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A Sincere, Accurate Assessment Contrasting Translational Choices Versus Underlying Original Language Text
Sufficient Intelligibility and False Friends
The most prominent recent conversation about the Bible (that I’ve seen) revolves around “sufficient intelligibility” of the King James Version. Some words used by the King James translators have changed in meaning since their translation. Podcaster Mark Ward declares about one hundred words as “false friends.” As an overview of the definitional usage, “false friend” means the following provided by an AI aggregation:
A false friend is a word in one language that sounds or looks similar to a word in another language, but has a different meaning. It is also known as a false cognate or bilingual homophone.
Unlike the new Mark Ward usage of the terminology, false friend does not refer to a word in the same language that over the centuries radically changed in its meaning. Instead, linguists calls this a “semantic change.” Mark Ward did not originate the concept of “false friend.” He simply uses the two word phrase in a different, inventive way that alters its original and definitional usage. It does not refer to the changing meaning of the word. The words for that are semantic shift or semantic change.
History of False Friends Versus Semantic Change
At the same time, Ward was not the first to use “false friend” in the novel way that he does. British linguist, David Crystal, began using the term “false friend” to refer to words in William Shakespeare’s writing that have now changed in meaning from their original understanding in Elizabethan English. He accumulated an appendix of these words as long ago as 2010. As far as I know, Crystal and Ward are the only ones using “false friend” like they have and do. In some ways, it’s an either rhetorical or marketing tool. Others are now imitating this new usage, but Crystal coined “false friend” for Shakespeare and then Ward for the King James Version.
Semantic shift or change is real. Ward and his host of assistants have searched for words with semantic changes in meaning in the King James Version. However, they’re a little late to the party, because those using the King James Version already provided these lists of words and their meaning for decades. They all know about this already, so they don’t need a lecture! In 1998 the late D. A. Waite and his Bible For Today at great effort published The Defined King James Bible. Even before Waite’s book, men wrote helps in this way. Thomas Nelson Press published The King James Version Wordbook in 1994.
In 1978 in An Introduction to Language, Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman wrote (p. 314):
In the King James Version of the Bible (1611), God says of the herbs and trees, “to you shall be for meat” (Genesis 1:29). To a speaker of seventeenth-century English, meat meant “food,” and flesh meant “meat.” Since that time, semantic change has narrowed the meaning of meat to what it is in Modern English.
Two Actions
You can see that Fromkin and Rodman referred to this alteration of meaning, as do many others, as a “semantic shift” (not false friend). This occurs in every language over time. Words take on a new meaning and contemporary readers should be informed of this in an older book or translation. Two different actions could alleviate the possible confusion for one hundred or so words most egregiously affected by semantic changes.
One
One, the meaning of these one hundred or so words could be placed in the margin. The Trinitarian Bible Society definitely does that in their classic and Westminster reference Bibles. Why should someone do a total retranslation of the King James Version, when this simple solution exists? It does not even require a giant group of Hebrew and Greek scholars to put in thousands of hours to accomplish this task. That work is done already.
The 1611 King James translators placed into their translation marginal notes. Marginal notes are not new. There were 7,342 of them in the 1611 KJV. The marginal notes were designed to provide readers with additional insights into the text. They often included alternate translations, explanations of obscure passages, and clarifications on specific terms or names found within the biblical text. Some notes defined biblical terms or provided context for certain characters, enhancing the reader’s understanding of the scriptures. When I say scriptures, I mean what God inspired, the original language text.
As some of you reading here might know, providing a definition in the margin is unacceptable to Ward. I’ve never heard him give an answer as to why. He defames and castigates any church leader who opts for public continuation of usage of the King James Version, even with provision of definitions. Ward recently said these leaders are sinning by continuing to have the KJV as their church Bible. The Inquisitor General has spoken. Sin! The only arbitrary option for Ward that would avoid sinning, besides changing to a modern version, is the next one.
Two
Two, someone could update the translation of the King James Version in the spirit of the Blayney edition of 1769, that almost everyone already uses. Some will say, “That’s already been done.” People will mention The New King James Version first. I’ve already written here in many posts how that the underlying text is different for the NKJV, which eliminates it as a possibility. I believe there are over one hundred places where the NKJV translators came from a different word, not identical to the King James Version.
Another new translation that claims the same underlying text is the Modern English Version. This was started in 2005 under the leadership of James Linzey, a Southern Baptist. Many men worked on the MEV from a lot of different denominations with many different doctrinal and gospel positions. It was published in 2014 by Passio, an arm of Charisma Publishing House, a Charismatic organization. I haven’t looked into the MEV like I have the NKJV, so I don’t have much to say about it.
Some have given the Modern English Version a good review and some bad. It seems like originally it was meant to meet a concern of chaplains in the British military and what they should give to their soldiers. The MEV does question the underlying text of the KJV in its footnotes, calling into doubt the text preserved and available to the Lord’s churches. I can’t in good conscience hand to someone or recommend to him a translation that denounces the very text from which it was translated. The MEV does that.
