.
You know, make the young guys do that grunt work, right?
You know, he's got a helper for that, okay?
So there's always that little ending, that variation at the end.
What does that tell you?
That tells you that there must have been an actual problem for Paul.
And he's not just paranoid, you know, coming up with this, I gotta do this in my own handwriting.
He's saying, no, no, no, this is to authenticate that the Epistle is really from me
because there were clearly people writing forgeries, pretending to be him, okay?
Not only that, but the Apostle Paul warned when he said,
we are not as many which corrupt the Word of God.
So if there were many people corrupting the Word of God,
then obviously, just because something is from the second century AD,
that does not mean that it's more accurate, does it?
Think about that.
Well, you know, the King James is based on manuscripts from the 10th, 11th, 12th century, 14th century.
The new versions are based on something from the second century, the third century, fourth century.
And the mentality says older is more accurate.
That's the mentality.
Folks, wrong.
Because there have always been these spurious copies of scriptures.
There have always been corruptions and forgeries and wrong things.
And typically, the reason why this stuff is being found many years later is because it was discarded.
Because the stuff that's being used, you know what happens to stuff that you use?
You wear it out.
You wear it out, you copy it, you throw away the old one,
or sometimes they would even reuse the paper and wash vellum and so forth and reuse it,
whereas something that is not being used, discarded, will often survive.
It's just random chance.
But here's the thing.
Does the fact that it's from the second or third century guarantee?
And most of their evidence is not from the second or third century.
Most of it's from the fourth century or later.
But let's say even if something is from the second century AD or something,
does that guarantee that it's accurate?
No.
But here's what they'll say.
Well, you're getting closer to the original.
You're getting closer.
And here's a statement that has always kind of cracked me up.
Closer to the truth.
Here's the problem with this idea of closer to the truth.
If you don't know what the truth is, how do you know whether you got closer to it?
Because these modern Bible advocates, they will tell you,
we don't know exactly what the original said.
We haven't seen the autograph.
So we don't know what the original exactly said.
But what we believe is that every single year,
we're getting a little bit closer to the original.
We're getting closer to the truth.
Here's the problem.
You don't know the destination.
How can you say?
I mean, what if I'm driving and I don't know where the destination is?
And I say, we're getting closer.
Keep driving.
How do I know we're not getting further away?
Right?
If you don't know the destination,
it's impossible to know whether you're getting closer to a place that you don't know.
This statement has no meaning.
Closer to the truth is a meaningless statement if you don't know what the truth is.
Now, if you know the truth, then you can evaluate, okay, this is close to the truth.
This is far from the truth because I know what the truth is.
But if I don't know what the truth is,
I don't know if I'm going left, right, or sideways toward it, away from it.
Who knows?
Am I getting warmer?
And here's the thing.
The modern versions are based on a text that is constantly changing.
And that's why the modern versions have to keep changing.
The NIV that's on sale right now is not the same NIV when I was a kid.
And 20 years from now, it'll be a different NIV.
And it'll be a different ESV.
You know, recently, the ESV committee made a statement and said,
this is the final ESV.
It's done.
We're done with it.
We're not coming out with another one.
That lasted, I think, like a year.
And then they announced, we're doing another ESV.
It never ends.
But why does it never end?
Because the underlying Greek text keeps changing, okay?
So the King James Bible is based on what we would call the received text
or the textus receptus, Greek New Testament.
Whereas the modern versions are based on a Greek New Testament
called the Nestle Alonde, Greek New Testament.
Well, here's the thing.
What you'll notice about the Nestle Alonde is that I believe they're on
the 28th edition right now, 28th edition.
Now, are they done?
Is this it?
We've done it.
We got it.
Here we go.
This is the Greek New Testament for you.
Nope.
There's going to be for sure a 29th edition, for sure a 30th edition,
for sure a 31st edition.
You say, well, how can you possibly know that, Pastor Anderson?
How can you know the future to know that?
I'll tell you how.
Because they have come out with now a whole new method of textual criticism
called CBGM, the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method,
and it's this new angle on the Greek New Testament,
and so far they've only applied it to a few books.
So they've applied it to books like 1 and 2 Peter and James.
They've applied it to certain books, Jude, several books,
and that is reflected in this new Nestle Alonde that's coming out.
But here's the thing.
They're going to do this to the whole New Testament,
and it makes serious meaningful changes in the text.
And so what they're saying with this new Nestle Alonde,
they're not saying, okay, yeah, I think we might have gotten it.
