Editorial, Review

Bryan Ross’ attempted fire storm

Introduction

I have the feeling of a strong man rejoicing to run a race as I saw and now write in response to Pastor Bryan Ross’ article about the Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE).

Ross has been pushing his narrative for a few years, that there is no single exactly correct edition of the King James Bible (KJB). He wants to embrace a host of badly edited American editions with all their divergences rather than run the course of a pure exemplar edition.

It has taken me some time to try to understand what he is arguing for, since it seems to me that he is saying that there is only general truth and not singular perfect truth, or perhaps, there is a single perfect set of ideas in the Bible but no actual copy of the Bible that expresses that perfectly as far as being letter perfect. I’ve found it difficult to understand precisely what he does believe.

Now I want to be fair, and since I think my view is correct, I don’t have to misrepresent or twist Ross’ view. Whether or not he made a spelling mistake in his heading on the word “Prespectives” is not the sort of thing I want to concentrate on. I’ve had to edit my own writing for typos too.

Ross has written a whole article trying to frame me as inconsistent. His article Inconsistent Logic & The PCE Position Examining Three Perspectives is an attempt to try to make out either I am illogical or have changed my ideas.

While it is true we all develop and grow, and we all improve our understanding, I will show how Ross is wrong, how Ross has misunderstood me and how I think Ross wants to frame me as wrong.

An attempt to present Ross’ position

I am going to do my best to try to present what Ross believes, as relevant to this debate. He believes that the King James Bible is the best English translation. He thinks that the King James Bible preserves what was in the Textus Receptus (TR), which he upholds. He thinks that the variations in editions and printings of the KJB do not amount to “corruptions”, but since he is measuring to the TR, he is accepting the various editions of the KJB are reliably presenting “substantively” the same meaning.

Ross also makes much of “verbal equivalence”, a term which his group has coined which describes that meaning of words are the same as the meaning in the original languages even if spelling has varied in English. In the same way, the Tyndale Bible might use a different word to the King James Bible, but the overall meaning is still “substantively” the same. He measures this in a doctrinal sense, and seems to base this on the idea of how the Bible seems to loosely (rather than precisely) quote itself between the Testaments.

He rejects “exact sameness”, which his group has termed “verbatim identicality”. This is the alleged idea that there must be a robotic and rigid “xerox” (i.e. photocopy) of what was written in the originals as to be given today. He applies the same with comparing the English orthography of the 1611 printing of the KJB with what was printed in the 20th century. I suspect that as a younger Christian, he had some sort of nebulous view that this was true, but as he became older and wiser, he realised he had to explain real editorial variations in editions since 1611. He took the same view that the modern supporters do, that the truth must generally be there, and that specifics of typography must not count for much. What matters, apparently, is the preservation of the message, while specific words don’t really matter so much, especially if comparing words like “ensample” and “example”, etc.

As far as interpretation of Scripture, there are two key passages that define Ross’ view. One is 2 Timothy 2:15, which speaks of “rightly dividing the word of truth”, which he takes to describe the dividing up of the Divine Œconomy into various dispensations, and specifically applies the verse to highlight that the writings of Paul are particularly relevant for Christians today (essentially part of Acts to Philemon). This might be termed the Pauline Dispensational Method.

The other passage of importance is Matthew 5:18, where he takes the “jots and tittles” to mean the descriptions of things in the message and not specifically the written legal form of those promises. This means that he is looking at Scripture as a set of ideas and doctrine rather than the narrow meaning that it is something which is communicated by a specific string of letters making words.

He therefore would read Scripture as primarily literally and he starts from a Grammatical-Historical Interpretation. It is important to note that he holds to the “Grammatical” part as how one should read a genre of writing rather than any specificity about the words or letters being used themselves. In the “Historical” aspect, he sees the Bible within the cultural lens of its communicating to the original audience.

He is a Futurist (i.e. anti-Historicist), and a Cessationist (i.e. anti-Pentecostal). While leaning to Paul’s writings as specifically relevant for the present day, he still allows for a broad application of all Bible passages to the present. Most especially, in all this, he places less emphasis on words and verbiage as conceptual containers, and so therefore, he must most especially be polemically moved against any position which constrains or narrows down on words as being specifically emphasised upon as the precise conveyers of an exact sense.

In looking at the printed history of the King James Bible, in the first instance, much of Ross’ targeting has been against a kind of unlearned Ruckmanite position that had tended to deny editorial work within the King James Bible, and the almost strawman view that the King James Bible today is identical to what was printed in 1611 except for some minor typographical errors.

My general comments on Ross’ approach

There are parts of Ross’ approach and thinking which I would quite noticeably differ with. I have tried to present this without the kind of editorialisation which Ross has practiced against me.

For example, he has tried to colour me as holding a “unique position”, using “unrealistic” ideas and being a practitioner of “private interpretation”.

Ross, as aided by his friend Nathan Kooienga, has tried to use “logic” to make out as if what I am saying is “inconsistent”. They say my position is “confusing”, but it seems to me that they have refused to understand my explanations.

I think this is related to an underlying problem, what I might call “Grace Libertarianism”, basically, by not approaching the Bible in a legal sense, one can see the corollary fuzzy thinking. I think that the same malaise which affects the charismatics also addles the thinking here of Ross and Kooienga, who both are intelligent enough, yet are surprisingly willing to adhere to a view which defies authority, precision and clarity.

Ross has been pushing his narrative for a few years, that there is no single exactly correct edition of the KJB. He seems to think that truth can be contained within parameters, rather than that there is a specifically accurate written word of God anywhere in existence. He is using a kind of logical fallacy that if something can be permissively correct, that is, generally correct, that it cannot ever be specifically correct.

That is, that if various possible ways of saying something exist, that these multiple possibilities seem, in his mind, to allow him to deny that there is one specific way to say something exactly correctly. Thus, Ross is anti-perfectability.

I don’t understand how Ross doesn’t see there needs to be a perfect standard to which all the permissible possibilities are ultimately adhering to. In order for there to be permissibility there must be an ultimate legal jot and tittle correct written standard.

By disconnecting conceptual accuracy from the specificity of words, letters and punctuation, he is more in the realm (akin to the thinking of many charismatics) that God’s truth is in ideas and that God is I guess apparently not tied to the letter of the law. Ross thinks that God’s ideas are being communicated in the King James Bible, but it’s not so far to backslide to the position of Ross’ acquaintances J. Burris and J. Armstrong, who along with the host of Reformed, Charismatics and Baptists think that various translations are okay as long as they are presenting the approximate same gist or message. Ross’ decoupling from the anchor the exactness of the words of Scripture is the first slipping towards that modernistic position.