Semantic and Translational Choices Versus Underlying Text
With everything said so far about semantic and translational choices in the English translation of the original languages of the Bible, how does that contrast with a different underlying text? The modern versions don’t translate from the same Hebrew and Greek words. There are thousands of differences in words between the critical text, the underlying text behind the modern versions of the New Testament, and that of the Textus Receptus, the underlying text behind the King James Version. Thousands. Those are different words, not words that could have variation in meaning, a semantic change, so someone could understand them in different ways.
It’s important to translate words right. Translating the original language words into intelligible language is also good. If you can, you want to translate into words that people can understand. You don’t want to translate into words that have a different meaning now than the word in the underlying text. This is called “getting it right.” When someone translates, if possible he should try to get the English word with the same meaning as the original language word. At the same time, having the wrong underlying word is worse.
Having a hundred words with a translation with a changed semantical meaning is not as bad as actual wrong words. Someone can learn the old meaning of the word that has had a semantical change. A totally different or wrong word is still different and wrong, even if it’s translated right and intelligible. No explanation or translation can change the wrong word in the underlying text. That’s worse than a “false friend.”
Important Consideration
100 Versus 5,000
I ask that you also take the next obvious truth into consideration. Someone such as Mark Ward and others, but especially him, will say it is sin to distribute one hundred words he assesses as unintelligible in translation. Yet, he will not consider or call it sin to distribute five thousand wrong words. This comparison should qualify the outrage over intelligibility. I’ll let you judge. Those one hundred misunderstood words look like more of a red herring next to five thousands wrong words.
Ward himself to his credit won’t say that semantic change is an error in translation. It isn’t. However, the wrong word is an error. You can never translate the right word from a wrong word.
The Hodgepodge
What’s lost with the hodgepodge of English translations on the market today? It dismisses the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation of scripture. Among other things, that is what is most unacceptable in an evaluation of this issue. In the late nineteenth century, B. B. Warfield at Princeton Seminary invented a new doctrine of inerrancy to compensate for this very betrayal of the doctrine of preservation.
I see two ironies at least. One, false friends itself is now a semantic change. Mark Ward and David Crystal use “false friend” with a different meaning. Ironic. Two, Warfield changed the meaning of inerrancy to induce acceptability to thousands of changed words in the text of the Bible. In fact, the critical text brings known errors into scripture. What was without error is now error and yet called, inerrant. The irony is not lost on me in either case.
Mark Ward speaks with certainty about a sin of unintelligibility. He isn’t certain about the words of scripture though. He calls it confidence, something less than being certain. According to Ward: confidence good, certainty bad. So that’s fine to Ward and others, to be expected from his and others’ perspective. The only thing wrong to them is questioning him and them on this issue. You must bend the knee to their fallacy or at least join in unity with them as if nothing occurred. Nothing to see, just move along.
Crucial to a Gospel Presentation: Explain Belief (part two)
Rampant Corruption of Belief
Belief is a very malleable concept. It’s easy to manipulate by people. Churches and their leaders can offer the results of belief for something less and far less than belief. They evoke the promises of God for those who believe, yet without the actual believing. Nothing could be of greater or worse consequence.
The Bible gives no varieties of Christians. Nevertheless, varieties of professing Christians take belief into their own hands and turn it into whatever they want. The different versions of belief have divided into several categories, even though there is still only one true belief and only one that saves. What is the belief that saves?
True faith in Christ is not complicated except that men have corrupted and perverted it. It’s not normal or easy any more to help a person understand belief in Christ. People have heard the wrong thing again and again. All the false teaching about belief also now must be undone. The preacher must untangle all those tangled wires and make them straight again.
It is a very low percentage, less than ten percent to whom I talk, that knows the gospel. When it comes to explaining belief, that percentage shrinks exponentially. We arrive at a tiny percentage of people in the United States that understand the gospel. Above all, they don’t understand belief. You’ve got to explain it if they’re going to get it. This is part of what preaching the gospel is.
Not By Works
If he knew those verses from the Bible, someone could go thirty minutes quoting verses that say that salvation comes by believing in Jesus Christ. Salvation comes by believing in Jesus Christ. First, one should establish that salvation comes by believing in Jesus Christ. It is not by works. Someone could also go thirty minutes quoting verses that say salvation is not by works.
Part of understanding belief in Jesus Christ is that it is not by works. Works and faith are mutually exclusive. Verses say this. If you believe in Jesus Christ, it is not by works. Belief itself is not a work, or else belief in Jesus Christ would be a way of saying that salvation is by works. It isn’t. Salvation comes by belief alone.
