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Man, let's flip over in our Bibles to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter number 2, the title of my sermon this morning is Bible Translations. Bible Translations. I'm going to give you several points on this topic and talk a little bit about why our church is King James Bible only. And let me just explain what we mean by that and then I'm going to get into the Word of God and into these principles. But when we say that we're King James only, what we mean by that is that the only version that we will ever use or accept here in the English language is the King James Bible. This means we don't use the NIV, the ESV, the ASV, the RSV, the Living Bible, or even the New King James. The New King James is not a King James Bible. It's a totally corrupted translation. It's got all kinds of just wicked things in it and it's just a counterfeit trying to slip in under the radar like, oh, you want the King James? Well here's the New King James. And that's what makes it just so evil, the way that they try to slip that in there when it's not even close to being the King James Bible. We believe the King James Bible is the Word of God in the English language but not only that, we don't just believe that the King James Bible is the only right Bible, we actually believe that the King James Bible is without error. Okay. I don't believe that it has any errors or mistakes in it. I believe that when you read a King James Bible, you're reading exactly what God said. Obviously it's translated into English, which is our native tongue, but it's not losing anything in the translation. I think everything we need is right here in the King James Bible. And a lot of people find that really hard to believe. And they say, well, you know, why English? I mean, why would God give us the Bible in English in a perfect edition? Well it makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that English is the most important language on the planet. You know, people say, what's so special about English? Well, I don't know. Ask the billions of people that speak it. What's so special about it? Apparently it's pretty special if it's the number one second language in the world, if it's the number one most important language in the world, if it's the number one most influential language in the world, it must be pretty important. Well, obviously it's pretty important to God to preserve his word and make sure that we have it available in that key language, English. Especially when you stop and think about the fact that the people who are doing the most soul winning, the most preaching of the word of God, the most evangelizing, the most zealous Christians in the world, many of them speak English. And in fact, the King James Bible over the past 400 years has been used to evangelize people in all other languages where missionaries are taken to King James to Africa and into Asia and to various islands and translating it even directly from the King James into those languages because that's what they had available to them. God has used the King James Bible in a mighty powerful way. Look at how churches have become since they've switched to the NIV and the ESV. Notice how the power's gone. Notice how the soul winning is gone. Notice how they've become weak and watered down and lame. Hey, you show me a church that's not using the King James Bible, I'll show you a church that has false doctrine that's dead, that's not winning people to Christ. You want to look at the great soul winning churches over the last 100 years, they all were preaching the King James Bible. So the fruit of the King James Bible speaks for itself. It's also not hard to believe that the King James Bible is a perfect translation when they had like 100 years to perfect it because of the fact that William Tyndale came out with his New Testament in the early 1500s which was the first translation into modern English in the early 1500s and then it was followed by other revisions of it, the Matthew Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishop's Bible. So it was being refined, people were reading it, checking it, finding any problems, finding any errors in it, right? Then you get to the end of the 1500s and you know King James comes on the throne and they start working on the King James Bible in 1603, right? And you get 54 top scholars, many of whom spoke, you know, 6, 7, 8 languages. One of them spoke 21 languages fluently. So these guys are very intelligent men, very well read, they didn't just barely know Greek and Hebrew, I mean they didn't just know Hebrew, they knew Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic and all the other related languages. I mean these guys were very educated. You have 54 top scholars spending 7 years on it. I mean you're going to have a great product and that's why the King James Bible, even by the secular world, even by people who don't even claim the name of Christ, is looked at as the greatest achievement of the human language, or of the English language. And it's a milestone of the English language that it's a great work of literature in its own right. It is the standard. And then people say, well why do you make the King James? They say, hey we didn't make the King James the standard. The King James was already the standard before we were born. And you can come out with some stupid version that you call the English standard version. No this is the English standard version right here. In fact I preach every sermon out of the ESV. I do all my soul winning out of the ESV because the real English standard version is the King James. You can just come out with some foolish version and call it the standard. This is and always has been and always will be the standard by which every other version is compared. Why? Because it is the finished product. Done. You say, oh let's revise it. It's done. And it has stood the test of time for over 400 years and if it ain't broke don't fix it. This is the one that we can trust in the English language. You say, well you got to go back to the Greek and Hebrew. Well here's the problem with that. You don't speak Greek and Hebrew. So what good is a Bible going to do you in a language that you don't speak? It's going to do you no good at all. You need the Bible in your own native tongue. We need the Bible in our native tongue. And even if you learned Greek and Hebrew as a second language you're never going to understand it as well as your native tongue. Your native tongue is always going to be that tongue that is most special to you and that speaks to you the clearest. Let's start out with the sermon now. Point number one, principle number one is that God's word is not limited to one language. God's word has power in all languages. God's word has power in all languages. Now this is different than the false religions of this world. When you talk to the Muslims they'll tell you, oh you got to read the Koran in Arabic. They don't accept any English translation. There's no English translation. So if you want to try to have a discussion with them about the Koran, show them the errors in the Koran, show them the falsehoods in the Koran, you can't even talk to them because you show it to them. Oh well that's not, that's not the real thing. And the funny thing is the vast majority of Muslims aren't even Arabs. Most of them are from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia. They don't even speak Arabic and they're trusting in a so-called word of God that they can't even understand because it's in a language that they don't even know. And they'll tell you, oh it's got to be in the original Arabic, right? The Hindus today with their Vedas, the Rig Veda, oh it has to be in Sanskrit. They go to their Hindu temple to worship idols and they hear those scriptures being read to them in a foreign language, Sanskrit, in a dead language. Roman Catholics went to church for centuries listening to a church service in Latin, a language that they didn't even speak. You see how these false religions, they tell you it's got to be in that