Home » Posts tagged 'Thomas Ross' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: Thomas Ross
The Essence of the Bondage Mentality or Worldview, Witnessed in Old Testament Israel and Reflected in the Democrat Party in the United States
The Israelites lived in bondage in Egypt. In this bondage, they ate a preferred variety of food without a threat of immediate death. If they went along, they could go along. However, God wanted Israel to leave the bondage of Egypt to the liberty of the land that He would give them. He raised up and then used Moses and Aaron to lead them out. God also hardened Pharoah’s heart to do his will. The Apostle Paul explains in Romans 9:17-18:
17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Deuteronomy 4:20 communicates a similar purpose: “But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day.” A very short while after Israel left Egypt, the people wanted back in Egypt in bondage. They could escape Egypt, but they could not escape their bondage mentality or worldview. They wanted back in bondage as seen in many passages in the Old Testament. Reacting to lesser food, they said (Numbers 11:1-7):
1 And when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and the LORD heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.
2 And the people cried unto Moses; and when Moses prayed unto the LORD, the fire was quenched.
3 And he called the name of the place Taberah: because the fire of the LORD burnt among them.
4 And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?
5 We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick:
6 But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.
Israel said in Numbers 20:5, “And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink.” They spoke another version in Numbers 21:5, “And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.” They would rather stay in bondage, because liberty meant manna, while bondage apparently brought fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlick.
A second group of passages repeat the words, “die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14, Numbers 21, 26), as in Exodus 14:11-12:
11 And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?
12 Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.
If the people of Israel trusted God, would they die in the wilderness? It seemed like it to them. They made decisions based on this worldview or mentality. You might call the bondage mindsight also a crybaby one, because everytime Israel chose bondage, they cried or complained like a baby to God.
Also reflecting the bondage or crybaby worldview or mentality was Israel’s desire for a king. God warned against having a king. 1 Samuel 8:1-18 (click to see this passage, while reading here) records what God thinks. Israel expressed the desire in verse 5: “And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” Their bondage mentality or worldview guided their desire. It displeased the Lord (verses 6-8) and it still does.
Thomas Ross writes about 1 Samuel 8 and chronicles the given reasons God opposes the bondage worldview, what he calls “big government” mentality. He exposes the following arguments:
- Loss of freedom of association (verses 10-13)
- Loss of freedom in a military draft (verses 11-12) [in contrast to God’s will, Deuteronomy 20:1-9]
- Loss of freedom of occupation (verses 11-13)
- Weakening of the private sector for the public sector (verses 11-13)
- Loss of Freedom of Property (verses 14-16)
- Loss of freedom and protection for physical property through “redistribution” (verse 14)
- Loss of freedom and protection for growth in wealth and income through 10% taxation (verse 15)
- Loss of freedom and protection for human “property” (verse 16)
In the end, Israel would regret its bondage or crybaby mentality or worldview (verse 18). Thomas Ross lists reasons in the text for taking this false view of the world:
- Rejection of the Word of God (verse 19)
- A Desire to Follow the Ungodly (verse 20a)
- Abdication of Responsibility (verse 20b)
- Faithlessness (verse 20a and c)
When Israel finally went into captivity, Israel also wanted to stay, similarly to returning to Egypt. Daniel begrudges this and God prophesies the chastisement (Daniel 9-12).
The Democrat Party of the United States reflects the bondage and crybaby mentality. I call it bondage rather than slave even though the latter works, if expounded. The Bible says everyone is a slave, either to righteousness or unrighteousness, so it seems unescapable. The Democrats keep people in bondage to government, which is bondage to unrighteousness according to God. Slavery to God isn’t bondage, but liberty. With liberty comes responsibility.
Going back to Egypt meant dependence on Egypt. Israel could rest in the world system, following along with its ways, never breaking from its position or direction. The Democrats sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate. They encourage everyone to live a temporal life.
Late in his life, Booker T. Washington visited Washington DC from Tuskegee and on his way, he witnessed and then criticized African Americans for moving to and crowding near Washington DC to obtain their means to live. This became Booker T. Washington’s debate with socialist African American leader W.E.B. Dubois, offering different trajectories for the future. Dubois’s view won out. This became the strategy of the Democrat Party, especially represented by Woodrow Wilson and then Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Victor David Hansen on June 29 wrote a piece titled “The Cry Baby Leftist Mind.” This agrees with what I’m writing here. The overturning of Roe v. Wade brought out further crying. What will women do now? How will they survive? Democrat California says, “We will pay for your abortion.” Even Republican governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota reacts by saying, “We must do what we can to help women in crisis,” as a beginning comment. She further said, “We will continue helping women navigate pregnancies they did not plan.” That is better than paying for the abortion, but it panders to a bondage and crybaby mindset.
God does not approve of the bondage and crybaby mindset. It will not succeed in a nation. People will not be better. They will be worse. Let us oppose it together.
Mark Ward: KJVO “Sinful Anger,” the “Evasion” of the Confessional Bibliologians, and Success
Mark Ward wrote, Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible, which I read. He’s taken on a goal of dissuading people from the King James Version to use a modern version of the Bible. He also has a podcast to which someone alerted me when he mentioned Thomas Ross and me. I checked back again there this last week and he did one called, “Is My Work Working?” In it, he said he received three types of reactions to his work.