Jesus Is Savior
If someone believes in Jesus Christ, believing in Him is believing He is Savior. You don’t believe in Jesus Christ if He is not Savior. He is Savior. A so-called Jesus who is not Savior is not Jesus. Churches, denominations, and Christian religions may say that Jesus is Savior, but most of them don’t believe that. He is not Savior as seen in their adding works to belief in Jesus Christ, what I call either frontloading or backloading works.
Frontloading
When a so-called preacher adds a particular work on the front end like baptism or another sacrament, making that necessary in addition to belief, that is not believing in Jesus Christ. This is frontloading works. If this other work is necessary in addition to believing, then it is actually not believing any more and Jesus is not Savior.
Backloading
Other false preachers say that someone must do good works to stay saved. If he stops doing certain works, he could lose salvation. I can never find how many works it is that someone must do who must also rely on works for salvation. You can’t know how many works because scripture says it isn’t by works. It is by believing in Jesus Christ alone. This is backloading works, to say that works are necessary to stay saved. If you have to do good works to stay saved, then who is doing the saving? You are. Then Jesus is not Savior and you do not believe in Jesus Christ.
In explaining belief in Jesus Christ, the true preacher of the gospel must explain this works issue. So many have corrupted the gospel in this manner. Among all religions, doing good works or trying to be good for salvation is the biggest perversion of the gospel. It’s an old corruption that continues to fool and deceive people.
Passages
There are some great passages to use against works for salvation. I will explain Romans 3:20-28, 4:1-6, Galatians 2:16, 5:1-6, Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:5, Romans 11:6, and others. Sometimes you will need to pinpoint a particular work, like baptism, and know verses that debunk that particular work. This is important to know and explain.
Jesus saves, which contradicts salvation by works. If someone believes in Jesus Christ, then He is Savior. Adding anything to belief will nullify salvation for a person. A true preacher will explain this as thoroughly as necessary to convince of this point from scripture.
More to Come
The Important Quality of Loyalty
Trump Cabinet Picks
This last week President Trump started announcing his cabinet picks and what appears to be their most significant quality is loyalty. The average Trump voter, I would assess, agrees with the strategy. Choose loyal people. Definitely don’t select disloyal ones.
What about Abraham Lincoln? Didn’t he pick a team of rivals? Loyalty doesn’t mean pushover or doormat. It does mean among other things keeping the questions and challenges inside the room. Someone working for Trump knows his position. He should not join to undermine or cause factions.
Factiousness and Heresy
The Apostle Paul in his epistles deals harshly with factiousness. The word in the King James Version is “heretic,” which transliterates a Greek term, that speaks of a factious or divisive person. For a church, heresy diverts off the path of truth as established by the congregation; its doctrine. The New Testament warns against division again and again. This doesn’t mean challenges can’t be made, but loyalty is necessary.
When someone defects in the Bible, that defector left the group. The group coalesced around a particular belief and practice and a person ejects from the group. 1 John 2:19 describes someone who goes out from the assembly, because he was not of the assembly. He would have continued with the assembly if he was of it. By going out, he showed he never was of it.
The usages of heretic or heresy in the New Testament indicate a divisive person. He breaks with leadership just to break with leadership. The person is a trouble maker. He never joined with the idea that he would try to get along.
Whose Agenda
People are drawn in magnetic fashion to the power of the federal government. Booker T. Washington talked about this from his first visit to Washington, DC from Tuskegee, recorded in his biography, Up From Slavery. The White House is a blazing hot center of the political power of the United States of America. People want to burrow their way into this honey pot like ants at a picnic. They aren’t necessarily and probably there to serve the President and with him. They want to use this as an opportunity for their own agenda. That is not the idea of a team of rivals.
Donald Trump was clear about his agenda. He ran on it. The people saying they want to join him know good-well what he said and what he’s trying to accomplish. He is right to pick only those who will be loyal to him and his agenda.
For instance, Trump will bring up ideas that maybe have little merit. He suggests them and perhaps they are stupid ideas or thoughts. But he wants the freedom to talk about those, what sometimes people call “brainstorming.” Those around him tell him what they think. They say they don’t like it and it won’t work, giving their best arguments. Trump wants that. What he doesn’t want is to read about that episode in the paper or hear it in the national news on television that night or the next day.
Trump employees join especially in this present administration with full knowledge of what and who he is. None should expect to leave and write a tell all book for bookoo bucks. They are serving at his pleasure. If they join and find out that they don’t like it, that doesn’t mean leaving to undermine his agenda.
Disloyalty
In the recent campaign, the media and the Democrats used the statements of former Trump team members. They spoke against Trump themselves. John Kelly gave a personal story in which he claimed that Trump said that Hitler’s generals would have obeyed him. Kelly used that to harm his former boss. Mike Pence did the same on different occasions. In order to justify themselves, these men hit Trump. Maybe their feelings were hurt. They should have stayed loyal. If they were not going to remain loyal, then they shouldn’t have joined Trump in the first place.
