Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here
from Faith Ford Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
When you talk about believing that the Greek received text
of the New Testament is the perfect word of God
or that the textus receptus in Greek
is the perfect word of God,
one question that people will often ask is,
well, which one, you know,
which edition of the textus receptus?
You know, you got five editions from Erasmus,
you got the edition from Stephanus in 1550,
you've got the edition from Beza in 1598.
Well, first of all,
these texts are extremely similar to one another.
There are very few meaningful differences
between these texts.
They're virtually the same text,
but they do have some differences between them.
So which Greek textus receptus is the perfect word of God?
Well, my answer to that is that the Greek text
that is the perfect word of God
is the 1894 edition of Scrivener,
and that is sold by the Trinitarian Bible Society.
Now, why do I believe that that edition
is the perfect edition?
Because of the fact that I believe
that the King James Bible is God's preserved word of God
for the English speaking people of this world.
It's the Bible that has been used
unlike any other book in the history of mankind.
It's the greatest translation in the history of mankind
in the world's most important language.
I don't think anyone would even doubt for one moment
that English is the most important language
in the world today.
And obviously God knew that,
that this would become the world's number one language.
God gave the Old Testament in Hebrew
because that was the language of God's people,
the Israelites at that time.
God gave the New Testament in Greek
because that was the world's main language.
And then it was immediately translated into Syriac and Latin
and a multitude of other languages,
Georgian, Armenian, et cetera.
So God knew that English was going to be
the most important language in the world.
And so he allowed in his wisdom and through his guidance,
these events to come together perfectly
with the invention of the printing press
and then putting it upon the heart of King James
and the people around him to commission this translation.
And just the unparalleled level of scholarship
of the 54 men who worked on the King James Bible,
just the exceptional scholarship
of even each of them individually,
let alone 54 of them collectively
translating the King James Bible.
I don't believe that this happened by accident
or on its own.
I believe that God orchestrated world events,
everything from the Mongolian Empire
to the fall of Constantinople.
All of these historical events were all geared toward God
giving us this marvelous book, the King James Bible,
that has gone around the world in the hands of missionaries
that have even taken the King James itself
and directly translated it into African tongues
and Island languages.
And it's been used unlike any other translation
of the Bible.
And obviously the United States of America
has produced the most missionaries and preachers
of God's word that have taken the gospel around the world.
So it's not far-fetched to believe
that we have the perfect word of God in our English language
through God's providence and wisdom and guidance
in the King James version of the Bible.
So I believe that the King James Bible
is the word of God without error.
And I don't believe it's necessary to learn Greek or Hebrew
to understand the Bible.
I believe that we have what we need
in the King James Bible, okay.
Now that being said though,
I do think it is good for some people to go back
and learn the Greek and learn the Hebrew
in order to be able to defend the King James Bible
and just in order to do that study and verify things,
but it's not necessary.
You could be a pastor and preach
and do great things for God.
I don't believe that you need to learn Greek and Hebrew, okay.
So I just wanna explain that going in.
So therefore, if I'm gonna look at which edition
of the Textus Receptus that I'm gonna read in Greek,
I'm not gonna go with the 1550s Stephanus,
even though it's an amazing book that God used greatly.
It's not without error.
It's not perfect, okay,
because there were some things
that are improved upon with Beza.
And then there are some things
that Beza didn't quite get right.
And God used these men,
the 54 translators of the King James Bible
to go through all this,
to go through the additions of Erasmus, Beza, Stephanus,
and make the final decisions
about which Greek reading they were gonna use
in any given verse.
And like I said, the differences between these three
that are meaningful are very minor
as far as it's a small number of differences
that are meaningful, okay.
So what we have with the 1894 Scrivener Textus Receptus
is they basically took the Stephanus,
Beza, Erasmus editions,
and they basically synthesized them
and gave us a text that represents the exact textual choices
of the King James translator.
So whatever the King James translators went with
in a particular passage,
that's what we have in Scrivener's Textus Receptus.
Now, some people have tried to say
that the Scrivener Greek New Testament
does not match with the King James.
I've gone through all their lists of so-called discrepancies
and I've only really found two that held water.
The only two I found is that the Scrivener Textus Receptus
is missing the amen at the end of the book of Ephesians.
