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Objections to Christians Learning Greek and Hebrew (6/7)
The first five blog posts summarizing the argument in Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages explained the value of learning the Biblical languages and explained that the languages are not too difficult to learn–indeed, Biblical Greek and Hebrew are easier languages to learn than modern English. Clearly, knowing the languages is valuable and attainable. But people have objections.
1.) “Greek letters look different from English ones! Hebrew letters, even more so! Greek and Hebrew must be hard languages!”
While some people who begin to learn Greek and Hebrew do not finish what they started, there is just about nobody that cannot learn the Greek and Hebrew alphabet. If toddlers can learn the alphabet in Israel and in Greece, adults can learn the same alphabet in English-speaking countries.
2.) “Learning Greek and Hebrew is dangerous: such knowledge makes the person who knows the languages proud.”
There is no reason why learning God’s Word in Greek or Hebrew would contribute to pride rather than to humility, any more than learning God’s Word in English would contribute to pride rather than to humility.
3.) “Learning Greek and Hebrew is too hard.”
This objection was already examined in the part four of this seven part series. However, even if learning the languages was very hard, it would not be as hard as being crucified. But all Christians are called to daily cross-bearing, so they are all already called to something that is much harder than learning Greek or Hebrew.
4.) “Greek and Hebrew can be abused.”
Yes, the Bible in Greek or in Hebrew can be abused, as can the Bible in English. Should we refrain from learning the English language because innumerable cults and false religions abuse the English Bible? Because many preachers who warn about the dangers of Greek and Hebrew do not even know how to properly exposit the English text, should we avoid English?
5.) “I do not have time to learn Greek and Hebrew—I am too busy preparing for ministry or too busy, already serving in the ministry.”
Over the course of a lifetime of ministry, learning Greek and Hebrew actually saves tremendous amounts of time. Exegetical conclusions that are easily and quickly determined by an examination of the original language text are hard and time consuming to someone who does not know the Biblical languages.
The objections above to learning the Biblical languages are insufficient. They do not even come close to refuting the positive case for learning Greek and Hebrew summarized in the first five sections of this blog series or in the more comprehensive work Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages, pages 52-57 of which are summarized here.
–TDR
The Shell Game Played With Words About the Bible
You know right now the concern about the gender of pronouns used to address the sexes. The controversy revolves around calling a biological male, “him,” or a biological female, “her.” People change the meaning of the words and expect us to play along. You know it’s a man, but you call him, a her. You call he, a she.
Let’s say we’re talking about the words of scripture. Inspiration applies to words. God inspired words. And then someone says, I believe in the inerrancy of scripture in the context of words. We think he means, no errors in the words. I think he even knows that we think he means words. However, he doesn’t mean words. He’s not saying that there are no errors in the words.
Someone holds up a Bible and calls it the inerrant Word of God. He doesn’t mean words. He means something different. It’s hard to say what he means, but it’s probably the following. Inerrancy means that you can trust that the teachings of the Bible are without error. He doesn’t bring up inerrancy in the context of the teachings of the Bible. He brings it up in the context of words. He’s playing a shell game, moving those shells around very quickly. You thought he meant words, but he didn’t.
You think the bead is under the shell. That’s what someone wants you to think. The bead is words, but you see a shell. Words aren’t under the shell. It’s teachings, and even that is ambiguous, because even with that, he doesn’t mean teachings.
When someone says the teachings of scripture are inerrant, if that’s even what he means, because that can become very ambiguous, he doesn’t mean that you can’t find errors in the Bible. You can. However, all things considered, if you take all the combined passages of the Bible to come up with those teachings, all the right teachings are available in the Bible.
Men don’t even agree on what the Bible teaches, let alone on what’s right that it does teach. Two different men can say they believe in inerrancy and then disagree on ten different doctrines of scripture. It’s a hypothetical inerrancy. Let’s just say it. It isn’t inerrancy. I can agree to an ambiguous, hypothetical inerrancy, and then agree that the Bible is inerrant. I can hold up the Bible and say, this is the inerrant Word of God.
