The New Testament does teach fellowship between churches.   In Acts 15, the Jerusalem and Antioch churches tried to get along.  It was worth it to try.  They got together for the sake of the truth.  I can see the Asian churches collecting money for the Jerusalem church in 1 and 2 Corinthians.  In 3 John, John says that when someone comes traveling through, out of fellowship for the truth a church should take care of him.  The Philippian church sent a gift to Paul.  I see that and believe that.  However, I don’t see in many instances today the New Testament emphasis of fellowship, but rather the building of coalitions.  I also witnessed this early in my pastoring.

The truth was so important to Paul that he confronted Peter to his face in a very severe way.  I don’t see these first century churches putting up with garbage.  Paul parted ways with John Mark for a time. Every New Testament epistle teaches separation, mirroring the very first Psalm among all the other Old Testament books.  Names are named, associations are discontinued.

When we pray, thy will be done, it’s as it is done in heaven, which is also how Jesus performed God’s will on earth.  Whatever is built, God builds.  It doesn’t come through careful assessment of the smallest common denominator.

We could talk about music, dress, methods, buildings, Bible versions, tithing, Promise Keepers, who has the biggest congregation, or whatever the subject du jour.  Sure.  Fundamentalism started over fundamentals — its term.  If that is so, and someone is a fundamentalist, one would think that the gospel would figure prominently in consideration in the fellowship.  What does someone believe, what does someone teach on the gospel?

When someone asks me for a recommendation somewhere, it is the first place I look.  What does that church believe about the gospel?  What they profess, write, post, and teach on the gospel says a lot about their thinking about all the other biblical teachings they might hold.  It says a lot about what they think of Jesus.  If someone is wrong about Jesus or at least not contextual with Jesus, giving Him a scriptural representation, should that not trouble a Christian, someone who names the name of Jesus?

It seems in many cases today, the lack of curiosity about belief and practice is rewarded.  What’s best is to learn not to ask too many questions.  When you ask questions, you find things out, and you really don’t want to find things out.  If you find something out, you might have to talk about it, and someone will be uncomfortable, let alone separate over some thing.  No, the thing is to keep the coalition, and call that fellowship.  “We had a great fellowship” means that we had a good time of not mentioning too many truths that would reveal something awkward and throw an ill will over the gathering.

When I was in fundamentalism, I began to notice what and why things were overlooked.  It almost never made any sense, and then it didn’t help to ask about whatever it was.  You wouldn’t be surprised how often it related to money.  Bigger coalitions are needed for money.  Bigger churches are needed for money.  Bigger churches are needed for bigger coalitions.  The participants think they need all this for success.  Doctrinal and practical precision suffer for it all to work.  It’s easy to see.  What bothers the most is the corruption of the gospel and most because of the dishonor to God.

The above isn’t just fundamentalism.  It’s worse in evangelicalism.  Evangelicalism doesn’t separate. Evangelicals today write mean tweets — their version of separation.  They produce a podcast and mock someone they don’t like without mentioning his name.  Everyone knows, wink, wink, but the name very often isn’t mentioned.  If the name is mentioned, the participants explain how it really is too bad.  It doesn’t stop the fellowship from continuing.

I wish I was wrong about everything I’ve written so far.  I’d be happy to hear how I’m not, if I’m not. None of what I have written reflects on the unsurpassed beauty and wonder of actual Christianity, of God’s Word itself, and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  All of that remains intact, pristine and majestic.  It is the truth.  The participants of fundamentalism and evangelicalism hopefully know this.

If you consider fellowship with another church, then look at the doctrinal statement and observe the practice of a church, and especially look at what a church says the gospel is and then what it says evangelism is or practices as evangelism — at least.  If you walk past that, ignore that, or diminish that for what you call fellowship, it’s destructive fellowship.  The Apostle Paul wouldn’t do it.

Our church practices closed communion.  We’re local church only in our ecclesiology.  We use the King James Version.  We believe in the autonomy of the church, the Baptist distinctives, and that true churches have always existed separate from a state church.  If another church believes all those things, just like us, and they don’t preach a true gospel, the former doesn’t excuse the latter. I start with the latter.  The former buttresses the latter.  The gospel precedes all of those in priority.

