Monthly Archives: November 2025

Editorial

Dangers of “hyper grace”

The need for the law, authority and religion (structured, doctrinal Christianity).

A LAODICEAN PROBLEM

Across the Western Church, a convergence is occurring of so called “Free Grace” messages. On the one side are some Fundamentalist, cessationist Dispensationalist groups, and on the other, certain charismatic groups including entertainment-driven megachurches with corporate messaging based on positivity and emotional uplift.

A hallmark of this “Grace” Gospel is that it rejects Biblical authority for emphasis on individual freedom. While the details differ across the movements, the common traits are unmistakable and growing, of free-grace, easy-believing, anti-Lordship and spiritual libertarianism.

We are living in the last Church era of history.

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:15, 16).

This “Free Grace” messaging, which has radically re-interpreted the Gospel, is predicted by the Apostle Paul, where he wrote, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves …” (2 Timothy 3:1, 2a).

He also shows where the message is going, “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,” (2 Timothy 3:5, 6).

Paul prophesies of the end of the Grace Libertarian message and also contrasts it to his own teaching. “But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, … But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience” (2 Timothy 3:9a, 10).

SALVATION AND WORKS

According to Romans, in order to be saved, one has to believe in one’s heart and confess with one’s mouth.

If you think Jesus is coming soon, and if you think as many as possible people should be saved, then the “Grace” people take it further. Why bother establishing the law? Why bother showing that no man can obey it? Why bother exalting the law of God as a set of standards no one can keep? Why bother concluding that all men are guilty, and can do nothing, and are worthy of eternal separation?

The “Grace” people have denied that God’s Word is law in the universe. They have denied that God is a judge. They have denied the severity of hell, the whetted sword of judgment that is now dangling over the heads of sinners, where their feet are about to slip…

But no, the “Grace” people say, “He loves you when you’re happy; He loves you when you’re sad; He loves you when you’re very good And when you’re very bad.” So, no matter what you do, God loves you!

You see, in rejecting working for salvation, they have made a mistake as they have also rejected the works of salvation. They are allowing that a person can just mutter some glib prayer with half a mind to it, probably manipulated at some concert gathering or as the result of some sweaty “evangelism”, and then you’re in, heaven bound and now you are a “saved sinner”.

The whole saved sinner message abounds everywhere too, throughout the Reformed, Anglican and Baptist worlds.

What we end up with in practice is either false converts or antinomian Christians, ones who sin on expecting that God absolves them. Some go so far to say you don’t even need to be sorry, you don’t even need to confess what you did wrong. Apparently “intentions” are accepted now, even though Paul described the person under conviction and not yet saved as wanting to do good, but find evil in him (see Romans 7 for those sinners with the awakened conscience).

Why then is there an attack on lawfulness, on the conscience, on conviction, on doing things? Is it not because the Christians want to persist in carnality rather than conformity?

Let’s be honest about this. The reason why the want to lower the standards is because they really don’t want to obey. It’s called antinomianism, which means, to have a self-satisfaction of salvation, but the freedom to sin. This is a grand delusion of our times. It is a heresy.

GRACE WITHOUT OBLIGATION

Whether from hyper dispensationalist fundamentalists or from slick charismatic messaging, the same false message is being presented. Apparently, it’s just believe in your heart, say a prayer and you are eternally saved. You don’t have to really make Jesus Lord, you don’t really have to obey Christ’s commandments nor show any evidence of regeneration.

This message, though dressed in the language of grace, is nothing less than modern antinomianism. It reduces conversion to easy believism. And it is certainly not the gospel of the historic fathers, who always saw salvation as both an event and the lifestyle of obedience, discipline, sanctification and Spirit-empowered holiness.

Charles Finney preached that Jesus came to save His people from their sins and turn them from their iniquities. That’s what he saved you from. The escape from Hell was just a mere consequence of the main work. But these people don’t believe in power for sanctification or the ability to walk in holiness by faith.

Let’s take a case study. The Old Testament teaches tithing, it’s ten per cent. The New Testament also teaches tithing.

“And here men that die receive tithes; but there he receiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth.” (Hebrews 7:8).

“Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” (1 Corinthians 16:2).

But they rebel at this. They say they are not under the law but under grace. They say they can give “whatever”. And now you know why they don’t want to tithe 10% but just make it “whatever” … because they are looking to give and do as little as possible. This is actually evil.

WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING THE LAW

One of the defining marks of this new theology is the rejection of the law of God in the life of the believer.

In both its cessationist form (which insists the teachings of Paul alone governs the Christian life) and in its charismatic form (which treats law as the instrument of Satan and enemy of “positivity” i.e. feelings), this movement claims things like:

  • The law has no place in Christian living.
  • The believer has no obligation to keep Christ’s commandments.
  • Morality flows purely from “identity” and never from obedience.

Some views like this are entirely foreign to Scripture.

Here is the correct view:

  • “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” (Rom. 7:12)
  • “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” (1 John 5:3)
  • “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.” (1 Cor 7:19)
  • Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Christ did not come to abolish righteousness, which is measured by the law, but to write His law upon our hearts (Heb 8:10), empowering us by the Spirit to fulfil the righteous requirement of the law (Rom 8:1, 4).

REPENTANCE

Of course, it is easy to slip off to the Greek or to redefine what words like “repentance” actually mean, but we need to elevate the Bible’s words and it’s definitions, not impose false and seductive meanings onto the Scripture.

Another shared feature of this libertarian theology is the reduction of repentance to nothing more than a mental adjustment. According to this mentality:

  • Repentance does not require turning from sin.
  • Repentance does not involve godly sorrow.
  • Repentance has nothing to do with obedience or transformation.

But Scripture reveals a very different repentance, involving:

  • the conscience,
  • renunciation of sin,
  • submission to Christ’s Lordship,
  • and the power of the Holy Ghost to walk in newness of life.

To replace this with a shallow “change of mind” is to reduce the Gospel into some sort of magic.

THE OBSESSION OF RELIGION VERSUS RELATIONSHIP

Another phenomenon appearing in both certain fundamentalist and charismatic realms is the insistence that Christianity has nothing to do with “religion” or “commandments” and only with an undefined sense of “relationship”.

They say that a Christianity of actually doing things is “dead”, and instead, they want “freedom”.

The same applies in relation to the Lordship of Christ.

They proclaim a false liberty where a person does not have to submit to the Lordship of Christ.

THE COLLAPSE OF STANDARDS

If you are going to throw out discipline, order and obedience, then I can confidently predict not only a collapse in morality, but a rushing headlong into the most craven, naked and utter forms of worldliness, carnality and wickedness.