When I say the Bible is without error, I mean that it is without error. Every Word that God inspired has been preserved in the language in which it is written. Since inerrancy relates to what God inspired, if there are missing words, then it isn’t inerrant any more. I believe that and not in a hypothetical way. I’m not going to say that we both agree the Bible is inerrant, fully realizing that when you say “inerrant” you don’t even mean “inerrant.” You mean something that allows you to believe the Bible is inerrant without believing that it is inerrant. This is like calling him, her.
If the Bible is perfect, then it can’t be given extra perfection. There are those who do not believe it is perfect. They also don’t believe that scripture says that scripture is perfect. They believe that it is inerrant, but it isn’t perfect.
I would say, don’t call the Bible perfect if you don’t believe it. Also, don’t call it inerrant, if you don’t believe it is inerrant. Don’t make perfect and inerrant mean something different than what they obviously mean in light of what the Bible says about itself.
I can go through my Bible and show you a doctrine of its inerrancy and perfection. Then I ask, “Does the Bible teach that it is inerrant and perfect?” You say, “Yes.” So then I ask, “Okay, so which Bible is the inerrant and perfect one?” You say, “None are.” So is the teaching of the Bible inerrant and perfect?
I believe the Bible is perfect and inerrant because the Bible says so. Then you start peppering me with individual words, phrases, verses, and even larger passages. I explain every one of those texts based on the presupposition that I have. I can do it. Now let me get into your presuppositions, how you came to having them, or whether they are reverse engineered.
You say, I can see that there isn’t a perfect Bible. So now when you look at the passages that teach the Bible is perfect, they’ve got to mean something else. Where do those presuppositions come from? How did you get those presuppositions? How is that conservative?
I’m not playing a shell game when I say the Bible is inerrant and perfect. Many others are.
John 3:36, the Second “Believeth” (Apeitheo), and English Translation of the Bible
The King James Version (KJV) of John 3:36 reads:
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
(1) in relation to God disobey, be disobedient (RO 11.30); (2) of the most severe form of disobedience, in relation to the gospel message disbelieve, refuse to believe, be an unbeliever.
not to allow oneself to be persuaded; not to comply with; a. to refuse or withhold belief
The King James Version and Old Testament Punctuation
The King James Bible has periods at the end of practically every verse. It also contains other punctuation marks, such as colons and commas, within verses. Does this English punctuation relate to anything in the Biblical text? The answer is “yes.”
The Old Testament accent marks, which there are strong reasons to believe are just as inspired as the Hebrew consonants and vowels, based on the statement of Christ in Matthew 5:18, among many other reasons, specify pauses or indicate disjunction in the text. In fact, God inspired a more detailed and specific system of punctuation in the original world language, Hebrew, the language in which He revealed 75% of His inspired Word, than the punctuation system of English. Every inspired word in the Old Testament has an accent revealing one of several levels of disjunction or an accent indicating conjunction, that words are to be read with a pause between them (disjunction) or connected (conjunction).
Consider, for example, Exodus 3:14-15. The bold “D” indicates a disjunctive accent in the Hebrew text, that is, a pause. There are levels of strength in the Hebrew accents–D1 is a stronger accent than D2, which is stronger than D3, and so on. (There are level 4, D4, very weak disjunctive Hebrew accents, and there are also conjunctive accents–every word has an accent–but I have not included the D4 very weak disjunctives, nor the conjunctive accents, below.)