Somebody might be “King James,” but if you rarely hear the actual teaching of the King James from the King James, using the King James doesn’t condone or excuse false teaching.  No one should sit and listen to something the King James doesn’t say and allow for it, as long as the King James is being used.  If someone takes a wrong view of spirituality and sanctification from the King James, it’s not fine now.  When false teaching or bad preaching is excused or allowed just because it came from the King James Version, it’s no wonder someone could receive the wrong impression about that translation.  If someone teaches what the King James Version actually says from the English Standard Version, and someone massacres what the King James Version actually says from the King James Version, the preaching from the English Standard was superior.  The King James is not the supreme test of fellowship for a church.  If it is, that is destructive fellowship.

Even as I write about destructive fellowship in fundamentalism, the only fellowship not destructive, really the only fellowship at all, is in and about the truth.  That fellowship occurs in a church and then between churches.  The truth is the basis for this ecclesiastical fellowship and is also the basis for ecclesiastical separation.  Churches either fellowship or separate based upon the truth.  When they forsake truth for fellowship, that is destructive fellowship.  The fellowship that continues into eternity proceeds from, exists in, and revolves around the truth.

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TDR

If you read here, you know how dangerous I think universal church doctrine is.  It isn’t taught in the Bible.  There isn’t such a thing — church isn’t universal.  However, there are concepts that are universal, and I want to talk about those.  Those are good enough and should be good enough.  There is fellowship beyond a single church, but mainly because of other concepts.  They do, in a sense, draw everyone together without everyone being a church or in a church.

Could someone just follow the Bible and admit, “There’s no universal church,” or “There’s nothing ecclesiastical that is universal”?  I’m writing here to say that the Bible teaches something universal, but it isn’t a church.  Could people give in on the universal that isn’t the church, and admit that it isn’t a church?

Before I talk about what is universal, you will see that there are practical ramifications to eliminating the false doctrine of the universal church.  Unity is required in the church.  That unity is a very specific unity that is represented all over the New Testament, but stated very well in 1 Corinthians 1:10:

Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

You’ve got a Bible, and now it must look like you represent it.  Anyone reading the Bible will see that Jesus said the following in John 14:12:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

Earlier in John 5:20, He had said the following:

For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.

These are the two places anywhere in the King James Version of the Bible where you get the terminology, “greater works.” A lot of expectation for a person and a church has been woven by teachers from these two English words from the King James.  I know Jack Hyles got much distance out of “greater works,” enough that I remember thinking about those two words especially as they related to him.  He got thousands.  Others got thousands.  I mean, we’re supposed to experience “greater works.”  Should I expect it?  I just googled Hyles and “greater works,” and here’s something he wrote (dictated to his secretary) in Exploring Prayer with Jack Hyles (you’ve got to love that title):

I find myself not wanting to do greater works than Jesus, but it is in the Bible, and I must face it. I must confess that I never understood that verse completely until recently when I was on an airplane. I had no commentary; I had no books with me except the Bible/ I was reading this passage. Suddenly it hit me! I shouted, “I know what that means! Praise the Lord!” 

The fellow beside me said, “What did you say?” 

I said, “Praise the Lord! Glory to God! I think I just found the meaning of John 14:12.” 

With a puzzled look on his face he scratched his head and went back to his reading. 

Now let us examine the petals of this lovely orchid.

Then he examines the orchid.  It couldn’t be a tulip, like the 6 points of the orchid — actually four points here.  He’s a four point orchid man.

Also, if he shouted on an airplane today, authority would likely get the marshal involved and turn the plane around.  Shouting, as you know, is a sign of ‘Holy Spirit filling.’  Good exegesis “just finds the meaning” like that earnest pastoral candidate.  No process.  No study.  The Holy Spirit just tells you, you dictate it to your secretary and how could it be wrong when you have 100,000 in Sunday School?  His seat mate just scratched his head after he screamed on a plane (yawn) — just an everyday occurrence.  Something short of a one year old screaming is annoying, but when a grown man screams, I look for the oxygen mask to fall out and I’m searching for the flotation device.