I think we're there, 29th edition.
Here we go.
Twenty-ninth time is the charm.
No.
Because they're saying, well, then on the 30th edition,
we'll apply CBGM to a few more books.
And then for the 31st edition, we'll apply CBGM to a few more books,
and it just never ends.
And then I guarantee you, once they've applied that to the whole New Testament,
then they'll come up with some new idea.
Pretty soon they'll have artificial intelligence deciding, right?
I mean, come on, we've got to do more textual criticism
because now we can have an AI.
And hopefully it doesn't decide to take over the world and kill everybody
when it's done.
Once it gets the New Testament text dialed in,
then it starts firing nuclear weapons or something.
I don't know.
That's what seems to always happen with these things.
But the point is that the text of the modern versions is constantly changing.
And you know what that makes me think of?
Shifting sands.
And I don't know about you,
but I don't want to base my life and ministry
and stake my eternity on the shifting sands of the Bible of the month club
and on a new text for 2022 and then a couple more years, another one,
and then it changes again.
No, I want to be founded on the rock.
I want the whole world to be changing around me
and the storms raging around me and everything is changing
and nothing is secure except one thing,
the Bible, the word of God, I want it to stay the same.
And thank God it will stay the same.
And when I'm an old man preaching,
it's still going to say the same thing it said when I was a young man.
It says the same thing that it said when I got saved as a six-year-old boy
and now I can stand up here 40 years old and it says the same thing
and I don't care if I live to be 100, it will say the same thing.
And you know what?
It's important that we have that rock that doesn't change.
It's God's word.
It's eternal.
Don't let it be like, you know, the ESV is like the flower of the grass.
Actually, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
because that's giving it too much glory.
It's like a crab grass.
Okay, it's a weed.
The weeds of the field, the ESV, the NIV, the Living Bible, the Message,
the New Living Translation, the Revised Standard Version,
these things are like grass and they're just being eaten up by the lawnmower of time
and they keep changing and they keep dying and then they get resurrected
and they get gnarlier and gnarlier and they get worse and worse
and they drift further and further from the traditional text.
Are they getting closer to the truth?
No one knows.
No one knows, right, of these guys that are making them.
You know, I'll tell you right now, I know that this is the truth.
This right here is the truth.
It's not closest.
I'm not going to get up and tell you, well, you know,
the King James is the best thing we've got.
This is the closest to the truth.
No, this is the truth.
This is the Word of God.
It's perfect.
It's preserved.
It's inspired.
And thank God we have it in our English language.
What a blessing.
Go to 2 Peter 1.
I think you're in 1 Peter, so just flip right over to 2 Peter 1.
2 Peter 1, verse 18, I'll start reading while you get there.
And this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the Holy Mount.
We have also a more sure word of prophecy, where unto you do well that you take heed,
as unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts,
knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God,
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
So notice the prophecy came when?
Did it come recently or did it come in old time, according to Peter?
He said this came in old time in verse 21, right?
The prophecy came in old time, but notice the present tense in verse 19.
We have a more sure word of prophecy.
Now more sure is a comparison, right?
More sure, more sure than what?
Well, in verse 18, he talks about hearing a voice from heaven in the Mount of Transfiguration.
Peter, James, and John went with Jesus up into the mountain,
and they saw Jesus transfigured before them, shining and bright,
and they had to be sheltered from the brightness of his glory.
And when they saw Jesus transfigured before them, they heard a voice from heaven saying,
this is my beloved son, hear ye him.
Who's ever had an experience like that?
Not me.
Now what if you had that experience?
Think about that for a minute.
Put yourself in that position.
You're up on the mountaintop.
Jesus appears unto you in all of his glory as he would appear in the second coming,
and you hear a voice booming from heaven, this is my beloved son, hear ye him.
Do you think that that would strengthen your faith a little bit?
Would that give you some confidence if that experience happened to you?
And you'd say, wow, that experience would just really seal the deal, wouldn't it?
That the word of God is true, because I had this experience.
But you know what the Bible actually says is, no, we have a more sure word of prophecy.
You know what Peter's saying?
He says, I have more faith in the Old Testament scriptures, the prophecy that came in old time,
the prophecy of the scriptures that came from men as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
I have more confidence, it's a more sure word of prophecy, the Old Testament scriptures,
than that experience I had in the mountain and hearing that voice.
Now some people would say like, how could you say that?
It's about the experience.
And atheists would probably say, well, I'm not going to accept the scripture,
but if I had that experience, I'd believe it.
