INTERPRETATION MATTERS
Christianity is in a war of Bible interpretation. Arminians and Calvinists can use the KJB and come to different views. Futurists, Historicists and Preterists can use the KJB and come to different views. There’s battles over all kinds of things. Yet these people can all use the KJB.
The KJB isn’t the problem. It isn’t a problem of what Bible version, the problem is actually interpretation. Now, a modern Bible version can be a small part of the issue, and it cannot be minimised that the people who want to doubt the end of Mark or the woman caught in adultery or 1 John 5:7 are putting themselves into a weaker position. But that’s not the biggest issue here.
There is a bigger difference between the KJB and other translations. That’s where conceptual differences occur on a much more significant level. Translation has a great effect on interpretation. But it is ultimately an issue of what God’s words are said to mean.
WRONG DOCTRINES
A bunch of wrong doctrines have historical roots, but today, wrong interpretations are rooted in wrong translations and most especially backed up by wrong interpretations.
We have to understand that the Scripture is God’s message to mankind. It’s less about God giving specific messages to an individual in the Bible, and more about what God wants the whole Church to know.
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
2 Peter 1:20, 21
The Scripture is primarily written on two levels, the natural writer writing to the original audience, and secondly, the Holy Ghost writing to the entire Church.
Because God is the author, we see that while there might be a natural and plain reading, there are often deeper spiritual meanings. This is the difference between what we might call the primary and plain reading or interpretation, and the deeper spiritual sense.
Just look at what Paul said about oxen treading out the corn, that while it shows care for livestock, it really was written primarily with the spiritual meaning, that labourers in the gospel ought to be rewarded.
At the same time, this does not mean that the Bible could just mean anything, or everything. The meanings are particular, known to God, and to be known to us.
THE WAR AND THE IMPOSITION OF MODERNISM
Today, the Devil is not using physical persecution to kill Christians in the Western world. He is using doubt and confusion about the Bible to destroy people’s faith.
Modernism, broadly, comes from a godless way of thinking about the world, as if there is no God. That way, instead of having the Holy Ghost interpret, you have to look to records of how men interpreted, and worse, you have to go to the lexicons and modernistic ways of interpreting as though God couldn’t possibly have a correct English Bible translation, and as though God couldn’t possibly have Christians today gaining right understanding, even though He promised that we shall know the truth.
The biggest and easiest way to pervert the meaning of the Bible is through all this talk about the Greek. Most wrong doctrines and wrong ideas today will be because people will say “the Greek here really means blah blah” and they will try to introduce a shift in ideas by talking about what the original languages really mean in light of the apparent culture of Bible times. The funny thing is that what they say the culture of Bible times is seems to be different from what the Bible actually teaches.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say there was a little door in the gate of a city and you had to unpack a camel to get it through the door. But this will be what people will say, meaning something ridiculous like, that you have to get rid of all your money and possessions before you can get into the Kingdom of God. There is no such teaching anywhere in the Bible, but that’s how they will interpret a certain passage.
MODERNIST HERMENEUTICS
Modernist hermeneutics are the way in which modern people (e.g. theologians, Calvinist intellectuals and in-crowders) interpret the Bible. They basically have a method. It goes like this: assume God doesn’t exist and you have to look at the words (grammar, style of writing and the contextual flow) and put them into the historical isagogic of who wrote to whom when (i.e. the historical context) and then cross a “principlizing bridge” which takes from the ancient era (another language, another culture, another time and another place) and brings the Scripture to some sort of sense and relevance that we can understand, learn from and apply today.
Notice in that method it isn’t about believing a doctrine of rightly understanding the Scripture as though God really can bring us to understand, but instead is all about some human science and art of interpreting.
MARK WARD IS A CHIEF ATTACKER
Mark Ward is writing a book to try to make out as if the language of the Bible doesn’t seem to mean what it seems to say. That there is something more and beyond the good old King James Bible.
I can only imagine the tripping ropes of inflexible thinking that it takes to argue that language has meaning beyond mere alleged “literal” meanings. No doubt, Ward will sufficiently cause us to doubt every normal statement made in English to then make out as if we cannot just take the King James Bible, which he will slur as belonging to a distant century, has added layers of difficulty.
This is a blatant lie, but one pushed by the mafia of modernist hermeneutics.
We all know that language can be non-literal and words can be contextual. But we shouldn’t be reading the Bible with mere natural, God-free logic. Language is not just some secular science, it’s a divine gift that needs to be practiced in light of its author. English as we know it (especially in the Bible) is not the product of a series of happenstance accidents but is divinely designed.