 I’ve never been in the Charismatic movement and I haven’t ever looked for its theologians, but the “greater works” terminology works like the elastic clause, the necessary and proper clause, of the Constitution to a Charismatic.  You drive through a mack truck load of signs and wonders through “greater works.”  Reinhard Bonnke (not in my opinion a very Charismatic name) wrote a book length work, greater than other works on greater works, entitled, Even Greater.  Greater works, of course, to Bonnke are the signs and wonders that he and others are “doing” today.

On the other hand, Hyles couldn’t say they were the same thing that Bonnke would say, even though if you read him and others like him, you would find that they claimed miracles too.  Hyles focuses his miracles on numbers, the great number of souls “won,” which translates to the size of your Sunday morning crowd.  That’s a miracle, like Pentecost to them.  Guys like Hyles throw their numbers at you and when you question, their greater works make them safe from criticism   Many knew he was a fraud then, said it, and were criticized. I understand it.  It still happens today.  It doesn’t seem different to me.  Much is out of a false view of unity too, which we’ve exposed many times here.

So, what are “greater works”?  You’d think the Bible talked about this a lot, the emphasis the Charismatics and revivalists put on it.  When you look at John 5:20 and 14:12 in the original language from which the King James Version was translated, you see that the word “works” isn’t even the word.  “Greater” is the Greek word mega, which has a wide range of meaning.  It doesn’t have to refer to power.  It doesn’t even mainly refer to power.  Then you have toutos, the near demonstrative pronoun, so the literal translation is “greater things.”  If you look up the two Greek words, it’s not twice those occur, but six of them (Mk 12:31, Jn 1:50, 5:20, 14:12, 15:13, and 3 Jn 1:4), five obviously by John the Apostle.

In Mark 12:31, love God is the greater thing.  In John 1:50, Jesus said Nathaniel would see greater things than seeing him under the fig tree.  In John 5:20, Jesus said that the Father would show greater things through Jesus than that crowd was seeing.  John 14:12 mentions the Apostles doing greater things than the works that Jesus had done.  If you go through John, Jesus refers to His own works, the antecedent of “things” in John 14:12, several times.  Jesus’ work in John 4:34 is the Father’s will, and after that, that is what Jesus’ work is in John 5:36, 9:4, 10:25, 10:32, 37-38, and 17:4,   In John 6:29, Jesus says God’s work is believing on Jesus.  As the Father sent Jesus to do His work, so Jesus sent us to do it, which is evangelism or discipleship.  In John 15:13, the greater thing is love.  In 3 John 1:4, the greater thing is God’s children walking in the truth.  We can’t assume that “greater things” was greater miracles or greater numbers of conversions.

When Jesus said the Apostles and then believers would do greater works, that didn’t nor does it assume signs, wonders, or miracles.  It doesn’t assume greater numbers.  Hyles doesn’t make any clear explanation that it is a gigantic or bigger church.  If we would assume anyone, it would be that there would be a greater extent of obedience, more wide-ranging and more of it.  We shouldn’t assume it is miracle.

Early in John, John 4, Jesus said in verse 34:  “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.”  In John 10:25, “Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?”  The works for which they were willing to stone Jesus, we know, were not the miracles.  Jesus said they loved those.  They wanted to stone Him for His claims, for His testimony.  He said He was the Messiah.  He preached the message of the kingdom.  The work of God that the Father sent Jesus to do, Jesus passes on to His own in John 20:21, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”  There is so much to say here, but Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:17 writes to that church, “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”

The Apostle Paul was sent to preach the gospel.  At the end of Jesus’s physical life, He told His followers, preach the gospel to everyone.  Jesus got to Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Perea — really amazing for three years, very diligent.  He told us to keep going to the uttermost parts of the earth. Paul said that he worshiped God in the gospel (Rom 1;9).  The Great Commission was make disciples, going, baptizing, and teaching.  As far as Jesus got, much more has been done since then, greater works.  Jesus worked Himself out of a job.  He left the work for us to do.  You are doing greater works if you in your 50 year ministry you go further than Jesus in his three years.  Will you do that?  That is something that you can do, and it has been done, we know.

Don’t be discouraged.