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה וַיֹּ֗אמֶר כֹּ֤ה תֹאמַר֙ לִבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה שְׁלָחַ֥נִי אֲלֵיכֶֽם׃
וַיֹּאמֶר֩ ע֨וֹד אֱלֹהִ֜ים אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה כֹּֽה־תֹאמַר֮ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵל֒ יְהוָ֞ה אֱלֹהֵ֣י אֲבֹתֵיכֶ֗ם אֱלֹהֵ֨י אַבְרָהָ֜ם אֱלֹהֵ֥י יִצְחָ֛ק וֵאלֹהֵ֥י יַעֲקֹ֖ב שְׁלָחַ֣נִי אֲלֵיכֶ֑ם זֶה־שְּׁמִ֣י לְעֹלָ֔ם וְזֶ֥ה זִכְרִ֖י לְדֹ֥ר דֹּֽר׃
14 And God said unto Moses, D2 I AM D2 THAT I AM: D1 and he said, D3 Thus shalt thou say D3 unto the children of Israel, D2 I AM D2 hath sent me unto you. D1 15 And God said moreover unto Moses, D3 Thus shalt thou say D3 unto the children of Israel, D2 The LORD God of your fathers, D3 the God of Abraham, D3 the God of Isaac, D3 and the God of Jacob, D2 hath sent me unto you: D1 this is my name for ever, D2 and this is my memorial D2 unto all generations. D1
Note that the strongest disjunctive accents / pausal accents correspond to the periods in the English punctuation or to colons (and the accent on the colon is less strong than the one for the period). Note the correspondence of the weaker disjunctive D2 and D3 accents to commas in the English text and other places of natural pause. (There are reasons why some accents at levels D1-4 are stronger at times and weaker at times, but that is a discussion too complicated for this blog post.)
When the King James Bible was translated the inspiration of the Hebrew vowels and accent marks was generally accepted, unlike in modern times, when the Hebrew accents are generally viewed as an uninspired addition to the text, and one can take several years of Hebrew in evangelical or even fundamentalist seminaries and not even know how the Hebrew accent system works.
The fact that the Authorized, King James Version takes the Hebrew accents seriously is another way in which the KJV is superior to modern English versions. Furthermore, since the Hebrew text indicates pauses, when one is engaged in public reading of Scripture in the churches of Christ, one should take the punctuation seriously. Do not rush through the reading of Scripture. Pause where the KJV has a period. Pause where it has a colon. Pause for a slightly shorter time for a comma. Let the inspired words of God be read with reverence, solemnity, and care–read them for what they are, pausing over the punctuation just like Moses and the other Old Testament authors intended when the Holy Ghost dictated the Hebrew text– consonants, vowels, and accents–through the human penmen of Scripture.
May I also suggest that if you are going to learn Hebrew, you learn it from a source that takes the inspiration and preservation of the Hebrew vowels and accents seriously, and so makes sure that students learn the accent system, rather than being deprived of understanding this important aspect of the syntax God’s Word? What would you think of an English teacher that never taught his students what commas and periods are?
(Don’t you want to know whether someone is saying “Let’s eat Grandma” or “Let’s eat, Grandma!”) Shouldn’t students of Hebrew know the same sorts of things in the the Old Testament?
By the way, if you studied Hebrew but were never taught the Hebrew accents/punctuation, the resources below are a good place to start. I would read Futato first and then Fuller & Choi.
Basics of Hebrew Accents, Mark D. Futato
Learning the Hebrew accents will help you in your studying, preaching, and teaching of the jots and tittles of God’s infallible Word.
–TDR
The Amazon links are affiliate links, but I would recommend these works whether they were affiliate links or not.
KJV margin vs Ruckmanisim
The original edition of the King James Bible had marginal notes (see the replica of the original 1611 in the Bibliology section here). These marginal notes, which are still reprinted in the Trinitarian Bible Society and Cambridge printings of the KJV, as well as being available in electronic versions such as for Accordance Bible Software, reject the Ruckmanite ideas that the KJV is superior to the original language text, that study of Greek and Hebrew should not be undertaken, and similar foolishness. For example:
The note on Matthew 5:15 contains the phrase: “the word in the original signifieth.” Oops, I thought you weren’t supposed to look at the original. See also Mark 4:21, etc.
The note on Mark 7:4 reads: “in the Original, with the fist,” supplying information that one would not readily understand by just looking at the English text. This is a no-no with Ruckmanites.