Ross wrote his article against me, with the help of his circle and some background AI assistance, to essentially try to charge me with apparently being inconsistent. Actually, Ross was stung into writing more because I called him out for wrongly saying that I say that if it isn’t PCE, it must be corrupt.

The actual article he wrote is more about him trying to save face than about me. Ross said that he concluded from a 2009 copy of my book Glistering Truths that I must be saying or implying that if it isn’t PCE, it must be corrupt. He didn’t get it from what I actually stated, he got it by a kind of convoluted way of thinking.

In other words, he has in his mind a way of thinking about what I was apparently meaning. That is really all it is, and then it was attaboyed by Kooienga trying to make a strained logical syllogism which totally says something I have expressly denied! It’s a conceptual mess, and it is designed to undermine my position by gross misrepresentation.

Ross tries to argue this as based on the fact that he used a monograph I wrote in 2009 (Glistering Truths), which he used to assess my views. Now, just as an aside, I edited that monograph in 2019 and 2024, to fix up typos and to rephrase some parts to make them clearer. But my argument and views expressed are not changed in light of this area of discussion.

How strange it is that Ross is writing an article trying to make out as if I am saying something different now to what I said before. In other words, he’s trying to frame me as inconsistent, when the reality is I can show in 2008 that I said the Latin Vulgate contains the word of God! See this link: https://av1611.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4258&postcount=5

Therefore, I would like to highlight how ridiculous it is, with minimal need for rhetorical effect, that I ever said, meant or implied that if it isn’t PCE, it must be corrupt. The Vulgate is far from the PCE, and I am not denying it was the word of God to those historical Latin-speaking Christians.

Ross’ approach is quite weak and really falls down when we try to find what exactly is his standard of what is the word of God. He seems to be allowing all kinds of things collectively to be the word of God without any specific ultimate form, method or measure. He is left trying to say that “Beer-sheba, Sheba”; “Beer-sheba, and Sheba” and “Beer-sheba, or Sheba” are all concurrently and equally the word of God at Joshua 19:2, even though the count will alter, and the Scripture says there are thirteen cities and their villages.

My approach is way better

Unlike Ross, I begin by pointing to the Scriptures and what the Bible says about itself in relation to its authority, origins and pre-existence.

The Scripture, I can show from the Bible, existed in the mind of God in eternity. (What troubles people get themselves into when they try to use the Greek to change the meaning of the Bible: but the Bible was known to be written in the mind of God, so they oughtn’t throw pencil shavings!) When Heaven was created on the start of day one in Genesis one, the Book was made and in the Heavenly Tabernacle.

Then, after many years, God moved through Moses, who while wrote the first Books of the Bible on Earth, God essentially worked through Moses and put that power into the words in the Earth. Inspiration essentially means putting spirit into, that is, putting the nature of spirit into those words which Moses then was writing (see also John 6:63). While on one level Moses was writing as a human to a human audience, it was actually God writing to mankind.

I think Bryan Ross has been addled by his going to the Greek and trying to Snuffleupagus “breathing out” like the Yahweists teach.

When we see the New Testament authors not quoting word for word the Old Testament, this is not because they were using some changed translation, nor because God is into deliberate or accidental carelessness, but because the same author of the Old (the Holy Ghost) is fit and free to give (and interpret) His own words in the New.

It’s very important to see that Luke quoting Isaiah is itself an inspiration, that Luke’s writing is as much inspired as the former writing of Isaiah. The Holy Ghost varying the wording is part of a Scriptural interpretative model that adds and aids meaning by the preciseness in the variations. Difference itself is new information. All such information is infallible and true, and reconciling it builds the full picture. There is no contradiction between any passage in the Scripture.

But Ross seems to think that variations in the New Testament quotes are the precedent for possible variation in orthography all being acceptable with some sort of latitudinal magnanimousness and perhaps even God ordained. There is little difference between this doublethink and the doctrine of modernist Rick Norris who says the same thing as Ross by allows for acceptability of various modern translations. Ross is just being less of an unbeliever than Norris.

Now in the copying process various errors, variations and corruptions occurred. No one can truly be as stupid as Ross makes out in believing that there is an exact sameness in manuscripts over the centuries. So the modernists, Ross and I all agree that there was no single perfect copy of the Bible being passed through time on Earth.

And yet, unlike Ross, I point to the indefatigable rock of the Scripture in Heaven, no matter what waves beat upon the Earth, truth existed there. I also articulate very clearly the doctrine of the scattering and gathering. The Scripture was scattered, and then with the scriptoria, and especially as leading on with the Textus Receptus tradition, we see singular gathered printed copies which begin to reconstitute the Text of Scripture.

Furthermore, in the various translations being made in English from the time of King Henry VIII to the apocalypticon of King James I.

Here we come to the most important point that blows up everything Ross the arsonist tried to do. He deliberately ignored this teaching about the modes of being of Scripture and its levels of perfection and purity, which ends his entire fake accusation against me.

Read closely. I do not believe that only the KJB is the word of God, yet I do believe it is only the Word for us now and for the world more and more. I do not believe that only the PCE is the word of God, but I do believe if you want to know exactly, precisely to the minutest detail it is true, that the ultimate knowledge of doctrines hang upon its words, and that doctrines therefore are in the balance based upon the very case of the lettering and punctuation marks.

You see, there are seven levels of the Scripture and its form.

First, the Scripture exists in the mind of God, which is also called Theistic Conceptual Realism. It’s a fat load of good being there alone, but because it is revealed in this time of creation first in Heaven and then on Earth for us through the process of inspiration, it is good.

So the second form is that it exists in a perfect form written in Heaven. We can prove this from many passages too, such as Psalm 40:7; 119:89, Daniel 10:21 and Hebrews 8:5; 9:19, 23.

The third form is the Scripture itself. Scripture having all the attributes we ascribe to it, such as inerrancy, infallibility, inspiration etc.

So now, taking this third form, we can argue three things:

  1. That a copy of the Scripture is the word of God,
  2. That a copy of the Scripture is the word of God to the people who use it as the word of God, and
  3. That a copy of the Scripture is the word of God in as much as it is faithful and substantively so.

Therefore on this basis the Greek copies of the Scripture in Constantinople, and even the Latin Vulgate was the word of God.

Now we know that there are Textual variations and translation issues in the Vulgate, so we know that the Vulgate does not match “verbatim” what would exist in Heaven or in the mind of God, but we do know it is accepted in general.

