“Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that steal my words every one from his neighbour.” – Jeremiah 23:30
STEALING THE LORD’S WORDS PERSONIFIES the modern “Bible” translations. They steal Jesus Christ’s deity, virgin birth, sinless life. They steal the saving power of his literal, liquid blood. They steal God’s promises to preserve his words unto every generation. They steal the commandments of separation which please the Almighty and beget holiness among his people. They steal the sharpness, power, and authority which distinguishes the King James Bible from all other books. No robbery is too audacious for those contemptible works of darkness which sons of Belial market as modern “Bibles.”
As I have often done in these pages, I will exhibit several pertinent examples of the modern perversions stealing God’s words, by first providing the King James Bible’s perfect rendering of the scripture in question, and then the modern version’s corruption of said scripture.
THEFT #1: ACTS 8:37
Acts 8:36-38 (King James Bible): “And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? (37) And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. (38) And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.”
Acts 8:36-38 (New International Version): (36) “As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” (37) MISSING (38) And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.”
What the perverted New International Version has stolen from the Word of God in this selection is self-explanatory. Howbeit, I must digress by calling your attention to the stark literary superiority the King James Bible maintains over the NIV (and all other modern versions, for that matter). More important than this, however, is the magnitude of what has been stolen from the text. In outright deleting Acts 8:37, the NIV teaches the strange doctrine that baptism, rather than being a public testimony of one’s faith in Christ, is evidently something that people do whenever they see water.
Dear reader, no man ought be baptized if he has not yet been redeemed from iniquity through the precious blood of Christ. Baptism serves only for saved souls to make a public testimony of their salvation, not for unsaved people to wet themselves in a strange spectacle. Baptism does not wash your sins away, or seal your salvation, or indwell you with the Holy Spirit, as false teachers through the ages have asserted. It is merely a symbol of your salvation, “buried in the likeness of his death, raised in the likeness of his resurrection.” The NIV makes a mockery of baptism’s purpose, or, if taken at its word, implies that baptism must precede salvation, which is patently FALSE. Note well what the King James rendering mentions: “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.” The eunuch could only be baptized if he first trusted Christ for salvation with all his heart – not if he surrendered his life to God, or committed to following Jesus as his “Lord”, or vowed to turn from his sins, or performed any of the other farcical false gospels so popular amongst unsaved religious people. Thus, the NIV steals the simplicity that is in Christ and substitutes preposterous confusion in its place – a common practice among modern “Bibles.”
THEFT #2: 1 JOHN 5:7
1 John 5:7-8 (KJB): (7) “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. (8) And there are three that bear witness in the earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”
1 John 5:7-8 (English Standard Version): (7) “For there are three that testify: (8) the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.”
One of the clearest references to the Trinity is shamelessly butchered in the English Standard Version’s disgusting perversion of this scripture. The King James Bible makes it clear that God the Father, the Word (Jesus Christ – see Revelation 19:13), and the Holy Ghost comprise the three Persons of God. But the English Standard Version inexplicably strikes this from the text and leaves a confusing, ravished mess in its wake. So the Spirit and water and blood agree? What pertinence does that have to the rest of this passage? Verse 7, which the ESV eviscerates, is key to the rest of the text. Without it, we are left with yet another example of how the modern perversions take something simple and sound, and leave it befuddling and begrimed.
THEFT #3: 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 (Easy to Read Version): “But the Lord will still show you this sign: The young woman is pregnant and will give birth to a son. She will name him Immanuel.”
The beautiful prophecy of Christ’s virgin birth is vilely mutilated by this imbecilic perversion proffered by the comically misnamed Easy to Read Version. Consider the difference between prophesying that “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son” and observing a “young woman is pregnant and will give birth to a son.” Is that really so, ERV translators? Do you mean to tell me a young woman who is pregnant will give birth? What an incredibly profound observation! Who could have guessed that a pregnant young woman would eventually give birth? We should all be so grateful that the magnanimous “Bible” translators who gave us the ERV deigned to include this stupendous wisdom in their work.
All jesting aside, the oft-repeated myth that the modern perversions “get the same idea across” as the King James Bible refutes itself by a simple comparison of these two verses. In what universe is prophesying a virgin will have a son, and mentioning that a pregnant woman will give birth, “getting the same idea across”? Moreover, pray ponder the implications if the virgin birth of Christ is stolen from the scriptures, as the ERV thieves ignominiously do. If Christ was not born of a virgin, then Joseph would have been his father (which all modern perversions falsely teach was so), and if Joseph were his father, Christ was not the only begotten Son of God, but a sinful, mortal man. He could not save himself, much less anyone else. And if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable (1 Corinthians 15:19).
CONCLUSION
I have demonstrated time and again that the modern Bible perversions teach drastically different doctrines than the King James Bible. But, even if they were more similar in their teachings, that would not justify even the subtlest change to tone, style, or word choice, because God has promised to preserve his WORDS – not his ideas, not his thoughts, not his general frame of reasoning – but his very WORDS themselves, unto every generation. And because every word of God is pure (Proverbs 30:5), no man has any right to tamper with a single syllable, for a single reason. If God has failed to preserve his words (which must be the case, if the modern Bible translations are to be taken seriously), then he is a liar, and only a fool would take him at his word. After all, what value would God’s word have, if it were found to be flawed? If some of his words cannot be trusted, how can any of his words be trusted? Nay, if his words are imperfect, or perfect but not inspired, or perfect and inspired but not preserved, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
Yet, if you persist in insisting it does not matter if different Bibles say different things as long as “the basics” agree (which, as I have demonstrated above and in many other articles, they do not come remotely close to agreeing), I ask you, “Who art thou, o man, that repliest against God?” What right do you have to diminish the importance of the purity of God’s words, when the Almighty himself has declared he has magnified hi word above his very name (Psalm 138:2). Given how often God references the power, majesty, and holiness of his name, to magnify his word even above his name signifies how much his words matter to him. And if his words matter to him, a mortal sinner – even a mortal sinner who calls himself a “theologian”, or a “scholar”, or a textual “expert” – has no right to suggest otherwise, much less steal some of those pure words and replace them with vile heresies, false gospels, and imbecilic absurdities. Of the inspired, preserved, pure word of God – the King James Bible – it may rightly be said, “if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20).