The note on Mark 13:8 reads: “The word in the original, importeth, the pains of a woman in travail,” again supplying additional information not obvious from the English text alone.
There are numbers of other notes like this. If you are a real King James Bible 1611 person, then you need to be in favor of studying Greek and Hebrew and helping the saints understand God’s Word better by referring to the original languages. If you are against study and reference to the original languages, you are not a 1611 KJV person. You may be a Ruckman2000, but you are not a KJV1611.
–TR
God’s Name Jehovah: What Does It Mean?
I thought that the classical statement below on the significance of the name Jehovah in the very helpful 17th century systematic theology The Christian’s Reasonable Service by Wilhemus á Brakel, theologian of the Dutch Nadere Reformatie or Further/Second Reformation, which was comparable to English Puritanism, was worth reprinting and thinking about. I have reproduced it from one of the appendixes of my essay on the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points:
[I]t has pleased the Lord to give Himself a name by which He wishes to be called—a name which would indicate His essence, the manner of His existence, and the plurality of divine Persons. The name which is indicative of His essence is יְהוָֹה or Jehovah, it being abbreviated as יָהּ or Jah. The name which is indicative of the trinity of Persons is אֱלֹהִים or Elohim. Often there is a coalescence of these two words resulting in יֱהוִה or Jehovi. The consonants of this word constitute the name Jehovah, whereas the vowel marks produce the name Elohim. Very frequently these two names are placed side by side in the following manner: Jehovah Elohim, to reveal that God is one in essence and three in His Persons.
The Jews do not pronounce the name Jehovah. This practice of not using the name Jehovah initially was perhaps an expression of reverence, but later became superstitious in nature. In its place they use the name אֲדֹנָי or Adonai, a name by which the Lord is frequently called in His Word. Its meaning is “Lord.” When this word is used in reference to men, it is written with the letter patach, which is the short “a” vowel. When it is used in reference to the Lord, however, the letter kametz is used, which is the long “a” vowel. As a result all the vowels of the name Jehovah are present. To accomplish this the vowel “e” is changed into a chatef-patach which is the shortest “a” vowel, referred to as the guttural letter aleph. Our translators, to give expression to the name Jehovah, use the name Lord, which is similar to the Greek word kurios, the latter being a translation of Adonai rather than Jehovah. In Rev 1:4 and 16:5 the apostle John translates the name Jehovah as follows: “Him which is, and which was, and which is to come.” This one word has reference primarily to being or essence, while having the chronological connotation of past, present, and future. In this way this name refers to an eternal being, and therefore the translation of the name Jehovah in the French Bible is l’Eternel, that is, the Eternal One.
The name Jehovah is not to be found at all in the New Testament, which certainly would have been the case if it had been a prerequisite to preserve the name Jehovah in all languages. . . . Even though the transliteration of Hebrew words would conflict with the common elegance of the Greek language, it is nevertheless not impossible. Since they can pronounce the names Jesus, Hosanna, Levi, Abraham, and Hallelujah, they are obviously capable of pronouncing the name Jehovah. . . . Jehovah is not a common name, such as “angel” or “man”—names which can be assigned to many by virtue of being of equal status. On the contrary, it is a proper Name which uniquely belongs to God and thus to no one else, as is true of the name of every creature, each of which has his own name. (Wilhemus á Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, vol. 1, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Bartel Elshout [Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 1992] 84-85)
May you be edified as you meditate upon Jehovah and His wonderful Name.
–TDR
The King James Bible: Too Hard to Understand?
“The King James Version is too hard for people to understand! It is written in Old English. Therefore, we need to use a modern Bible version that is easier to understand.”
Is this true?
Before dealing with the most important question–what Scripture says on the subject–a few brief words on a secondary but related question.
The King James Version: Is it Old English?
First, the King James Version is not in Old English. Old English is the language of Beowulf. If you want to hear Old English, watch this:
Is the King James Bible easier to understand than that?