People who rejected and still repudiate Jack Hyles at the same time welcome his ideology.  They aren’t opposed to Hylesism.  If you asked them if they supported Hyles, they would scoff at you and deny with vehemence.  Yes, they support the ideology if you remove the Hyles label.  It’s still his ideology, but doesn’t have his name attached.

There were reasons why Hyles’s philosophy and practice worked at expanding the size of his organization.  Hyles may not have been as big as he said he was, but he was still huge.  When he was on the road, he attracted a lot of people too, very often packing out gigantic auditoriums with people who wanted to hear him.

Hylesism goes way back before modern day iterations of the same ideology.  People who were and really hard on Hyles keep what was corrupt about Hyles.  They may not use everything that he preached and did, but they operate with significant similarity, so that you should understand that they practice Hylesism.

I was around and close enough to observe Jack Hyles at his hey-day, and what I see in large evangelical churches is the same essential methodology and philosophy.  From what I see, they don’t just support Hylesism, but in many, if not most, cases, they have taken Hyles methods and philosophy past what he did.  They go further than Hyles in doing Hyles.

The success of Hyles did not and does not center on authoritarian leadership or dress standards or using the King James Version.  The latter were not the issues in his day that they are today.  People knew then, but now people know even more, that there was corruption at First Baptist Church in Hammond.  Today someone could say that they don’t like Hyles because he abused people.  The abuse part of it was more a byproduct of the philosophy, not the philosophy of Hylesism itself.  The philosophy though is what is rampant still today.  I contend that Hylesism hasn’t regressed, but is believed and practiced at an all time high. I know it is in our area.  Again, I witnessed Hyles at his greatest power and influence from fairly close proximity and I see many today as essentially the same as him.

What I’m saying here is, don’t tell me you opposed or oppose Hyles.  You are worse than him.  You have embraced Hylesism, so don’t act like you don’t like him, that you are against what he did.  You are not.  You are the same as him.  Almost every mega church today follows Hylesism and even those who are not mega churches, mainly because they just aren’t as talented at the implementation of Hylesism as many others.  Some men like me know what is necessary to be where Hyles was and what the modern version of him is, but they choose not to be that way.  They know it’s wrong.  They would feel guilt over going that direction.  I recognize that some just couldn’t do Hylesism, so don’t even try, but many could do it, do it very well, but still don’t do it.  They know it’s wrong.

On top of people believing and practicing Hylesism, there are those who, even though they would repudiate Hyles, don’t repudiate Hylesism.  They continue fellowship with Hylesism. They reward the latter iteration of it.  They may not do everything those churches do, but they don’t confront their practice.  They would call it a non-essential or area of liberty or not something over which to be judgmental, expressing thoughts like those.  Many would say that those churches have many good things that we can learn from them.  They do some things very well that can be emulated that aren’t wrong, so just pick through the bones to find the meat, they might say, and leave the other behind. It’s OK, they say, to sort through it and implement what you will not have a problem with and then leave the other behind.  Is that really how harmless it is?

I’ve decided to write at least two posts on Hylesism.  It is rampant in fundamentalism and evangelicalism.  Those who either follow it or tolerate it are in the vast majority in fundamentalism and evangelicalism.  I wanted you to think about it in principle in this first post, but I’m going to come in Wednesday to flesh out some about it’s meaning and who is doing it who would also contend that they are nothing like Hyles.

To end this first post, I see Hylesism, as using human means to attract a crowd for evangelism.  Hyles’s church manual focused on numerous areas to increase the crowd size.  A theology is then formulated to match  the practice and that’s also a philosophy.  The Bible doesn’t teach it, but it is shown anyway to teach it by those who want it to exist and continue existing.  Hyles and the modern purveyors would defend it in similar ways.  At the root of it is deceit.  The method is formulated to sell Christianity like a product.  Very often today, the people, who say they aren’t doing it and are against, are actually doing it.  Not saying you’re doing it is part of the philosophy and the method. Those who criticize aren’t worth listening to because they aren’t very big.  Some would even say that God isn’t blessing in those places, or they’re dead or they don’t know what they’re doing, so they’re not worth listening to.

I look forward to spending more time exploring Hylesism with you.