With a doctrine which is against the idea of authority, structure, rules and guidelines in churches, we can expect:

  • no structure of accountability,
  • no expectation of holy conduct,
  • no pastoral authority to call out sin,
  • no sense of the fear of the Lord,
  • no boundaries to stop bad behaviour, and
  • no limitations because of rebellion.

People are assured of heaven based on a prayer prayed once, rather than a life of obedience to Christ. But Scripture teaches:

  • Pastors are overseers (Acts 20:28).
  • Elders are to rebuke sin (1 Tim 5:20).
  • Churches must judge those within (1 Cor 5:12).
  • The Spirit produces discipline (Gal 5:22–23).

The Word-and-Spirit tradition has always taught real authority in the house of God—not oppressive control, but righteous shepherding and holiness.

Editorial, Review

Answering allegations made by Bryan Ross

By MATTHEW VERSCHUUR, author of Glistering Truths.

OVERVIEW

I was unaware, until late November 2025, that Bryan Ross had written a book in 2017 which contains a number of attacks and misrepresentations of my position.

His booklet, “The King James Bible in America”, is designed to be an attack on the idea of there being a pure edition of the King James Bible (KJB), and an attack on the idea that we can have the KJB letter perfect.

One can only conclude that Pastor Ross, who does make some good and interesting points in some of what he talks about, is misunderstanding or else being intellectually dishonest on these issues.

I suspect he is so wrong on this topic because he has a flawed interpretation methodology (i.e. some influence of modernist hermeneutics, such as in how he reads Matthew 5:18), and because he is not approaching divine providence in history as interventionist but rather merely examining things with some degree of Enlightenment reasoning (e.g. variations are observable therefore there is not final perfection) and most especially because he is not adhering to a worldview that says that manifestation on Earth is to reflect perfection in Heaven (thereby denying a perfect knowledge of fixed words of God on Earth as being able to match a heavenly prototype).

Bryan Ross wants to argue that “alway” and “always”, “stablish” and “establish”, “ensample” and “example” and “throughly” and “thoroughly” are not distinct, deliberate words, with some element of specific meaning that makes them unique to their counterpart similar wordform.

At the outset, I want to make it clear that these words can be quite similar, in appearance and in usage, but there is still something specific, distinct and particular about them. We cannot just broadbrush and replace all instances of one word with another. They are not just merely variant spellings, archaic forms or variations of orthography of no consequence. The fact that these words have been listed distinctly in dictionaries, and were not edited to be replaced by Dr Blayney (1769) or in the Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE) shows that indeed there is every reason to retain them.

Pastor Ross can argue that some words might come from the same etymological root word, or that at times historically usage appeared somewhat interchangeable, but I think this does not counter the peculiar “glistering truth” nature of these words. I suggest that there may be other reasons why there was some looseness, and am inclined to hypothesise that less educated compositors and especially American printers have been less exact. We see how much a spirit of wanting to change the King James Bible has manifested in America, including the stupendous amount of changes made by the American Bible Society and also in more recent editions, which thankfully propriety, market forces and diligent Christians have rejected.

I wonder whether Pastor Ross is arguing that God cannot, will not or has not provided the King James Bible with distinctions, even shades of meaning, in accurate printing. I cannot understand how Pastor Ross would be siding against accuracy, exactness, fixedness or certainty to allow the ideas of those who wish to modernise, simplify and deny precision.

I will now give a survey of some of the issues in his book.

MIXED DEFINITIONS

On page 1, Pastor Ross begins with a false accusation against my view that I claim that “modern printings of the KJB, do not possess the ‘pure word of God’”, and that believers “need to purchase a copy of the King James text which is devoid of these changes in order to possess an uncorrupted copy of God’s word in English.”

This accusation is wrong because he is (deliberately) confounding the purity or perfection of a version or a translation with the totally separate idea of the correctness of editing or of printing. These are entirely separate concepts. Version is not translation, and editing and printing are their own things.

As such, if I say that the King James Bible is the Word of God in English, then I cannot be denying the KJB’s version-readings and its translation. I must be accepting that version and translation even if it was printed by Clarendon at Oxford.

On one side, I think that the Word of God is best presented in a typographically accurate form of the KJB, on the other hand, I accept the Scripture as being true, such as when Paul wrote it, before English even existed.

PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH

On page 7, Pastor Ross says that we assert that, “‘throughly’ was of entirely different meaning than ‘thoroughly’.” This is incorrect. That word “entirely” is his embellishment. In fact, I could be prepared to concede that in some cases the different meanings are so close, as to constitute a 99% similarity. But they are, I am sure, still different.

He goes on to discuss me and my book, Glistering Truths. (Note that over the years I have done some minor work on this book, not to change its central thesis, but just normal editing.)

Bryan Ross wants to reject my idea that every letter in the Pure Cambridge Edition of the King James Bible is exactly correct. He says, “Brother Verschuur maintains implicitly if not explicitly that any Bible that changes the spelling of ‘always’ to ‘always’ or ‘ensample’ to ‘example’ is a ‘corrupted’ Bible and not capable of expressing the exact sense of scripture. So unless one possesses a particular printing (circa 1900) from a particular press (Cambridge University Press) they do not possess the pure word of God, according to Bible Protector.”

This is false and absurd. This is not my position at all. It almost seems as if Pastor Ross is deliberately misrepresenting, for he is certainly mistaking, my position.

The King James Bible has both a correct, pure and perfect version/text/readings and translation. The King James Bible has gone through many valid historical editions, which exhibit both printing mistakes and editing. I certainly do not call such editions as “corrupted”. While obviously a printing mistake is not right, by implication “impure”, I am not attributing some moral evil to this, which is what detractors to my position are falsely accusing me of.

(I could illustrate it as having a shirt with a loose thread or a tiny hole in it. It’s my preference for absolutely correct typesetting, like you would rather not wear a shirt with a tiny food splotch on it.)

We all know that editing has happened and that there have been some adjustments in orthography, but such things have been within the parameters of the normal, natural printing and presswork of the history of the King James Bible, and to correct and to standardise spelling and grammar have all been commendable trends.

Since I know that the Word of God was there in the writings of Paul, or in Latin, or in foreign Reformation translations, or in old Protestant English Bible translations, I must steadfastly refuse Pastor Ross’ blatantly false accusation that I am saying that if it is not Pure Cambridge Edition, it is not the Word of God.

The problem arises with modern publishers who want to (despite whatever historical precedents) bring out new Americanised KJB editions — and the problem is not restricted to them, because David Norton also brought out a very modernised edition with all kinds of modernised changes in spelling and grammatical forms — and this is inherently a bad thing. It is changes by stealth, it is an undermining of the idea that we have a tradition which reflects the work of divine providence.