(In fact, the ESV contains the word of God where it matches the KJB, though the ESV be corrupt and the corruption have rendered it practically unusable to a person who has an awakened conscience on these matters.)

The next level, the fourth level, is that of the Text. We can argue for purity of Text. This means a perfect Version, this means a perfect set of Readings. We now point to the King James Bible as being this exactly, as it being the final form of the Received Text.

The next level, the fifth, is that of the translation. We can argue for the purity of the translation. That means a perfect translation, not just a good one like Tyndale or Geneva. We can argue that God’s words have come into English properly and exactly. We can say that the King James Bible is the best translation in the world.

The next level, the sixth, is that of the Edition. One Edition of the King James Bible is better than the others, because of accuracy, because of getting the orthography right. We can argue for a progress in this matter from 1611 to the 20th century. We can see how far advanced the work of Dr Blayney was in 1769.

When I said that Dr Blayney did well, that he had a moral obligation to fix typos and to standardise and improve the English, did you know that Bryan Ross and his friends laughed me to scorn. I cannot understand their attitude at all except to understand it spiritually. I shall not render evil for evil for this, but show that in the love of God, God has given Pastor Ross a fine gift of the benefit of the 1769 work, something good.

Now there are a series of editions of the King James Bible, and editors have worked to fix typographical errors, standardise the spelling and grammar, etc., and there are seven major Editions, which are editions of significant editorial importance, they are the folio Editions of 1611, 1611 again, 1613, 1629, 1638, 1769 and the Pure Cambridge Edition (which is not a folio but exists in a series of various printings). The PCE therefore presents the word of God exactly with proper editing in English.

This brings us to the seventh level, which is the Pure Cambridge Edition, but specifically, a copy-edited form of it, a resolved, exactly correct copy. I didn’t invent the Pure Cambridge Edition, I didn’t make a computer file copy of it based on some sort of “pentecostal experience” or “supernatural guidance”, I did it in line with Providence, and I used a believing textual analytical method. The setting and setting forth of the PCE as a resolved and acknowledgeable perfect textual form therefore presents the word of God exactly correctly to the letter.

Now Ross has quite wrongly said that I say that my holding to the Pure Cambridge Edition (level 6) invalidates every manuscript and copy and Bible (level 3), every Bible version (level 4) and every translation (level 5) and every other edition of the King James Bible. This is so blatantly wrong, and yet he has built his entire attack on me on this silly and false syllogism.

It should be obvious that every edition of the KJB has the same version and translation, and therefore how could I be casting them out on that ground? The fact is that I personally only strive to use the PCE of the KJB for the reason of love of accuracy and wanting to ensure reliance on the exactness of the very presentation of truth.

And so, at the last, we have, before the end of the world, a very perfect, precise and exact knowledge of the very words of God to the very details and possible grasping of the very nuance of meaning, by having a perfect form of the PCE, which in itself answers here below to that which is above in Heaven.

Semantics required for conceptual accuracy 

The fundamental foundation of my belief system, and of the argument for the KJB and the PCE, is that worlds are framed by the word of God, and that the “word of God” is made up of words, and words have meanings. Therefore, exactness of meaning is rooted in exactness of words.

(This is, I am sure, what the rabbis thought too, after their own fashion. My own theological belief, being Word and Spirit, is built directly upon Word of Faith theology, and this emphasis on words as “containers” is central. The Puritan Calvinist, being primarily a legalist, also shares the centrality of God’s law being communicated by words, that words have meaning, because the law is words of meaning. And so, language is a kind of presuppositional framework that exists, it comes from the mind of God, and it enters creation, which is why we call our Saviour by the title Word. The modernists, in their foolishness, have called Him Logos, but I say that we must dominate the Platonic understanding and plunder their words and use words in a Christian way, and not subject Christianity to Platonism.)

Words matter. Things cannot exist except words describe them, and the perfect form of the things exist because they exist in the mind of God, therefore, Theistic Conceptual Realism (the ideas that God knows) dominates Nominalism (mere words). Meaning requires words, just as God’s ideas were expressed by the divine utterance and reverberance in creation, And God said!

Bryan Ross is so far from these mysteries, floundering about with his six different spellings of a word, that he cannot detect that perfection is come.

He cannot accept that the very truth is communicated precisely by jots and tittles which are necessary for conveying the exact sense of the Scripture.

He accuses me of believing in “verbatim identicality”, yet I do not believe in such a thing, but I do believe in the perfect Scripture in Heaven being the progenitor of perfection that is here now in the whole world, and that its force is of full effect in its operation in the Earth.

I can point to scripture reference after scripture reference of promises, prophecies and implications that we should have the Bible perfectly and exactly before the end of the world.

Of course, any edition of the King James Bible which, at the point where it is varying from the PCE, is at that point not giving the “exact sense”. 

Doctrine, statutes, precepts, the very nature of our religion, is based upon the legal nature of covenant agreements and written testaments. Righteousness is measured by the very exact “every last whit” of the law.

The specific and exact state, word order and lettering of Scripture has an effect on nuance, concept and meaning. Therefore, the very letters of the King James Bible are important, because life and death can depend upon them.

Ross intentionally misreads me as though a world of meaning exists in a letter “w” sitting by itself on a piece of paper made by the calligrapher’s art. Ross writes, “Whole doctrines in the Bible do not hang on letters; they hang on Bible verses in context”. This is exaggerated nonsense about a single letter hung with doctrines. But in that a letter changes doctrine, in a verse, in context, that is evident: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” (Galatians 3:16).

So, a letter does make a difference. When we look at editorial variations, we would not be so foolish as to not correct typographical errors, and we would be not so foolish as to insist that “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh” (in Joel 2:28) is identical or else meaninglessly distinct to “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” (in Acts 2:17). Every word matters, every capital letter matters, even dots matter.

I cannot believe that Ross would stoop so low as to use such a willfully “on the spectrum” style of gullible reasoning to accuse me by saying, “The way doctrines are derived in the Bible is not by looking at a single letter or word in a single verse.” As we can see here, I am using a variety of letters making words and typing out a response here which you can read and which makes sense. I am not striking the letter “L” over and again on my keyboard as if one letter is going to do anything by itself. I mean, how does it edify anyone if I really was doing what Ross suggests and I was abasing myself before the letter “L” and insisting it, in some sort of new religious cult-like way, was some angular power to whack his lambda?

Surely Ross knows he is being dishonest. Surely he knows I am not saying that some mere letter on a page in the Bible itself is full of doctrines. Surely he knows what the nuance of “Glistering Truths” shows.