original, it's got to be Arabic, it's got to be Sanskrit, it's got to be Latin, whatever. The difference with the Bible is that the Bible has power in all languages. It's not limited to a certain language. You know, you can read the Bible in any language and there's power. There's power there. We're not reading it in the original language, yet the King James Bible is powerful. We don't even need another language. Now look at Acts chapter 2 verse 4. This is the famous story of the day of Pentecost. The Bible says in verse 4, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how here we, every man in our own tongue wherein we were born, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia and Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Crete and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. Now here was a miracle where the 120 members of the early church that were gathered together are preaching the Word of God to all of these foreigners that are visiting Jerusalem and they are hearing it, look at the end of verse 6, they're hearing it in their own language. Do you see that? They're saying we're hearing this in the tongue wherein we were born. This isn't even in our second language or our third language. This is the tongue wherein we were born, our most native language and they understood the Word of God. Now how did this happen? Well verse 4 tells us, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So these men of Galilee, they didn't know how to speak Arabic or these other languages that they spoke but yet miraculously the Holy Spirit gave them the ability to speak in a foreign language that they had never studied. They had never visited these places, they had never studied these languages but miraculously they were able to speak those languages. Now what were they speaking? The Word of God. They were preaching the Bible, they were preaching the Word of God, they were speaking by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. So that tells me right there that the Holy Ghost can speak at least 17 languages here that are listed and I'm sure he can speak any language. Now I wonder if the Holy Ghost was saying to himself, you know what, you kind of lose something in the translation when you take, when you bring this into Arabic. You know, when I bring this into the language of Mesopotamia it just doesn't really have this, that's ridiculous isn't it? I guarantee you that the message was just as powerful for the guy from Arabia as it was for the guy from Libya as it was for the Parthians and Medes. They all got the same powerful message. Why? Look, if the Holy Ghost is the one doing the translating you know it's a right translation. You know, so this proves that God's Word can be translated into all tongues and that it doesn't lose any of its power in those tongues. You know, God's not a respecter of persons. There's no difference between the Jew and the Greek and so it's not like God created this world where everybody spoke one language right in the beginning and then he split up everybody's languages at the Tower of Babel and now it's like, oh sorry, you're born in the wrong language, you don't have the Word of God. Nuts to you because we can't even translate it into your language because it's got to be in Hebrew or it's got to be in Greek or you've got to speak English and have a King James Version. It's foolishness. You can have the Word of God in your tongue wherein you're born. Go to Revelation chapter 7. Now it's true that there are obscure languages of this world that don't have the Word of God in their language or maybe certain obscure languages and what I mean by that is that they don't have the entire Bible, right? Like they don't have Genesis to Revelation but even these obscure languages that don't have the entire Bible, they do have some part of the Bible in their language, okay? Whether it's just a plan of salvation that someone has translated, you know, key scriptures or whether it's just a book of John or a John and Romans, maybe there are certain languages that just only have the New Testament. They don't have the full Bible but obviously if you're going to evangelize a group of people and they don't speak English or some other language that already has the Bible, you know, you're going to need a Bible in their language to evangelize them. So it would seem that step one to trying to evangelize that group of people is you'd have to translate some of the Word of God into that language, wouldn't you? And then you'd take that little bit that you translated even if it were just some kind of a salvation plan that included key verses from the Romans road, right? And you'd preach that to them. And if you win somebody to Christ, you want them to be able to grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. They need to read the Bible, right? So then you're going to want to get them more scripture. So maybe you'd start with what you consider the most important book like the book of John. So that's why there are many languages in this world that only have the book of John, you know, small obscure backwards type languages. And then there are other languages where they get them John and Romans. Others they get the New Testament. I mean, look, if you have just the New Testament and not the Old Testament, you can still live the Christian life. Now you're going to obviously be lacking some teachings. You're going to be lacking some things. But you know what? That's a great start. And then eventually as you get lots of people saved, as churches are established, then they're going to say, hey, we want, we want Genesis, you know, we want the Pentateuch. And then we want more. Eventually the goal is to get them the Word of God in their own language. But the goal is not to say, all right, everybody, you got to learn English. All right, everybody, you got to learn Greek. All right, we're all going to learn Hebrew. That's not God's plan. God's the one who designed it where there are other languages. God's plan was never for the whole world to speak one language. He's the one who split the languages. And even in the book of Revelation in the end times, there are still going to be languages. But here's what's encouraging about it. Look at Revelation chapter 7, verse 9. After this I beheld and lo, a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the lamb clothed with white robes and palms in their hands. Verse 13, and one of the elders answered, saying unto me, what are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they? Saying, where did they come from? And I said unto him, sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, these are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Isn't it encouraging to know that when we get to heaven, there will be people from all tongues. So every language will be represented in heaven, right? When we see that great blood washed throng in heaven, he said, these people are out of every tongue, every language. You know, that proves to me that God's word is not limited to one language because how do you get saved? Through the word of God. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And so if you have saved people that have come out of great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, that tells me they heard the word of God in their own language. And that tells me that God's word has power in all languages. It's not just limited to one language. God's word has gone all over the world. So number one, God's word is not limited to one language. But number two, it is not necessary to learn a foreign language to comprehend God's word. You do not need to learn a foreign language. You don't need to learn Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek. You don't need to learn English. You don't, you know, for those that don't speak English, you don't need to learn a foreign language to comprehend God's word. Now people will often tell you, you know, you always lose something in the translation. This is often coming out of the mouth of people who only speak one language. But they're the expert on how things transmit from one language to another. Oh, you always lose something. Well, did we lose something in Acts 2? And if that were true, that, you know, you always lose something in the translation, well then why did God write the Bible in three languages then? You know, if we have to have Hebrew, why didn't he put the New Testament in Hebrew then? He didn't. He did it in Greek. And if it just has to be Greek, then why is the Old Testament in Hebrew? And if it just has to be Greek and Hebrew, then why is part of the Old Testament in Aramaic? And not only that, but you know, Jesus Christ, when he walked on this earth, his primary language, his main language was neither Hebrew nor Greek. It was Aramaic. You say, how do you know that? Because when you're in trouble, when you're in a bad situation, and you're speaking from the heart, you speak in your most native tongue. You know, when we were on the Mexico trip, we were only speaking Spanish. We weren't supposed to speak English. So even during fellowship and at the restaurant and things like that. But when something crazy would happen or when something caught someone by surprise and they just kind of just uttered something or if they got in an emergency situation or if they got emotional, what did they do? They slipped into English. You know, the proverbial parent who speaks a foreign language and when they get mad at their child, they start yelling at them in Spanish or yelling at them in German or whatever. Right? It's the language of emotion, the language of the heart. Okay. Well, when Jesus Christ is on the cross and he gives his most emotional utterance ever, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? You know what? He didn't say it in Hebrew. And you can look it up in a Hebrew Bible. You can go to Psalm 22 verse 1 and see that that's not what Jesus said. Why? Because Jesus spoke Aramaic and the Bible of course records him saying, you know, talita kumi and ephata and all these utterances where it tells you exactly what he says and it translates it for you. You know, talita kuma, that is to say, you know, damsel I say unto thee arise. But notice when he's speaking in that, it's his native tongue. Now I'm sure that Jesus spoke multiple languages living in the region that he did. You know, Jesus lived right near the Greek speaking area. He's in Galilee, Galilee of the Gentiles. Obviously Jesus spoke Hebrew and Greek as well. But his heart language, his main language appears to be Aramaic because that's what we see him speaking over and over again. And we know history tells us that that was the main language of the people living there at that time. And now that he's even talking to the father in Aramaic. He doesn't, oh, oh, got to switch into my spiritual language, talk to God in Hebrew or talk to God in Greek. No, he talks to him in Aramaic. Why? Because we can talk to God in any language. God's not limited to one language, number one. Number two, it's not necessary to learn a foreign language to comprehend God's word. And this idea of losing something in the translation is a hoax. If you read your English King James Bible, that's all you need in order to learn everything that God has for you. But number three is this. Translations should have the same meaning as the original. Right? If we translate something, it shouldn't say something different. You know, it should have the same meaning. But translations should not be word for word. This is where a lot of English only speakers get mixed up and a lot of King James only people go overboard and over the top. This is like your Ruckmanite style King James only. And you know, Peter Ruckman was a major false prophet, false teacher, and his disciples like Sam Gipp and Bill Grady are just as wicked as hell as he was teaching lies and false doctrine and garbage. But a lot of people defend these guys and say, well, you know, at least their stuff on the King James is good. You know what? Their stuff on the King James is just as stupid as everything else that they teach. And Sam Gipp likes to lie and say, oh, Pastor Anderson said he likes my stuff on the King James. Really? Because I've never said that. Because I've always felt that Sam Gipp's materials on the King James are total garbage. Why? Because Sam Gipp has this stupid doctrine from Peter Ruckman like that the whole stinking world has to learn English or something. They think that the English Bible contains revelations not found in the original. You know what I'm saying? Like you have the original in Greek in the New Testament and you have the original in Hebrew of the Old Testament and they think that the King James brings new revelations not found in the original. You know, new edition not found in the – no. That's a false doctrine. The reason that the King James Bible is the Word of God is because it is an accurate translation of the original. It's not any more or less the Word of God. It's not less the Word of God but it certainly isn't more the Word of God. Okay? And they come up with all kinds of crazy and dumb things with an over – and I'm going to give you some examples of this kind of over the top King James only. And look, I already told you where I stand. The same place I've always stood, that the King James Bible is preserved, it's the Word of God and that it's without error. But I'm not going to go over the top into the point of stupidity to the point of saying like well every spelling is inspired. The English spellings are inspired and the capitalizations and every comma and all this stuff. Hold on a second. How's that going to work when you translate the Bible into Chinese if the spelling has to stay the same? I mean it's just – people just don't think sometimes. And so I want to dispel some of this over the top King James only-ism in my sermon this morning. People who go overboard on this thing. Where they expect every other language of the Bible, including Spanish, they expect it to match the King James Bible word for word. Well, I've got really bad news for you. The King James Bible doesn't match the Greek and Hebrew word for word because if it did it would be a bad translation because if you want that then use Google Translate. I mean if you think translations are supposed to be word for word then why don't we just take the Greek New Testament and throw it into Google Translate. And that's what some of these modern versions sound like. They did. They sound so, you know, robotic. Just hear me out for a moment folks. This is how you know a translation is a good translation. And I've actually done some professional translation work. My wife and I spent four months just working with translation as our only source of income at an earlier time in our marriage where we worked together on translating medical documents from German into English. And here's the thing about translation. A good translation, when you're reading it, you don't know it's a translation. Does everybody know what I'm saying? You don't know it's a translation. I mean have you ever gotten the instructions for something and you start reading the instructions and you're like whoever wrote these instructions did not write them in English. You're like this is a translation because that's not how we would talk. But a good translation, you don't even know it's a translation. And you know what? That's why people are always making fun of King James Bible believing Christians for thinking that Jesus spoke English. But you want to know why so many people think that Jesus spoke English? It's because the translation is that good. I mean look, I'll be honest with you, when I was a little kid, three, four, five, six years old, before I'd studied history and before I knew about the history of the Bible and the different original languages, you know, I thought Adam and Eve spoke English. I thought that Jesus Christ spoke English. You know, I thought that God's up in heaven speaking nothing but English. And I thought he sounded like Alexander Scorby. That's what I pictured, you know, going to heaven and I'm going to hear a voice exactly like his. So the