I guarantee you most atheists would say that if they had this experience in the mount,
now they'll believe.
But let me tell you something, the Bible is a better proof.
And let me tell you why.
The Bible doesn't change, and the Bible has power, and the Bible is unlikely to get a book.
You could later wonder about that experience that you had.
If you're up in the mountain and you heard that, you might wonder, did I imagine that?
Ten years go by, 15 years go by, and you might say, did I imagine that?
Or was I hallucinating?
Was I in some kind of a trance?
Did I dream that?
I think we've all probably had real life experiences that were very strange.
I'm not talking about a religious experience.
I'm just saying you might have had a strange experience where later you wondered,
did that really happen because it was so weird or so extraordinary?
And as time goes on, you doubt yourself sometimes.
You doubt, like, is that really what happened?
Or did I dream that because it was so incredible?
And so our memories fade.
The grass fades.
Human beings fade, but the Bible doesn't fade.
See, I can pick up the Bible, and the power is right there.
The voice of Scripture today is just as loud and clear as it was when I was six years old.
It's just as loud and clear right now.
Whereas if I'd heard an audible voice at age six, I'd start wondering, man, I don't know, I was six,
and I heard that voice, and was that just a kid with an imagination?
See what I'm saying?
What's more trustworthy to Peter?
Peter says the more sure word of prophecy is the Scripture.
That's more sure than a voice that I heard from the sky,
which is pretty dramatic hearing that voice of God the Father speaking from the sky.
I'm not downplaying it. He's not downplaying it.
He's just saying the Scripture is even better.
So don't envy Peter and say, man, I wish I could have been there.
You have something better.
The whole Bible, 66 books.
Because, you know, hearing one statement, this is my beloved son, hear ye him,
you're only going to get so much mileage out of that statement.
This will keep you busy for the rest of your life.
There's a lot more meat on the bone here than just one statement.
Because you do have that statement, too.
I can find it for you and show you.
But you've got other stuff, too.
This is better.
And it's more certain.
It's more sure.
He's saying I'll trust this more than I trust my eyes and my ears.
This is the absolute truth right here.
This is the final authority.
This is the Word of God.
So here's the thing.
If you actually have faith in the Word of God,
then it's pretty easy to believe that God inspired it.
And it's pretty easy to believe that God preserved it.
Why would God go through the trouble of inspiring it if he's not going to preserve it?
Heaven and earth shall pass away, Jesus said.
But my words shall not pass away.
How about Isaiah chapter 30 verse 8?
Now go, write it before them in a table and note it in a book
that it may be for the time to come forever and ever.
God told Isaiah, write this in a book so that it will be forever and ever.
Just in case forever is not long enough, and ever.
Okay.
So that's not going to end.
Now a lot of people, when you preach about this and say God's Word is preserved,
traditional text, you know, the traditional Greek and Hebrew,
not some new discovery, not something that was dug up
by a bunch of German archaeologists and scholars and philosophers of the 19th century
as they're questioning everything about God and the Bible
and getting into teachings of, you know, evolution
so that they can just believe that human beings just, you know, came from animals
and it all just kind of happened and that God's not required.
You know, all this junk of the 19th century that produced this attitude that says
we don't believe the traditional text of the Bible is right.
We need to reconstruct what was really written.
All of that junk, all of that philosophy that came out of that, right,
has caused people to, you know, go down this road of basically not believing
that the Word of God that we have today is the same thing that was written.
But, you know, we can talk about all that and talk about how God's Word is preserved
and we don't need to rediscover it or reconstruct it.
It's perfect and whatever.
But then a lot of people would say, okay, okay, I believe that the Word of God is preserved
but how do we know that the King James Bible is where we can find it, right?
I mean, you know, we're in 2021 America.
Here we are and we speak English.
We know that God's Word is out there somewhere.
He promised he'd preserve it for all generations.
But how do we know that we've got it here in the King James Bible?
You know, do we have to learn Hebrew in order to get it?
Do we have to learn Greek in order to get it?
And the good news is, no, you don't.
Isn't that a relief, right?
Because to learn how to read Hebrew is going to take years.
And to learn how to read a Greek New Testament properly is going to take years.
You know, even if you work really hard at it, you know, I've worked really hard at it.
I've spent many, many hours a day for many years and that's what it takes to be able to read it.
And I've got good news for you.
You don't need to because guess what?
I've been reading it in Greek and Hebrew and you're not going to believe this
but it says the exact same thing that it says in your English Bible.
