Bibliology: The Study of God's Word

 I think it would be unrealistic to believe that from several different books that are titled the same, yet have completely different contents, that we could find the true meaning of God's word. This might at first seem unimportant. You would not be alone in this thinking. Several prominent speakers, Pastors, and churches strongly feel that there is no need to exhaust one's thinking in this area. They might even be heard saying that “it doesn't matter”. If you were having a home built from a floor plan that you have chosen and invested a great deal of time and money into, but arriving at the job sight you find several sets of plans that read differently from each other. All the plans are for ranch style houses, and on the cover of the house plans, they would all have the same picture, but it wouldn't take long for problems to occur when everything on the inside begins to give different instructions. A house could be erected this way, but it would never be the house you originally planned. Would you be satisfied with your home being built in such a way? If you said no, then how could you dare be willing to build your relationship, and your knowledge of salvation from a group of contradicting blue prints? 

 Some might say that “all Bibles say the same things, they just come from different grammatical perspectives”. This is simply just not the case. The differences are far more than language style. There are several charts we could use to show the radical differences in what the different translations are promoting and not promoting. But I will simply pick a few verses to show how different these books are. In Daniel 3:25 Nebuchadnezzar is looking into the fiery furnace that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into. He can see four figures. Nebuchadnezzar identified the fourth person in that fire as “like the Son of God...”. There is no arguing that he is talking about Jesus Christ in the King James Bible. The NIV reads “like the son of gods...”, the Living Bible reads “Looks like a god...” and the New American Standard reads “like a son of the gods...”. You can clearly see the versions other than the King James are not making a reference in anyway to the Son of the Most High God, but rather to any pagan figure you choose. Is this a big deal? By making reference to any god we open the door of corruption in two ways. First, it says that the magnificent presence of Jesus Christ is not enough to distinguish between him and other false gods. Second, to the unlearned Bible reader, they would not know who was really in that fire, one could assume it was an angel or even Satan. What is clear is that the other Bibles are unclear as to who was in that fire. 

 If we turn to I John 4:3 we read in the King James Bible “every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God...”, and the NIV reads “every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God...”. The King James is clearly stating that the Holy Spirit and God are one, but the NIV is saying that the Holy Spirit came from God, or was sent by God. We all came from God, all of creation is from God, but we are not of God. The clear separation of the created and the uncreated must be upheld, and understood for one to truly be saved. We are to believe Jesus is God, and God suffered and died in the manhood of Jesus on that cross for our sins. If we believe anything other than that, we put our hope in a lie, and are lost to our sins. 

Can one defend from other versions that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation? The answer is yes. What we are seeing however, is a gross weakening of the need for Christ for salvation, and a gross weakening of who Jesus is. Is he created from God, or is he uncreated of God? Satan rarely is open and direct. He works elusively with small corrosive steps. The word “Father” has been omitted a minimum of 601 times, the word “Son” 181 times, and the word “He/him” 3,408 times from the Bible depending on the non-King James Bible you use. No, not all of those words were fully removed, but enough to see that the other versions of the Bible are different, and much weaker. 

 Have you ever ordered a glass of lemonade, and found it watered down, and without real substance in taste? Would you be happy and satisfied with your drink? That is the word of God that the churches are pushing today. A weak and watered down Bible. If you would send that glass of lemonade back, and demand the full strength for your drinking experience, then why are we so ready to accept our Bible at less than full strength? Only the King James Bible is complete in the strength, power, and might of the Holy Spirit. We can find that even at the most basic foundation of our Christian beliefs, that Satan is using Gods word to confuse and weaken our ability to stand firm in God's truth. With the religion of evolution being taught to our children in public schools up and down this nation, our children are in great need of a foundation on which to push back from. Only with the King James Bible are they equipped to resist, and push back against such lies that are being placed before them, and taught as factual truth. 

 If we turn in our Bibles to the foundation book of Genesis. We will find within the first few verses that Satan is removing all substance from our Biblical diet, and virtually giving you nothing of strength to stand upon to fight even the obvious lies of evolution. In Genesis 1:5 we read in the King James Bible, “And the evening and the morning were the first day...”. If we turn to the NIV we read “there was an evening and there was a morning-first day...”. Although very insidious the NIV has removed what the first day was “an evening and a morning...”. The King James clearly identifies that a day begins in the evening not the morning. The NIV simply says there was an evening, a morning, and a first day, but gives no understanding of order or significance. This may seem inconsequential, but without the knowledge of when a day starts and ends we could not keep many of God's laws to an appropriate and acceptable standard such as feast days, and even the Holy Sabbath. This is exactly what Satan desires. 