point is that people can make fun of that but you know why I thought that when I was a little kid before I'd been educated was because the translation is just that good. The King James Bible is so good you think you're reading the original. That's a good translation. You know what? Nobody's going to think that about the ESV. It's so wooden. It's so robotic. It's like woo woo woo. It's something out of Google Translate. So this idea that translations have to be word for word is false. Okay? What we want to get is the same meaning. Okay? Now I'm going to break the... Let me give you some Bible verses and explain it to you. The Bible does talk about every word. Amen? Amen. So let me give you some verses on every word and I'm going to explain to you how we can balance this with, you know, using common sense about translation. Okay? So in the Bible Deuteronomy 8, 3 says that man does not live by bread only but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord does man live. Proverbs chapter 30 verse 5, every word of God is pure. He's 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. Matthew chapter 4 verse 4, but he answered and said as written, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Matthew 5, 18, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Matthew 24, 35, heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away. Now he's saying, look, it's got to be every word but when you translate though, here's how that works. Okay? So giving out a word or adding a word in a translation would be like, for example, when the Bible says he that believeth on me has everlasting life, right? And then another false translation will just say he that believeth has everlasting life and they left out the on me. You see how that's removing words there? If Jesus Christ said the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, and then you have a new modern version that just says the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ period and it leaves out the fact that he's the son of God. You see how they're removing words there? Okay. That's an example of removing something. And then there are other examples of things being added that are not there. Okay. But here's what is not removing or adding is when you translate from language to language, it's not going to be literal word for word but you're going to get the same idea. You're going to match words with appropriate words in the new language. So for example, like if we're speaking Spanish, if I want to say my name is Steven, a way to say that, the most common way to say that would be, me llamo Esteban. Okay. Now I don't have to say, mi nombre es Esteban. I don't, it doesn't have to be like exact word, my name is. I can say, me llamo Esteban and that would be a perfectly good translation. Even though literally what I would be saying is I call myself Steven. But that's how you say it in Spanish. Okay. So there are lots of different, you know, if I wanted to say, you know, I'm washing my hands, you know, in Spanish you're not going to say, I am washing my hands. You're basically going to say, I wash myself the hands. You're like, what in the world? But that's the right way to translate it. The accurate way. Why? Because that's how they talk. We can't just bastardize their language, turn their language on its head to make it sound like a different language. No, no. That's their language. We have our language, right? So the point is that when you translate things, you say, okay, how would people in that language express this same idea, express this same thought? And that's how it is with the Bible. It's the same thing. Okay. So you don't want to go over the top, this word for word thing. Okay. Now let me give you some examples of where the Ruckmanites go off the rails with this. And let me give you some examples from the Bible where the King James is not just exactly word for word from the Greek. Okay. Go if you would to Acts chapter 19. Now I've read the New Testament cover to cover in Greek. I'm working on my second time through right now. And the thing about, there was really only one thing that jumped off the page at me is like, whoa, that's different because here's the thing. The King James Bible says the exact same thing as the original Greek New Testament. That's why I'm saying you don't have to learn Greek. You don't have to learn Hebrew to understand the word of God. Everything's right there in English. So when I was reading the Bible in Greek, it wasn't like, oh wow, this is different. Okay. Now here's one thing that jumped off the page as like, wow, that's different. Okay. Look at Acts chapter 19 verse 28. It says, and when they had heard these sayings, they were full of wrath and cried out saying, great is Diana of the Ephesians. This is a pretty famous story, right? Where they're chanting about great is Diana of the Ephesians. And five times in this chapter, it mentions the name of Diana, which is their false god, right? But when I was reading this in the Greek New Testament, it didn't say Diana. It said Artemis, all five times. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. But then I went home and guess what I did? I looked up on Wikipedia Artemis and I looked up Diana. It's the same person. It's two different names for the same person, right? So is the King James Bible wrong here to say Diana? No, because Diana is Artemis. Artemis is Diana. And you're like, well, things that are different aren't the same. Actually, many things that are different are the same, like Artemis and Diana. Okay, those are two different words, same person. Okay, you know, not only that, but there are lots of words in the Bible that are different, but they're the same. Like how about this? Spirit and ghost. Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost. There is no difference. This is the same person. The Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, same person. But some people literally, especially these ruckmanite types, they'll go so over the top they try to come up with a difference between ghost and spirit. And then they'll try to say like, well, other versions need to have a different word for ghost than spirit. Even though in the Greek New Testament it's just the same word for both, same word for both spirit and ghost because they're synonyms, they're exact synonyms. You say, well, why does the Bible sometimes say spirit and sometimes say ghost? Well, because of its sounding good. It's just more poetic to use a variety of words. You know, you ever write something and you feel like I've already used that word in this paragraph? I think I'm going to use a different word just to spice things up a little bit. So this is called euphony or making things sound good. Isn't the King James Bible beautiful? Doesn't it sound good? Okay, so that's why you'll use a variety. God who at sundry times and in divers manners. Well guess what, sundry and divers both mean the exact same thing. He's just using two different words to make it sound better. Holy ghost, holy spirit, identical. One time I talked to this pastor and this is the kind of nonsense I'm talking about. I talked to this pastor who spoke Spanish as a second language but he was a dunce. And he also taught false doctrine. He wasn't even saved but I found that out later. But I'm talking to this guy and he told me that in Spanish instead of saying a spiritu santo that it should say phantasma santo. Okay, phantasma is like ghost, like Casper type of a ghost. He's like, you know he used to say ghost. And I told him, I'm like, you know, you know in the Greek New Testament it's the same word, right? For spirit and ghost, it's just one word. Why phantasma? That's crazy. He's like, no, no, no, that's what it is. But what's funny is that the word phantasma is a Greek word that's used in the New Testament for that part where Jesus is walking on the water and they see Jesus and they think he's a spirit. They're like, oh, they thought they saw a spirit, right? They thought they saw phantasma. So if you're reading the New Testament in Spanish, that's what it says, phantasma. And