WRONG CRITERIA

On page 12, he writes, “Bible Protector makes no mention of the fact that the same Greek word translated ‘always’ in John 12:8 is elsewhere rendered ‘ever’ six times, ‘always’ five times, and ‘evermore’ two times by the King James Translators. Please also note that no English language resource is given to substantiate the difference between the two words. One is simply asked to take Brother Verschuur’s word for it. ‘Always’ and ‘always’ appear to be another distinction without a difference.”

The first and by far biggest problem here is that Bryan Ross is not judging English, but is imposing from (his view of) the Greek onto English. This is a massive fault, because he is essentially denying the providential distinction in English by the authority of himself or modern scholarship or some external misapplied standard of the so-called Greek.

Pastor Ross also claims that I have given no source for why I stated in my monograph that “alway” is different to “always”. However, here is the basic fact: my monograph is not a deep academic work, but one which is only superficial in nature, inviting much further study. In it I don’t have an extensive bibliography, extensive footnotes or careful examination of various historical dictionaries or lexical sources. I fully expect that lots more study should be done.

However, I am confident, even in my “infant” study, that to approach the Bible, in the providential perspective of what Blayney (1769) and the PCE present, in the distinction of words like “alway” versus “always”, is because there really is some meaning difference. I am sure that further studies will only vindicate this on a much more comprehensive level.

Bryan Ross is asking us to take his word for it that I expect the reader to take my word for it. My view is that as people look into these matters, and if people like Ross’ friend Nathan Kooienga do, if they are going to be honest, I expect based on just a simple faith approach, that “alway” and “always” do have peculiarity, and could not just arbitrarily be made to be just one word only. We know that a modernist approach would do tend to do so, and that they would probably just have “always” at every instance. Either Bryan Ross is dipping is toes into modernistic thinking or at least he is giving them comfort with their way of looking at KJB editing.

ACADEMIC SNOBBERY

On page 19, Pastor Ross says, “Much has been made by King James Bible Believers of the alleged difference between the English words ‘ensample’ and ‘example.’ … Bible Protector, Matthew Verschuur maintains that there is a difference in meaning between these two words … Once again, please note that Brother Verschuur does not reference any English language reference book to support these statements.”

This is slightly laughable in that there are several ways in which to detect a difference, which should be taken in concert, being: King James Bible usage, proper dictionaries and etymological observation.

I also stress that the King James Bible itself is superior to any dictionary.

So my simple examination of the matter could well be a first step, regardless of whether I somehow referenced the Oxford English Dictionary or not. (W. A. Wright’s Bible Word Book is also a source which I note Ross does not mention at all in his work.)

Now, the fact may be that Ross has looked at a bunch of old dictionaries. Generally, I may have looked at the OED, Johnston and Wright’s book. I can even admit sometimes I didn’t look at them that much. Why? Because my monograph is the proposing of an idea rather than the rigorous testing of it. I am inviting such rigorous testing from a believing perspective! And because I started from believing what the Bible actually has, i.e. the word “ensample” being different to “example”, I was able to suggest, even just by observable etymology, that “en-” differs to “ex-”, one being inside (taking it to heart) and one being outside (a pattern to conform to).

I don’t mean that my “off the cuff” definitions I have just given are to be treated as the absolute full definition, but I think that this is far in the right direction, and God is working to clarify these things, because it is His will for us to understand.

Perhaps this is more to the point another issue, about the advancement in knowledge of Christianity. I actually believe God wants us to know and that we can know. Proverbs 1:5, 6 is about us attaining the needful, perhaps hithertofore hidden, knowledge. I see it in many places, including 1 Corinthians chapter 2, etc.

If Pastor Ross wants to cast doubt because I didn’t cite a dictionary, I will counter far more simply that I am starting from believing what has been providentially supplied to us in Blayney and more especially the PCE.

Let me add that despite the variations that appeared from American presses “accidentally”, and worse, deliberately in the middle of the 19th century, and again deliberately from World publishers over two decades ago (after they had printed the PCE when they were aligned with Collins), I will note the irony, that is, providence, that has Ross and his Scofield-loving friends using copies which do get these words like “stablish”, “alway”, “ensample” and “throughly” correct.

STUDYING IT OUT

Bryan Ross goes to some length to attempt to discredit the idea that “example” and “ensample” have distinctions in meaning. Yet, upon reading the King James Bible, the distinction is apparent and applicable at every place.

If I am proposing a hypothesis, and it works, it is a theory. And as a theory, we should be able to get to (by collaboration and proper believing study) a fact.

We will not, as Pastor Ross wrongly does, try to use the Greek to change the English meaning. Instead, we can look at 1 Corinthians 10, and see whether the distinctiveness between “en-” and “ex-” holds ground.

In verse 6, we see that the happenings to Israel in the wilderness are examples, which means patterns to conform to, of things which are an external warning to us, by example. It is not of the nature of a born again Christian to lust, though one might submit to the alien invasion of lust, but the warning is clear. We cannot “internalise” the punishment against lusters because Christ in us is not a luster. Therefore, we look AT the Old Testament, and treat the stories of the Israelites of old as examples.

But then, in verse 11, we are told that the things that happened to Israel are for our teaching, our learning, and therefore, we do internalise knowledge, we are admonished, we take it to heart, they are ensamples!

We are told not to do as the Israelites did wrong, as though we could, and therefore we internalise the admonition, it is the result of learning we received from understanding the teaching of the Scripture.

I can only suggest that Bryan Ross is deliberately trying not to see or discern the difference between “example” and “ensample” in 1 Corinthians 10.

DICTIONARY POWER

Then, on page 22, Pastor Ross goes on to criticise the distinction between “stablish” and “establish”, which can be shown from the Oxford English Dictionary.

The problem that Bryan Ross has is how he selectively interprets the OED to try to make it have “stablish” and “establish” as interchangeable or the same thing. He writes on page 31, “It is obvious that the supposed difference in meaning does not arise from the words themselves since the OED indicates the words are equivalents. What is evidently occurring is that each zealous defender of the KJB has pre-decided that ‘stablish’ and ‘establish’ have different meanings. Since neither the OED nor other dictionaries support such a distinction, each KJB defender has had to manufacture a supposed difference in meaning which does not exist. Thus, one observes that they invent different meanings. The fact that they invent different meanings is proof the supposed distinction between stablish and establish is not real, but contrived.”

In fact, Bryan Ross has started out with the assumption that the words are really just the same, and interpreted the dictionary according to his bias. (There would be common roots in the etymology.) But instead of seeing a difference, Pastor Ross wants to make it interchangeable. He does so, not on the basis of proper merit, but on his assertion that people are apparently making up meanings and that some people had different meanings. (This is like saying because someone was wrong, therefore my view is right.)

Ross wants to take the smudging road that differences are really just the same thing. (Sounds like the same argument NKJV supporters use when saying that they accept both the NKJV and the KJV… but then always say something is wrong in the KJV. In this case, Ross is saying, by implication, something is wrong with having “stablish” when he thinks it really just is “establish”).