We have new youtube presentations of the 2014 Word of Truth Conference.  Look here for all of them. And if you want to go straight to mine on Sentimentalism Versus Love and Doubt Versus Certainty, go to here 1, here 2, here 3, and here 4.

I got a Jews for Jesus mailing last week and it had their Christmas catalog. They sold several different mezuzahs, the piece to be placed on the doorpost with the shema inscribed.  Shema is the first word of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear,” in “Hear, O Israel.”  And then, “The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”  Since there is only one Lord, He should be loved with all your heart, soul, and might. That love should not be divided with other gods or with yourself, but sanctified unto Him.

One Lord.  Proceeding from Him is one Word.  Not two.  And yet, through many various unscriptural arguments, multiple version or critical or eclectic text supporters expect you to accept two, not one. From one Lord comes one Word.  You can’t accept two Lords.  You can’t accept two Words.  You can’t ever accept two Words, either in inspiration or preservation.  And that is the biblical and historical position.

I move to the “Which TR?’ question, which exists to argue for two Words.

From my observation and experience, which is opinion, but fairly scientific at this point in my life, the main arguments for “preservation” from the eclectic text, critical text, or various iterations of the multiple version position are really just attacks of the scriptural and historical position on preservation of scripture.  They are motivated to write a book that could include a section on preservation in order to prove that we should keep restoring the text of scripture that is still not restored and will never be.  That isn’t preservation. Perhaps it is preservation, but only in the same sense that the cottage cheese is being preserved under the kitchen sink in that wastebasket. Sure, it’s still there, but it has deteriorated from its original state.  A sane person shouldn’t swallow a non-restored-text view as preservation, even if told that we must do so to preserve unity among Christians.

I’ve read a lot of the criticism from the yet-to-be-restored-text people, and as I see it, their main argument is that if there is one word that could be different, then we have an opening for an eclectic text.  Where does that stop?  I don’t know.  There is no standard that I have read to guide on how much variation or error can be acceptable to those willing to accept any. Kevin Bauder writes in Only One Bible?

If they are willing to accept a manuscript or a text that might omit any words (even a single word) from the originals, or that might add any words (even a single word) to the originals, then their whole position is falsified. . . .  If preservation does not really have to include every word, then the whole controversy is no more than a debate over percentages.

But Scripture teaches every Word preservation of itself.  That is the doctrine we should accept, because it is what the Bible teaches.   Every doctrine about scripture requires belief in biblical teaching — inspiration, canonicity, authority, sufficiency, and preservation.  Bauder would say that we also must prove that every Word we have is also in the original manuscripts, or else a position of perfect preservation is falsified.  Really?  The position of perfect preservation comes out of God’s Word, so it must be true.  God’s Word is true.

If you take a biblical position on preservation of scripture, it will be verbal plenary preservation.  But men like Bauder add something to the Bible, as though it is not sufficient on preservation, unlike all the other doctrines of bibliology.   In addition to what the Bible says, they add that you also have to prove with empirical evidence that we have every Word.  And “since we can’t,’ it is as he writes, “a debate over percentages.”  Is that what we should expect from reading the Bible?  No one ever answers that.  Imagine preaching that position to a church:  “we’re talking about what percentage of the Bible we have, not that we do have it, so be assured, brethren.”

An additional red herring of the eclectic text and multiple version side, the opponents of preservation (which could only be perfect preservation), is that if there is one word that is brought into question, then, as Bauder has written, “Our discussion should turn from theologizing to the doing of textual criticism.”  Why?  Why are Bauder and others sure about this binary choice, the existence of only two alternatives?

Our theologizing should give us one choice:  what the Bible says.  That’s what we believe.  Then I look at how the churches applied it.  The position of Bauder and others is a recent one and in the tradition of modernism.  It bifurcates truth into two stories:  the top story, subjective and questionable, and then bottom story, objective and sure.   The identity of the text is subjective and questionable, like theology.  You should rely on science for the text, because science is objective and factual.  This position is an apostatizing of bibliology.  It’s not how Christians have believed.

