“But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” – 2 Corinthians 4:2
HANDLING THE WORD OF GOD DECEITFULLY – of this charge, the translators of the inaptly named “Good News Bible” are guilty. For they have leveraged the hidden things of dishonesty to produce a Scripture perversion which is odious and obnoxious concurrently. They have walked in craftiness to pretend that this steaming pile of garbage somehow embodies “good news” for the modern man. Yet, most importantly, they have created yet another modern perversion of the holy Scriptures – a perversion which deletes countless crucial doctrines, butchers and weakens numerous others, and obscures what remains with a veil of pathetic, paltry language, lest the heathen be offended with plain scriptural truth.
In these pages, I endeavor, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to demonstrate several of the most sordid perversions found in this trash translation called the “Good News Bible”. To do so, I will take my usual course in charting out modern Bible perversions, by first showing the accurate King James translation, then showing the depraved modern perversion mistranslation, and then providing some brief commentary on the discrepancies between the two. But here I must note, as I always am inclined to do so in producing such articles as these, that I abhor the very act of looking upon these despicable corruptions of the word of truth, much less the act of having to type their vile syllables.
#1: 1 TIMOTHY 3:16
1 Timothy 3:16 (King James Bible): “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”
1 Timothy 3:16 (Good News Translation): “No one can deny how great is the secret of our religion: He appeared in human form, was shown to be right by the Spirit, and was seen by angels. He was preached among the nations, was believed in throughout the world, and was taken up to heaven.”
Is “the mystery of godliness” the same thing as “the secret of our religion”? I hardly think so. I hardly think “godliness” and “religion” are the same thing, or even similar things. But this nonsensical – or shall I call it occultic? – rendering pales in comparison with what follows. I ask you to compare carefully the phrases “God was manifest in the flesh” with “He appeared in human form.” From the former, of course, we can easily deduce that Jesus Christ is God, and when he was on earth, he was “God manifest in the flesh.”
But what can we take from the Good News Translation’s rendering of this phrase, “He appeared in human form”? Everyone who has ever lived has “appeared in human form.” This in no wise indicates that God Almighty was made in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:7). What it instead accomplishes, is striking down a powerful reference to Christ’s deity, and replacing it with a moronic statement which could apply to anyone. What exquisite scholarship!
#2: ECCLESIASTES 12:13
Ecclesiastes 12:13 (KJB): “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13 (GNT): “After all this, there is only one thing to say: Have reverence for God, and obey his commands, because this is all that we were created for.”
Here, the “Good News Translation” has done away with the crucial doctrine of literally fearing God, by replacing the phrase “Fear God” with the lame “Have reverence for God.” This is not an issue of mere semantics. “Fearing” and “reverencing” are not even close to being the same thing. I can “have reverence for” somebody without being afraid of him. This is not what God asks of his children. Rather, he wants them to literally fear him, for “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
It may not appeal to the modern world of hurt feelings and politically correct language, but the doctrine of FEARING GOD is as biblical as the doctrine of loving God. Proverbs 1:7 tells us that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Does that make the Good News Bible translators “fools”?) Proverbs 14:26, “In the fear of the LORD is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge.” Psalm 34:9, “O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him.” Over and over throughout the Bible, we find the command to FEAR GOD – not merely “have reverence for God”, but FEAR GOD.
Or, maybe we are only to fear “Bible” translators, and keep their commandments? I wager there are not a few “scholars” and “experts” who think so highly of themselves.
#3: ROMANS 10:13
Romans 10:13 (KJB): “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Romans 10:13 (GNT): “As the scripture says, “Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved.”
According to the Good News Translation, a man who wants to be saved does not need to know that he is a sinner who has been condemned to an eternity in hell (John 3:18), with no rest day nor night (Revelation 14:11). He does not need to know that the precious blood of Jesus Christ was shed on the cross to pay his sin debt in full (1 Peter 2:19). He does not need to believe the gospel (Romans 1:16). All he has to do is call out to the Lord for “help”, and he’ll be saved!