When I use Kelly and Pence, as examples, and I don’ think they are equal (Kelly was worse), this is not saying they couldn’t disagree. Pence said he couldn’t employ a particular application of the U. S. Constitution. Fine. Do what you’ve got to do. But leave it there at least. I’m living 20 minutes from Columbus, Indiana, Pence’s hometown. Most are not happy with Pence there. It is the issue of loyalty.
Just as a related topic, what about the loyalty of Donald Trump? Maybe Trump himself isn’t loyal either. It’s not something I’ve seen, based on what I’m writing here. Trump follows his own principles of loyalty. He isn’t loyal to those who are disloyal to and remain disloyal to him. For his business and his goals, I understand it. How can you give a presidential job to a disloyal person? The disloyal people are poison to the administration. I get it.
The Same Thing for Church and Friends
As I did a search on my blog here, I didn’t find one post on loyalty. Someone couldn’t say that it is a pet subject for me. However, I believe in it. It’s a good trait for someone to have.
What I’m talking about with the new Trump administration, I would say the same of a church and those who are your friends. True friends will show loyalty. I can say that I’ve had several who called themselves my friend through my life who were disloyal to a great magnitude. Again, I’m not talking about remaining silent without saying anything. That’s not loyalty. What I do mean is someone who treats someone like a friend. That person will not then trash his “friend” to others, even many others. He won’t join in with others who will do the same.
A real friend, a loyal one, is someone who will be there for you when you’re down. What I’m describing goes along with what I’m saying about Donald Trump. I’ve had a few loyal friends through the years. Not many, but I have some and I’m thankful for them. I’m planting that flag of loyalty in the ground too. Above all of course, I want to be loyal to God and His Word.
Educational Stratification in the United States
Stratification
Yes, “stratification” is a word, and the one used right now to discuss education as a demographic in voting habit. Students of the election call one aspect of this point as historic for the 2024 election. College education most divides the electorate in the United States. How does education stratify a view of the world? Think with me about this.
The students of election will say that smart people vote for a Democrat. On the other hand, dummies (or garbage) vote for a Republican and specifically Trump. They delineate this demarcation by education. Education stratifies voters into these separate voting trays. Is that true?
Present American education is overwhelmingly or essentially propaganda on worldview. Both state and private colleges or universities hire Democrat teachers. I believe, and I also think I’m right here, that the best description of college and university philosophy is postmodern. This matches with what comes out of the other side into the Democrat Party. The best of Democrats are modernists and the worst are postmodernists. The postmodernists have the loudest influence in college and university education.
History
What I’m writing here about education goes way back. I think it best traces to two points of address. First, educational institutions eliminated God and the Bible in the early 1960s. That left these places without a mooring in objective truth. Second, I point to Allan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind, except things have regressed even further than its 1987 publication. It became a bestseller because it truly reflected what dominated the American university experience as early at the 1980s. It’s easy to see this began much earlier with all of the sit-ins and protests on the college campuses in the 1960s.
Colleges and universities produce a high percentage of clones now. More than ever these are infected with the woke mind virus (article here). Even if they don’t subscribe to the extreme, they obediently and silently get in line. The universities immerse their students in lies and worse, the lie. And they all do think they’re smart, because they got, akin to the strawman in the Wizard of Oz, their diploma. They is smart now.
What Happens
Perhaps the biggest push-back with what I’m writing here is that it broad brushes college graduates. Those who put so much into their college and post-college education don’t want discreditation of it. For sure, many escaped the strongest influences of the state university. They came out of it with certain values intact. If that’s you, then so be it. That doesn’t mean that what I’m writing here is not true.
Many of the college educated today are not only not smart — in general they’re stupid — but they think they’re infinitely smarter than these non-college-educated, blue collar types. It’s worse than that. College education as a whole dumbs people down in the worst example of “mass formation hypnosis,” what others call “mass formation psychosis.” American universities and college indoctrinate their students, which explains the sameness of their graduates.
1 Corinthians 15:33
To explain from the Bible education stratification, I ask that you consider what the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:33:
Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.
“Communications” translates homilia of which BDAG says, “this noun is used of a group and then of what a group ordinarily engages in: conversation.” The English word “homily” comes from the word, which is a type of instruction or speech of a theological kind.
Indoctrination
An evil theological speech would spread false doctrine and practice, something that sends someone a different direction than God and His Word. Those in Corinth were hearing false theological instruction that rejected bodily resurrection as a doctrine. When someone was hearing this from false teachers in a Greek culture that embraced the concept that found goodness only in the spiritual and not the physical, it corrupted the person hearing it. It would send the hearer of it down the wrong path, even away from a true gospel.
The “evil communications,” which is theological speech or philosophizing, is another way of saying, “indoctrination.” The beliefs espoused in colleges and universities puts its audience, the students, into an unnatural state. They would not naturally think the way they do, except that they are coerced or brainwashed during a very vulnerable time of life.