you know, I'm using Spanish this morning because that's a language that several people here speak, who speaks Spanish here? You know, probably like what, 40 people here speak Spanish, something like that. So a lot of people kind of understand what I'm talking about a little bit. But these people, they think there's a difference between spirit and ghost. They think there's a difference between eternal and everlasting. It's the exact same word. But they're like, no, it's gotta be everlasting versus eternal. It's the same thing. Everlasting means it lasts forever. eternal means it never ends. It's the same thing. So then they'll go to a foreign language Bible where it's just one word for both and they're like, oh, this is wrong. Well, you're not going to like the Greek New Testament very much because guess what? It's the same word for both. But then all of a sudden Spanish needs to come up with some new word or something to match that. And a lot of people talk a lot of trash about the Spanish Bible because they just don't understand the fact that the Spanish Bible is actually a great Bible as long as you have the right version, La Reina Valera Antigua, you know, the old Reina Valera, it's actually a great version of the Bible. But they just expect it to be identical to the King James in a word for word way. They want phantasma. They want all these things that are just ludicrous to any Spanish speaker. If they heard that, they'd be like, whoa, that's really weird. So we could go through a whole bunch of examples like that. So number one, let me just back up and review a little bit. Number one, God's word is not limited to one language. God's word has power in all languages. Number two, it is not necessary to learn a foreign language to comprehend God's word. A pastor could go through his whole life and have 50 years of ministry in only his native language whether that's English, Spanish, whatever, and still have a great ministry, serve God, and understand every doctrine of the Bible. He doesn't have to learn a foreign language to comprehend God's word. And you know why that's important? Is because not everyone has that gift. You know, some, who here says, you know, I've tried to learn a foreign language and it's really hard for me. I just, I can't do it. And then other people would say, it comes naturally to me. Comes easy. I like it. I enjoy it. Well, good news for both of you. You can both understand everything in the Bible with just English alone. Okay. Isn't that great news? So number three was that translations should say the same thing. If it says something totally different in another language, we got a problem. You know, if it says keep your, keep his commandments in one and wash his robes in the other, well guess what? That's different. That's a problem. That's an issue right there. Okay. It should say the same thing but not word for word. It should sound like it was written in that language. A Spanish speaker who's a little kid should grow up thinking that Jesus spoke Spanish, you know, until he's smart enough to learn the history and everything. You know, it may, you know, and so forth. Okay. But then fourthly, this. The original Greek and Hebrew texts and even other foreign language translations like Spanish or other languages can be good reference tools but only if we speak those languages and at the end of the day, if we can't teach our doctrine to English speaking people using only English, then there's something wrong with our doctrine. There's something wrong with our doctrine. If there's some doctrine that I can't teach you without referring to another language, there's something wrong with my doctrine. You know, if I'm an English speaker and I'm teaching to the English speaking church and I got an English Bible and I can't teach my doctrine, maybe I'm just making stuff up at that point. You see what I'm saying? Like we need to demand that everything be shown us in the King James Bible and false teachers, they love to go back to the Greek and go back to the Hebrew to teach lies because the congregation doesn't know Greek and Hebrew. They can just lie to them. They can tell them whatever they want. They can easily pull the wool over their eyes. What do you think's harder? To pull the wool over the eyes of an English speaker with an English Bible or a language they don't even speak. You know, it's going to be easy. So they love this. Beware of preachers going back and tell you, oh well, but you know, here's what it says in the Greek though. And trying to tell you like there's something wrong with your English or that it's not enough or whatever. That's garbage and that's where a ton of false doctrine comes from. These guys go to seminaries and their teachers tell them, oh, but here's what the Greek says. Here's what the Hebrew says. And then instead of just going with what the plain reading of the English text is, they get off on this other stuff, you know, because of the Greek that they don't speak. They can't even count to 10 in Greek. They can't even count to 10 in Hebrew. They cannot even find the hotel if we were to drop them there. But they're going to tell us what it really means. All they're doing is just parroting something that they read in a commentary. Look I'm telling you this, if you don't know how to speak the Greek language, don't even open a Greek English dictionary to try to get more light on God's word. You'll have more, if you speak English and Spanish, you'll have more light on God's word reading the Bible in English and Spanish than Greek or Hebrew is going to do for you. Because when you open those tools, when you open those commentaries, those concordances, those dictionaries, many times they're filled with lies. But how are you going to know? You cannot prove them. You cannot test them. And so it's a very, very dangerous practice for preachers to get up and say, oh, well, here's what the Greek says. Here's what the Hebrew says. Now look, the only time that I feel like it's appropriate to refer to Greek or Hebrew is when we're talking about translation. You know, if we're talking about translations, if we're comparing the NIV to the King James, obviously then yeah, you know, we need to refer sometimes to Greek or Hebrew because we're talking about how we got there. Or if we're talking about, hey, this is what it means when the Lord's in all caps. This is what it means when God's out. Because we're explaining why we can trust our English. We're explaining why the English is there. But if we're preaching sermons on any other subject, stay away from the Greek, stay away from the Hebrew. You don't need it to make the point. If you need it to make the point, the point isn't there. And look, if you, I only have time to cover so much in this sermon. You know, I strongly recommend that you watch this video if you haven't seen it already, New World Order Bible Versions, because this video is, it compares the new versions with the King James and explains all the philosophy and all the history of why we're King James only, why we can trust the King James, why we believe it's the Word of God. And you can watch this for free on YouTube. Usually we have DVDs of it back there, but we're out of them because, you know, people like to give this thing out. We burn through them. But you know, this is on YouTube, New World Order Bible Versions. You know, watch this. Understand this. Comprehend this. Why we're King James only. Okay? So we need to beware of that. But that being said, we don't want to take this over the top Ruckman view or Sam Gip view that says like the Greek is demonic. You know, they say, they literally, they take, and Gail Ripplinger is in that same group, by the way. A bold-faced liar is what she is. Okay. Her book literally says that the Greek New Testament published by the Trinitarian Bible Society differs from the King James Version 52 times. That's what she claims in her book. And she is a liar. Okay. So I took out her book of the 52 differences and I took out a Greek New Testament and I took out a King James Version. I put all three of