© 2007 The Flaming Torch, All rights reserved.
The Word of God is facing severe attacks today concerning its make-up, its manuscripts and its morals. These assaults relate to its authenticity, its accuracy and its authority. With regards to its attitude toward the inspired Word, all professing Christendom can be divided into three categories: the Bible benders, the Bible menders and the Bible defenders.
The "Bible Benders" group includes individuals and organizations who claim to accept the inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy of the Word, but refuse to be bound by its authority.
They bend its message, methods and morals to accommodate and fit their compromising schemes. The Bible benders propagate unscriptural evangelism, promote unspiritual entertainment and practice undesirable ethics.
"Bible Benders" declare allegiance to the written transcripts, claiming to accept the exclusiveness of the Christian gospel, but bend the Scripture to make allowance for fellowship, cooperation and practical dilly dallying with the gospel's avowed enemies.
The SBC conservatives seem to be experts at this type strategy, disavowing the theological liberals within their spiritual circumference, while making all kinds of compromising alliances with the ecumenical detractors of the faith outside their convention.
While proudly proclaiming their adherence to Biblical values, they bend the Scripture to accommodate to their sensual worldly music, their market oriented entertainment programs and recreational activities schedules.
While pledging outward allegiance to its eternal verities, the Bible Benders freely accommodate the inspired Word to fit lowered moral conduct, defending or ignoring their unbiblical actions. The ranks of evangelicals and Fundamentalists are rapidly filling today with these conduct benders, who justify their worldly affections, worldly affirmations and worldly actions with twisted Scripture interpretations.
They are also never divinely ratified, with each succeeding translation resulting in a less authoritative voice among the professing conservatives.
The thesis of these Bible menders is unacceptable, their texts are unreliable and their tactics are uncommendable. They either believe there is no perfectly preserved Word of God for today; or if they accept this premise, they believe it is contained within a mass of manuscripts which no living authority can accurately decipher or determine.
Despite manuscripts which are discarded and rejected by saints for nearly 1800 years, they cling to their thin 1% manuscript copy claims, while dismissing as unscholarly the massive evidence favoring the Masoretic Hebrew and the Greek Received Texts.
These modern perversions date their origins back to the Westcott- Hort text from which the 1881 English Revised Version and 1901 American Standard Versions were penned. Their modern 20th century flagship version was the 1952 based Revised Standard Version, produced by the apostate National Council of Churches.
Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. rightly sized up this perverted translation in a 1950's chapel message calling the RSV "one of the dirtiest blows that Jesus Christ . . . ever received below the belt." He openly ridiculed professing Fundamentalists who wanted to be classified as "scholars" for saluting it.
In discerning perception that was typical of his alert and Scripturally sensitive mind, he stated that "the devil went as far as he could in" the RSV "in order to SOFTEN UP THIS GENERATION TO GET READY FOR ANOTHER TRANSLATION TO PULL OUT SOMETHING ELSE." Dr. Ian Paisley was keenly correct in his book My Plea for the Old Sword, when he stated that "the foundation texts upon which any translation rests are all important" ; that if the foundation is false, corrupt and erroneous, then the translation also will be likewise (p.13). The host of modern versions, perversions and paraphrases adequately validates Paisley's claim.
With the great Bible defender Dean John Burgon, they believe that "the Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth on the throne." They are willing to defend its authenticity, accuracy and authority regardless of the cost involved, adhering without question to the premise that the KJV is the providentially preserved Word of God in the English speaking world; that it is based on a text that is reliable and trustworthy and should never be exchanged for an inferior model based solely on age and antiquity.
In a day of defection and dilution, the FUNDAMENTALIST DIGEST editor readily takes his stand with these valiant defenders and stakes his spiritual claims upon the dependable promises of God's inspired, preserved, inerrant Word.
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© 2007 The Flaming Torch, All rights reserved.
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