Ross claims, “A host of English language resources stretching all the way back to early 17th century, when the translation work on the KJB was being conducted, report that the words are equivalent in meaning.”

That is a mistaken thought. First, because the words are listed separately. And second, because at least some dictionaries, good ones, identify something different about each word.

Here’s a quote from the OED which shows that the words were not merely synonyms: “From the 16th c. there seems to have been a tendency to confine the use of the form stablish to the uses in which the relation of meaning to stable adj. Is apparent, i.e. where the notion is rather ‘to strengthen or support (something existing)’ than ‘to found or set up’. The modern currency of the word is pure literary, and reminiscent of the Bible or Prayer Book.”

The point here is not whether the OED is right, but it is touching on the important point that there already existed in the minds of people centuries ago a difference.

The 1604 Table Alphabetical shows that stablished means “sure, confirmed, one made strong”, while establish means, “confirm, make strong”. In this case, this work does not give identical definitions, though obviously there is a lot of crossover. I’m not suggesting that we should use some work by one man designed for ladies, to define religious and Bible words as being used by KJB translators, but it does give us valid insight as far as it goes. The point here is that the definitions are NOT strictly synonymous, and also they contradict the reporting in the more thorough OED. Yet all agree on separate lexical entries.

As to the point that I might be starting out with my own view of a difference, and inventing my own arbitrary definitions, I think we have already seen too much from the dictionaries to prove otherwise. Furthermore, I didn’t approach the Bible imposing my view upon it, I found two different words, and wondered why. I didn’t just assume (as apparently Pastor Ross wants us to) that the words are just the same. I followed the hint from Dean Burgon, that every distinct word is distinctly different, that every distinct word is exactly correct at its place. I then humbly began to learn why it was so, without just denying or trying to explain away the difference.

(Bryan Ross saw all these differences in 19th century American Bibles, and seems to have concluded quite wrongly that there was no hand of God in these matters altogether. He has pushed very hard to make a case against there being an editorial standard, skirting far too closely toward the thinking of David Norton.)

DISTINCTION VERSUS AMERICAN FUZZINESS

On page 32, Pastor Ross writes, “Not only will this problem not go away for the standard editions of the KJB between 1611 and 1769; but … the problem is compounded when one considers the printed history of the KJB in the United States. As early as 1792, nearly one hundred years before the publication of the Revised Version (1881), American Bible publishers were already ‘Americanizing’ the spelling of words in King James Bibles printed in the United States. If one is going to persist in the belief that KJBs exhibiting these spelling changes are ‘corruptions’ then they must also conclude that generations of unwitting American Christians who used these Bibles did not possess the pure word of God.”

We know full well that there were orthographic, spelling and grammatical works taking place in editions of the King James Bible from 1611 to 1769, especially in 1769. We know that in America, it obviously went a bit haywire doing this.

It’s not a “problem” if we know that the issue has been resolved. It’s not a “problem” if we know that the 1769 Edition and the Cambridge tradition leading to the Pure Cambridge Edition kept in place a proper usage of these various word forms.

It’s not a problem that if we examine closely the usage, in the editorial form we have now, that we can see how “ensample” differs to “example”.

Was the distinction between these two words clear in 1611? I think so, but I also think that the conceptual clarity, especially as we see through other kinds of examples of grammatical standardisation, really becomes a notable phenomenon more and more in time.

We could find some case where people, even the translators, had written the word in the other form. That’s true of any of the kinds of editing Blayney did, even where “you” or “ye” have been changed somewhere. This is no problem.

We can fairly assert that the translators’ intention was to communicate the ideas as we are now able to discern them, through acknowledging distinctness. Of course, we can certainly argue in a retrospective sense that since we have these distinctions fixed and known, thanks to Blayney and the PCE, that we have knowledge of God’s providentially intended distinctness in words.

REALLY PUSHING AGAINST THE GOADS

Pastor Ross dials up the rhetoric, asking on page 61, “Do we really want to say that generations of American Christians possessed ‘corrupt’ King James Bibles because they did not come from an Oxford or Cambridge University Press? Is it our position that in order to possess the ‘pure word of God’ in English one must possess a particular printing, from a particular press, produced on a particular continent?”

This is an absurd set of questions, because we know the King James Bible is good, regardless of the “disparity” or “interference” or “lack of precision” in American printings. I have a London BFBS printing from about 1806 or so, and it is fraught with bad typography. Bad typography or historical looseness in American editions do not invalidate the Scripture, but they are issues thankfully that people today can address and have the answer to, being accurately printed editions.

The Cambridge press has traditionally been the best, and people should read my books on the subject from my website to see how good Cambridge has been. However, Cambridge has also made mistakes and done the wrong thing. The Revised Version was wrong. The Concord Edition was not a good step. And changing the PCE in places as has been done silently (e.g. at Acts 11:12) has been a bad thing. But I am not saying that KJBs which spell “Hemath” as “Hammath” must be cast into the fire. Ironically, there are plenty of Pure Cambridge Edition copies that have made this change, and yet I myself have used them. Of course, it should be “Hemath” at 1 Chronicles 2:55, and thankfully we have been able to resolve even these questions. Therefore, if someone is using a 1917 Scofield Bible, except if he was doing it out of rebellion, they still have the KJB. I am rather just encouraging conformity to the PCE in a positive sense.

I suspect that Bryan Ross does not like that which God’s providence has favoured and wishes for a libertarian approach, which might just allow him to fashion something else. For why is it that he has to react so strongly to the set and particular orthography, spelling and grammar of Dr Blayney and the PCE? Is he really just moved against the PCE, is he really just motivated to reject it?

THE REALITY

The distinctions of “throughly,” “ensample,” “stablish” and “alway” existed pre-1769. Dr Blayney and the PCE preserved and standardised these distinctions rather than inventing them. The retention of these, largely stable from 1611, and certainly stable from 1769, shows editorial recognition of meaningful distinctions.

The work of the editors was not arbitrary. Orthographic choices were meaningful, reflecting nuance, register or function. Editors did not standardise or erase “stablish” or “ensample” or the rest because they understood they were functionally distinct.

Early lexicons and glossaries are not technical, and therefore should not be over-invested with authority. Johnston and particularly the OED are about usage patterns and the record of usage, and from this, we can infer they are reporting a record of semantic distinctions with these words.

Definitions of course have become more clear to us, but that doesn’t mean they were not existing in the past. It’s just that these days we have precise orthography, stable editing and of course a universal means (the internet) to communicate and understand that words like “alway” really are special and particular.

Overlapping definitions of words does not invalidate specificity.

1611 compositor errors, historical orthographic variation or US printing inconsistencies do not erase distinctions.