THE TRUTH IN ENGLISH
Mark Ward and others like him hold that the full truth cannot be in English. No, they see English as just a reflection, a bad reflection, of the real, deeply mystical (it seems) truth in the original languages. God inspired in Hebrew and Greek and somehow these languages are more holy. Also, modernism (you know that belief that there isn’t really an interventionary God), says that you can’t actually get the full meaning from the originals into English. (And that’s if they know what it really means in the original languages!)
HOW MEANINGS OF WORDS ARE CONTROLLED
Like the Newspeak Dictionary in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, there is a special lexicon that tells the modernist what a word might mean. This is a lexicon called BDAG, which was made by modernists who use a method as though God is not in control of languages or that God can actually communicate truth to common Christians.
No! You have to go through these special hierophant authorities, and BDAG was made to give an extensive list of words from Greek, and then guesses as to their meanings. Out of these different options of meanings, a modern day user (peddler) of Greek can then choose which meaning he (or “she” if your name is Faith Womack) thinks best fits the context at a certain place. These meanings come from a variety of eras and sources, so it’s by no means restricted to Christian texts. Furthermore BDAG is the letters of the surnames of the men who made the work.
Bauer = Higher Critic, Liberal, Historical-Critical, big “M” Modernist
Danker = Moderate, Higher Critic, big “M” Modernist
Arndt = Secular-backed, conservative, evangelical, small “m” modernist
Gingrich = Neutral scholar, centrist, small “m” modernist
WHAT IS WARD’S WAR ON WORDS REALLY ABOUT?
What could possibly motivate a financially struggling man like Mark Ward, but the promise of funds for his work in reverence to his higher masters. His higher masters being certain leaders in the entire industry of impositional interpretation.
You see, Christians must be told that they CANNOT be allowed to safely interpret Scripture for themselves, because they couldn’t possibly be led by the Spirit of God. What they need (apparently) is good advice, good tools which means buying stuff and listening to guides like Mark Ward.
There’s a whole industry of products that exist that are said to be needed. These products include paying for the privilege of attending their institutions of higher learning. By “their” I mean both sides of the Christian industry, the got-at Pentecostal ones as much as the got-at Reformed ones. The intellectual mafia might sit like a curia in the intellectual side of Christianity (Baptists, Presbyterians and Reformed), but is just as much at work through the cognate world of Pentecostalism and Charismaticism. Everywhere where it is taught that the “Greek” really means something other than what the Bible says, they are there.
BUT, HE PROTESTETH
Mark Ward will say he is not at war with the King James Bible and “loves” it, even though this entire exercise is specifically designed to fight the meanings of words in the King James Bible.
They will say that they are not Liberal/Modernist/Higher Critics, even though everything they have is like the evangelical-friendly version of the same sources. Mark Ward is a small “m” modernist, which is a dangerous leaven in Christianity.
They will say that you can use the tools for free so you don’t need to spend a dollar getting “educated” by “hermeneutics”. That’s called voluntary subjection where one puts themselves on a low level and denies that the Holy Ghost practically leads into truth.
18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
Colossians 2:18
THE REAL ANSWER
There is a mighty doctrine of the Scripture that says that we can know. We can attain. We can understand. We can access all necessary wisdom.
This blows up the entire library of books of hermeneutics, every lexicon and all the books about choosing the right Bible translation for your fleshly desires.
Believers should align to the truth, not listen to Mark Ward’s classifications of “common Bible study errors”.
But, an objector may say, “every Christian is interpreting for themselves” and “there are so many doctrinal disagreements” and “there are so many varieties and subsects of Protestantism today”.
Here is the answer. If all Christians align with the Holy Ghost’s interpreting they are going to be interpreting for themselves rightly. If Christians align with the truth of the Holy Ghost’s leading and teaching in their proper study of relying on King James Bible English words, then we will align to the standards of the truth, not multiplicity of doctrines. If we look to Jesus and think after God, then I am sure we will align to sound doctrine.
28 That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
Isaiah 44:28
The building of Jerusalem is by a Spirit-led people being actually Spirit-led, and the foundation to the temple is the true Scripture, the actual truth of the Scripture clearly known at the basis of a proper Church movement in the Earth.
And now you will see how the modernist approach disallows this interpretation because they both disbelieve it and have a method to not make the Scripture say or be understood to mean this thing.