 This is not all that Satan has for these verses. We will find in the New American Standard, Modern Language, Revised Standard, and many others, the words “The First Day...” are replaced with “One Day...”. The words first day are a clear and precise time period. One day could be any day in time. It could have been yesterday, it could have been any day. The Ferrar Fenton version even goes as far as to say “this was the close of the dawn of the first age...” When God said “in the beginning...” we have no way of knowing when that was. It could have been 6 thousand years, or 50 billion years ago if we don't know when the first day was. But thanks to the precise and perfect words of God, preserved though the ages of time as he promised in Psalms 12:6-7 “The word of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.” We know with surety that the beginning of time was the FIRST day. Only with this piece of truth can we begin to push back against the idea of an uncreated universe. 

 Evolutionist count on time to make all their theories plausible. The only difference between a fairytale and evolution is time. If I tell you a frog turned into a prince last night, you would say that is a fairytale, but if I say that a frog turned into a prince over millions of years, some would say that is science. If we lack the necessary foundation of when time began, and when creation began with it, then we are exposed to the evolutionist belief that the universe is billions of years old. The words “one day” or someday give great room for time to laps from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 1:5, but with the King James we know it to only be twenty-four hours. 

 Only a perfect word can be from God. If we are to find errors in God's word, then that very word discredits God's power and perfection. If we examine the verses found in, II Samuel 10:18 “David slew the men of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians...” and then in I Chronicles 19:18 “David slew of the Syrians seven thousand men which fought in chariots...”, we discover that II Samuel tells us there were “seven hundred chariots...” and I Chronicles tells us how many men were killed that drove the chariots, “seven thousand men...” For clarity chariots were made of men-horse teams. When a horse or a man became tired or killed it was replaced, and the chariot continued fighting, so we see that David killed several men off of the same chariots several times, no errors hear. Now lets look at the NIV, the New King James, the New American Standard, and others, they read in II Samuel 10:18 that “David killed seven hundred of their charioteers…” and then in I Chronicles 19:18 reads “David killed seven thousand of their charioteers...”. This is a clear undisputed contradiction. The other translations are saying one place that David killed 700 men, and in another place 7,000 men. This and many others errors of the non-King James Bibles open us up for personal interpretation. When you can say, there was a mistake, or a copier's error in one place what stops you from claiming the same in other parts of the Bible? It will be hard to defend a Bible that has mistakes as the perfect word of God. The most grievous aspect of God's word having error is it makes God a liar. If God tells us to follow his word, but can't give us the word He wants followed, what does that make God? 

Many times, we can find that the different translations actually say the opposite. When looking at the King James Bible Proverbs 18:24 says “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly...”. Now looking at the NIV, “A man of many companions may come to ruin…” and in the Revised Standard “there are friends that pretend to be friends...”. None of theses verses are saying the same thing, but only one verse will hold up when we compare it to the whole Bible as truth, The King James. 

 For a second witness turn to John 4:29, which reads: “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is this not the Christ?...”. It is clear that the woman that quoted this verse knew who Jesus was and wanted to share it with others. Let's look at this same verse from the New International Standard version “This is not the Christ, is it?...”. One is saying this is Christ, and the other is saying it is not Christ. Exact opposite of each other. 

 The King James uses the personal pronouns that start with “T” and “Y”. Other translations actually boast of using a more modern language, that of course drops all of the “ye” and “thee”, as if they have accomplished something great. In reality the “thee” and “ye” play a very important linguistic role for interpreting and understanding the Bible clearly. The personal pronouns with the letter “T” are always referring to a single person, and the personal pronouns that begin with “Y” are plural. This is easy to remember because a T has a single straight line “singular”, and a Y has two lines to make a fork “Plural”. If I walked into a room full of people and say “you come with me” no one would know if I was talking to one person or all people. If I said to a room full of people “Ye come with me” you would have no question in your mind that I was referring to the whole group, because Ye is plural. Now let's look at the Bible, and see how Satan can change what God has said in His Holy word by removing this simple yet invaluable tool. Reading John 3:7 “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again...”. It is very easy to see in these famous words from Christ to Nicodemus, that Christ is telling Thee (Nicodemus) that Ye (all other people) must be born again. Now let's look at it from the NIV “You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again...” It's clear that Christ is telling Nicodemus that he needs to be born again, but it is unclear if that applies to anyone else. 

