Why the King James
Bible, also known as the Authorized
Version, as opposed to more modern versions? God gave the Scriptures by
inspiration.
2Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness:
Inspiration gave the men who wrote the Bible understanding,
which is wisdom to write what God wanted written but to include their own
style, some of their own opinions, and even things that aren’t God’s specific
commands but kept in for us to learn from. This is not always word for word
dictation.
Job 32:8 But there is a spirit in man: and the
inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.
2Peter 3:15 And account that the longsuffering of our
Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the
wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
Romans 15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime
were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the
scriptures might have hope.
God’s hand of inspiration extends not just to the original
autographs but translations and copies and as Jesus clarifies God’s commands so
can a translation make clearer what He wanted.
Jeremiah 36:32 Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it
to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of
Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in
the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words.
From the previous passage you would realize that you do not
know nor is it important what the originals said because God wanted us to have
the final result. It took about 1500 years with dozens of authors, their
secretaries, copyists, and even translators to give us the Bible we have. It
took about the same amount of time to perfect and complete that work using
copyists, translators, and those faithful to it to give us a perfect and
complete Bible to use even though in each generation mankind had the Scripture
they needed to sustain them and give them understanding. God’s hand of
inspiration is evident throughout. This is because of our sin nature and God
working with man’s disposition and with man’s finite understanding to produce
what He wanted.
The doctrine that God only gave by inspiration the original
autographs is as vain and blasphemous a doctrine as the one that insists that
your church tradition is equal to the authority of the Scriptures.
Two important events in the history of human thought took
place around the time of the publication of the King James Bible. One began in the previous century and was called
the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation, an attempt to overthrow the authority
of the Bible in principle, the ones those people had and used before the Authorized Version, which was the
foundation of Protestant and other Nonconforming Christian’s worship. The other
flowed from it in the following century and was called The Enlightenment, a
vain exaltation of man’s reason over God as an ideal. It can be proven, and I
have done so to my own satisfaction, that all modern Bible translations flow
from these movements. The King James
Bible, also known as the Authorized
Version, was the last major Bible translation done before these two
movements resulted in German theology and rationalism that led to the modern
apostasy of the exaltation of reason over revelation and a general Bible
illiteracy among Protestant Christians.
God preserved His word through the ages using the mind and
hands of fallible men. We should be so grateful that we have more of a
revelation, a more complete revelation of God’s will than Job or Moses or
Ezekiel had.
Psalm 12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as
silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt
preserve them from this generation for ever.
Psalm 119:89 LAMED. For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled
in heaven.
Most fundamentalists believe that God’s word was found only
in the original autographs, inerrant and infallible, something which they have
never seen and which we cannot examine.
The King James Bible
is the true Bible of God and our final authority in all matters of faith,
practice, and doctrine. It is there
for us to see, to examine, to question, and to study; and like Christ was
physically touched by the Apostles we have God’s words to handle and He speaks
to us through them. It is the last Bible translation before the victory of the
Counter-Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the assault on faith by German
rationalism. The final nail in the coffin of understanding was the consequence
of scientists like Isaac Newton reducing the God of all reality to simply the
God of the First Cause. It was a short step from there to not needing God at
all.
One other thing to note is that modern, scientific man is so
intent on breaking reality down into its component parts that he has a hard
time seeing the beauty of the forest for the trees and even the individual
twigs. Let us look at the verses in context and understand metaphors for what
they are without creating an entire edifice of meaninglessness that the Holy
Spirit never intended.
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