KJV “SINFUL ANGER”
Ward said he received more than 100 times praise than anything else. The next most reaction he said was “sinful anger” from KJV Onlyists. Last, he received the least, helpful criticism from opposition.
Critical text proponents very often use KJVO behavior as an argument. It does not add or take away from Ward’s position. Ward reads his examples of “sinful anger,” and well more than half didn’t sound angry to me. They disagreed with him.
My observation is that critical text advocates do not have better conduct. They disagree in a harsh manner and with ridicule. Ward himself uses more subtle mockery, sometimes in sarcastic tones. It just shouldn’t come as a point of argument. Many in the comment section of his podcast use sinful anger. Ward does not correct them or point out their sinful anger. It seems like Ward likes it when it points the other direction.
In these moments, Ward talks about his own anger. He finds it difficult not to be angry with these men. Why even mention it? Just don’t talk about it at all. Deal with the issue at hand. I’m not justifying actions of Ruckmanite types. They’re wrong too. Both sides are wrong. This is an actual argument though of critical text supporters — how they are treated. It comes up again and again, because they bring it up.
“EVASION” OF THE CONFESSIONAL BIBLIOLOGIANS
Ward says that few to almost none answer a main argument of his book, which he’s developed further since it’s publication. They don’t concede to his “false friends” with appropriate seriousness. He says they don’t think about false friends. He provides now 50 examples of these that appear many times in the King James Version. He includes the confessional bibliologians in this, which would be someone who believes in the superiority of the Textus Receptus of the New Testament. Their position might be perfect preservationism, Textus Receptus, confessional bibliology, or ecclesiastical text. He used the confessional title, referring to men like Jeff Riddle.
I’ve answered him in depth. Ward is just wrong. Hopefully calling him wrong isn’t considered sinful anger. “He said I was wrong!!” King James Version supporters all over buy Bible For Today’s Defined King James Version. It provides the meaning of those words in the margin. Lists of these from King James Version proponents are all over the internet, and books have been written by KJV authors (the one linked published in 1994) on the subject.
Ward says that every time he brings that up to Textus Receptus men, they sweep it away like it doesn’t matter, then turn the conversation to textual criticism. That’s a very simplistic way of himself swatting away the Textus Receptus advocate. They turn to textual criticism because the critical text and the Textus Receptus are 7% different. Many words differ. That matters more. It also denies the biblical doctrine of preservation.
The members of churches where men preach the KJV hear words explained. Sure, some KJV churches rarely preach the Bible. Talk about that. Where men preach expositional sermons from the KJV, relying on study of the original languages, they explain words to their people. They care. I have been one of those and the KJV doesn’t hurt our church in any way. Personally I read the KJV Bible twice last year and this year I’m on pace for one Old Testament and two New Testament.
SUCCESS
Is success how much praise one receives for what he does? Is that the measurement? That is a very dangerous standard of success. That is what Ward uses as his standard in his video. In Jeremiah 45:5, God told Baruch: “And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.” We don’t succeed when we receive praise. We succeed when we are faithful to what God said, whether we’re praised or not. Seeking for praise is discouraged in scripture. Many faithful Bible preachers received far more harsh treatment than Ward. It’s not even close.
True success is finding what God says and doing it. It’s not success to turn a church away from the King James Version to a modern version, even if Ward supports that outcome.
Baptism & Salvation Debate Page, Douglas Jacoby
I have created a page for resources on the Douglas Jacoby-Thomas Ross debate on baptism. Both parts of the debate video, as well as links to the places where the debate is live on Rumble and on YouTube, the blog posts where the speakers answered questions from the audience that were not discussed in the debate proper, and further resources, are all on this page. I would, therefore, recommend that you visit this page in the future and make it your point of reference if you share the debate with others.
Click Here For the Page on the Douglas Jacoby / Thomas Ross Debate, “We Are Born Again Before Baptism” (part 1) and “We Are Born Again In Baptism” (part 2)
–TDR
PATAS, Philippine Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism (Society) Debate live: Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels? Ross / Maisonet
I am pleased to inform What is Truth? readers that the Thomas Ross – Benjamin Maisonet debate, “Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels?” is now live and can be watched on YouTube.
Click here to watch the Ross-Maisonet debate, “Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels?”
The debate took place in Manila, Philippines, in 2019, where I was teaching a class on the preservation of Scripture and preaching for Bro Billy Hardecker of Mt. Zion Baptist Mission in Manila, but issues with the audio and video lining up kept the debate from going live until now. The quality is still not absolutely amazing, but considering the non-first-world setting and the equipment used, I am thankful for the quality that is present. Mr. Maisonet was (and I assume still is) the president of the Philippine Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism (Society), or PATAS. He told me that he replaced the previous president because that person had been stealing money from the organization. Atheism and agnosticism are much less common in the Philippines than they are in the United States, which may be one reason that the president of PATAS was born in the United States and moved to the Philippines. In any case, Mr. Maisonet, as the president of PATAS, was a good representative of atheism in the Philippines. He made the sort of popular-level arguments that one will run across in personal evangelism, rather than the more scholarly type of arguments against the accuracy of the New Testament made by Islamic apologists such as Shabir Ally. I confess that I did not find his argumentation particularly convincing, but he seems to have thought he made a good case, and I will allow those who watch the debate to evaluate what was said based on facts and logic in God’s world.