Ross can easily observe that I actually teach that the “neesings” of the leviathan is full of meaning that is not merely the same as someone sneezing. Now, I know how Ross will run to the Oxford English Dictionary, and claim with umpteen examples that “neesing” was a 17th century form of “sneezing”. I can imagine Ross right now pumping AI for info, that neesing is just an old and archaic spelling for sneezing. But he has missed the point: the Bible trumps the dictionary, and adhering to the divine trumps mere human reasoning.

We approach Scripture with a believing sense of wonder, we don’t impose fake criteria by sullying Bible words with the tyranny of subjective opinion and dictionary dictatorships. Dictionaries are tools, they are servants, they exist downstream from the Providential supply of words and their meanings. We should not be so foolish as people like Mark Ward who petulantly proclaim that usage determines meaning. Divine usage, not human usage, determines meaning.

Let us humble ourselves gladly to then find out what “ensamples” means rather than just say it must be the same as “examples”. To ignore or conflate them would be anti-intellectualism or vain deceit.

Ross also makes a weird accusation that I did not get my views on the PCE by comparing Bible verses. I assume he means the comparing of Scripture with Scripture, and I assume he is meaning a doctrine about there being a perfect exact standard of God’s words. Well then, Pastor Ross can be assured that the entire doctrine of the PCE is based upon Scripture. I also appeal to Providential and internal arguments, but the entire argument is built upon Scripture, it is itself a scriptural doctrine. I’ll be happy to give him an extensive list of Bible verses, but I know already what he will say. He will find it incompatible to interpret the Scripture that way, because I know the problem actually lays in how he interprets Scripture. He’s demonstrated that with how he rejects the teaching of Matthew 5:18.

In fact, Ross came up with his “verbal equivalence” by just trying to explain (wrongly) why New Testament quotes of the Old Testament are not identical. Other than that wresting, his views and his rejection of the PCE are nothing really to do with Scripture.

And so we arrive at the nonsense position of Ross, as if that “alway” and “always” are the same word spelt two different ways. It’s very easy to prove in all kinds of ways that these are two different words with different meanings. Ross has committed himself in writing that they are not different, that they don’t present a different sense. His position is forced to accommodate the places where editions which vary the spelling, orthography, wording or made typos and to uphold them (those places that differ) as equal to what the PCE has now. (Obviously, Bryan Ross accepts the PCE is an edition, but he deliberately tries to deny its specialness.)

Answering Ross’ accusations 

Ross wrote accusingly of me, “He developed his position on the PCE through private interpretation (his Pentecostalism & Historicist interpretation of Revelation) to determine what he thinks the reality of the printed text should be, rather than what the actual reality was.”

This is loaded with wrong and false accusations.

I did not argue for the Pure Cambridge Edition based on private interpretation at all, it is based upon open analysis, providence and tradition.

The accusation that I used some sort of “Pentecostal” experiences to determine the PCE is just completely made up, and I have rejected this ridiculous accusation many times.

I also did not use the Historicist interpretation of Revelation to develop my position on the PCE. In fact, I did not understand Historicism very much when first studying about the PCE. I have written on multiple occasions about how I came to understand about the PCE, and Ross can easily correct himself by reading my several accounts.

It was later that I found in Historicist writings that they pointed to the King James Bible in how they interpreted Revelation 10. In general, I did not initially build or understand the case about the PCE as based on Historicist prophecy.

It is strange that Ross refers to the “reality” of the Pure Cambridge Edition. What is his “reality”? That we cannot get exactness in editing? I’d sure like to know how Ross proposes to have an exactly correct printing of the King James Bible. The history of editing from 1611 to 1769 is obvious, but why doesn’t Ross be more clear in recognising the improvement in the printed history?

Things are heading somewhere, editing has not been for no reason. It staggers belief that Ross would be fighting so hard to reject a post-1769 standard edition. Is he denying that God would want to get a correctly edited KJB Edition for the Body of Christ?

I also can’t understand how he doesn’t recognise that words mean something, his reluctance to get exactness, and his trying to just make “throughly” and “thoroughly” the same. If KJBOs didn’t make an academically rigorous case for the distinction in meanings then why not make an academically proposition to understand why there are detectable differences (according to God’s academia, not the worldly peer-reviewed mafia).

Apparently he doesn’t understand how constitutions and the courts work. Words are full of meaning, but if words can just be just smudged because they seem similar, then I think Ross would be the most sloppy lawyer in the world.

In all of this, Ross’ attacks have done one thing, and that is make me explain more, and I expect it all is more of an encouragement for believers to:
* stick with the reputable Pure Cambridge Edition
* understand and stay with the “glistering truths”
* align with Divine Providence

Conclusion

Pastor Ross may continue in the same denial he seems to hold to but never articulate: that the Scripture cannot have an ultimate final, exact form on Earth. He needs to see that all things move with purpose instead of “verbal equivalence” of general ideas, of approximation, which avoids admitting that God’s Word is communicated in words, not in loose impressions. And because he rejects exactness in the written form, he cannot penetrate a standard beyond conceptual boundaries.

But creation itself testifies otherwise. The sun shines as one light. So too with Scripture. Many copies may vary, many translations may obscure, but the light of truth itself has a penetrating form. Not because man contrived it, but “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11).

Heaven and Earth follow patterns. The tabernacle below reflected the pattern above; the law given had a heavenly origin; the Scripture is both divine in source and earthly in manifestation. This correspondence is what God designs in perfection and brings to completion in history. Ross seems to be ignorant of this principle, though it be through the whole Bible.

I stand for that God’s Word existed eternally in His mind,
was written perfectly in Heaven,
was given and used throughout all ages as Scripture on Earth,
was gathered through the Received Text,
translated exactly into English for the world,
edited providentially into a standard Edition,
and resolved in a stable and exact form.

This is not private interpretation, it is not whimsical opinion, but the belief in a precise God with an actual set of words telling exactly what we need to know. We can enter into every exact nuance of doctrine by knowing we have every jot and tittle in its right order.

Editorial

Bryan Ross finds out that a letter can change doctrine

Even though openly spoken of for many years, Bryan Ross only today discovered about the 1985 letter from Cambridge University Press when via their American office they discussed the case of the word “spirit” at 1 John 5:8.

For years I have discussed the letter in various writings on my website, and this topic was discussed by various people too, including Gail Riplinger, so it is surprising that Bryan Ross has only just found out about it.

Essentially, Cambridge University Press made a decision to reject their own editions, which had since 1629, had the word “spirit” lower case at 1 John 5:8, and further, so had Oxford’s Clarendon Press in the well known 1769 Edition.