Still, I’m a little confused. Just what kind of “help” does the man need to ask for? Is it the “help” described in a Tavistock Beatles song? If so, here’s the path to salvation: just sing, “Help me if you can, I’m feeling down” three times, click your heels together, and hey presto! You “will be saved”.
All jesting aside, the GNT perversion of Romans 10:13 can imply that man must earn his salvation, but will only receive it if he asks God to “help him out” – which is patently FALSE. It can also imply that simply shouting “help” at God will do away with the need to believe Christ died at Calvary for his sins, because “sincerity” matters more than truth – which is also patently FALSE. But what it proclaims loud and clear, is that the Good News Translation’s rendering of Romans 10:13 should rank atop any list of the most farcical verse translations in existence.
#4: JOHN 4:24
John 4:24 (KJB): “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
John 4:24 (GNT): “God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”
The King James Bible clearly delineates true worship of God: it must in the power of the Holy Spirit, and it must be in the knowledge of the truth. This is why heathen, idolatrous ceremonies like the Roman Catholic mass, in addition to being abominable in the sight of the Almighty, do not qualify as “worshipping God.” This is why sodomite priests lashing themselves in their monastery lair does not qualify as “worshipping God.” This is why unsaved religious people singing “Christian” rock music and reading out of modern “Bible” perversions and hearing ecumenical sermonettes delivered by accursed false prophets does not qualify as “worshipping God.” When the worshippers lack the power of the Holy Spirit, and the truth, they are not worshipping God, regardless of what they “think” or “feel” they are doing. Instead, it may rightly be said of them, “Ye worship ye know not what” (John 4:22).
The Good News “Bible” definition of “worship” is vague and weak, dropping any mention of the truth’s role in biblical worship, and instead speaking of worshipping God “as he really is”. It’s unfortunate the translators of this junk failed to define just what worshipping God “as he really is” means. I have a feeling it differs significantly from what the King James Bible teaches.
#5: PHILIPPIANS 2:12
Philippians 2:12 (KJB): “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
Philippians 2:12 (GNT): “So then, dear friends, as you always obeyed me when I was with you, it is even more important that you obey me now while I am away from you. Keep on working with fear and trembling to complete your salvation,”
Did you catch that last part, dear reader? Don’t worry about acknowledging you cannot save yourself from hell (Isaiah 64:6). Don’t bother with being justified by the blood of Christ (Romans 5:9). “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11) – forget all that. It’s probably just a mistranslation, because the evil King James Bible was translated by incompetent, ignorant caveman who couldn’t tell a Greek word from a bottle of ink. Those King James manuscripts are completely unreliable. YOU are responsible for your own salvation, so you’d better get busy working on it. And don’t think about stopping if you get tired, because if you happen to slip up before you complete your salvation, you’ll go to hell. That must be where the “fear and trembling” part comes in.
But I thought you could get saved if you just called out to God for “help”? I guess not anymore. These modern perversions certainly have a knack for contradicting themselves. Perhaps that’s part of the “great secret of our religion”.
#6: ISAIAH 7:14
Isaiah 7:14 (KJB): “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
Isaiah 7:14 (GNT): “Well then, the Lord himself will give you a sign: a young woman who is pregnant will have a son and will name him ‘Immanuel’.”
I should not have to explain that a “virgin” and a “young woman” are not always the same thing (in our degenerate modern society, they are rarely the same thing). The King James Bible’s rendering of Isaiah 7:14 speaks of the forthcoming virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son. The “Good News Translation” instead offers the profound statement that, “a young woman who is pregnant will have a son.” Gee, isn’t that brilliant? Who could have ever guessed?
As if it were not bad enough for the GNT translators to pervert this precious verse by changing “virgin” to “young woman”, the verse’s damnable footnotes read:
“The Hebrew word here translated “young woman” is not the specific term for “virgin,” but refers to any young woman of marriageable age. The use of “virgin” in Mt 1.23 reflects a Greek translation of the Old Testament, made some 500 years after Isaiah.”
Here, we come once more to the very heart of this issue of which Bible you are to believe. I ask you, dear reader, who is your final authority? Is your final authority the word of God, or the word of men? Is your final authority a God who cannot lie (Titus 1:2), or mortal men who have the arrogance to claim knowledge about manuscripts they have never seen, then ruthlessly strike a crucial doctrine from the Scriptures, without demonstrating even the slightest display of remorse?