The attack on the one biblical position often takes shape with the question, “Which TR?”  The editions of the received text of the New Testament are not identical.  According to Bauder, this would mean we’re now “debat[ing] over percentages” as well as “turn[ing] . . . to the doing of textual criticism.” Understand that there is no biblical basis for this conclusion.  It is the conclusion of the lower story that separates theology from science.  But how do perfect preservationists answer the “Which TR?” question?  This was recently asked in the blog comment section, “Where was the generally available perfectly verbally preserved text in AD 1829?”  I’m going to answer “Which TR” in that form of the question.

I don’t think there is anything significant to the year 1829.  That’s just random, but for the sake of the answer, I’m going to deal with only before 1829.  I would think that the point of the question was to deal with verbal preservation before Scrivener 1881, the so-called “reconstructed Greek text behind the King James Version.”  I often say, “They translated from something.”  And Edward F. Hills, the summa cum laude graduate of Yale and PhD from Harvard in textual criticism, wrote that “the King James Version ought to be regarded not merely as a translation of the Textus Receptus but also as an independent variety of the Textus Receptus.” Were the Words translated into the King James Version in the printed editions of the TR?  Yes.  Preachers who used the King James were studying from a Greek text.  In 1815, Frederick Nolan had published An Inquiry Into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, Or Received Text of the New Testament.  If the received text didn’t exist, then how could there be a book written about its integrity?  I add to this all the exegetical commentaries before 1829 from the received text and using the King James Version.  How could they exegete from a text that did not exist?  If we do write a second edition of Thou Shalt Keep Them, which deals with the history, I want to look into the quotations of exegetical commentaries from 1550 or so to 1881 to show that they were referring to those Words.

The biblical position on preservation says that all the Words were available to every generation of churches.  If there are differences between the TR editions, they were minimal, so small in number relatively not to be considered to be different.  But they are different.  They vary.  And this then brings us to the single word challenge of Bauder and others, where they say that one word of difference opens the door to the science of textual criticism and an ongoing and never ending “restoration” of the original text.  No.  Believers settled on the words.  And this is where the doctrine of canonicity is applied to the Words — the unity of the Spirit, the Spirit guiding believers.  A settled text is required for “adding” and “taking away” to mean anything.  It should be assumed.

From here, perfect preservation opponents engage in a game of “gotcha.” They try to find places where the KJV misses on Scrivener or misses on Beza, looking for that one word of difference to send everyone in the direction that Bauder described, willy-nilly assuming a binary choice without regard of a scriptural and historical doctrine of preservation.  This is an assumption against preservation.  For sure, the Bible doesn’t teach the need of restoration of the text.  It does not.  That should never be accepted.  Just like with canonicity of 66 books, believers should be willing to live with the possible minor tensions of the arguments over those few words.  This is what Hills called “the logic of faith.”  He wrote:

If we are Christians, then we must begin our thinking not with the assertions of unbelieving scholars and their naturalistic human logic, but with Christ and the logic of faith.  For example, how do we know that the Textus Receptus is the true New Testament text?  We know this through the logic of faith. . . .  In biblical studies, in philosophy, in science, and in every other learned field we must begin with Christ and then work out our basic principles according to the logic of faith. . . . The defense of the Textus Receptus . . . is entailed by the logic of faith, the basic steps of which are as follows: First, the Old Testament text was preserved by the Old Testament priesthood and the scribes and scholars that grouped themselves around that priesthood (Deut. 31:24-26). Second, the New Testament text has been preserved by the universal priesthood of believers by faithful Christians in every walk of life (1 Peter 2:9). Third, the Traditional Text, found in the vast majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts, is the True Text because it represents the God-guided usage of this universal priesthood of believers. Fourth, The first printed text of the Greek New Testament was not a blunder or a set-back but a forward step in the providential preservation of the New Testament. . . . When we believe in Christ, the logic of faith leads us first, to a belief in the infallible inspiration of the original Scriptures, second, to a belief in the providential preservation of this original text down through the ages and third, to a belief in the Bible text current among believers as the providentially preserved original text. . . .  In short, unless we follow the logic of faith, we can be certain of nothing concerning the Bible and its text.