And reading it in the King James is going to give you all of the same doctrine, all of the same teaching.
And not only that, you are getting exactly what God said.
It's not like, well, the English kind of gives you the gist of it.
No, no, no, believe me, the thing that will surprise you when you read it in the original languages
is just how, wow, this really does say the exact same thing that it says in English.
Wow, this is really obvious. This is really clear.
You're not just going to be like, ooh, the hidden mysteries.
Now, a lot of people will use their imagination and find a lot of hidden mysteries in the Hebrew and Greek
but honestly, if you read it in English, it says the same thing.
It's just in English, your language. Isn't that great?
But you say, well, how do you know that? How do you know?
Well, let me give you some things to think about of why we believe that, okay?
The first point I would like to make is that God can speak any language.
God's not limited to one language, so it's not like you have to learn Hebrew to get God's word
because Hebrew is some kind of a special language.
If Hebrew were a special language, then the New Testament would be in Hebrew, right?
I mean, if God's word can only be in Hebrew, if you can't translate it, then why wasn't the New Testament written in Hebrew?
Guess how many handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament we have in Hebrew? Zero.
Guess how many handwritten manuscripts we have of the New Testament in Greek? Well over 5,000.
Not only that, but most of the New Testament is written to places like Corinth.
Where's Corinth? In Greece. Thessalonica, right?
The seven churches in Asia, which is the western part of Turkey, also known as Asia Minor,
which at that time was a Greek-speaking place.
It was culturally Greek, it was ethnically Greek, it was linguistically Greek.
So Revelation, Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
You know, Luke is writing to who? The former treatise, have I written to the O Theophilus?
Well, Theophilus is a Greek name.
All of the shout-outs that you'll read where Paul and his epistles is giving shout-outs to his fellow workers,
it's just Greek name after Greek name after Greek name.
The apostle John is bringing up Greek people's names.
You know, it's obvious to anyone that the New Testament is written in Greek.
Well, if the New Testament is written in Greek, you know what that shows me?
That God's not limited to one language because he can do the Old Testament in Hebrew.
He can even do several chapters of it in Aramaic.
And then he can do the New Testament in Greek.
And in fact, the Greek New Testament quotes the Hebrew Old Testament.
And guess what? It's still God's word, isn't it?
Jesus Christ, who spoke Aramaic, can quote a Hebrew scripture and say,
Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.
And then it's written down in Greek.
So that's going through three different languages.
You've got Jesus speaking in Aramaic about a Hebrew scripture, and then it's written about in Greek.
Then you've got the Day of Pentecost, where all languages are being represented.
There's just all manner of languages, and they're speaking as they're moved by the Holy Ghost in all those languages.
Sounds to me like God's word can be expressed in a variety of languages.
It can be expressed in a Semitic language like Hebrew.
It can be expressed in a European language like Greek.
So guess what? It can be expressed in a European language like English, too.
Or Spanish, or German, or French, or Portuguese, Icelandic, Hungarian, whatever.
Hungarian's not a European language, but God's word can be expressed in all languages.
And so that right there is evidence from scripture of God's word going from language to language,
and it's still God's word. It's still considered every word, even though it's going from language to language.
But you say, okay, well, you know, why English?
And it always cracks me up when people have this attitude of, like, oh, you Americans, you think you're so important.
You think you're special. Stupid Americans think that...
But hold on a second. You know, why English? Oh, I don't know.
Maybe because it's the most important language in the world.
How dare you?
Well, let's see. It's the language spoken by the most people in the world.
Now, you can say, well, Mandarin Chinese. Okay.
Folks, that might be a language that has the most native speakers,
but if you count people who learn English as a second language or are learning English as a second language,
I mean, we're talking about a couple billion people with varying levels of English proficiency.
Even just native speakers, English is one of the very biggest languages.
But when you count second language speakers, and let me tell you something, it's getting more and more that way every day.
And so when I was a teenager and visited Germany, nobody spoke English.
I mean, to get around in Germany, you had to speak German.
Now you go to Germany and all the young people speak English and they're fluent.
It's incredible how good their English is. And that's the way the whole world is going.
It's just every day there are more people speaking English.
But not only is English the number one most significant language in the world today,
and has been for a long time and will be going forward for a long time.
It's a universal second language. The influence of it is huge.
But not only that, English has also been the language of the most missionaries and preachers of the gospel and the language of soul winning.
Why? Because if you just look at the missionary movements over the last few hundred years, who did the most missions?
Who sent the most evangelical Christian or Baptist missionaries all over the world?