them side by side and I looked up all 52 of them. And 50 of them were lies. I mean some of them were just bold-faced just lies. Just but see here's the thing. People don't know. People don't check it. They just remember, oh wow, that Greek New Testament is full of junk. No, it isn't. The Greek New Testament is the Word of God. That's the original text that this is even translated from. Hello. Is anybody home? But she lies about it. I looked up the 52 so-called discrepancies between the Greek New Testament and the King James New Testament and only two of them were right. You want to know what they were? These were the two that she was right about. Fifty lies and two were true. These are the two that are true. In the Greek New Testament, I'm talking about the edition published by the Trinitarian, man, I like that name, the Trinitarian Bible Society, which is the 1894 Scrivener, Texas Receptus, Reconstruction of the Greek underlying the King James Bible. Two of them were legit. Okay, that Greek New Testament, it leaves out the amen at the end of Ephesians. That's a quick fix because I took my Greek New Testament and I just wrote amen at the end and it was fixed. So that was a quick fix. Okay, just leaving out the amen at the end of Ephesians. You know, just very end of the book just says amen. I just wrote amen. And then there's one place where there's a typo where it says Word of God instead of Word of the Lord. Oh wow, that's really going to, you know, ruin our understanding of doctrine and God's word, right? Well, newsflash, God and the Lord are the same person, so that typo is not really a big deal. You know, correct the typo by all means, but you know, that's not really making me lose any sleep tonight. The Word of God versus the Word of the Lord. And then Gale Rippengold goes on and on about like, that's really different. The Word of God and the Word of the Lord. But remember, these people think eternal and everlasting are different. These are the same people who think that ghost and spirit are different. These are the same people who think kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven are two different kingdoms. Okay, these are the kind of people that we're dealing with, okay, with these ruckman types. So we don't want to get this over the top bizarre view that somehow the original Hebrew is bad, or the original Greek is bad, other versions are bad. Everything has to be identical to the English King James. That's just, you've gone past being King James only, just into the realm of just being like King James stupid at that point. Like only English. And I've even heard these people say, missionaries need to teach people English and then get them saved, you know, and then they can learn more about the Bible. No, they need the Bible in their own native tongue. So let me, let me say this, the original Greek and Hebrew text and other foreign language Bibles can be a useful reference tool if you speak those languages. Now I love to read the Bible in other languages, okay, because of the fact that that's just my hobby. And again, I'm not saying that, that, that you have to do that. Everybody's got their own interests and their own hobbies. Well, I've always loved learning foreign languages ever since I was a teenager. I've been fascinated by that. And so I've read the New Testament in German. I've read the whole Bible in German cover to cover. I've read the New Testament in Spanish, Greek, Romanian, whole bunch of languages. Okay, and you know what? When you read the Bible in other languages, sometimes different things will kind of catch your attention. You'll notice different things because it's worded maybe differently. But then you go to the King James and it says the same thing. The same truth is there, but sometimes you'll just notice different things when you're reading it in Spanish. So and in fact, I've been doing my Bible reading in Spanish every single day for a long time. And I run into people who speak English and Spanish, they're like afraid of their Spanish Bible. They're like afraid to read it. Well, I only read the King James. It's like, well, you know, if Spanish is your native language, read it in Spanish. There's nothing wrong with reading in Spanish. But they're like afraid of that because they kind of bought into some of this over the top kind of propaganda. Now if the Spanish Bible said something different, then we got a problem. But guess what? 99,999% of the time it doesn't say anything different at all. It's not even debatable that it's saying the same thing. So you know, when you're reading it in another language, sometimes things will jump out at you. And I will say this. Sometimes the original languages or a Spanish New Testament or other languages can be used to debunk wild interpretations of the English. Wild interpretations of the English. Now go to Ephesians chapter 2. I'm going to give you an example of this. Go to Ephesians chapter 2. You see, if you've got the Holy Spirit living inside of you and you've got an English Bible, that's all you need. You don't need to study foreign languages to understand the Bible. You don't need the Greek. You don't need the Hebrew. You just need the Holy Spirit and an English Bible. But there are some wild interpretations that people come up with that can just be shut down with the original language like debunked. But again, you don't need it because a normal saved person wouldn't even come up with these weird interpretations anyway. Or even if they did, they're not the natural reading of the text. They're like people trying to stretch. You know, sometimes people take a verse and kind of try to stretch it or twist it, kind of fit the round peg into the square hole. Sometimes when you're reading it in another language, that's not even possible. Like for example, this verse, to me this is pretty clear, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. Now I grew up with this verse. Most of you could quote this verse from memory. Who could quote this from memory? Virtually everybody, a lot of people. And we all know what it means, right? I mean, is it hard to understand? Do we need to get out the Greek and get out the Hebrew to figure this out? No. All we have to do is just read this in English and it makes sense that we're saved by grace through faith and when it says that not of yourselves, that's talking about our salvation is not of ourselves. Salvation is what? The gift of God. And we could cross reference this with other scripture where in Romans it says the gift of God's eternal life. And then we see in verse 9 it says not of works. What's not of works? Salvation's not of works lest any man should boast. But there are some people who are Calvinists who try to foist a weird interpretation on this and they say no, no, no, it's faith that's the gift of God. So basically what they're saying is like you don't have to have faith in Christ to be saved. God gives you the faith. Because remember the Calvinists think God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. So he gives faith to certain people and not others. And they'll use this verse to say that faith is the gift of God. Here's the problem with that interpretation, okay? It says that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works. So would it make any sense to say faith is not of works? No but does it make sense to say salvation's not of works? So faith is not the gift of God. It's salvation that's not of yourselves. It's salvation that's the gift of God. It's salvation that's not of works lest any man should boast. Okay, does everybody get that? But the Calvinists will try to say oh it's faith that's the gift of God. Here's the thing, if you're reading this in Spanish you're never going to believe that in a million years. Because of the fact that in other languages words have gender. Now in English objects don't have gender, right? Like the pulpit, is this masculine or feminine? It has no gender. It's just a pulpit. A chair is a chair. A jacket's a jacket. Now people have gender, right? We say he, she. But in Spanish objects have