The PATAS debate was set up at short notice, so I employed a lot of the material from my debate with Dr. Ally on “The New Testament Picture of Jesus: Is It Accurate?” which is also in my study on evidence for the New Testament from archaeology, prophecy, and history. In my view, which is admittedly biased in favor of God and His Word, the arguments made for the historicity of the New Testament have now stood up well against both Muslim and atheist apologists.
Feel free to subscribe to my KJB1611 YouTube channel,”like” and comment on the debate, and share it with others, if you believe it deserves it. Also, if you would be interested in sponsoring a debate with a non-Christian philosophy or a pseudo-Christian cult, please contact my church.
–TDR
Gender-Neutral Language in Bible Translation is Unscriptural
Many modern Bible versions employ what they call “gender neutral” language. So, for example, the Authorized, King James Version of John 1:9 reads:
κἀγὼ ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς, πάντας ἑλκύσω πρὸς ἐμαυτόν.
kagō ean hypsōthō ek tēs gēs, pantas helkysō pros emauton.
The masculine form of pantas is properly rendered “all men.” The NKJV alters the text to the more feminist “all peoples” to prevent “man/men” from being the generic word for mankind (oops, excuse me, “humankind”; using “mankind” might have been a microaggression and evidence of systemic racism and sexism). Note also that here, as in vast numbers of other places, the NKJV is not simply updating archaic and hard-to-understand language in the KJV; “all men” is not hard to understand in the least.
αὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρεῖ αὐτοῖς, Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐφ᾿ ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε.
ai apokritheis ho basileus erei autois, Amēn legō hymin, eph’ hoson epoiēsate heni toutōn tōn adelphōn mou tōn elachistōn, emoi epoiēsate.
The plural adelphon, “brethren,” is from the Greek word adelphos, “brother.” The “and sisters” is simply not contained in the text, but has been added in by the NIV translators to make their version more feminist.
When the New Testament writers, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, translated the Old Testament, did they follow the practice of modern feminism and transform the inspired Hebrew Old Testament into something more “gender neutral”? Or did the New Testament specifically use “man” as the generic term for all people–does it specifically make the male the representative of generic humanity?
Romans 11:4 is referencing 1 Kings 19:18:
1Kings 19:18 Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.
Notice that the word “men” is not specifically contained in 1 Kings 19:18, but it is in Romans 11:4. Furthermore, Romans 11:4 does not use the Greek word anthropos, which is commonly a generic word for “mankind” or the entire human race, but the word andros (lexical form aner)–“men” as “males.” So when the New Testament, under inspiration, makes reference to the Old Testament, it is so far from removing masculine terms and making the Scripture more gender neutral that it specifically states “all men” in translating a less-specific original language reference.
The Lord Jesus Christ does the same thing as the Apostle Paul. Consider Matthew 12:41:
Matt. 12:41 The men [andros, “males,” from aner] of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
The Lord Jesus is referring to Jonah 3:7-8:
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man [Hebrew ‘adam, properly rendered “man” but frequently a generic word for the entire human race, not for “males” in particular] nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man [Hebrew ‘adam again, frequently a generic term] and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
When Christ refers to the Old Testament, He takes a more generic Hebrew word for “mankind” or “humankind” and employs the word aner, the word specifically for a “male … in contrast to woman” (BDAG). Christ, speaking in Greek, does not make the Hebrew Old Testament “gender neutral.” He does exactly the opposite. Luke 11:32 indicates this fact as well.
So, what does the Bible teach? When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it translates and paraphrases the Hebrew in such a way that the text is less gender neutral, not more gender neutral.
In light of the inspired and infallible practice of translation modeled by the sovereign, all-wise God, we should:
1.) Reject modern Bible versions influenced by feminism and gender-neutral language, from the New International Version to the New King James Version, and cleave to the Authorized, King James Bible.
2.) Reject gender-neutral replacements for classical terms for humanity. We should retain expressions such as “all men” and “mankind” if we are engaged in the holy practice of Bible translation ourselves.
3.) We should continue to use “man,” “mankind,” and such like terms in our own speech when reference is made to the entire human race. We should follow the practice of Christ and His Apostles instead of bowing to anti-Scriptural feminism in our language.
4.) Recognize that feminists know exactly what they are doing when they seek to make the English language, and even more importantly, God’s infallible Word, less patriarchal. They oppose patriarchy, while the resurrected Lord and Son of Man, Jesus Christ, their Creator, taught patriarchy Himself and led His prophets and Apostles to support it through what He dictated to them through the Holy Spirit from God the Father. Let us consciously agree with the Father, the Son of God, the Holy Ghost, the Apostles, and the infallible Word of God, and support male headship in our common language and in our English Bible version.
Learn more about Bible texts and versions by clicking here.
–TDR
Recent Comments