The record of normal, standard and proper KJB editions, especially from Cambridge, are a witness to stabilisation, not wild, random, erratic orthographic, spelling and word variations, which means that meaning was stable and preexists any issue about apparent changes in orthography in places, which kind of editorial work is consistent particularly with Dr Parris and Thomas Paris’ and Dr Blayney’s editing.

I have engaged in a methodology of studying the editions and the words, and the editorial weight is with the consistency of the Pure Cambridge Edition. We can safely say that 1769 and PCE editorial decisions present the intended distinctions in English usage, as to the differences between the words, and the English language standardisation has served to help clarify distinctions that may have been historically more blurred.

Therefore, Pastor Ross’ objection that the KJB words are more chaotic, or less distinct, or exist in some level of editorial, semantic and conceptual uncertainty is a position which is antithetical to both reality and to the revelation of divine providence.

CONCLUSION

If Ross is right, he must explain why “alway”, “ensample”, “stablish” and “throughly” display remarkable stability across centuries of KJB printing.

If no meaningful distinction in meaning existed, and these words are just synonymous pairs, we would expect far greater instability, especially in the fluid orthographic environment of the 1600s and early 1700s. But we see general stability.

If these words were really just synonymous, the printers and editors would have had every reason to standardise or modernise them long ago, yet these words resisted elimination. Such survival does not reflect random orthographic drift or mere accident, but a continuity far more consistent with providential preservation of distinctions.

Surely the only answer is that these words exist precisely because they are providentially placed, and because their theological meaning and nuance matters.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: In the recent few months before writing this article, I made a few cheeky but harmless memes about Bryan Ross. His accusations I have addressed to which he has committed to writing are far worse than anything I’ve said. I want to be careful to treat him as a brother, because for all the differences in our theology, I don’t mind him as a person, and want to only disagree on him on things we have to disagree on, and do so in robust but constructive ways.

Editorial, General, Review

The Cambridge Text problem

SUBHEADING: The KJV Store’s pet project, Bryan Ross’ misrepresentation on 1 John 5:8 and why the Trinitarian Bible Society’s text is diverging.

If anyone thinks the 1769 Edition is a standard, they must be made aware that there are ongoing divergences from it.

In fact, there is a problem that there have been divergences made from the proper standard of the Pure Cambridge Edition. This is not good, for where the Body of Christ needs to come to a standard, there are those who are pushing after their own standards.

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” (Isaiah 5:20, 21).

The solution is that we need to come to the standard. That requires humility and that requires aligning with divine providence.

Rejecters of the Pure Cambridge Edition

For whatever reasons, the KJV Store, a company based in the USA, has sided with Cambridge’s current text against the Pure Cambridge Edition with their production of their “Sacred Syntax” edition.

Cambridge’s main edition has been in a state of flux since the 1980s, in important ways, with their small but vexing changes to the Pure Cambridge Edition.

In 1985 they began to wrongly implement the change from “spirit” to “Spirit” at 1 John 5:8. From 1990, Acts 11:12 and Acts 11:28 began to be changed.

These are changes to the Pure Cambridge Edition as opposed to the London-Cambridge Edition which was published in the Emerald and Royal Ruby, which has been the base of the Trinitarian Bible Society printings, which themselves have been further changed.

There are examples of Cambridge Bibles printed in that period with various combinations of changes from “spirit” to “Spirit” at 1 John 5:8, Acts 11:12 and Acts 11:28.

There are those out there who explicitly reject the Pure Cambridge Edition. One of the reasons they do this is to align with the in-flux status of Cambridge University Press.

As it is, Cambridge University Press themselves are still making available material which is Pure Cambridge Edition, such as, through sales of old stock, through their preferred second hand vendor(s), and through some new works like the calligraphic Gospels.

The slippery slope

To be clear, Cambridge’s text has been changing since it printed the PCE from about 1910 to 1999/present.

There’s one change that was made in the PCE printings by Cambridge in the late 1940s, which was to change “Hemath” to “Hammath” or “Hamath” in several places. That’s not a significant issue, in that this change is not historical nor accepted by other publishers.

While it should be “Hemath”, I certainly am using Bibles with “Hammath/Hamath” … because I am not on the spectrum and know that God has outworked to rectify that issue.

(You really can’t be worried that your Bible is missing a dot accidentally, and we have knowledge of what is right now, so all things can be rectified.)

Some years ago, the British arm of the Trinitirian Bible Society announced it was going to change the word “spirit” to “Spirit” in a whole list of places. This wasn’t Cambridge, this was the TBS! By taking this misguided decision, they were pushing against even Cambridge or accepted standards as manifest by Divine Providence.

We must be exceedingly careful if we are to undertake to make some change. I have striven to align with the proper Cambridge tradition and the general witness of post-1769 editions, and I have also been honest and open about what I’ve done, for example, in putting it out there about how I have treated the letter “s” on the small capital word “LORD’s”.

We need to come to a standard, to a unanimity, a uniformity, not continual divergence of every man setting up his own idol, which has been a problem in Protestantism.

Without an anchor, it will be like how Bryan Ross has all these variations in American editions of the KJB, and somehow he is reluctant to come to the standard.

Let us have an excursus with Isaiah 59, because it’s not just the modern version/translation issue we see, but the rebellion in some against the PCE:

BEHOLD, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:

4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.

13 In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

14 And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.

15 Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.

18 According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompence.

19 So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.

The layout issue

The KJV Store Reader’s Edition Bible with so called “Sacred Syntax” has some non-traditional elements.

I am not against people doing artistic and other representations of Scripture, but going against the verse by verse layout and blocking the text into a continual running paragraph can be a bit disconcerting.

There’s a place for it, I grant, but not as liturgical literature. I know Schuyler likes these new metrical layouts too, and they’ve been around for a while, for example, with Scrivener’s Paragraph Edition.

I personally don’t prefer that layout, but they say it is to make the Bible “like literature”. I think the Bible has to retain it’s superiority to being mere literature, and have no problem with the flow or pattern in the traditional layout.

Having said that, to make a particular work in that style, like Brandon Peterson’s Story of David, is probably a positive example.

But hidden behind these layouts of Psalms or other Books of the Bible like that often is a modernistic spirit, and it does tend to design to undermine the truth of the Scripture itself by implying something against verse and chapter increments.

One also wonders about these ways people make new layouts or new study systems of the Bible. While innovation isn’t evil, sometimes there is a level of gimmickry. Having said that, words of Christ in red has remained popular even though it was really popularised only in the 20th century. And likewise, having prounciation marks on Bible words, something which I really appreciate, was pushed by Henry Redpath at the same time as the words in red was done at Oxford in about 1901.