Maybe the King James is Middle English if it isn’t Old English. Here is someone reading from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which was written in Middle English:
Here you can probably make out something here and there, but it is clear that the King James Version is not in Old English, nor is it in Middle English. It is much easier to read than the Canterbury Tales. (Side note: I enjoyed my college class on Chaucer’s classic at U. C. Berkeley.) The King James Bible is in early modern English. English has changed less between 1611 and today than it did from the days of Chaucer in the 1400s to the KJV.
So the King James Bible is not in Old English, nor in Middle English, but in modern English–early modern English. That does not mean, however, that it is necessarily easy to understand. Perhaps it really is “too hard,” and we should overlook the fact that the New King James Version is soft on sodomy, removes “hell” from 22 verses in the Bible, replacing it with easier words to understand, and ones that are in common use, like “Sheol” and “Hades” (2 Samuel 22:6; Psalm 18:5; Matthew 11:23, etc.), is not actually translated from the same underlying language text, and contains other problems. Maybe since the King James Bible is “too hard” to understand we need to just deal with these sorts of problems in the NKJV.
“Too hard”: What is it?
Biblically, what does it mean that language is “too hard” to understand? In the New Testament, the Greek of the book of Hebrews is much harder to read than the Greek of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of Luke and Acts are harder to read than 1 John. Sometimes the New Testament contains really long sentences, like Ephesians 1:3-14, which is all just one sentence in Greek. Why did the Holy Ghost dictate such long sentences? Wouldn’t they be too hard to understand?
The vast majority of people in the first century were simple rural people; farmers, shepherds, and the like, not highly educated urbanites. Literacy was sketchy in many places. What was Paul doing when he wrote Hebrews under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? What was Luke thinking? Didn’t they know that their Greek would be too hard to understand?
What about the Old Testament? Significant portions of the Hebrew prophetic and poetical books are much more challenging Hebrew than many of the narrative sections of the Hebrew Bible. Why did the Holy Spirit write hard Hebrew and hard Greek in some parts of the Bible? Shouldn’t it all have been easy to understand?
Is there more literacy in the English speaking world now than there was in the first century world of the New Testament, or in the world where God gave the Hebrew Old Testament? When was learning to read–or improving one’s reading level–easier? Surely now.
The question, then, should be: “Is the English of the King James Version significantly more complex and harder to understand English than the Greek of the New Testament was to the New Testament people of God or the Hebrew of the Old Testament was to Israel”? The King James seeks to replicate the syntax of the original language texts as much as possible. That is why every verse from Genesis 1:3 to Genesis 1:26 begins with the word “And”–we may not write that way in non-translation English, but the KJV accurately represents what the Hebrew given by the Holy Spirit says here. We can’t simplify the syntax of the King James Bible without moving it further away from the original language text. If we have to leave the syntax alone, does the King James Version have more archaic words than the Greek of the New Testament or the Hebrew of the Old Testament? There are over 680 hapax legomena or words that occur only one time in the Greek New Testament and close to 1,500 hapax legomena in the Hebrew Old Testament. While not all of those hapaxes would have been rare or archaic words to first century readers, many of them would have been. By way of contrast, there are nowhere near that many archaic words in the King James Version.
Evaluated by the standard of Scripture itself–by the standard of the Greek and Hebrew text God gave to His people–the English of the Authorized, King James Version is indubitably not “too hard.” People who claim that it is too difficult to read should be enthusiastically promoting the Defined King James Bible, which leaves the actual King James Version text unchanged but defines the few archaic words at the bottom of its pages for readers, or works such as David Cloud’s Way of Life Encylopedia of the Bible and Christianity, where all the rare KJV words are defined, instead of encouraging readers to reject the KJB’s fantastic translation of the perfectly preserved Hebrew and Greek Textus Receptus for corrupt modern Bible versions.
So is the King James Bible too hard to understand? If we employ the only objective standard–Scripture itself–the answer is “no.”
Learn more about Bibliology here.
