The scripture says of itself that it’s settled in Heaven forever. (Ps 119:89) The word “settled” (nāṣab) means “stands firm,” “is established,” or “is fixed in place.” Heaven is the seat of God’s throne and absolute authority—nothing there can be altered by earthly powers, time, or circumstance.
In other words, God’s Word is not temporary or provisional—it is forever (lə·‘ô·lām, “to perpetuity”). It originates from and is anchored in God’s unchangeable nature and throne in Heaven. No earthly opposition, cultural shift, human opinion, or historical event can overturn, revoke, or nullify what God has spoken. (Ps 12:7)
So, how does this fact this inform the KJV-Only debate, which is evidently a singularly unique one (there’s no ESV-Only or NIV-Only debate).
What’s actually being debated is whether any biblical translation at all should be received as fully inspired of God. The objective in opposing implicit trust in the KJV is to dethrone anyone’s implicit trust in any version of the bible, the KJV in particular.
The first question to ask in such encounters is, “By what standard are we claiming a given translation is imperfect?” The claim itself implies a perfect standard by which to make the claim. So, what is this standard? Where is it, and how do we access it?
Yet no such standard is ever offered, since the actual claim is that no such standard exists. Yet this claim lacks any sort of proper grounding. How does one prove a perfect translation does not exist?
By definition, we can’t prove such a claim; we can only disprove it.
What we are actually encountering are axiomatic claims: accepted as true or false a priori. No proof is required or even offered. We call such claims assumptions.
We can assume there is a perfect translation of the bible, in a language we can understand today, or we can assume there is not. These are our only choices.
We navigate such scenarios using proof by contradiction: if an assumption leads us to contradiction, then it is false.
Assumptions about the existence of a perfect, trustworthy translation of the Bible reveal underlying beliefs about the purpose of biblical inspiration itself, and about God’s ability to achieve this purpose. Either God has a purpose in inspiring the Bible, or He doesn’t. If He does have a purpose, He either intends to achieve it, or He doesn’t.
If there is no perfect translation of the Bible, then either God had no purpose in inspiring it in the first place, or He has no interest in actually preserving this quality of His Word across the boundaries of time and language in order to achieve this purpose.
What does the Bible say? It says God inspires His Word to fully equip believers to live the spiritual life. (2Ti 3:16-17) To achieve this purpose God must preserve this inspired quality of His Word across the boundaries of both time and language, so He has. This formally ends the debate. We’re done.
The only remaining question is, which Bible can I implicitly trust as God’s inspired Word? For me, the answer is straightforward. It’s the only one being attacked so we will not implicitly trust it: it’s the KJV.
What harm is done to me by not trusting any Bible as inspired? I then have no faultless ground for my faith: this is eternally catastrophic.
What harm is done to me by implicitly trusting the KJV as inspired? I must endure the mild disdain of a few who won’t. I can live with that.
Here is a Grok discussion elaborating on this concept.
Here is a Grok discussion resolving what is claimed to be absolute proof of a scribal error in the Masoretic text resulting in an inconsistency in the KJV.
The problem relates to the age of King Ahaziah when he began to reign:
— 2Ki 8:26: “Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign…”
— 2Ch 22:2: “Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign…”
The standard claim is that a scribal error was introduced into 2Ch since the Hebrew letter for 40 is very similar to the letter for 20. It is motivated by an earlier stage of the Hebrew script (before about 400–300 BC) when numerals were written with letters that looked extremely similar: 20 was written כ (kaph) and 40 was written מ (mem). In the oldest forms of the script, כ and מ are almost identical — just a tiny difference in the length of the bottom stroke or the angle.
Several different explanations are available to avoid the scribal error conclusion, the most prevalent of which is that Ahaziah began to reign in the 42nd year of the Omri dynasty, but this strains the text itself, which states 42 as Ahaziah’s age.
In my view, a better, and quite reasonable explanation is that Ahaziah was 22 when he began a co-regency with his sick father, Jehoram, which lasted 20 years. During this time Ahaziah was acting as the functioning king even though Jehoram was officially still king. Then when Jehoram died at age 60, Ahaziah began to officially reign as king at the age of 42. This does no injustice to the grammar of the text; it only contradicts an assumption that Jehoram died at the age of 40 when Ahaziah was 22, which the text itself never explicitly states.