It staggers belief that a topic discussed in openly on the internet in this space is so unknown by Bryan Ross.

In the 1985 letter, the Press claimed that the [correct] rendering of the word “spirit” is to them “a matter of some embarrasement [sic]”. What is ironic here as well is that there are all kinds of places where the King James Bible has the word “spirit” lower case.

Within a few years, Cambridge was seeking to update its printing plates, and consequently engaged David Norton to make a wholesale edit. Hindsight shows us what nature the Press was of by that stage, which is one of many reasons why the change being made in 1985 should not be accepted.

It waits to be seen what Bryan Ross will do with this new revelation, but I expect he’ll be like a chicken on a bug.

Also, by the way, in case any mistake is made, the Press was not the Queen’s Printer in 1985, they got that title in 1990. The fact is that the PCE was printed as the Queen’s Printer with the Royal Warrant to 1999, as thankfully not all printings after 1985 were immediately tampered with.

Collins was still printing the PCE in the early 2000s. It was literally in the few years right after Cambridge stopped printing the PCE that the “Pure Cambridge Edition” was identified as correct and called by that title.

(Technically, the calligraphic Gospel of John and of Matthew as currently printed by Cambridge are PCE.)

See also http://textus-receptus.com/wiki/1_John_5:8

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.

Editorial, Review

The letter J is right

The Trinitarian Bible Society released an article saying, quite rightly, that “Jehovah” is the “most accurate pronunciation of the Divine Name”.

However, that’s not quite right. “Jehovah” is not the “most accurate” it is the exact, right and proper pronunciation of God the Father’s name.

But the problem is more deeply rooted. The Trinitarian Bible Society clearly does not believe the King James Bible is the ultimate authority, nor does it seem to think it is right in Psalm 119. In that Psalm, we see the names of Hebrew letters of the Biblical Hebrew alphabet. We see these words rendered in English. We see JOD, HE and VAU. TBS unfortunately has a different view, and essentially rejects that, giving the modernist “Yod and Vav” instead of the Biblical and perfect “JOD and VAU”.

It blatantly obvious that a J is not a Y and a U is not a V. But in modernist Hebrew, changes have been made.

Although they rightly reject “Yahweh” (which is the speculative name of some near eastern mountain or sky deity known also as Yah, or Yahu who is associated with Mount Seir in Edom) the TBS strangely still mutilates Jesus’ name stating, “and the name ‘Yehoshua’ (Jesus)”. Clearly this “Yehoshua” is nonsense, and not a name to be found in the King James Bible at all.

TBS also wrongly states, “‘Jehovah’ as the English form of the Hebrew ‘Yehovah’.” This is nonsense of the highest order, seeing as we have a correct English Bible, and see the word “JOD” in Psalm 119, and yet, instead of accepting the King James Bible’s use of the word “Jehovah” on occasion, they corrupt the lettering and sounding from “J” to “Y”.

Their article on the subject acts like “YHVH” and “YeHoVaH” are entirely legitimate and correct. The problem here is that while they have rejected the false deity “Yahweh”, they still have accepted a perversion on the same of God and on proper Hebrew as presented in the King James Bible in Psalm 119, but substituting letters and sounds.

Now TBS are right to make a case against “Yahweh” but they are doing so from a ground of quicksand since they have already accepted the modernists’ ideas to replace the pure and proper “J” with “Y”.

It is true, however, that at the end of names, the “j” sound becomes an “i”, as the article does rightly state, “Many Old Testament names begin with ‘Jeho-’ … (e.g., Jehoadah, Jehoash, Jehoshaphat) or end with ‘-iah’ (e.g., Amaziah, Jeremiah)”. It’s telling that when actually talking about Bible names suddenly the Tashlan nonsense of “Y” disappears.

Yet as soon as they can do so, they revert to perversions of the name of the Saviour, saying, “The name of God in the Old Testament, Jehovah, is eminently confirmed by the name of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus, both in Hebrew (‘Yehoshua’) and in Greek (‘Iesous’), a name that has an absolutely glorious meaning: ‘Jehovah saves’.”

They do rightly show that Yahweh is a pagan deity and not Jehovah, stating, “Given that Jupiter in Latin is ‘Jove’ and the Samaritan ‘V’ are pronounced like a ‘W’, Yahweh could more accurately represent the Samaritan pronunciation of Jupiter (‘Joh-weh’), rather than the Scriptural name for God. This may indicate that the Samaritans identified their deity with Zeus or Jupiter, raising the possibility that Yahweh may reflect a corrupted or paganised form of the name.”

They also rightly show the modern invention of “Yahweh” as being in the hands of the German rationalists, critics and liberals starting from Gesenius.

The solution to the invasion of the names of Baali into the Church is the restoration of the true name of God as listed in the English Bible, the King James Bible.

“For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.” (Zephaniah 3:9).

It’s Christianity based on the King James Bible that will bring the Jews and many Christians back to the proper name of God:

EZEKIEL 36:19-23

19 And I scattered them among the heathen, and they were dispersed through the countries: according to their way and according to their doings I judged them.

20 And when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned my holy name, when they said to them, These are the people of the LORD, and are gone forth out of his land.

21 But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went.

22 Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.

23 And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.

Editorial

Protestant Bibliology as scriptural, historical and providential

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Reformation emphasised starting from the original languages and translating the Bible into the mother tongue for the common man.

The King James Bible was raised providentially as the universal standard for spreading the Gospel worldwide. Various Biblical prophecies are fulfilled in English and the King James Bible.

Protestant history shows a providential shift from reliance on Hebrew and Greek originals to authoritative English Scripture, and the KJB is now positioned to continue as the primary Bible for global Gospel progress and doctrinal unity.

INTRODUCTION

The Reformation was a movement that saw both the turning to the Hebrew and Greek for the source of translation, but also the outworking of translation in English to reach every person. Therefore, Protestant writers must be understood to be within a providential continuum where they were acting in such a way as to bring about the ultimate result of having one Bible as standard for the world.

THE SCRIPTURAL CASE

1.1

“For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.” (Isaiah 28:11).

Besides the fact that Pentecostalism has done more for spreading the Gospel into foreign nations than any other movement, and that the Pentecostal movement is primarily an English-speaking movement, this passage also points to a time when God will speak to the Jews in a language other than Hebrew.

Now this was not a prophecy of Greek, nor of the day of Pentecost which were only the start of the fulfilment, but the completion of God speaking to the Jewish people is with the English language and one standard Bible: the King James Version.