If the virgin birth is not in the Bible, then we might as well eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Because all men are sinners (Romans 3:10), no man could ever take away his own sins, much less the sins of the whole world. After encountering enough examples of how the modern “Bibles” pervert the word of God, we can begin to see a distinctly modernist pattern to their actions. They have reduced the sinless Son of God to a sinful, mortal man who was not God in the flesh. These translators ought bear in mind “That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement” (Matthew 12:36).
#7: PSALM 16:10
Psalm 16:10 (KJB): “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”
Psalm 16:10 (GNT): “because you protect me from the power of death. I have served you faithfully, and you will not abandon me to the world of the dead.”
The world of the dead? Is the Good News “Bible” a translation of the word of God, or the Epic of Gilgamesh? And what about heaven? There are dead people there. Is that also the “world of the dead”? Or, perhaps the translators want us to believe that the doctrines of an everlasting hell of fire and brimstone, and an everlasting heaven of joy and peace, are antiquated and obsolete. After all, this is the 21st century. Only luddites and imbeciles would still believe in a place called hell.
Verily, the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone is just as real as the words you are reading now. It is the eternal abode of all who die in their sins, without having received Jesus Christ as their Savior (Revelation 20:15). It is where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:44). Please do not make the mistake of believing that the doctrine of hell is an antiquated, primitive fiction. It is as true and relevant as anything in the world, and it will be the place where you spend eternity, except you be born again (John 3:3).
Psalm 16:10 is quoted in both Acts 2:27 and 2:31. In case you were wondering, this buffoonish talk of “the world of the dead” is repeated in both places in the Good News “Bible”.
#8: EPHESIANS 3:9
Ephesians 3:9 (KJB): “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.”
Ephesians 3:9 (GNT): “and of making all people see how God’s secret plan is to be put into effect. God, who is the Creator of all things, kept his secret hidden through all the past ages,”
This is one of many examples of where the Good News perversion, as well as the modern perversions at large, removes the principle that Jesus Christ is the Creator of the universe. While most modern perversions prefer to change the phrase “by Jesus Christ” to “through Jesus Christ”, the Good News perversion bypasses this route altogether, and flat out removes any reference to Christ whatsoever from the verse. Why are the translators of the Good News “Bible” so eager to rid their text of every reference to Jesus being God?
So, according to the Bad News Bible, Jesus Christ is not God, was not born of a virgin, and did not create all things. You can be “saved” simply by calling out to God for “help”, as long as you keep performing good works the rest of your life to “complete your salvation”. You don’t need to fear God, because you only need to “have reverence for” him. You don’t need to know the truth to worship God “as he really is”. Oh, and in case I forgot, the unsaved do not burn forever in hell; they go to some place called “the world of the dead”. Got all that?
CONCLUSION
What has been compiled above, is but the tip of a very large, and very grotesque iceberg. As in other modern perversions, John 3:16 is butchered, so that Jesus is reduced from “the only begotten Son” (King James Bible), to God’s “only Son” – an absurdity if verses such as John 1:12 and Luke 3:38 are to be believed. The GNT’s rendering of Acts 2:47 changes “such as should be saved” (King James Bible) to “those who were being saved”, continuing in the pattern of modern perversions changing salvation into a process, rather than a free gift. And the “simplicity that is in Christ” outlined in 2 Corinthians 11:3 in the King James Bible, instead becomes “your full and pure devotion to Christ”, changing a warning about being wary of those who corrupt the gospel, to a corruption of the gospel itself.
So, dear reader, what say you to these things? Will you have the King James Bible, with its wonderful words of life, its glorious truths, its poetic purity? Or will you have the Bad News for Modern Man, with its obtuse modern English, its farcical wordage, and its deplorable doctrinal changes? Pray heed to my counsel, for I charge thee to cast the Good News Babel, not into “the world of the dead”, but straight into hell, for that is surely from whence this foul book sprung.
For further reading on this subject, I highly recommend this link: