Monday, November 26, 2007

"Perfect in the original manuscripts"

Search the internet for churches, preferably conservative churches who call themselves evangelical, and read their statement of faith. Concerning the Bible it will say something like this one from Campus Crusades for Christ, "The sole basis of our beliefs is the Bible, God's infallible written Word, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. We believe that it was uniquely, verbally and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit and that it was written without error (inerrant) in the original manuscripts. It is the supreme and final authority in all matters on which it speaks.


Can I ask you, does ANYONE have a copy of the ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS? NO! So what good does that statement do? If we don't have the exact word of God, copied exactly from the original manuscripts, then we don't have the Holy Scriptures. How is it that the so called intellectuals that write these statements of faith not see the stupidity in their statement concerning the Scriptures? So what if you believe that the original manuscripts were perfect, we don't have them now! Accuracy in translation doesn't mean inerrancy or infallibility, because translators, being human, or having evil intentions, can make small changes to the Scriptures and change the meanings of entire passages.

So these same people that will hold up a Bible and proclaim it to be "THE INFALLIBLE WORD OF GOD" are saying under their breath, "but not really, because we don't have the original manuscripts".

One has to trust that manuscripts that have been carefully copied are also infallible and inerrant. I believe that there were texts that were carefully transcribed and kept perfect, and I believe this only because God promised that He would preserve His word all generations.

The modern translations such as the NIV, ESV, RSV, NASB, among others, use a Greek text that was extremely modified by Westcott and Hort in the late 1800's. The text of the NIV has 64,000 less words than the King James Version. And ministers can stand in a pulpit and say it doesn't really matter that much which Bible version one uses. This is satanic. The more I study it, and the more I think about this issue, the more I am convinced that this is confusion sent from the devil himself.

God promised that He would preserve His word for all generations, and I believe Him. The 5,000 most ancient manuscripts of the Bible that we have match up with the Textus Receptus some 99%. I am still studying this issue, because I am certainly not an expert, and a man or woman may gain information for salvation from any decent translation of the Scriptures; I did. However, this is a confusing mess in the world of Christianity. I am sticking with the Authorized Version (King James).

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