Colleges and universities corrupt good manners. They spread a worldview that changes the course of their adherents away from a Christian worldview. Instead of pleasing God, the hearers of the college and university homilies for four to eight years at a pivotal time of their lives please themselves, their teachers, the world system, and the prince of this world.
Avoidance
Missing college and university doesn’t mean that you will have the right type of thinking, belief, and living. I would say it is more likely that you’ll do better at living how you should if you avoid colleges and universities. You will miss those homilies, which are powerful in the wrong direction. The constrast between hearing the “evil communications” and not hearing them causes the stratification that manifests itself in election results.
I say, “manifests itself,” because the election just reveals the difference. What actually occurs is worse than that. The evil homilies of colleges and universities dumbs down the whole country. Even if graduates can get a job, they infect everywhere, including their companies, the government, and other institutions with their bad ideas. It degrades the country overall. Not only do the graduates think wrong, but they don’t know it, because the education makes them more clever at resisting the truth. It hardens them against the illumination of the truth and wisdom from God.
Change Necessary Immediately
As an example, Decatur County, Indiana voted one way in the election. The teachers in the county schools voted completely opposite to the parents and voters of the county. Parents send their children to school to receive the opposite of who they are. The parents paid these teachers to undermine them. What I’m writing is true. It’s a wonder that this last Tuesday could turn out how it did, but it also explains how a Kamala Harris could come so close to winning. A majority of her voters drank the kool-aid of the colleges and universities. That’s also why they talk the way they do, that sounds so incomprehensible to most of us, the other side.
You maybe don’t understand the Kamala Harris word salad. You ask, “What was she even saying?” Yet, those hearing her speeches sit or stand there and accept it with wide eyed enthusiasm. It’s as if they operate on a different frequency perhaps with a different antennae. This is the education stratification at work.
For real change to occur on a national level, educational stratification needs to stop. It is so ingrained that generation after generation repeats it. Everything about education needs to change. That will start by illumination of the problem of educational stratification. It’s a diversity than the United States cannot afford.
One of the Greatest Political Events in the History of the United States
The 2024 election of Donald Trump is one of the greatest political events in the History of the United States. Whatever you may think of Trump, how bad you dislike him, this is a unique moment. It’s hard to say that anyone has been opposed by more people and to a greater extent than him. I could tell you of the very powerful people, institutions, investigations, trials, and events that went against him. You know it already. He still won. This win, I would say, tops 2016 too, which is hard to do.
Historical Precedent
Many people would say that Trump would either win or go to prison. Let that settle in once again. The other side was going to put him in prison. He’s already had at least two assassination attempts on his life, one of the bullets hitting him in the head.
Other presidents set themselves apart. Four were assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. I hope the Secret Service does a good job at guarding Trump, keeping a sharp look-out, because the threat is still there. What will set him apart is his resilience against the degree of onslaught.
When I declare the historical precedent of Trump’s election, president now number 45 and 47, this comes out of teaching history and government for over thirty years. I know American history. As a figure, Trump has risen to a level of greatness in United States history, compared to the events of American history. The country itself might not make it another one hundred years and it shrinks into oblivion next the kingdom of Jesus Christ and the eternal state. Still, you are witnessing something significant.
Resilience
People stuck with Trump in a major way because he wouldn’t and didn’t quit. I can’t envision anyone else standing against all this. Not only would no one else have continued, like he did, but much more than that. He won really against all odds.
What can people say? What can his enemies say? This is quite a win and quite a loss. Whatever comments someone may have even to this post — well, you lost. I’ve heard it all myself in the way of attack, nothing like what Trump has withstood.
Trump wasn’t alone. People stood with him despite the slings and arrows. It wasn’t easy for any of them to face the hatred they did. I’m happy for them, but now the hardest part, really.
Hope for the Future
I hope this victory will not be met by anything close to what happened in 2016. It shouldn’t. The American people have spoken, despite the absolute mockery and ridicule at unprecedented levels.
Things should change in the country. This ought to allow more freedom at least. Everyone reading here should think he can take this as an opportunity. When I say that, I mean for God.
Many reading here won’t like this, but it’s true. We should praise God that Trump won. God deserves the credit and the glory. I’m not endorsing Trump’s morality or testimony. Instead, it is something providential and can be very useful too.
It’s a good time to make a move on embracing everything about scripture. It is the truth. Men are men and women are women. It matches much of what God wants. Go at it with gusto and without apology. Do the will of God. Talk about Him. You’ve been given a great opportunity. Don’t let it pass you by.
Vote Trump 2024
Concession
2016/2020
In 2016 Donald Trump won the presidential election against Hillary Clinton and she did not concede the election. You say, “Oh she did. She made a statement.” Sure. Hillary said something like all the lies characteristic of the Clintons, what turned since into its own vocabulary word: Clintonesque. She lied, what some might call “parsing words.”