The movement of history, particularly with Protestantism, has done much in this regard, so that the Jews now have English (which is the most known and essentially global language), there is now a recognised perfect Bible as a world wide standard for the conversion of the Gentiles and the Jews, so as to fulfil the prophecies of Romans 11.

1.2

“For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.” (Zeph. 3:9).

The pure language that God would turn natural Israel to is English, specifically, the English of the Bible, to access it. And by this all can know the name of the Lord, which is JEHOVAH, not some other thing. And by having one perfect Bible, as a standard, Protestants and Jews can be together in the one true evangelical religion as based on one Bible.

1.3

“But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith:” (Rom. 16:26).

The passages of the Old Testament, conveyed formerly by the Jews, even to the Reformation, are now made known to the whole world, not in Hebrew, but in English. No nation on this Earth has a population that could access Biblical Hebrew, but more and more, all can access English.

Therefore, God has providentially raised up the King James Bible as the standard for all, and by conforming to it properly, may continue the holiness doctrine pioneered by Wesley, Finney and the early Pentecostals, that men everywhere should actually obey the truth.

1.4

The prophecy of Revelation 10 shows, in the Historicist view, a mighty angel holding a book, which represents both the preaching of the Gospel by Protestantism, and also the book for the world, ultimately being the King James Bible.

This angel’s power is felt on sea and land, and the angel’s voice is like a roaring lion — a symbol incidentally of English and the British Empire — and the fact of seven thunders, which could be said to be seven major Protestant iterations of the English Bible. After this is done, England then passed through the movement of looking ahead to the Seventh Trumpet, known as the Millenarian movement, which is the time when the English Bible is to be made universal.

Before the upcoming flood tide of the Spirit, when His outpouring brings revival to the Earth before the coming of Jesus in the air to take up His Church, we see the witness of the King James Bible reaching the nations, as it did in the 19th century for example. But in our future, we look for the increase of the King James Bible witness in all the world (from the time of the future fall of Gog) before the end come.

THE TRANSLATORS

2.1

“If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” — William Tyndale.

William Tyndale was the first Protestant translator of the Bible into English. He did not expect the population of England to learn or know Greek or Hebrew. They were going to know the Bible in English, and this is exactly what happened.

2.2

Many lengthy quotes can be given from the makers of the King James Bible. The prefatory materials — The Translators to the Reader and The Epistle Dedicatory — offer rich insights into why translating the Bible into English was not only necessary but a duty in line with divine providence. They argue for clear, accessible Scripture for the English-speaking people, affirming the value and sacredness of the English language in carrying God’s Word.

“For when Your Highness had once out of deep judgment apprehended how convenient it was, that out of the Original Sacred Tongues… there should be one more exact Translation of the holy Scriptures into the English Tongue…”

2.3

They expressed their concern for the spiritual welfare of all, showing that without Scripture in their own tongue, many would be deprived of the ability to meditate on and apply God’s Word:

“But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.”

Here, the translators highlighted that Scripture was meant to be understood by all people in English, not confined to scholars who knew the original languages.

They further illustrated the plight of those who could not read Latin or Greek, describing them as at a deep well without a bucket to draw water:

“Indeed without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deep) without a bucket or something to draw with: or as that person mentioned by Esay, to whom when a sealed book was delivered with this motion, Read this, I pray thee, he was fain to make this answer, I cannot, for it is sealed.”

This metaphor underscored the translators’ conviction that English translation brought spiritual nourishment to those otherwise shut out from the Word.

2.4

By citing previous translators, they affirmed the legitimacy and necessity of English Scripture, situating the KJB as a faithful continuation of this important tradition.

The translators also emphasised their commitment to faithful translation from the original Hebrew and Greek texts, striving for accuracy and clarity.

Quite lengthy quotes can be garnered from their works illustrating these points, but here the reader is admonished to do their own reading.

THE THEOLOGIANS

3.1

The Westminster Confession spoke of the authenticity and appeal to the original languages, but then made this important elaboration, “But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God who have right unto, and interest in, the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner, and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope.”

Thus, they endorsed the Scripture being translated and that the common people, indeed all people, could access the Scripture by translation.

Therefore ALL controversies of religion today may be resolved by the English translation which represents in English the original languages, being the KJB.

3.2

John Selden wrote that, “The English Translation of the Bible, is the best translation in the world, and renders the sense of the original best, taking in for the English Translation, the Bishops’ Bible, as well as King James’. The translation in King James’ time took an excellent way.”

Having established that the King James Bible is the best translation in the world, Selden then explained “the Bible is rather translated into English words, than into English phrase. The Hebraisms are kept, and the phrase of that Language is kept.” Meaning that the King James Bible represents the ideas of the Hebrew the best.

3.3

Selden moved onto talking about Jesus’ command to search the Scriptures, saying “Scrutamini Scripturas. These two words have undone the world, because Christ spake it to his disciples, therefore we must all, men, women and children, read and interpret the Scripture.” And even English kings allowed, by degrees, everyone to read and interpret the scriptures.

Therefore, the Scripture truly is destined to every man, young, old, male, female, servant, etc.

THE CASE

We therefore see the providential continuum, from the Reformation to today. The logical extension of the Reformation men and Puritans is that the true nature of Protestantism is to put emphasis onto perfect Scripture in English.

We must therefore be loosed of the chains of this Hebrew and Greek in primacy, as the King James Bible was translated from the originals and has been checked for over 400 years, now bringing the Word of God to the ears, eyes and hands of everyone in every place.

There is a providential process to shift the focus of Scripture from the originals to the English. And as the Puritans were pro-translation. Cromwell’s commanded the printing of the King James Bible (not the Geneva Version), and there was no enforcing of the Hebrew and Greek, and Brian Walton’s London Polyglot certainly was not a best seller for every home in the country.

We are therefore able to observe the process of providence where we observe the shift through Protestant history from the originals to the Word of God in English in authority. The providential shift already evident in the Westminster Confession of Faith. They clearly did allow that the Word of God in English would be the authority.

In times past there were learned men who knew Hebrew and Greek, but that has been effectively left behind. By the time of Granville Sharp, we can see in practice how going to the original languages was now becoming evidentially contrary to providence, and now that process has entered into completion.

If any today are insisting on, or deferring to the Hebrew and Greek, then they are bucking against providence.

CONCLUSION

As the Reformation was about getting the truth to every man, the King James Version, represents the providential theological standard for the progress of proper doctrinal understanding within Protestantism.