gender. Like the chair is a feminine object. It has nothing to do with whether it's manly or something like that. You could have the manliest looking chair in the world and it's still feminine. La cieja. It's just the words have gender, okay? So in Spanish words have, objects have two genders. In English they just, there's just it. We just say it. But other languages they would call this he or she or whatever. Now that might be kind of weird to you if you've never studied another language. But who's familiar with that in Spanish, you know, the basic fact that there's el and la. There's the masculine and feminine, right? Well here's the thing. Greek has three genders. Before it was cool. I mean they, you know, and German, German has three genders. I'm not kidding. German has three genders. Greek has, they have masculine, feminine and neuter. Okay? So it's like he, she and it. But every object is either masculine, feminine or neuter, right? Who's ever experienced that in a foreign language with three genders? Okay. And then Hungarian has no gender. So the he and she is the same word. It's just uh. Literally that's how you say uh. Is like that's he or she, okay? So anyway, in this verse, if you're reading in Spanish, okay, it says porque por gracias soy salvos por la fe, right? So la fe is feminine, right? Porque por gracias soy salvos por la fe y esto no de bosotros. Now look, it doesn't say esta. It says esto. So do you see how the gender doesn't match with faith? When it says that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, it's not the same gender as faith. Why? Because it's not talking about faith. Same thing in a Greek New Testament. The word faith is feminine and then the that not of yourselves it is the gift of God is neuter. These two do not match. So what I'm saying is like you don't need to go to other languages. You can just read Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 like a normal person and get the right teaching. But it's sort of like you would take a dictionary off the shelf and use it as a reference tool. If you are fluent in another language, you could read the Bible in that other language and kind of see like no. This is stupid. This doesn't make sense. This is impossible. It doesn't even work. But what's funny is you'll show something like this to a ruckmanite and they'll just be like oh no, you're using some other language. Yeah but it kind of represents reality though. You know feminine and neuter don't mix period but it's just like well no. So you know and we could go on I'm not going to waste your time with a whole bunch of examples but I could show you other examples that are like that where people come up with dumb interpretations where they're trying to twist scripture putting the round peg into the square hole and you know in other languages it wouldn't even be possible. See if we have the right doctrine, we should be able to have the right doctrine in English or Spanish or German or Greek or Hebrew. No matter what language, doctrine should be the same in all languages, right? So if you have some cute little doctrine that only works in English, it doesn't work in any other language, you got a problem with your stupid doctrine at that point. Amen? Let me show you one other example. I'm out of time here but go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I'll just show you one other example. I've got a whole bunch of examples listed here and I don't want to just beat this into the ground but I just want to make the point here with a few things. But while you're turning to 1 Corinthians 15, I'll just bring up kind of a fun one, okay? Like for example, I brought up the fact that in the Spanish Bible when it says in Isaiah 40, 22, it is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth. It says, El global de la tierra. So he sitteth on the globe of the earth. And by the way, that's from 1602 so I don't think NASA was around back then, you know, back in 1602 messing with it. But you know, this ridiculous flat earth doctrine isn't going to fly in the Spanish world, you know what I mean? It says, El global de la tierra. But then the over the top hyper King James only will say, well that should say circle. And Spanish too, circular. But here's the problem with that is that what does it mean when it says circle of the earth in English? What does it mean? Does it mean a two dimensional object or a three dimensional object? We know that the earth is three dimensional because we're not living in some 8 bit Nintendo game. We live in a three dimensional world. So guess what it means when it says the circle of the earth? Guess what it means? It means a sphere or a globe which can be described as a circle. It's a three dimensional circle. So is the Spanish Bible wrong when it said El global de la tierra? Is it wrong? Of course it's not. Is that a bad translation? It's why I need to say circular. No it's fine the way it is. Leave it alone. It's fine. In fact, I like it. Okay. Because we know that that's what circle means in that context. Okay. But that's the kind of examples that I'm talking about with this. Okay. How about first Corinthians 1529? First Corinthians 1529 is a verse that some people have struggled with because this is the one that the Mormons will try to twist this one to say that it's biblical to get baptized for dead people. Who's ever heard of that doctrine of the Mormons? Because we live in Mormon country, don't we, out here in Phoenix where they get baptized for the dead. And if you ask the Mormon, where did you get that from the Bible? This is the verse they'll point to. This is the only verse they've got. And it says in first Corinthians 1529, else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead? Now the first thing I want to point out here is that God's not saying here, hey, go get baptized for the dead. Is he telling us to do this? No. And is he saying here, hey, these people do it and they're right. It's good. No, no, no. He's rebuking false teachers, people that are not saved, people who deny the resurrection and he's pointing out a contradiction in their own doctrine by saying, look, these people don't even believe in the resurrection yet they're getting baptized for the dead. Why are they then baptized for the dead if the dead rise not? That doesn't even make sense. So he's pointing out an inconsistency in a false religion. He's not telling you this is what we do. Did he say, hey, we get baptized for the dead. You should get baptized for the dead. Let's all get baptized for the dead. That's not what it says. And we should never base our doctrine on only one verse, especially if it's a question. It's not even a statement. It's a question. Questions could be used to confirm what we believe from clear statements, but the bedrock of our doctrine shouldn't be a question. So some people have struggled with this interpretation. Now I just interpreted this verse to you. Does what I said make sense? I mean, it makes sense that he's just pointing out an inconsistency. He's like, they're doing it and it doesn't make sense because of this other doctrine they have. Now a friend of mine called me a couple weeks ago. He called me on the phone and he said, what do you believe about 1 Corinthians 15? And I said, well, I explained to him what I just explained to you. I said, you know, that's what I think it means. And then he said to me, well, he said, a friend of mine told me a different interpretation of it and I wanted to run it by you to see what you think about it. So he ran this interpretation by me. He said to me that when it says baptized for the dead, it's talking about Jesus. Who's ever heard of that interpretation before? Like, oh, it's talking about Jesus. Like, you know, they're baptized for the dead because since they don't believe Jesus rose again, like he's, they think he's dead. So it doesn't make any sense to be baptized in the name of Jesus if he's dead. Right. So, you know, this person hit me with that interpretation and you know, off the cuff, it kind of caught me off guard. I'd never heard of that, but you