Hillary Clinton, even before she lost, cooked up with the rest of the establishment, but led by her, the Russia conspiracy against Trump that impeded his presidency. She preyed on Trump’s inexperience in Washington, DC. John Durham in his special counsel investigation of the Russia hoax came to the conclusion
that there was no basis to immediately launch a full-fledged investigation against Donald Trump; that the FBI failed to follow up on intelligence reports that Hillary Clinton had approved a scheme to manufacture the Russia hoax and that her campaign funded opposition research to supply to the FBI and media with the false narrative; and that FBI leaders willingly subverted FBI policy, quashed investigations into Clinton’s potential violations of the law, and more.
Disqualification and a Fake Issue
That wasn’t the only signification that Hillary Clinton and the establishment did not concede the election. They treated his presidency as ineligible or disqualified and didn’t ever accept the results. The unelected administrative state cooperated with the Democrat Party in dozens of different ways to defy the electoral victory of President Donald Trump. As an example, James Comey, the head of the FBI under President Barack Obama, leaked sensitive information about President Donald Trump to the press that precipitated the appointment of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation.
Many arguing against Trump point to his unwillingness to concede. I don’t hear anything about the other side not conceding. Both Clinton and Trump may not have conceded either in word or action, but Clinton didn’t inhabit the White House in 2016 nor Trump in 2020. It’s ultimately a fake issue. According to my own assessment, Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election did not compare to the seriousness of what Clinton did in 2016 and following, helped along by President Obama spying on the Trump campaign.
My History
I have voted in all the presidential elections since 1980. Living in Wisconsin during my Freshmen year in College, I voted for Ronald Reagan in 80 and the same in 84. When I moved to California, I started voting there first for George H.W. Bush in 88, same in 92, Bob Dole in 96, George W. Bush in 2000, same in 2004, John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump in 2016, and same in 2020.
This year I’ll vote Trump again in the state of Indiana in 2024. It wasn’t until 1976 that I really started considering presidential elections with the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter election. Even though I was alive for the 1968 and 1972 elections, I don’t remember them at all. The first political event I remember was Watergate, seeing it in black and White on our old tube television set. This will be my twelfth presidential election.
Every presidential election year from 1992 to 2020 I taught United States government in our high school. Five days a week I came into government class and commented on the election until it occurred the first Tuesday in November. I also taught jr. high history. The United States history curriculum for jr. high also included some government. The class read and answered questions about the United States Constitution.
Endorsement
Those for whom I voted president in the general election won six out of eleven times. This year could become seven. When Trump won in 2016, I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t think he would win in 2020. Will he win this year? For the first time, I think he will. It’s hard to tell by the polls. Maybe some of you reading know about the quiet Trump voters. This affected the polls in 2016 and 2020. The pollsters and the media got the Democrat vote percentage about right. They underestimated Trump’s percentage both times. Maybe you’ve seen this data.
Nothing gets more negative commentary on this blog than a positive mention of President Donald Trump. Even if I intimate something positive about Trump without mentioning his name, I get a nasty comment. What does this do for or to me? Nothing. Easily, Trump gets far more foul comments than all the other subjects combined. Apparently these comments come from those who don’t like Trump’s meanness and nastiness.
The only hope for anything close to a Christian worldview is Trump. I’m not going to tick off all the reasons. They should be obvious. If they’re not, I don’t think there is much I can write here today that will persuade you the reader, which you haven’t already heard, watched, or read.
Information on This Blog on Psalm 12:6-7
Mark Ward and Psalm 12:6-7
In his last youtube video, Mark Ward mentioned my name again in reference to Psalm 12:6-7. He included a quote from me, which wasn’t the best one for me. I’ve written several thorough and good articles on the subject with many better quotations. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t even say the exact words he quotes anymore, partly because of a change I’ve had for ten plus years on the actual meaning of the word “miracle” in scripture. I’m much more technical about a miracle and I’d have to explain that more, but don’t want to do it in this post.
Ward put out a video on the meaning of Psalm 12:6-7, focusing on whether it teaches the perfect preservation of scripture, which is of course “no” to him. I had already reviewed his journal article on that passage, which is the basis for his video. Below I’m going to put links to articles I’ve written on that passage. Ward makes too much of the dependence on Psalm 12:6-7 for a doctrine of preservation. As an overall critique, he gets several things wrong in the video.
Steelmanning Not
You’ve probably heard of steelmanning. Here’s the meaning:
Steelmanning is the practice of applying the rhetorical principle of charity through addressing the strongest form of the other person’s argument, even if it is not the one they explicitly presented.
Mark Ward does not do that with our position on Psalm 12:6-7. When he doesn’t do something like that, he then also doesn’t allow direct conversation with him. He blocks criticism of his content. I think he and I could have a very decent conversation, but he doesn’t do that, even with all his protestations about unity.