Why “spirit” lower case matters

Bryan Ross wrongly said that I said that 1 John 5:8 was not about the Holy Ghost. (The tradition from 1629 is that the King James Bible has “spirit” lower case at 1 John 5:8, including in the 1769 Edition.)

I have explained about this over the years, but it’s very clear that “spirit” has a lot to do with the Holy Ghost. So Bryan Ross is wrong.

Here are some examples to consider:

“Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.” (Proverbs 1:23).

And yet we also know that the Holy Ghost leads us in truth, in understanding of the Scripture and in things to come.

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:” (Joel 2:28).

We know that this is “of” the Holy Ghost when we read Acts 2.

“Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.” (Psalm 143:10).

God’s “spirit” obvious means the way and work of the Holy Ghost, and that in the heart of a man. Thus, when we read Acts 11:12 we surely can see that “spirit” should be correct.

“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” (1 Cor. 2:12).

It is obvious that this “spirit” is the impartation of knowledge, of being born again and knowing God. That’s very helpful for seeing why 1 John 5:8 should be lower case, since our born again spirit is witnessing to us of God, that we are wrought of God.

(So, anyone who claims that this is some sort of Pentecostal plot to want to have this in lower case at that place, in fact, there is no specific connection to that, except that proper Pentecostalism should have proper doctrine about being born again! Also, I doubt Cambridge was being motivated by Pentecostal doctrine in 1629, nor Blayney in 1769, when they had “spirit” there too. In fact, if anything, modern Pentecostalism has become very anti-tradition, so they would want to change things up.)

“We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” (1 John 4:6).

The spiritual way of truth is obviously the way the Holy Ghost moves.

Therefore, one might be very bold, and say that the Pure Cambridge Edition is aligned with the spirit of truth.

General

Theological support for the King James Bible

INTRODUCTION

There are such good arguments for the rightness of the King James Bible, and in this essay I shall also take the opportunity to draw upon ideas expressed by Peter Van Kleeck Jnr and Jeff Riddle who are leading lights from the Reformed and Confessional Bibliology side of the aisle.

Essentially, the primary authority for right theology, doctrine on the Scripture and why the King James Bible is right is the Scripture itself. Scripture of course has to be properly interpreted, but if we begin from Scripture as itself being the revealed will of God and by His intention present with us, then we are beginning from the assumption of Biblical presupposition rather than the assumption of mere evidentialist ideas about phenomena.

Thus, as we look to the question of whether we have Scripture and whether we have it properly, we all come with “biases”. Either we believe that God really has provided us with Scripture which is a feedback loop with what we see in Scripture, making the King James Bible self authenticating, or else, we doubt that, but believe instead that what we see and think must be exercised to work out what might best be Scripture, with no final authority of appeal other than things like the consensus of opinions of learned men.

We live in an age of conflict between the true faith with proper reason versus Infidelity with foolish reason. Much of what is called “theology” and scholarship and so on is sliding on the scale somewhere in between these two poles. No wonder Jesus rebukes this Laodicean age for being lukewarm!

In a practical sense, either you are with the King James Bible or you are with any/all/custom choice “Bibles”.

ACADEMIC MAFIA

The theological academic world is dominated by silos of thought, which push very particular agendas, whether they are Calvinist, Baptist, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal or (heaven forbid) Seventh Day Adventist.

As such, ideas which do not conform to the silos must be pumped out through smaller, independent bodies. We see this within the King James Bible only space, with Bryan Ross’ circle, with my own materials and with those of the Van Kleecks and Jeff Riddle. There are some good sources of information and general discussion from people like Christopher Yetzer, Nick Sayers, Will Kinney, Steven Avery and others.

I believe that it is good to have a kind of network which connects together some different ideas, and that while I have been pioneering in areas, there’s a lot to take from facilitating studies, and also a lot to draw upon from the Van Kleecks and Jeff Riddle.

There’s clearly a concerted effort out there to rubbish the King James Bible itself and to rubbish support for it. I see continually an unwillingness to engage properly about the King James Bible out there, and when engagement does happen, for example with someone like Rick Norris, it is not in a formal sense, and the two sides really talk past each other.

My view is that some of the ideas of the Van Kleecks and Jeff Riddle need to be taken up but shorn of any Calvinistic bias or undue ongoing deference to the original languages.

Further, we hear platitudes from people in their alleged acceptance or professed love of the King James Bible, but if they are really in their heart holding to something else or saying people can choose some other translation that is right for them, then we are dealing with the common problem of mere relativism.

If we view the area as a field of debate or discussion, the King James Bible supporting side does not get a fair representation out there in the theological academic world, and in part, this is because the funds behind the scenes are focused on the money making versions and translations of major publishing companies.

New versions and translations are being done as vanity projects or as funded by some commercial interest that in the end means that the “advertising power” and paid for scholarship is largely arrayed against the King James Bible. But, however, publishers who are selling the King James Bible will at least be keeping alive the viability of the King James Bible, even if it is frowned upon by paid propagandists.

PRESUPPOSITIONALISM VERSUS EVIDENTIALISM

In apologetics (defence of the faith) there are two main schools of thought. Either you start from one or other worldview. In the presuppositional view, that worldview contains pre-conditions, like logic, morality and the God given fact of language, as well as that there is no neutrality, and that God exists as a transcendental reality.

Or else, you start from phenomena (empiricism), reason (e.g. the cosmological/first cause, teleological, ontological, moral argument, degrees of perfection/aesthetic arguments, etc.) and historical records (e.g. the likelihood of the resurrection) then this builds a case for someone starting from an atheistic perspective.

Of course, the apologetic approach that takes both the presupposition and uses the evidential view as confirmation is ideal.

Now this is how to look at the reality of the existence of God, but we must take this to apply to Scripture. Indeed, we have to take the truth of the Scripture as part of the presupposition as well as using arguments to prove the correctness of Scripture, of which there are plenty of proofs for, including fulfilled prophecy, etc.

Just as we cannot approach the Scripture in an atheistic or non-supernaturalist approach (to try to find if it is true without starting from the premise that it is self evidentially true), so likewise we have to take this approach with the Scripture as we have it.

James R. White accuses us of having a circular argument, that we start with the premise that the King James Bible is true, but the reality is that this position is self-authenticating. Therefore, in everything we see in the King James Bible is true, and every investigation we do confirms this. This means of course that such a view is not naturally objective, but it also means that the view is based on an absolute, whereas rejecting the perfection of the King James Bible as a starting point of the other side invariably means that they have no final authority or absolute certainty to appeal to, except things like their own reasonings, which can be entirely subject to the deceptions of the devil.

We in fact have to start with God’s mind. We have to start with Theistic Conceptual Realism (see https://www.bibleprotector.com/blog/?p=1329).