–TDR
“The Anabaptists Church Worldwide” & “Street Preacher Fellowship” cult
There is an organization called “The Anabaptists [sic] Church Worldwide” that supports a “Street Preacher Fellowship.” It is a cult, a false religion.
This blog post will not focus upon peripheral problems, such as the poor English grammar evident in the fact that the organization’s name does not appear to understand the role of the apostrophe and the many grammatical errors in its statement of faith and other documents.
Nor will it focus upon the fact that the cult rejects the congregational church polity of Anabaptism for a form of hierarchicalism with a “Biblical presbytery rule [sic]” and “national bishops” and so is not Anabaptist, but would be better called Episcopalian than Anabaptist, although it may not even understand what episcopalian, presbyterian, and congregational church polity are.
Nor will it focus upon the fact that the cult does not understand that the church of the New Testament is not universal or invisible. Nor will it focus upon affirmations in its doctrinal statement such as that Christians are “at point [sic] of salvation baptized by the Holy Spirit of God into one body . . . and that body being not all [sic] figurative, but altogether real, physically . . . that body is Christ’s . . . each born again child of God is literally made to be . . . members of Jesus Christ’s body, of His flesh and of His bones.” The members of the organization do not, however, literally disappear into the ascended human body of Christ to become part of His literal bone marrow, and, remember, the statement is allegedly literal, “not at all figurative.”
Nor will it focus upon the cult’s extreme Ruckmanism, through which it denies Christ’s promises to preserve the Greek and Hebrew words which were dictated by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 5:18) and denigrates study of the preserved words of God in the original languages. Nor will it focus upon how the cult undermines confidence in the King James Bible through its extremism. Nor will it focus upon the bizarre idea in its doctrinal statement that the Bible actually is God in written form, an idea which the pseudo-Baptist cultist Steven Anderson has also adopted.
Nor will it focus upon the cult’s tendency to name-calling and careless study of Scripture, nor upon the fact that the section in its doctrinal statement on (the wicked sin of) sodomy adds ideas not present in the Bible; nor on the fact that the cult also follows Steven Anderson and rejects Scripture by teaching that sodomites cannot be saved (with the “Anabaptists Church” cult making certain qualifications to this), nor on the fact that it spends more time on sodomy than it does on the nature of God, and that only its statement on sodomy, but nothing else in its doctrinal statement, ends with the affirmation: “This section of the Articles of Faith of the Anabaptists Church [sic] Worldwide is not subject to revision, and shall never be changed by any presbytery without the dissolvement [sic] of the Church Worldwide.” Apparently even the bad grammar in this section of the cult’s articles of faith cannot be changed; but that is not the focus of this blog post.
What is the worst false doctrine of this cult? The worst false teaching is its rejection of the Trinity and of the incarnation of Christ in favor of a bizarre, blasphemous, and ignorant form of modalism. Its article of faith on the Trinity includes the following:
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2.3 We believe that God is a spirit (John 4:24), and that the Holy Spirit is
that very Spirit of the Lord God (Isaiah 61:1, 10.11, 14), and was the very
breath of Life in Jesus Christ (Isaiah 11:4/ Job 33:4/ John 20:22).
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2.4 We believe that Jesus Christ is God the Father (John 10:30) manifest in the
flesh (1 Timothy 3:16), and that Jesus Christ was and is the bodily
manifestation of God Almighty.
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2.5 As a ghost is the spirit of a dead man (Luke 24:37/ Matthew 14:26), we
believe that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Jesus Christ which He gave up on
Calvary when He died for our sins (John 19:30/ Matthew 27:50/ Mark
15:37/ Luke 23:46), and as the Holy Ghost (Acts 1:2-8) is the Spirit of Jesus
Christ (Romans 8:9/ Philippians 1:19). These Three being One God, each
exists eternally as God, and as the manifestations of themselves in One as
distinguished from the Other. God is a spirit, and that spirit is the Holy
Spirit, who was the breath of life (Genesis 2:7) of Jesus Christ, who Himself
was the bodily manifestation of God the Father with the Holy Spirit
breathing within Him as the very Life of God. Though the Eternal God cannot
die, God the Father sent His Son into the world to do just that, yielding up
the ghost when He had finished His Father’s work; upon which the Holy
Ghost of God became the working manifestation of God the Father in
baptizing believers into the very body of God, Jesus Christ the Righteous (1
Corinthians 12:11-14/ Acts 1:5).