 These small details play amplified rolls in understanding the true meaning of scripture. Only the King James Bible offers such valuable tools of clarity. 

 By now one thing should be clear. The King James is not saying the same thing as the others versions. In fact, of the two family trees that our Bibles come out of today, the Textus Receptus (King James), or the Sinaiticus/Alexandian/Vaticanus (all modern Revised Versions), the modern translations from the corrupt text fail to agree with each other. If you were to take the King James Bible out of the topic, you would find that none of the other translations agree, despite coming from the same family tree of text. This means that the text they claim to be superior is incomplete and inconsistent with itself. One can also conclude that there is personal interpretation being added into these Bibles. It only stands to reason that if you are translating your Bible from the same Text that it will read the same way, but we can clearly see this is not the case from the very short examples I have given in this article, and I have only referenced a few translations that I have in my personal library. There are more than a hundred translations out of the corrupt Text, and none will fully agree with another, or you would be unable to gain a copyright for these Bibles. 

 You will not find that same problem with the Textus Receptus. Several Bibles over history have come from this family tree the Wycliffe Bible, Tyndale Bible, Coverdale Bible, Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible to name a few. All these Bibles completely agree with each other in all areas of theology. Why does the other family tree have so many problems? The answer is very simple. Writing a Bible that spans 1500 years of literary work, and several different languages would be an immense project that only God himself could handle, and when you walk away from what God has written you will find yourself with confusion and nonsense. “God is not the author of confusion...” (I Corinthians14:33). While preaching at a Hospital one morning, I was reading a verse from the Bible. A young lady raised her hand with a confused look on her face, and asked “what was I reading from?” she asked this because her Bible read something completely different. A confused look is exactly what you get when preaching to a congregation with several different versions of the Bible. This was not Gods plan for his word “...but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” 

 All versions can't be right. With this understanding that not all Bibles are the same, how do we determine the correct Bible to learn of our Father in Heaven? How do we find the one true word of God? The answer to that question I believe can be found in I John 4:1-3 “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God… And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God...”. When we look closely at the Revised Version Bibles and the King James Bible it is clear which is professing the strongest, that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Most High God, and that is the King James Bible. The Revised Version Bibles work very hard to reduce Christ to a mere created being. They do so by watering down his relationship with the Father, but even more by removing vital words from the Bible that promote the true deity of Jesus. The King James on the other hand reads strong and clear unmatched by any Revised Bible, that Jesus Christ is the uncreated Son of God. The most profound verse in the Bible on this very subject does not go unscathed, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son...” (John 3:16) you will find the word “begotten…” missing for your NIV and numerous other Revised Bibles. This is a clear assault on the divinity of Christ. By removing the word begotten we open the door that Jesus is a created being, but with the simple word begotten, we slam the door shut on created, and are constrained and helpless to admit that Jesus is of God the Father, and part of his very essence. Only one English translation of the Bible in use today that meets the requirements of I John 4:1-3, and that is our beloved King James Bible. 

 It is important to recognize that despite all the corruption that we see in the books labeled Bible today, that an accurate copy can and does exist despite human hands being part of the process. The scribes used a very precise and meticulous step by step process which allowed for the most accuracy. A copier would first count all the words on a given page being copied, then he would count how many times each single word would appear. After all the words were counted and recorded he would then count all the letters, and count how many times each letter was used. At the completion of a single page being copied if there were more or less words than the original it was destroyed. If a specific word was used more or less than the original, the hole copy was thrown out. Even if just one letter came up wrong he would start again fresh. This procedure made it virtually impossible for an error to occur in the copy. With this knowledge, we can rest assured that God's word has been preserved, and there cannot be multiple translations of the same word. We also know that any change from the original was not by mistake, but by intent. Let's not be seduced by Satan, neither have any part of his game to mock God, and his sword of truth. 

 Ephesians 6:10-17 tells us that our battle is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”. We are in a fight with Satan, and his evil army which are involved in all entities of this world. We are instructed to defend ourselves against this evil with the “Armor of God...” by “having your loins girt with truth… the breast plate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace… taking the shield of faith…” wearing “the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”. If the Spirit inspired word of God, which is the sword, has been weakened or destroyed, then all other pieces of armor will fail. You can't have truth, righteousness, knowledge of the gospel, faith, or salvation without first having a strong and pure word of God. This is why Satan has diligently worked so hard to change God's word because Satan knows the POWER of the true Holy Bible. 