I’ve written a lot on Psalm 12:6-7. We named our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, after the words of Psalm 12:6-7. We don’t “proof text.” Historical confessions of Christianity used Psalm 12:6-7 among many other verses to defend a doctrine of preservation of scripture. I asked AI recently about this same doctrine using Isaiah 59:21, Matthew 4:4, and Matthew 5:18 about a doctrine of perfect preservation and AI reported those verses taught perfect preservation of scripture.
One of the reasons that it is popular and Mark Ward is careful not to mention (unless he’s just incompetent and uninformed) is the allusions to Psalm 12:6-7 in a multitude of various confessions. It’s obvious confessions that represent almost every true Christian in the world for hundreds of years refer in the language of the confession to Psalm 12:6-7. Crickets from Mark Ward on this. That wouldn’t make his presentation look good.
Pronouns
When Mark Ward makes his argument on the video about gender accordance or discordance in antecedent pronouns, he skips proximity as a guide for pronoun reference. He uses gender as the most important mitigating quality, when numerous examples of discordance exist. Those people in the modern version movement, who hop way back to the “poor and needy” to find a referent to “them,” won’t even mention proximity.
The presentation of Ward short shrifts the examples of purposeful gender discordance in the Bible and referred in Hebrew grammars and syntax. It just doesn’t help his cause of shooting down the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation. This is not steelmanning.
Preserved Copies
Ward uses a title for his video that says that men such as myself are defending the preservation of copies of scripture. I’m guessing I’m in print saying almost one hundred times that I believe in the preservation of words. Ward still twists it for his own purposes. It makes his opposition look crazy, but they don’t even take that position. Crazy is what he wants people to think.
I don’t know one person that I’ve ever met in my entire lifetime that believes God promised He would preserve copies of scripture. No one believes that or teaches that on planet earth. What should someone think about Ward’s expertise about the teaching of preservation when he says such a thing? His echochamber would approve. I too like setting up a row of bobble-head dolls and making statements to them as a measure of my competence.
Further Reading and Research
Besides the above, I could say much, much more, but I’ve been doing that, as seen below. I hopefully may not need to say such things much longer to Mark Ward if he follows through with his published plan of disengaging on this issue in 2025. Until he does, please consider the following one stop shop for Psalm 12:6-7, where you get much more context on the issue.
Further Details in Psalm 12:6-7 Elucidating the Preservation of God’s Words
Psalm 12:6-7 Commentaries and the Preservation of Words
Gender Discord and Psalm 12:6-7
Psalm 12:6–7 and Gender Discordance: the anti-KJV and anti-preservation argument debunked (again)
AI Friday: “Did God Perfectly Preserve Every Word of the Bible?”
I’ve done more than these, but these will suffice. Enjoy.
Crucial to a Gospel Presentation: Explain Belief
What Happens
Today I went canvassing for three hours. Most of time, I go out preaching, but for various reasons, I canvassed. Nevertheless, I preached the gospel to an 80 year old woman, who did not know it. I was putting a packet on her door, and there she stood looking at me, so I introduced myself. She sat down on her porch, so I sat down on her porch, and we talked. In most ways, it was a very typical conversation, which means she did not know the meaning of the gospel. She had heard the word, but it was almost meaningless to her, and that is normal today in the United States.
Very often when I preach the gospel, I say something like this:
I have given the gospel to thousands of people. When I finish, I always ask the person hearing it if he believes what I said was the truth. I can’t remember the last time someone didn’t answer, “Yes,” to that question. Everyone to whom I explain the gospel says they believe it is the truth.
At the end of my presentation, she also said it was true.
How the Gospel Breaks Down
In my experience, gospel preaching breaks down on nearly every occasion (probably 95% plus) in one of three places.
- The listener will not relent on considering himself to be a good person.
- Someone doesn’t believe he deserves Hell.
- A person refuses to believe in Jesus Christ.
The third of these is the biggest problem, but all three connect with or depend on the other two. On many occasions, I’ve gotten by the first and second of them. The third is still the deal-breaker when it comes to salvation. Believing the gospel unto salvation requires believing in Jesus Christ. It is vital, absolutely necessary that someone believe in Jesus Christ for salvation. In one sense, this is the gospel. Someone can believe everything else within the gospel message and not believe in Jesus Christ and still reject the gospel. The first two become irrelevant without the third.
It’s important that believing in Jesus Christ is in fact believing in Jesus Christ. The hearer must believe in Jesus Christ. It can’t be something someone calls, “believe in Jesus Christ,” but isn’t. For this reason, the preacher must explain belief in Jesus Christ. He must.
What “Believing in Jesus Christ” Isn’t
- It isn’t merely praying a prayer.
- Believing in Jesus Christ isn’t accepting Jesus into your life.
- Neither is it merely accepting Jesus as Savior.
- Believing in Jesus isn’t asking Jesus to save you.
- It is not asking Jesus into your heart.
