The Word of God

Just as all religions aren’t the same, modern Bible translations are also different. How can we tell which one’s best? Why does it matter?

Well, if we’re not committed to obeying our bible then it really doesn’t matter; we’ll go with whatever happens to make us feel good … hardly noticing when it encourages men to abuse their families, as many of our newer English translations actually do.

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Clements Mountain, Montana

But if we’re hiding our bible in our heart, meditating on it daily and conforming our lives to every word of it, then I think the version we choose makes a big difference: we should trust it as God’s inspired Word. Is any translation worthy of our trust? How can we know?

As it turns out, I don’t think we need a seminary degree to nail this one; no need to master ancient biblical languages. The consistency of the Majority text sheds invaluable light: most of our English translations are based on patent absurdity: The Syrian Recension.

Of the few that remain, the King James Version (KJV) empowered two Great Awakenings, was the backbone of the English-speaking world for nearly 300 years and is the only English bible to have ever been generally accepted as inspired by God’s people. In my humble opinion, this one’s a no-brainer.

The Bible isn’t just any old book; it’s alive and powerful (He 4:12); it cannot be broken. (Jn 10:35) God’s Word is food for our soul (Je 15:16), a light to our way (Ps 119:105), a map for our journey (1Ti 3:16-17), and the Spirit’s sword, our weapon of war. (Ep 6:17) Let’s choose our bible wisely; pick one we trust and obey it as the very Word of God to us. Our spiritual health depends on it.

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One thought on “The Word of God”

  1. In this video, questioning the reliability of the KJB, Tim Berg claims the KJB is copyrighted (see his article); he provides as evidence that a Royal Charter or Patent, which was granted by the Crown to Cambridge University Press, is equivalent to copyright, which is a good argument, but nonetheless debatable. ChatGPT refutes this claim (that the text of the KJB is copywrited), as in this chat, so there may be some real difference between the rights held by Cambridge University Press and the modern concept of copyright (as the Chat asserts). For example, the right to reproduce a text in printed form (ie. the Royal Charter) is evidently not equivalent to owning rights to the text itself as intellectual property (as with a copyright). In any case, it is relatively clear that outside the UK anyone may treat the KJB as being in the Public Domain, and even within the UK restrictions are not placed upon replication and distribution of the KJB other than to preserve its integrity, which is a good thing. This is clearly not the case with most other English translations, which do appear (to me) to be driven by a profit motive to restrict the free dissemination of their texts.

    The video’s general content, as well as Berg’s website, appear to me to make significant efforts to cast doubt on the reliability of the KJB via an assortment of claims, many of are likely true, but none of which actually imply, or really even suggest, that the KJB is unreliable, or that it should not be trusted as the Word of God.

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