 Now that we have the true word of God it is important to use it correctly so we can gain the most from God's word in understanding it, and utilize it to it's full potential power. By applying these basic Bible hermeneutics we can avoid certain stumbling blocks and pitfalls that Satan will surely place before you in your understanding of God's word. 

 1) Thou shalt not deny the divine inspiration of the Bible. It is so important that we place credit where credit is due. We must not give man credit for what the Holy Spirit has done through them. It would be virtually unachievable for a book to be compiled from several different writers, of different languages, over a course of 1500 years, and put them together to make a complete book as perfect, consistent, and accurate as the King James Bible. It can only be explained as a divinely, Holy Spirit inspired book, every last word of it. Don't give even one word to man. 

 2) Thou shalt not deny the divine preservation of the Bible. We cannot limit God's ability to preserve his word as he promised, “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached.” (I Peter 1:24-25). God said he would keep his word safe and pure, and we are to trust that he has done just that. We need find and use that word, and not settle for anything less. 

 3) Thou shalt not take scripture out of context. It is very easy to take a verse here, and a verse there, and make them say exactly what you want them to say. We must read God's word in its entirety. It is important to apply the greater meaning of the whole passage, and not the isolated words of a single verse or statement. Many denominations were built off of just one verse, and they have worked very hard to make the rest of the Bible fit inside that one verse or passage. They only appear successful because they ignore parts of the Bible that disagree. In some cases, denominational foundation verses are elevated as having more value than the ones that disagree with them. That is not how Christ intended for his church to build theology. The meaning of a verse should always be compared to the overall teaching of the Bible. One should also have knowledge of the historical setting of the verses. There is much that can be learned from the historical land marks, the people that are being addressed, and the events that are happening at the time the passage in written to give clarity as to what is being said. 

 4) Thou shalt not add to or diminish ought from the Bible. “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2). This is a clear warning to preachers to be very careful what Bible they are promoting or not promoting from the pulpits of America. God is saying he only wrote one word, and we are to use it just as he wrote it. Satan knows the power of changing God's word, and was the very first to do it in the Garden. In Genesis 3:1 Satan said to Eve “Yea hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the Garden?”, but this is not what God said. God said in Genesis 2:16-17, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it...” Satan changed the words of God in his first conversation with man on earth. He was minimizing the significant difference between the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from all the other trees. Satan went on to say “ye shall not surely die...”, but that is not what God said at all. God said: “...for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”. Satan did not stop his lying in the garden, and we must not take part in those lies. 

 5) Thou shalt not presume to have secret knowledge of the Bible that is unknown to other Christians. By not following this principal we expose ourselves to the thinking that God has called us or others to be a prophet. Many false religions today could have been avoided by following this principle. We should lean on the words found in Ecclesiastes 1:9 “The things that hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun”.  

6) Thou Shalt not rewrite, re-translate, or reinvent the Bible by abusing and depending on concordances, lexicons, and commentaries. There is nothing wrong in using some of these tools to help work out a tough spot in the Bible, but these help books are not from God, but are man’s interpretation of God's word. Let the Bible interpret the Bible, not man. Many of the commentaries that I have used have made references to the other corrupt Bible texts as if they were all equal and divinely inspired. There is only one word of God, and if one has to leave that word to understand his word, then that should be a red flag. The Bible can and will interpret itself. In Genesis chapter 3 we have a creature that arrives on the scene called “the serpent”. I have a commentary that identifies this serpent as a literal speaking snake. Wrong! If we use the Bible to interpret the Bible we can turn to Revelation 12:9, “And that great dragon was cast out, and that old SERPENT, called the devil, and Satan...”. We know that the serpent in Genesis 3:1 is none other than Satan. We also now know who the dragon is in Revelation 12:17. The only way you can use the Bible to translate is if you read it. Don't let these help books take away from true Bible study. 

 7) Thou shalt establish doctrine in the mouth of two or three witnesses. “...In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (II Corinthians 13:1) the words here in II Corinthians are a quote directly from Deuteronomy 19:15. If you can't find a supporting verse for your biblical understanding of something, then you understand incorrectly. Make sure the theological foundation you stand on is supported by this presupposition of two or three witnesses. 

 The word of God is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us. Job said “I have esteemed the words of his (God's) mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12). With grateful hearts for the word that God has given us, let us move forward in our growth in him by finding the right Bible, and walking in that Bible with understanding and accuracy.