Mark 11:27-33 comments, part 1, by what authority

 

Mark 11:27 ¶  And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 28  And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things? 29  And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30  The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me. 31  And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? 32  But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. 33  And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.

27 ¶ And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?

This is the essential problem of mankind. Modern man does things justified by his own authority. Those worshippers at the feet of humanism, scientism, and naturalism have their final authority as themselves. Jesus is my final authority through His Book, the King James Authorized Version of the Bible. To the fundamentalist who upholds the originals, the Textus Receptus (which one?) and the Second Great Rabbinic Bible aka the Masoretic Text, which he nor anyone he knows has ever seen, he is still his only authority because he would have to translate the Greek or Hebrew original and his translation would have to be the authority.

You can’t get around it. The fumbling fundamentalist comes to I Corinthians 15:55 and;

1Corinthians 15:55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Now, when the modern fundamentalist comes to this verse he sees that grave is translated from the word, Hades, which he refuses to translate but rather transliterates. In doing that he renders the verse meaningless. What is Hades in context? What about this verse?

Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

Once again, our brave scholar will refuse to translate Hades as hell or anything else. He will simply transliterate Hades. Hades, as a word, means nothing unless it is translated. Now, you can’t have it both ways. Either, God had His hand in the AV’s translation and it is His word and you can trust it as your final authority or any one of the other 200 or so versions based on Egyptian manuscripts are equal in authority in which case you have no authority but your own choice “du jour”.

I know the AV is true and the word of God if for no other reason than that reading it over 68 times has changed my heart and even removed specific desires for and enjoyment of specific sins in my heart and mind. If you say to me that the NKJV, the NIV, or the NASB are equal to the KJV in power then I ask you, how many times have you felt compelled to read one of them? In fact, I don’t know anyone who has been drawn into a book so intensely, outside of the KJV, that they have felt a hunger for it like this. But I know many people who claim that they have read the KJV dozens of times and continue to read it and will read it until they die and that doing so has changed them dramatically. In fact, I know of one old preacher who insists he has read it 175 times + in his many years.

Okay, Christian, you say you believe in the “fundamentals” of the faith? By what authority do you believe these things? By your own heart? By your own reasoning? By some unseen force you think came into you while you prayed? Without the word of God you have no authority other than your own imagination to believe anything. Do you have the word of God? The actual words of God? If you don’t have the actual words of God that He wants you to have, then what do you have? A reliable translation? No, you have your own presumption and self-worship, and worship of someone’s intellect, perhaps other than your own.

You are not a Sudanese Christian who has never seen a Bible and can only stand firm on his faith in Christ and die for it or be enslaved. We are a literate culture with literally hundreds of millions if not billions of Bibles in print. Do you say that none of them are the actual words of God and that God’s actual word is something that is unavailable to us? Then, how do you know anything by faith? By what authority, Christian? By what authority do you believe these things?