| Chapter 17 Which Bible III Which bible? At one point in my life, I was an active member of a fundamental independent church. I won't mention the denomination, as that really doesn't matter. During this time, the preacher had a series on the theme 'which bible'. He presented a lot of verses to support his belief that the King James version was the only version and all other versions were perversions. Central to his discussions were the arguments of and between Ruckman and Dollar. Also, cited were 'God Only Wrote One Bible' by Jasper James Ray, and 'The Revision Revised' by D. J. W. Burgon, which was in answer to the Greek text and theories of Westcott and Hort. He attacked the 'oldest manuscripts' ( in the preacher's words the Alexandrus, Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus ) as being invented in the Vatican by 'atheists'. Among those he labled as such, were Origen, Westcott and Hort. The series ran over six weeks, and his unanswered claims were very convincing. In the emotion of the sermons, I became convinced and a strong defender of the King James version and a detractor of other versions, but not totally a Ruckmanite. Less than a year after this, we had to move to another town and return to one of our previous churches, less militant but of the same denomination. This church was in the process of a pastor search, and the ultimately successful candidate had offered to meet privately with members of the congregation to answer questions. My wife and I accepted his offer, and posed several questions to him. One of them was, how he stood on which bible. His response was that he preferred the King James version. All his answers fit the mold that we were looking to fill, so we voted for him. Immediately after being voted in, his next three Sunday evening sermons were aimed at the militant ideas that he had led us to believe he supported. He even stated that he could lead someone to the Lord with the Douay version of the bible! In our pharasean state we left the church for other pastures. At our next church, the pastor preached heart attitude. He tolerated our 135 _______________________________________________________________________________ militance. We were continuing to attempt to set anyone straight who saw fit to use any corrupted version, that is to say any version other than King James. One day at a Christian book store, I was attempting to set the owner straight, when I noticed the combination of hurt and anger in her eyes. This bothered me, and the image of the hurt that I had caused began to haunt me. And then the light came on. In Genesis 3:1 it says "Now the serpent was more subtil than any of the beasts of the field...". How deceptive can Satan be? Very! It appeared to me that very early in the development of the written record that we have, which we call the Bible, Satan whispered to the scribes and copyists. These whisperings made each copy slightly different. Then he sat back and left the rest up to man, to lose sight of the main purpose of the gospel while quibbling over semantics, interpretations and styles. My dilemma now became, again, which Bible? Even in more tolerant churches that allowed NIV, KJV, NKJV, ERV, ASV, NEB, RSV, NASV, etc., they still drew a line. This line fell more along the lines of accepted canon. What is canon but a decision by men on what should be accepted as the inspired word of God that was meant for congregational use, in use at the time of the decision, with all other either not extant or determined by those men to be frivolous in one way or another. But this line was drawn by men. Could they have been misdirected by Satan in the same way, causing further divisions? As you might have already seen I am talking about, among other things, the inclusion or lack of inclusion of the apocryhal writings, which are included in the 1609 Douay version at Rheims, but not accepted by the people of Israel or most Protestants. Again a broad gulf lies between each, and yet the Holy Spirit can and will be an excellent bridge between each. If only we could listen to a passage of scripture which is common, I believe, in all versions: Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.". If we would only ?prayerfully enter each study, I am satisfied that God is faithful and true and 136 ________________________________________________________________________________ |
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