Into the future, as the Gospel must reach every nation, and make its progress around the world, the King James Bible is in the prime position to serve as a doctrinal and cultural standard for Christianity with its ongoing authority and spiritual power.

Editorial

Protestant Bibliology and the King James Bible

Executive Summary

Protestant Bibliology is the belief that God’s Word has been divinely inspired, preserved and made accessible for all people in their own language. In light of English being a global language, the King James Bible (KJB) fulfils the Reformation vision that Scripture must reach every nation, aligning with the Westminster Confession’s teaching that the Bible should be available in the “vulgar language”.

Some core principles of Protestant Bibliology: (1) God has preserved His Word through the continual use of believers; (2) Scripture is revealed in a know language today (English); (3) Modern scholarship with the original languages promotes doubt through subjective lexicons and unresolved textual criticism; (4) The Bible is for all including the common man; (5) Christians have always used translations; (6) Inspired Scripture must not be lost but be present; (7) Scripture should be received, not dominated over with naturalistic reasoning; (8) Scripture is spiritually discerned rather than by mere human expertise and (9) The KJB provides unity and certainty as a singular authority amid the confusion of modern versions.

In addressing Textus Receptus onlyism and Confessional Bibliology, while both affirm preservation, they fall short of the Reformation principle that translation itself is a divinely intended means of preservation and proclamation. The KJB exemplifies this by faithfully rendering God’s Word into the global language of English with doctrinal soundness and textual integrity.

Introduction

The command of the Gospel is that it is destined to all nations. The Kingdom of God is reaching everyone everywhere, to young, old, female, employees (see Acts 2:17, 18). The promise of the Spirit of God is to be pervasive. And the Bible is to reach every corner, every home, every last outpost, because the Scripture states, “But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26).

It means that the Word of God must be in the hands and hearts and mouths of all God’s people (see Deut. 30:14). It means that the words of God, the Scriptures, are going to the nations, that they know the Scriptures, and that there is a response to the Scripture, which is obedience.

This is why the Reformers were all in favour of translating the Scripture into the mother tongue. We can point to the great success the Scripture has had in English. This would not have been possible if the Scripture was not translated.

Protestant Bibliology

Let us consider some principles of Protestant Bibliology.

  • The Scripture is at hand

God’s preservation of Scripture means that believers have had access to the Scripture, and it means that the Scripture was in use by believers. God’s promises are to speak to His people (see Isaiah 28:11) and this means that the Scripture would clearly be at hand.

Now the Scripture was first given in Hebrew and Greek, but since those languages are not well known, but English is a global language, it follows that people are able to access the Scripture in English.

It is counter to this idea that archaeology, textual criticism and other sciences would have to be employed to try to recover the Scripture. Either God has given, and given to us, the Scripture, or we must rely on a few intrepid explorers to try to work out new modern versions.

We are to choose between the Church’s general use of the Textus Receptus (TR) tradition, or else await the discoveries of a handful of Greek scholars, as they ransack manuscripts and try to recover the original text (which they admit they cannot achieve).

  • The Scripture is in a known language

As simple as it seems, the reality is that God spoke the language of the Hebrews and of the Greeks which was their common tongue. God’s pattern is to use the vernacular. Thus, the world, which is speaking English more and more, has a particular Bible designed for it: the King James Bible.

To turn back to the Hebrew and Greek would be turning away from God’s flow of providence. The world does not speak or know the original languages. Therefore, it is only proper, in God’s plan to get the Gospel to the nations, to ride the floodtide of English.

  • The original languages are uncertain

Building on the fact that the original languages are really akin to dead languages, it means they are “unknown tongues”. They are foreign to the average Christian and to the world.

The greater problems arise with all the opinions of rabbis and modern lexicons as to what words mean. The reality is that studying the original languages itself, particularly Hebrew, is an exercise in modern subjectivism. The tools as made by modernists do not have a believing view of God’s provision, and are therefore leaning on the post-Enlightenment “arm of flesh” (see 2 Chron. 32:8).

In practical terms, people are being forced to choose between the time honoured King James Bible or the multiple choice options of modernist lexicons, and therefore varying to the King James Bible.

The lexicons (and textual apparatuses) claim they are made “neutrally”, which means, made without either deference to Christian doctrine/tradition, or even to the existence of God Himself. That is, the modern lexicons attempt to give the translator (and interpreter) options from which to choose from, as if God has nothing to do with the whole history and process, and that it is now up to the art and science of the modern translator or interpreter.

This gives rise to the problem of private interpretation (see 2 Peter 1:20) and dissenting works: “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.” (1 Cor. 14:33).

  • The Bible is for the common man

The Scripture is meant for all people, not just a special educated class that know the original languages.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” (Psalm 19:7). What is wise in Scripture is made understandable, which means it has to be accessible by people speaking the common language, not locked with special meanings in Hebrew and Greek.

Since God wants to get His words into the mouths of the young, it makes sense that it is in English.

  • Christians traditionally used translations

Whether the Septuagint, the Vulgate or any number of Reformation translations, Christians have long accessed God’s words in languages other than the original ones.

The Reformation, indeed the lengthy Preface “To the Reader” in the front of the King James Bible, makes a strong and powerful case that the Scripture should be translated and should be in English. The fact of centuries of English Bible usage, and that we still use the King James Bible every Sunday at Church testifies of the fact of the liturgical use of translation, let alone every man’s devotional use.

  • The inspired Scripture must be present

Very often people make doctrinal declarations that the original autographs were made by inspiration. That’s true, but those inspired words are not lost in time. Furthermore, as even the Westminster Confession of Faith recognised, the Scripture is present today in translation.

The same inspired words, message and meaning is present in our King James Bible, as it was in the beginning. God’s counsel stands and so what He declared from ancient times still stands today (see Isaiah 46:10).

  • The Scripture should be received not dominated

When a new Christian accepts the King James Bible with childlike simplicity, this is very different from the attitude of those who want to present themselves as those who know better, who want to tell everyone what the Greek or Hebrew really says or means.

Our authority should be every word of God, and we should not be adding or taking away from that (see Proverbs 30:5, 6). The proper attitude is to receive the truth as given by God, not essentially tell God and others what he allegedly “really” meant.

  • The spiritual nature of Scripture

It is ultimately the role of the Holy Ghost, not the Greek scholar, to reveal the truth of Scripture. Illumination is first spiritual, and often theological academia centres on the natural and the human.

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:14).

The Holy Ghost guides into all truth (see John 16:13), and therefore the entire body of post-Enlightenment scholarship with their wrestling about the original languages can be bypassed for the certainty God has provided in English.