It's going to be English speakers.
And not only that, how many people have taken a King James Bible and translated directly from the King James?
Because they didn't know Greek and Hebrew.
They translated directly from the King James into African languages, different tribal languages of different Polynesian islands and everything.
And so this Bible has been used to reach so many millions and millions of English speakers.
And then it's even been translated into other languages.
And so the missions movements of the last few hundred years, the biggest portion of them have been English.
Obviously God knew that English is going to be a huge language.
That tons of Baptists are going to speak English.
Tons of evangelical Christians and missionaries are going to speak English.
So God, through his providence, allowed all of the political and world events to fall into place so that we could get this excellent translation in English.
Because other languages didn't necessarily get as great of a translation because a lot of languages had the Bible translated by one guy or two guys.
But our English Bible, a lot of work went into it.
Which is why it's such an excellent product.
But God was behind that.
Because God knew English is going to be super big.
It's going to be super important.
He wants his word to go to as many people as possible.
Now English is not the only language where we find God's word.
Don't misunderstand me.
The original Greek is God's word.
The original Hebrew is God's word.
And here's the thing.
That original Greek and Hebrew has also been translated into a multitude of languages.
And in fact, if you have the choice and you have the ability, you'd want to translate from the original Greek and Hebrew.
But if all you've got is the King James and you don't know Greek and Hebrew and you're trying to reach the guy with the bone in his nose, well then, by all means, translate the King James.
Get this guy to first base spiritually.
Right?
Thank God the King James is such a fantastic translation.
Now, a lot of people would ask this question.
You know, well where was the Bible before 1611?
Hmm?
And they think they're so smug.
Like, gotcha sucker.
So where was the Bible before 1611?
Hmm?
Well, how about the Greek and Hebrew text from which the King James Bible was translated?
How about that?
You know, where was the Old Testament preserved before the King James?
In Daniel Bomberg's edition of the Hebrew Old Testament, which the KJV translators used to produce this.
That's where it was.
You know, where was the Greek text?
It was in the Textus Receptus in the editions of Stephanus and Beza.
That's where you'll find the Greek text underlying the King James Bible.
And so there you go.
And it was translated into lots of other languages, lots of other places.
Now, here's the thing.
You're not going to have a history of English Bibles all the way back to the time of Christ because English didn't exist.
OK.
So what's the history of the English Bible?
Well, first of all, let's talk about the history of the English language.
OK.
We know that around 1000 AD, the language was Anglo-Saxon, also known as Old English.
And it was a Germanic language that is totally unintelligible to us today.
So unless you've actually studied Old English, you would not be able to understand any of it.
OK.
You know, I'll give you a little sample of it.
OK.
Here's the beginning of Beowulf in Old English.
Do anybody understand any of that?
No.
It's completely unintelligible.
There are little parts where you'll be like, I know what that just said.
You know, in the opening of Beowulf, there's a part where it says, fat was good cunning.
That was a good king.
That was one good king.
And you're like, ah, I understood that for a second.
But by and large, it's completely unintelligible, a totally foreign language.
So don't let anybody tell you that the King James Bible is Old English.
No.
Old English is 100% unintelligible.
It's Anglo-Saxon.
It's nowhere near what we have today.
Now, what changed?
How did English change so much to what we have today?
Well, William the Bastard, also known as William the Conqueror, in 1066 AD, invaded England
from Normandy, right?
So the Norman French language speakers conquered England.
And they ruled over England for a while.
And so the people that are in charge are speaking Norman French.
And the people who've been conquered and subjugated are speaking Anglo-Saxon or Old English.
So over time, a hybrid language developed where they can communicate with one another,
where you're mixing the language of the conquerors with the language of the conquered.
OK.
So this is why a lot of things in English will have two ways of saying it.
One of them is the more Germanic way, coming from the Anglo-Saxon roots.
And one of them is the more Latin-based way, coming from the French roots.
So we talk about English being influenced by Latin.
But it's really through French.
So it goes Latin to French to English.
So for example, you think about certain words related to food.
And we talk about the animal.
We're talking about a cow.
But then when we eat it, it becomes beef.
Why?
See, the people who are eating it are the wealthy nobles, the people that are the bosses,
the norms, right?
They're going to speak French.
And so they're going to use the word beef.
But the guy who's actually taking care of it out in the field, he's calling it a cow
because he's doing the work.
And they're eating the steaks.
Everybody understand?