So I fixed that by just writing in the word amen at the end.
So that was pretty easy to fix.
And then the other discrepancy is word of the Lord
versus word of God in the book of Acts,
which means exactly the same thing.
So it's kind of a nothing burger
to make a big deal about two typos in a book.
And by the way, the 1611 King James has the same typo
where it omits the amen at the end of Ephesians.
And of course it has numerous other typos.
Printed editions are gonna have typos,
just like handwritten manuscripts are gonna have
mistakes here and there just from human error.
But as far as the word of God,
as far as the Greek text of the Texas Receptus
has been preserved perfectly unto this day.
Now, obviously man couldn't be responsible for that.
Man makes mistakes, but God has kept it pure
throughout history, okay?
And the King James is the same thing that God said
thousands of years ago.
It's just been translated into English,
which is our mother tongue.
Now, where do you get a copy of this?
If you are one who is a Greek speaker,
maybe you're a Greek person and you speak Greek fluently,
or maybe you're one who has studied Greek
and you've learned Greek
to where you can read the Bible fluently in Greek.
Great, which Greek New Testament do you go for?
Or maybe you wanna learn Greek and you're studying Greek
and you're in the process of learning it.
What Greek New Testament should you get?
Well, I recommend, like I said,
the one sold by the Trinitarian Bible Society.
This is their basic model right here, okay?
It's a hardback, it's nice, the text looks good,
it's legible, it's a great font.
And I believe this thing is like $8.
So it's actually a good deal.
So this is pretty easy way to get your hands on this.
Trinitarian Bible Society.
And again, this is the Greek text underlying the King James.
And then they also sell a Cadillac version of this,
a nicer version of this that is the,
I don't know if it's, I'm not really a book guy,
so I don't know, is it a leather-bound, goat skin,
calf skin, I don't know,
but it's a really nice leather Greek New Testament.
I think I paid like $55 for this.
So again, just to get the basic is only like eight bucks.
But if you wanna take this thing everywhere with you
and enjoy it and use it a lot,
then you could go for the leather-bound.
And let me tell you, this thing is durable
because anybody who knows me knows my faults
and they know that I don't really take care
of my stuff very well.
And so I tend to use things pretty hard, okay?
And this Bible, I've used it hard
and I've actually dropped it in the bathtub.
I was actually reading it in the bathtub.
You can see how well I take care of it here.
This is the table of contents page.
I actually literally dropped this thing.
I was reading it in the bathtub
and I dropped it in the tub
and the thing fully submerged and got soaked in water.
So it was baptized by immersion
and I left it out to dry
and you can't even notice that it's even been submerged.
I mean, it's still in great condition.
It still is holding up.
And so again, people ask the question,
hey, where do I get the Greek Texas Receptus?
Thank God for the Trinitarian Bible Society
for keeping it in print and making it easy
to just spend eight bucks or 50 bucks to get a nice one.
And by the way, they're doing great work as well
translating the Bible into other languages.
And they have a King James philosophy,
which is why not only are they using the Texas Receptus,
but they're actually using the exact Texas Receptus
underlying the King James.
They're not translating from Stephanus or Beza.
They're actually translating
from this Scrivener Texas Receptus.
And they're using the translation philosophy
behind the King James.
So they're not using a modern philosophy
like would lie behind the new King James version
or the modern English version
or other wrong versions that are coming from the TR.
They're actually translating
with a King James type philosophy, okay?
That's their mentality going in.
In fact, they just came out
with the New Testament in Persian.
And I was fellowshipping after a service.
I wanna say it was in Atlanta, Georgia
at Stronghold Baptist Church with Pastor Berzins.
And a guy walked up to me and said that his dad was Persian
and had read, Persian means Iranian to a lot of people.
He had actually read the Gospel of John
from the new Persian translation
put out by the Trinitarian Bible Society, and he loved it.
He said it was great.
He said the language was excellent, super high quality.
So it seems like they're doing great work over there,
but if nothing else, it's definitely a great place
to purchase foreign language Bibles.
Not only do they sell this Greek Texas Receptus,
but they sell the Bible
in a whole bunch of different foreign languages.
So you can go on their website
and just look at the other languages that they offer
and they sell Bibles in like,
I don't know, 20 languages or something.
Anyway, God bless you.
Have a great day.