All of the above are not what it is to believe in Jesus Christ. They are, just maybe, a piece of it, a small one. More than these five could probably be listed, but they at least give the essence of what’s wrong.
Some so-called “evangelists” don’t even use “believe in Jesus Christ” as the terms for salvation. If they go to those verses, they very often just ignore those statements and what they say. They use the Bible, but they don’t rely on it. It results in preaching a false gospel, because it doesn’t get to “believing in Jesus Christ,” which is required in the true gospel.
What Believing in Jesus Christ Is
Next Time
The Fundamental Root of Division in the United States
United States History
In 1607, English settlers landed on the East Coast of America and formed the Jamestown colony. That began a colonial period until 1776 and a Declaration of Independence of the original thirteen colonies from England. They became states of the United States of America. After those states ratified the Constitution in 1788, they seated the first Congress in 1789. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified the Bill of Rights.
Before states ever united under one Constitution and Bill of Rights, division began according to ideological positions termed, federalist and anti-federalist. The Federalists were a political party and supported a strong centralized government. On the other hand, another party, the Anti-Federalists argued against expanding national power and advocated individual liberties, states rights, and localized authority.
Before the ratification of the Constitution, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay debated federalism versus anti-federalism in the Federalist Papers, first published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and May 1788. Division along the lines of these two general positions continued in the early history of the United States. With the addition of other issues, like slavery, this division grew and then fomented into a Civil War.
Since the Civil War
The completion of the Civil War in 1865 did not end division in the United States. That continued. Some of the disunity founded by the early disparity between Federalists and Anti-Federalists persisted. Those seeds still germinate and rise in various iterations of the original ground of division.
The United States is no kingdom of Jesus Christ under the unifying power and discipline of the words of Christ. Its form of government cannot sustain oneness like that between God the Father and the Son expressed in John 17. The superstructure of this nation doesn’t portend toward biblical unity. Discord is baked in. The United States doesn’t possess the tools or instrumentation necessary to ward off significant division, even though United is its first name.
Paul taught Timothy to pray for rulers and those in authority so that the church can live peaceably (1 Timothy 2:1-3). Peaceably stands for a manifestation of unity. The government agrees not to imprison and kill believers for merely practicing scripture. It doesn’t mean the government supports the church or its positions, just allows it to operate freely.
Greater Division
Out of the soup of Federalism and Anti-Federalism comes the present and even greater division in the United States. It stems to a certain degree from the original division, but it grew in magnitude. The founders of the United States did not, maybe would or could not, put in the necessary preventatives against massive division in the country. They compromised at the beginning to hold everything together, which meant not providing the crucial deterrents for division that first turned into a Civil War and now we’re where we are.
A popular Democrat and media talking point is that Donald Trump is the number one cause of division in the United States. Their point argues that Trump operates in conflict with established political norms, which creates chaos and a very uncomfortable environment. People will describe this situation dividing families, making for an uncomfortable time at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The Cause of the Division
Trump didn’t cause the division seen in the environment heading into election on November 5, 2024. Very often today people will call this clash a culture war. It already existed before Trump, but his rise reveals its existence. Trump embodies the division in the country, doesn’t cause it. It represents two completely diametrically opposed views of the world. Not everyone voting for Trump falls neatly into one of the two sides of this dispute. Some just like his policies better. The heatedness and underlying threat of war emanates from the fundamental root of the division.
The separation between the two major factions goes back a long ways, even preceding the time of the founding of the United States. It relates to epistemology, how that we know what we know. The printing and publication of scripture in people’s language took nations out of the dark ages. Arising from this was modern science and a return to the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28, especially seen in Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. True science started on a good trajectory, but splintered finally for various reasons (important ones to understand) into modernism first in Europe and then on to the United States.
Modernism arose in the United States after the Civil War parallel with the industrial revolution. Instead of God and scripture as a starting point, modernism shifted to human reason, rationalism, or “evidence.” Premoderns began with a bias toward God, what Stephen Meyer calls the “God hypothesis.” They believed in a transcendent, which is objective, basis for truth, goodness, and beauty. Modernism came into major institutions, influenced their leaders, and changed the culture.
Further Explanation
The insufficiency and inadequacy or failure of modernism finally led to a total rejection of objective truth, goodness, and beauty. This transformed the culture. Pragmatism in churches led to compromise, capitulation, and then cooperation with the cultural changes in the United States. The right side of the two major factions does not necessarily embrace the reality or necessity of objective truth, but it understands the suicide of not living or acting like it exists.
Many if not most would ask, “Why Trump?” That requires a long answer that many won’t accept even if it is the right answer. The country is divided and taking Trump out of the equation will not change that. It comes from deep philosophical and even theological differences and an unwillingness at least for now with either side to accept the other. Some still won’t vote for Trump even though they also don’t accept the other side.
Over a year ago, I called this a “slow moving car crash.” The cars have about arrived now. We’re days away.
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