Which is why you're going to go from a swine or a sow out in the field, the Germanic word,
to pork on the table, which is the more Latin-based word.
And have you ever noticed that all of our fanciest words in English are more the Latin-based
words, and usually the more everyday basic words are the more Germanic words?
So here's a little trick if you're learning Spanish, is if you want to just make up a
word in Spanish, because I do this all the time.
If I don't know what a word is in Spanish, I think of the fanciest way to say something
in English, and then I sort of just Spanishize it.
And usually it ends up being a word.
But if you're learning German, you do the opposite.
You take the most basic way to say it and Germanize it.
Okay?
So when you're learning German, the hard words are really hard in German.
But in Spanish, the hard words are the easiest words.
So for example, these really difficult words like propitiation, tribulation, redemption,
transubstantiation, these type of words.
Trying to come up with these in German, you'd kind of be like, oh man, how do you say that
in German again?
But in Spanish, it's just like propitiation, tribulation.
You know, you just kind of like make it sound Spanish.
Redemption, transubstantiation.
You know, you can kind of fake your way through with these words.
You know, you take the kind of big fancy highfalutin words, and they mainly come from Latin.
And then you've got the more basic words, you know, mother, father, milk, bread, cheese.
Those all sound like German.
Milch, fatter, mutter, brooder.
Right?
These are all, they're easy.
The basic words, milch, broot, you know.
But the fancier stuff is more Latin based.
Okay.
So that's what, that's where our English language mixed in with French.
And that mixed language became known as Middle English.
So from around 1150 to 1450, that's called Middle English.
And then that language of Middle English evolved into what we know today as Modern English.
So by the time you get into the 1500s, you're into Modern English at that point.
Okay.
Now, Middle English is not really impossible to understand.
Like, you could kind of understand a little bit because it's much closer to Modern English.
Old English, forget about it.
Okay.
So you get into the 1500s, Modern English hasn't been around that long, has it?
No.
Now, there were Bibles in Old English and there were Bibles in Middle English.
Most of them have not survived.
Almost no literature from Old English has really survived in the scheme of things.
There's very little.
We barely even have Beowulf.
It's one manuscript that almost burned in a fire.
It's like a fluke that we even have Beowulf.
So you have very little literature in Old English.
You know, you have all kinds of scraps of Bible verses from Old and Middle English,
but most of it hasn't survived.
Okay.
So we get into Modern English.
We need the Bible in Modern English, right?
Well, God in His providence worked things out to where all of the Jews got kicked out
of Spain in 1492.
Okay.
Imagine the Jews getting kicked out of somewhere.
It's hard to imagine, but it happened.
So they got kicked out of Spain in 1492.
It's easy to remember because it's the same year that Columbus sailed.
So the Jews got expelled from Spain in 1492 and, you know, they brought their Hebrew scriptures
and their knowledge of Hebrew to the rest of Europe, to mainland Europe and to England
because they, you know, deeper into mainland Europe because they had to get out of the
Iberian Peninsula of Spain because they're kicked out, right?
Also, in 1453, Constantinople was sacked by the Turks, and so you have the Greeks fleeing
from Constantinople in 1453, and they're bringing all their Greek scriptures and knowledge of
Greek and everything, and they're taking that deeper into Europe and into England as well.
So, God is kind of preparing the way for the printing press and the Word of God to
be mass produced in a way unlike ever before.
Because before the printing press, I mean, the Word of God couldn't really be produced
in those quantities.
It had to be written by hand, so it's a long, laborious process.
Well, the printing press is going to make it possible to really crank out Bibles.
Okay.
So, I want to make sure it's the right Bible if you're going to crank out that many copies.
Amen?
So, God worked out world events to where the Greeks are heading in from this direction,
the Jews are heading in from this direction, all kinds of Greek manuscripts, Hebrew manuscripts,
the people who know how to speak it and read it, and they can teach that to scholars that
are interested in learning.
Okay.
So, in the 1500s, you have a movement to go back and basically take the Bible back to
the original Greek and Hebrew because the idea was that the Latin Bible was corrupt.
The Roman Catholic Church had corrupted the Latin Bible, and we don't know if we can trust
it.
Let's go back to the original languages and see what the Bible says in the original languages.
So, you've got Erasmus publishing the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament
in 1517, then he produced the second edition, third edition, fourth edition, fifth edition,
as he's looking at more manuscripts, honing it, dialing it in.
You've got Daniel Baumberg producing a printed copy of the Hebrew Old Testament.