know, he said, what do you think about that? And I said, I said, well, you know, I said that, I mean that, yeah, that sounds like that could be right. Maybe that, maybe that is right. That sounds good. You know, I said, that sounds good. You know, I'll have to look at that again now, you know, trying to like wrap my mind around that other way of reading this. But I was like, yeah, I mean, that sounds like it could be right. Okay. But that's never what I had, you know, when I'd read this my whole life, that thought never came into my mind because that kind of just the, the plain reading of the text, right, is just, hey, why else what should they do which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all, why are they then baptized for the dead? You know, dead rise not at all is plural. So you'd kind of just assume it's the same dead all three times, the dead, the dead, the dead, it's the same dead. So it's kind of a little bit of a stretch to try to put Jesus in there as the dead, right? Does everybody see what I'm saying? But when I got hit with it, at first it sounded kind of good and I thought like, okay, you know, maybe that is, maybe there's something to that. So I got off the phone with him and I took my Greek New Testament off the shelf and I looked it up though and all the deads all three times is plural. And then I looked up in Spanish Bible and here's what it says in Spanish, de otro modo que aran los que se bautisan por los muertos, si en un guna manera los muertos resucitan porque pues se bautisan por los muertos. So what do you see? Muertos, muertos, muertos. So do you see how it would be impossible to come up with that interpretation if you were reading this in Spanish? Because in English the dead could be singular or plural, right? If I said the dead this, the dead that, it could be singular or plural. But like in Spanish it's different, plural, plural, plural, plural, plural. So then I called this person back and I said, hey, I got bad news for you about that new interpretation of that verse. It doesn't pan out and here's why. And as soon as I explained it to him, he's like, oh yeah, well then yeah, for sure. I mean if it's in Greek, if it's plural, then that's not going to work. You see what I mean? But the ruckmanite in somebody would be like, well, but you know, we're speaking English. It's like, okay, but here's the thing about that. Normal English people in the normal reading of the text aren't going to jump to that conclusion anyway. And if they read the text a little more carefully, if you read it really carefully, what's it say? Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead? If the dead rise not at all, we know that the word rise there, what's the singular for rise? Rises. You know, if the dead rise not at all, that's plural. It has to be plural. Even in English. But on a casual reading you might miss that, right? So you see how it could be helpful if you speak two or three languages, reading it in another language because it's clearer sometimes. It's like, oh, that's clear. That's easy to see. Whereas in English you got to work a little harder sometimes, but it's still there in English, isn't it? Like did we have to go to another language? No, it's right there in English, but you could see how you could sometimes use that to debunk false doctrine, okay, as a reference tool. And I know there are good people who came up with that 1 Corinthians 15, 29. The person who called me is a great person. The person that he heard it from is a great person. I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm just saying that the other languages could be a great reference tool just like a dictionary is a reference tool or an encyclopedia is a reference tool. But at the end of the day, the King James Bible is the final authority. If it's not in the King James, if it contradicts the King James, I'm not going to believe in it. I'm going to believe in it. You know, if something's not there. But these are things that are in the English, but you might just notice them more in another language or you might be able to debunk what I would call kind of wild interpretations or stretches of interpretations. You can kind of like land that airplane. You know, all right, let's land that plane here back to reality. That interpretation doesn't work. So in conclusion, we said what? Number 1, God's word is not limited to one language. God's word has power in all languages. Number 2, it's not necessary to learn a foreign language to comprehend God's word. Number 3, translations should say the same thing. No matter what language, we should get the same doctrine. If it only works in one language, something's wrong with that doctrine. We should get the same teaching in all languages, but it's not going to be word for word because languages express things differently, especially if you get into like Chinese or something. And then fourthly, this, that the original Greek and Hebrew are not bad or scary or evil and they could be a good reference tool if you actually spoke those languages, just like Spanish could be a good reference tool if you speak Spanish because the, the, the, the good Bible version. Okay. So the conclusion is this, be King James only, but don't take it to the point of stupidity, over the top ridiculousness where you think the whole world has to learn English because now you're just as bad as the people who are telling you you have to speak Greek except you're just doing it with English now. Only the English is right. You're kind of doing the same thing. And let me just say real quick before I close in prayer that where we stand on the Spanish Bible issue, because it's an issue for us because we have a lot of Spanish speakers in our church and we're doing Spanish soul winning, Spanish missions trips and stuff like that. Where do we stand? Here's where we stand. We reject the modern Spanish versions of the Bible, such as the new international version in Spanish where they have like their own NIV in Spanish. And we also reject the reignable era 1960 edition. The 1960 edition of the reignable era is not a true reignable era. It's a fraud just like the new King James. In fact, the reignable era 1960 version is worse than the new King James. I would say that it's about halfway between an NIV and a new King James. It's that bad. So I just want to make that clear. I don't want to see anybody using a 1960 reignable era in our soul winning ministries or preaching or anything like that. We do not accept that version. We reject that modernized fake reignable era 1960 version. And a lot of King James only churches use it. And they're wrong and they need to get rid of it. It's junk. What we do accept in our ministry is the old reignable era. Now I don't care which edition you use of the reignable era Antigua, the old version. I don't care if you're using the 1602, the 1885, the 1909, the reignable era Gomez or the 1602 purificada. You know all of those editions of the old reignable era are fine. But do not use the 1960 or any of these other corruptions of God's word. That's our policy. That's where we stand. And again I couldn't even begin to scratch the surface of this subject. You know watch New World Order Bible versions to get the rest. Let's bow our heads in the Board of Prayer. Father we thank you so much for your word Lord. Thank you so much for preserving the Greek and the Hebrew Lord and allowing it to be translated accurately into our native tongue English Lord. And I pray Lord that your word would continue to be translated into all languages in 2018 Lord. That all the languages of the world would have an accurate translation of your word so that they might be saved and grow and learn every possible doctrine from your word Lord. God I pray that we would do our best to preach the gospel to every creature here at home and abroad Lord. And I pray that mighty works would be done in these last days. And Lord I pray that everybody who has a King James Bible would appreciate it, love it, and study it Lord and not neglect it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.