I find it extraordinary that a Calvinist could consistently hold to a view that says that humans can certainly know God’s mind, in that it often seems that Calvinists are certain only of their inability to know God’s mind. However, laying that aside, as a Word and Spirit Christian, I believe that we can indeed know the mind of God. I do not mean absolute comprehension, but I do mean that we can attain information we need. My belief is based on many passages, but Proverbs 1:5, 6 is sufficient to mention, along with Paul’s statement in Acts 20:27, “For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” I remember the old time Pentecostals had the motto, “All the Gospel”.

Might I also interject that it was Calvinists who were pansophists in the 17th century. Pansophism is a view that grew under the reign of King James I, that not only said that the Gospel must go to the ends of the earth (George Abbott), but that knowledge is increasing (Francis Bacon), that we the English-speaking Christians are agents in this (cf. Mede, Hartlib and others), and that we must therefore take practical steps accordingly (cf. Cromwell).

It’s no coincidence that with the rise of the King James Bible, there was also an expectation of the cause of truth.

So, if we begin with the Scripture, specifically the King James Bible, as foundation, we therefore take it as objective, as reflective of God’s mind, as the written source of perfect understanding (not of everything but of what we need to know) and we can therefore with the consistent Calvinist agree that the mind of God is revealed in scripture (the KJB specifically).

As a Word and Spirit Christian, I expect that the Holy Ghost is also illuminating hearts in line with this, in that He is the Spirit of truth, so a personal revelation of God’s thought as concerning our own purpose (and that of the whole Church) is also the other half of this reality. These two sides must be in agreement, for the Holy Ghost will not contradict the Scripture. Also, no one has a monopoly on the Holy Ghost.

On the other side, those who are influenced by modernism, who are against the King James Bible, and who use modern textual criticism and modern translation methods, do not start from Scripture doctrine for their beliefs. How they decide what they think is or isn’t a reading of inspired Scripture is in their judgment about phenomena, about the Scripture copies/documentary evidence as artifacts, and as fitting into certain hypotheses (“theories”) of their own scholarly (human) making.

(Of course, they simply say that our view of the King James Bible is mere opinion too, whereas their opinion is elevated because it is like an idol of their own fashioning.)

THEISM VERSUS DEISM

If we are asking the question about how we can be certain we have God’s actual words, we can appeal to the fact of God’s imminance, His superintendence in history, his promises and prophecies in Scripture, and the outworking of providence, and the assurance God works in our hearts.

But that theistic approach is entirely different to the other side in this debate. Their approach is deistic. They believe that God gave the Scripture by inspiration but then He lifted His hand off it, and it has come down through the ages subject to the naturalistic whims of “reality”.

Because they essentially do not believe in the direct hand of God through the Church giving us the very Bible, they think that they must scrabble about, with human effort, deciding what manuscripts are old and what might be, through their earnest application, the best possible text of the Scripture.

So when a modern version (and modern translator) supporter debates a critic, or an agnostic, or an atheist, or a Muslim tahrif proponent, their views are much aligned. In fact, one could be an atheist and undertake the method of attempting to “reconstruct” and translate the Scripture as is done by the modern version supporters.

There’s nothing in the Bible that would ever hint or lead a person to use such an unbelieving method as pure naturalistic empiricism, reason and critical methods (including reasoned eclecticism, etc.).

We have a God on one side who has a special care about the Scripture, and on the other side, a God who is remote in relation to Bible and has no connection with the transmission of the Scripture, as if that is just all in man’s hands.

Accordingly, the conflict becomes one of belief versus human wisdom (i.e. foolishness). The faith side points to God and to a specific Bible. The other side points to science falsely so called. The other side cannot actually point to God or to anything from the Scripture leading them to their views, because their views are based on the intellectual movement of man rather than true religion.

This nonsense position of those who are subject to modernist ideas leads them to make broad statements like that various different texts and translations are all the Word of God, or that you can just pick the Bible that you favour.

This ridiculous approach is promoted both popularly but also in the highest echelons of theological academia, and no doubt it is driven by the funds that are generated by selling various modern versions/translations.

FAITH VERSUS INFIDELITY

Deism and all the methodology of modern, unbelieving science (as opposed to proper, traditional and believing science) comes out of a movement called the Enlightenment, which of course led to the violent and horrendous French Revolution.

The name for the belief system that encompasses all of that is called Infidelity. For a long time I could detect these problems, but one day I realised what it was called. I always knew that many bad things happened in society 1960s and 1970s, but now I understood that these were the English-speaking manifestations of the same thing that led to the French Revolution.

One of the major doctrines or components of this anti-Christian belief is anti-supernaturalism, as well as an idea of the separation between the secular (or scientific) versus the religious (or believing).

Since the 1960s, we have observed more and more the degradation of belief in the nature of God and also the apparent death of distinctive Christian beliefs. I don’t believe that this is fully actually the future, but it has been a problem for the past and current generations.

So when it comes to the question of the perfection of the King James Bible, one side is promoting all these modern ideas in the debate, with their many versions and translations, and their appeal to philosophical standards or respected ideas that come out of the Enlightenment. The other side is arguing from a believing approach, from the doctrine of Scripture itself.

Both sides therefore are starting from premises, built in assumptions, biases … presuppositions. We can identify what is the basis of the modernist-influenced/anti-KJB/anti-TR side.

They begin from Scripture, or else begin from the philosophical basis of the Enlightenment/Post-Enlightenment. Those on the other side in this debate start in post-Enlightenment philosophy, the begin with phenomena, with empiricism and with rationalism. Their belief system is deistic because they say God inspired but since inspiration the passage or transmission of the Scripture is really by naturalistic/non-supernaturalistic processes. 

In their system, they must look to whatever appeals to Enlightenment thinking, for example, to the rule of entropy. And because entropy prevails, they think, they must go to source languages, to earliest copies and to reconstructions by conjectural emendations of some elusive past perfection.

They implicitly reject the practicality of providence, the superintendence of the Spirit of God in history or that God, by the very hands of His people (the true Church) through time, that God should be able to transmit and dispatch His holy Scripture so that we could receive it intact today.

In their system, they need data, the more the better, in order to come nearer to the unattainable truth, whereas we are warned against those who are ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Instead, we are those who are able to arise shine because the light is come. We are able to possess and know that the truth is present, that it may be made known, since it has been sent to the ends of the world (see Rom. 10:18 and Rom. 16:26).

CORRECTING THE CONFESSIONAL BIBLIOLOGY BIAS

There are those on the Confessional Bibliology bandwagon who are a lot of the way right, but are dragged down by their Calvinist biases and by their inability to see that the King James Bible is of equal importance to the original languages.

In addressing the modern textual critical approach, the Confessional Bibliology supporters (i.e. the Van Kleecks, Riddle, etc.) try to equate using the unbelieving modern scientific methods with a rejection of their pet doctrine of total depravity.