So, now you've got Hebrew Old Testament, Greek New Testament being printed on the printing
press in the 1500s, and so now these start getting translated into everyday languages.
They start getting translated into Spanish, French, Icelandic, Hungarian, German, down
the list of all of these European languages.
You start translating these from the original Greek and Hebrew.
And so, specifically in English, you've got William Tyndale.
Now William Tyndale is a fugitive and an outlaw because the Catholic Church was dominating
in England at this time, and so it's not legal for the Word of God to just go free.
So, William Tyndale is a fugitive, he's one guy, but thankfully, he was a brilliant man.
He was a really good translator.
And so, he was able to translate the New Testament into modern English.
So, William Tyndale produced the first modern English translation of the Greek New Testament.
William Tyndale, right?
And he's working on the Old Testament, but he ended up getting burned at the stake by
the Catholic Church, so he couldn't finish.
So, then other people stepped in and they finished Tyndale's work on the Old Testament,
they translated the rest of it, and other people revised his New Testament.
So, from the time Erasmus published his Greek New Testament in 1517 all the way up to when
the King James is published in 1611, do the math.
I mean, we're looking at almost 100 years, right?
What happened during that 100 years?
Here's what happened.
You've got scholars working on the Greek New Testament.
You've got scholars poring over the Hebrew Old Testament, learning the language, collecting
the manuscripts, looking at the evidence, and so you have a purification process, a
honing, a dialing in of the text.
So, does this sound like the process just happened real fast in a hurry?
It happened over the course of a century.
So, there was plenty of time for everybody to look at it, study it, scrutinize it, go
back and forth, compare, revise, and get this thing dialed in.
So, several Bibles come out throughout the course of the 1500s, and finally we get to
the Bishop's Bible.
So, the Bishop's Bible is coming out at a time when the Catholic Church is no longer
in charge of England.
England has become Protestant, and so now it's sponsored by the Church of England.
It's sponsored by the Queen of England, and the Bishop's Bible was really a magnificent
Bible version, really just a phenomenal work of scholarship and translating, but it wasn't
perfect, and the biggest problems that it had were just style problems.
It just wasn't as good as it could be.
Also, there was this other competing Bible that had been produced in Geneva, Switzerland,
called the Geneva Bible.
So, people are kind of divided.
You've got some people that want the Bishop's Bible.
You've got other people that want the Geneva Bible, and it's kind of two factions.
So, King James, when he comes to power, is given the suggestion that maybe we should
just put in the work necessary to just make one definitive version of the Bible in English
that we could all agree on instead of having some people who got the Geneva, some people
who got the Bishop's.
Let's put in the work to have one definitive version, and I'm almost out of time, but what
they basically did was they took the Bishop's Bible, which is already a really good translation,
and then they take 54 scholars that are some of the most brilliant minds that have ever
even existed, literally.
I mean, some of these guys had read everything that had been ever written in Greek that was
available in England at that time.
They had read it.
They'd read all of it.
They didn't just stop at the Iliad and the Odyssey.
I mean, these guys had read incredible amounts of Greek literature.
Many of them spoke a lot of languages.
The guys that were doing the Hebrew translation, they also knew Arabic and Aramaic, and they
were very well-versed in Semitic languages, and one of the translators is famous for speaking
15 modern languages and six ancient languages.
I mean, this guy knows 21 languages.
That's one guy.
There's 54 guys.
These guys are brilliant scholars, just handpicked the Creme de la Creme.
They spent six years translating the Bible, and they're not starting from scratch, folks.
They've already got the bishop's Bible, and King James specifically told them in the instructions,
don't just change it for no reason.
If the bishop's Bible is right, leave it alone.
Only change it if it actually needs to be changed.
And he said, look at the Geneva Bible, and he said, if the Geneva Bible is better in
a certain passage, go with the Geneva.
And look at the Spanish.
Look at what the Italian has done.
Look at other languages.
Look at German.
Look at all of it.
Let's get this thing nailed down, 54 top scholars, and they weren't all from one denomination
or one faction because he didn't want it to be slanted doctrinally toward one group or another.
So he's got Church of England guys, Puritan guys, people that are just more secular guys
that just really love the language, weren't really necessarily that religious, but you've
got a whole breadth of guys approaching this.
You've already got an awesome Bible in the bishop's Bible, then you've got 54 guys over
the course of seven years just really dialing it in and perfecting it.
Folks, that's really a blessing to have a Bible translated with that kind of attention
to detail and that type of effort and everything that went into it.