The statement that “Jesus Christ is God the Father” is modalist heresy and idolatry. It is a damnable false doctrine. It proclaims a false God, a denial and rejection of the true God. Jesus Christ is the Son, not the Father. By teaching that Jesus Christ is God the Father, this cult shows that they are antichrist, denying the Father and the Son (1 John 2:22).
The affirmations in 2.5 make a crazy confusion of Christ’s human spirit with the Holy Spirit. By denying that Christ’s human soul and spirit were separated from His body at His death, instead claiming that the Holy Spirit was present instead of Christ’s human spirit, the “Anabaptists Church Worldwide” cult denies the true humanity of Christ. Only if Christ had a true and complete humanity, body, soul, and spirit, could He represent and save sinful mankind. Section 2.5 denies Christ’s true humanity by claiming that the Holy Spirit replaced the Lord Jesus’ human spirit, something similar to the ancient heresy of Apollinarianism (although if the cult’s members cannot even write in English properly, and think Anabaptists held to presbyterian church polity, it is not likely that they have much understanding of early Trinitarian controversies). By denying the true and complete humanity of Jesus Christ, the “Anabaptists Church Worldwide” cult shows itself to be of the “spirit of antichrist,” and its members to be deceivers and antichrists (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7).
Various parts of their doctrinal statement also teach the idolatrous idea that God is body, soul, and spirit like people are–the Holy Spirit is allegedly God’s eternal spirit part, based on a confusion of the use of the word Spirit for the third Person and also for the human spirit. The words for spirit, ruach and pneuma, are also used for the wind in the Bible, but the Holy Spirit is not God’s eternal wind. God’s eternal body part is allegedly the Son, denying His true incarnation in time (1 John 4:1-3) and thus evidencing itself as antichrist. God’s eternal soul part is allegedly the Father, something for which Scripture gives not a scintilla of evidence. The cult claims Biblical support for its idolatry by assuming that since man is in the image of God, God must be body, soul, and spirit, ignoring the fact that the image of God in man is “righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24) and that the image is being progressively renewed in believers through progressive sanctification (Colossians 3:10), so the image of God in man has absolutely nothing to do with the wicked blasphemy that God is an eternal Son-body, spirit-Holy Ghost, and soul-Father.
There are a number of things that a born-again child of God, and a member of one of Christ’s true Baptist churches, could find attractive about the “Anabaptists Church Worldwide” cult. It claims to stand for the KJV; it believes in modesty and gender distinction; it (pretends) to be part of the Anabaptist/Baptist line of true churches; it takes a strong stand against sins the world is promoting, such as homosexuality; it claims to be fearless and bold in its preaching; it practices street preaching, which is very good, and so on. One can hope that perhaps some of the members of this cult are too ignorant to realize that their articles of faith deny the Trinity and the true humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ in favor of modalism and a form of Apollinarianism. Regrettably, none of the above nice things justify its wicked rejection of the true God and of the incarnate Christ. Who cares if you are modestly dressed if you are a blasphemer and idolator? Those that actually believe its doctrinal statement will find themselves in hell with the Antichrist. Those that are too ignorant to understand its heresies have no business preaching to anybody (1 Timothy 3:1) until they learn the rudiments of Christianity on the nature of God.
If you are a member of the “Anabaptist Church Worldwide” and “Street Preacher Fellowship” cult, I call on you to repent of your idolatry and other sins, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved (Mark 1:15), and then separate yourself from this cult and join one of Christ’s true churches. Learn more about Christ’s true gospel and His true church here.
–TDR
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