The one word for which opponents of verbal plenary or perfect preservation are seeking or desiring does not contradict the logic of faith.  It does not veto the theology, the doctrine.  That all stands.   The “gotcha game” does not work.

Let God be true and every man a liar.

A First Post

For the sake of full disclosure, there are wacky, wacky supporters of the King James Version with crazy arguments and positions.  We have crushed them here.  It does kind of remind me of liberals, who lure you into some type of advocacy of a piece of their agenda and then say nothing positive after seducing you as prey into adherence.  These multiple version folk (MVF) use the craziest King James Version advocates as examples and when you separate yourself from those guys in a clear way, the MVF do not care.  Nevertheless, I start this with repudiation of double inspirationists, English preservationists, and all spin-offs.  Their existence does not and should not damage the biblical and historic position because those views actually have more in common in principle with multiple versionists.

So many things.  Let me start with one today that happened.  I talked to a MVF pastor face to face. He was a fundamentalist, independent, Baptist, Bob Jones type of guy.  I like to have these types of interactions — of great interest to me.  In the middle of our talk while watching a mutual event, casual chat, I asked, “So what exactly is your problem with West Coast?”  Speaking of the revivalist college in Southern California.  He said, “I don’t like their militant stand…”  When he said that, I thought, “Militant stand?”  Not sounding good so far.  “….in separation over the use of the King James Version of the Bible.”  I waited for more, but that was it.  That was his problem with West Coast.

I don’t even think of the King James Version when I think of West Coast.  They don’t make themselves known by a stand on that English translation.  Sure, they use the King James.  But that’s what bothers MVF about West Coast?  I asked, “What about West Coast’s ministry philosophy?”  Ambivalence.  No reaction.  Not even an answer.  That’s all he had to say about West Coast.   I’m thinking, “What about their gospel?”  And that’s what I was intimating with ministry philosophy, church growth technique.  Nothing.  This is wacky to me.  Talk about an obsession.  I knew he wasn’t alone, because I hear the same kind of talk over and over.  And they do not know what they are talking about or they are lying.  I’m choosing the former.

It is wacky to me how much this bothers them.  What difference does it make how “militant” West Coast is about using the King James if they preach a false gospel?  Leave them alone and be glad you don’t have anything to do with them.  If they don’t have anything to do with you, the more the better.  Yes!  But bothered that they exclusively use the KJV and that’s what really gets to you?  Someone is drinking the koolaid.

OK, that’s a first example.  Many say they believe in verbal, plenary inspiration.  They are adamant about it.  They see this as very, very important.  If I asked about conceptual inspiration.  No way!   But the Bibles they use, the conceptual Word, not verbal or plenary.  They have no problem that there are many errors in them.  They call them copyist errors.  I’m not saying that they aren’t copyist errors.  But they are saying that they are errors, and yet they believe in “inerrancy” of these Bibles with errors.  However, for verbal and plenary inspiration, that can’t have any of these errors in it.  This doesn’t work in the real world in almost any area, but they are fine with this kind of strange contradiction with the Bible.  MVF believe in inerrancy!  So no errors?  “No, by inerrancy, we mean there are errors — let me explain….”  They can explain, but it shouldn’t make any sense to someone who knows what the Bible says.

Another.  MVF use any number of very good English translations of the Bible.  They differ, but they are all good.  They come from different texts, but that’s fine too.  And if you believe there is only one set of Words.   No, no, no, no.  No.  Any number of some of the very good solid translations that each come from different words, but they are all good.  Is this the biblical and historical view of the Bible? If you don’t agree with this, they think something is wrong with you.  And they will say that you have an aberrant bibliology if you don’t believe this way.  No one who would call himself a Christian believed like they do until the 19th century.  They can’t talk about history previous to the 19th century.  Could there be a biblical position that originated in the 19th century?  Can you believe that and not be wacky?  I don’t think so.

There is no logical basis for God — Divine, sovereign, powerful — and the permissible and the “best view’ of His word is that there are errors in it. “We aren’t sure what His words are, and yet He wants us to live all of His words obediently.” Where is this taught?   No where in the Bible.  It is wacky that they think that faithful people should believe it.  Wacky.  The emperor is wearing no clothes.