Now, other foreign languages, unfortunately, sometimes they have a Bible that's just translated
by one guy, sort of like what Tyndale did.
And hey, that's better than nothing.
That's great.
But let's face it, Tyndale was just the rough draft.
This is the final draft.
And this was such an amazing product that when this came out, it basically just displaced
every other version, which is why eventually the Geneva Bible, the bishop's Bible, and
every other English Bible before it all went out of print.
They stopped being printed and this just became the definitive Bible.
In fact, if you find Bibles from a couple of hundred years ago, they won't even say
King James on them a lot of times.
They'll just say Holy Bible, the Bible, because it's like, well, yeah, it's the King James.
What else would it be?
That's the Bible in English.
It's the only Bible anybody's printing for a long time.
This was the only Bible that was mainstream for a very long time.
Why did that change?
Why did all of a sudden all these other Bibles come?
It's only because of the 19th century mentality that said we have to dig up evidence and find
something different.
God's Word is missing and we got to find it.
This has been corrupted.
Folks, that's a wicked philosophy that rejected the preservation of God's Word and that's
why it's all started over again in the 1800s and we got to start over and go back to the
drawing board and that's where you get all these garbage modern versions.
But let me tell you something.
The King James Bible is the one that has stood the test of time for over 400 years.
You say, how do you know that God's Word is found in the King James?
Well, I don't know.
Maybe because it's been used by more preachers, more soul winners, more missionaries than
any other Bible in the history of mankind.
How about that?
Isn't the tree known by its fruit?
So if this is the Bible that has borne so much fruit, if this is the Bible that was
so well translated, such quality, everything else went out of print.
It's like, this is it.
This is our Bible in English.
And then today in 2021, here we are, 410 years later, still saying, this is the one.
This is it, folks.
This is our English Bible.
This is the definitive version.
And you know what?
Today in 2021, if you're reading the King James Bible, don't feel lonely.
Oh no, you're not lonely because more people woke up this morning in the United States
of America and read this Bible than any other version.
Today, October 20th, more people woke up and read this Bible than any other version in
America.
You say, well, the NIV is the best seller.
Yeah, it's the best seller, but not for actually people who read it.
A Pew Research poll actually looked at what Bible do people read the most, not which one
sold the most little precious moments copies to, oh, here, let me give you this as a gift.
Here, let's put this on.
Doesn't this look nice on your shelf?
Or, oh, here, I can carry this to my rock and roll church with me and put that down
and woo, you know.
What about the Bible that people actually read?
And they did the research and they did the polling on people who read the Bible at least
a couple of times a week.
It's overwhelmingly King James.
This is the Bible that people actually read.
People that are serious about the Word of God, they have a big boy version.
You know, the precious moments NIV is for babies.
Okay, this is the big boy version.
Oh, it's too hard to understand.
All have sinned.
What does that mean?
How would you translate that into our language?
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth
in Him should not perish but have everlasting life?
For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
Him might be saved?
Huh?
I mean, folks, it's our language.
It's modern English.
Well, it sounds old.
Well, it was written a couple thousand years ago.
It might sound a little old sometimes.
I don't know.
I mean, as read Leviticus, it sounds old.
What's 3500 years old?
You know, and there's so much I could say.
But alas, the lateness of the hour.
Let's bow our heads in that word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for our preserved Bible.
And thank you so much that we have access to your Word in our tongue wherein we were
born.
Because, Lord, even learning Greek and Hebrew and going back and reading it in the original
languages is not gonna be the language wherein we were born.
There's something special about our native language, the language that we were born
and raised speaking and hearing, Lord.
Thank you that we can have your Word speak to us in our own language and that we have
it in English.
Thank you for the blessing of the King James Bible and how you worked through history and
events to bring us this magnificent translation, Lord.
And help us to appreciate it by reading it every day.
Lord, what a shame it would be if we had the greatest translation of your Word in the history
of mankind on our shelf and instead we reach for the comic book or the remote control,
Lord.
Help us to turn off the TV and turn off the radio and turn off the internet and reach
for that King James Bible that has been so greatly used throughout history.
Help it to be greatly used in our lives and in our generation.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Amen.
Let's take our song books, please.
And turn to 467.
If you need the words, the B-I-B-L-E, hymn number 467.
Our song, 467, we'll sing it twice.
467.
The B-I-B-L-E, yes, that's the book for me.
I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E.
The B-I-B-L-E, yes, that's the book for me.
I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E.
Amen.
Great singing.
Tonight you are dismissed.
Amen.