Total depravity says that fallen men have no power to do the truth, let alone make a decision to receive salvation, whereas the proper view is that fallen man still has some capability of understanding God, and that as best as a man may try, he will always have sin and cannot attain or earn salvation himself. Therefore, God gifts knowledge or insight so that a person may respond to the Gospel, which makes God more generous than the Calvinist view of a remote and unfathomable God.

The Confessional Bibliology approach therefore wrongly conflates the more Arminian perspective with the strivings of the makers of modern versions.

Further, in relation to Christians, the usual Calvinistic perspective is to degrade the believer and say he is but a sinner, barely one rung up from a complete wretch. Such a perspective, of course, is anti-Biblical, but they do boldly push this perspective on every occasion. One can see how holding such a low view of the believer can equate not accepting the perfection of the King James Bible since they would think that any translation, and any Christian work of saved believers is barely one degree above complete contempt. One wonders how they can harbour such admiration for Spurgeon, Sproul or others seeing as they have such a low view of the best Christians, thinking it holy and just to regard them as chiefs of sinners as though the Apostle himself were such a wretch. One wonders what Christ actually has done for them, seeing as they internalise being “sinners saved by grace”.

I argue that the Westminster Confession of Faith is not merely about the authenticity of the Scripture in the original languages as it came to the Reformation times, but that as God’s people don’t know those languages, and that the population of the world knows English the best, that God’s design and favour is with the King James Bible, as the WCF shows, the word of God by translation does represent His word to the people.

WHERE IS THE BIBLE EXACTLY?

So if we are saying the Word of God for the future is specifically for us the King James Bible, what this does not mean is that the Word of God has not existed in other languages.

The King James Bible only existed in 1611, so what was the Bible before that? We have to say that even today if you are a French-speaking Christian, you are accessing the Word of God in French.

But in our view, the King James Bible is for the French people, which means that the language of the French people, such as in New Caledonia, etc., must come to include English. It’s not about banning French, it’s about promoting and favouring and educating with English. The best Bible in the world, the perfect Bible, exists in English. So it is a gift for the French to get the perfect English Bible. But the reality is that historically the French, even to this day, all do not know English.

So the word of God must have always existed, as it exists in Heaven, but it was revealed progressively through the inspiration process, it has existed in multiple old and varying Greek manuscripts, and even in the Vulgate, and in the various Textus Receptus editions, and various Protestant English translations.

How dare anyone ever say that I have implied that if you have an Oxford edition of the KJB, you don’t have God’s word!

We should agree fully with the Confessional Bibliologists when they say, “The words of God that I have in my Bible have always existed. Has the Church always believed like I believe? No. …  Have the words always been here? Yes. So [these are] two separate questions.”

So then, we should understand that because of the scattering and gathering that the words of God have been here since inspiration, but the finality of the textual gathering was in 1611.

We rightly accept the 66 Book Canon without there being one verse stating this. By the same token, we can accept that the King James Bible even though it is pointed to in Scripture rather than expressly named.

JOTS AND TITTLES MEAN WRITINGS

The modernists, modern version supporters and Bryan Ross argue that the jots and titles in Matthew 5:18 refer to the content of the prophecies not the actual writing of Scripture. Even though the word “scripture” literally means writings, these people seek to de-emphasise the exact words of God and focus more on a kind of matrix where the Bible is more a book of meanings/content than specificity of words.

The modernists happily cut out the end of Mark and other parts of the Bible, they change meanings all over the place using their lexicons, so they need to allow looseness in the idea of what actually is the text or a good translation. These people are ardently against the perfection of Scripture.

Bryan Ross tries to argue that we don’t need a letter perfect Bible because of the same slack standards the modernists use. Their view is near enough is good enough. They certainly don’t seem to want God to be a lawgiver and judge measuring people by the precision of His law. There is some ugly libertarian spirit there bucking against proper authority.

Another extreme is Thomas Ross, an ardent Textus Receptus supporter who elevates Greek and Hebrew high above the English, and thinks that the jots and tittles mean specifically Hebrew (even though jot and tittle are English words with English meanings pointing to English characters.

The promise is that not one part of a letter will pass away. That means that the written words of God must exist, and whatever it says must happen.

This means that we must have the actual writing in the King James Bible, and we can then come to rely on every letter.

INTERPRETATION NEEDED

I believe there are a number of Scripture passages and places which support the King James Bible, but the fight is over correct interpretation.

Most people will say that they cannot understand how the Scripture is pointing to the King James Bible, and every place we can show, they will doubt that interpretation because they have an unbelieving model.

Their model of hermeneutics comes straight out of the Enlightenment as is built on the false assumptions, with their empirical emphasis on original language words (led by Ernesti) and their rationalistic emphasis on trying to read the Scripture as if limited to the natural confines of the culture of the historical context (led by the German critic Semler).

Then Keil followed Ernesti, and sought to read the Bible like any other book, taking also the Higher Critical ideas of Semler. This led to the Historical-Grammatical School of Bible interpretation. Schleiermacher, a modern liberal theologian at the beginning of the 19th century, tried to accommodate the rationalist view while rejecting its excesses.

And so the unbelieving approach of how to interpret the Bible littered through to Fairbairn (1859), Doedes (1862), Immer (1877), after which came Farrar (1886), Terry (1890), Tenney (1957), Mickelsen (1963), Ramm (1967), Berkhof (1969), Kaiser (1981), Fee (1983), Carson (1984), Moo (1986), Osborne (1991), Tate (1991), Zuck (1991), Klein (1993), Silva (1994), etc.

This unbelief is worshipped by the anti-King James Bible shills and their allies, including James R. White, Todd Friel, John Piper, Mark Ward, Wes Huff, Tim Wildsmith, etc.

These people have a method of interpreting Scripture which has a central belief that we cannot properly understand the Scripture, and as such, they are already disadvantaged to interpret Scripture properly, let alone, accept that the Scripture could point to the King James Bible.

Their whole system has been laced with the leaven of unbelief, and as such, they tend to deny the Scripture’s pointing to things in our times. They deny the fundamental principle that the Scripture was written for and to us.

So instead of believing that God would lead and guide us into all truth, they are too far away in insisting upon imperfect interpretation, thereby missing out of the promises of Scripture.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The defence of the King James Bible ultimately rests on the very doctrines and presuppositions of Scripture itself. The contrast between a believing, theistic view of God’s providential preservation and the deistic, Enlightenment-shaped assumptions of modern textual criticism could not be starker. While the academic world, driven by commercial interests and shaped by post-Christian philosophy, largely dismisses the perfection of the King James Bible, Scripture teaches that God provides His words with certainty for His people.

This fight between proper theology and false, worldly theology is one which has a long way to go, as the other side has currently made so much inroad into the Christian world.