  • Singular authority

The subjectivity, multiplicity, uncertainty and ongoing unsettled state of modernist original language studies stands in contrast to the objectivity, singularity, certainty and finality of the Scripture in English.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” (1 Cor. 1:10).

Having the King James Bible as the true foundation of unity for Christianity is so much better than the speculations, unbelieving utterances and divided opinions concerning the unsettled original languages.

Bringing it together

The King James Bible stands as the final, preserved and inspired word of God for entire church in the world. Of course, while not everyone speaks English, those who can, who are many, should align to the King James Bible. This makes it potentially needless and even dangerous to appeal to the original languages.

At the heart of Protestant Bibliology is the holistic understanding of the authority and preservation of Scripture that does not confine God’s Word solely to the original Hebrew and Greek languages. Rather, as the Westminster Confession of Faith affirms, the Scriptures “are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner, and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope” (WCF 1.8).

The purpose of divine preservation is thus inherently missional and translational: “I will make known my words unto you” (Proverbs 1:23b).

The King James Version (KJB) stands as a monumental witness to this principle. It is not merely a literary masterpiece but a faithful translation that has conveyed the doctrine and text of Scripture into the English vernacular for over four centuries. The enduring legacy of the KJB reveals the profound Reformation truth that God’s Word is preserved not only in the original tongues but in faithful translations that make the gospel accessible to all peoples.

The Textus Receptus

The Textus Receptus (TR), as a tradition, is indeed very good. However, all TR editions differ to each other, and there is not one singular perfect standard of it. The KJB’s strength lies not on some perfect Greek manuscript, but in its faithful selection of textual variants and its careful, doctrinally sound translation. No extant Greek manuscript or printed edition perfectly preserves the autographs by itself. Whereas the KJV translators made prudent textual decisions grounded in the best tradition, producing a text that is intelligible, powerful and faithful to biblical truth. It in fact can be said to convey the Scripture fully and exactly in English.

The KJB exemplifies the Reformation principle that preservation leads to proclamation, and proclamation requires translation. As Psalm 119:130 states, “The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” The Scriptures must not be confined to an elite who read Hebrew or Greek but must be made accessible to all believers in their own language (see Deuteronomy 31:11-13).

Confessional Bibliology

Confessional Bibliology begins with the recognition of Authoritas Divina Duplex. This means the twofold divine authority of Scripture, first, the authority of divine doctrine, the revealed truth of God; and second, the authority of the written text, the form in which that truth is preserved and transmitted. Unfortunately, it seems to insist on the continuing primacy of the original languages.

The reality is that both are preserved by God’s providence (Psalm 12:6-7), yet neither is restricted to any one manuscript or even the original languages alone. The Bible is not preserved merely as a museum artifact of Hebrew and Greek words but as a living word, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.

The Westminster Confession clarifies that since the original languages “are not known to all the people of God,” the Scriptures “are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation.” This affirms that divine preservation includes faithful translation, ensuring the Word “dwelling plentifully in all” so that believers may worship God “in an acceptable manner” (WCF 1.8).

Protestant Bibliology upholds the King James Bible

Both TR Onlyism and Confessional Bibliology misunderstand the position of Protestant Bibliology which came out of the Reformation. The Reformers defended the primacy of original languages against the Latin Vulgate but never insisted on elevating one Greek edition to perfection. They understood that God’s providence preserved His Word through a history of textual transmission and faithful translation, for the sake of all men.

Ultimately, Protestant Bibliology upholds the King James Bible as a perfect text and as a faithful translation that fulfils the divine purpose of Scripture’s preservation: that God’s words be made known to His people in their own language. “I will make known my words unto you” (Proverbs 1:23b) is not simply a promise of divine revelation but a mission for the church to proclaim and translate God’s Word.

Psalm 68:11 declares, “The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.” The preservation of Scripture is thus inherently tied to its proclamation and translation, ensuring that “the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all” (WCF 1.8) is a living reality in every language and culture.

Conclusion

The King James Bible is the ultimate expression of Protestant Bibliology. It upholds both the preservation of doctrine and text and the essential role of translation in making God’s Word accessible. It stands against the restrictive views of TR Onlyism and Confessional Bibliology by affirming that Scripture’s divine perfection extends beyond the original languages into the global language.

As Isaiah 55:11 reminds us, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” Through faithful translation and proclamation, God’s Word accomplishes His purpose for all everywhere.

Editorial, General

The Biblical and Protestant Affirmation of the Sufficiency of the English Bible

Introduction

Are you a person who wants to believe God’s truth is for us today in the Scripture?

Our discussion is about translation and interpretation.

The question is whether the Bible has come into English as a proper translation. Can we rely on it as it is in English?

And the other question is can we interpret the Scripture properly as we read it, or do we need to make recourse to the original languages?

Truth revealed

God has not only inspired His Word but also preserved it for His people in a form they can understand. Therefore, the translations in English grounded in the Protestant tradition — the King James Version — is trustworthy and fully sufficient for understanding and obeying the Scriptures. The modern practice of appealing to Hebrew and Greek meanings derived from modern lexicons to reinterpret Scripture often undermines the clarity, authority and Scriptural promise of the provision of God’s Word.

The Scripture is present in English

“The words of the LORD are pure words… Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” (Psalm 12:6, 7).

“But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” (Romans 16:26).

These verses teach that God’s truth is to be preserved and present for us today, and as these words are made known to all nations, it implies that the English translation must be central to this accessibility.

If recourse must be made today to Hebrew or Greek words, to continually correct, expand or somehow bring out more or deeper meanings, then God has failed, for He would have kept hidden aspects of His words and not be manifesting them or His message properly to the nations (e.g. in English).

The Bible must be rightly understood, and be able to be made known to all, so God is promising access, which means it must all be sufficient and clear or interpretable in English.

The Clarity and Sufficiency of Translated Scripture

The Protestant Reformers championed the doctrine of the primacy of Scripture, that is the final authority in matters of faith and practice. But this conviction was built upon another vital doctrine: the clarity and sufficiency of the Scripture. That is, that the Scripture has perspicuity or clarity.

Now, we know that there are hard sayings in Scripture, or things difficult to know. But to get that knowledge means the requirement to connect to the Holy Ghost, to study and to gain understanding.

“A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.” (Proverbs 1:5, 6).

How are we to study Scripture, except that we have it, which means of course we have it in translation.

William Tyndale famously said he would cause the ploughboy to know more of Scripture than the priest. The Bible was never intended to be the domain of scholars alone. It is for the people and God ensured it would be understandable in their own language.

“The holy scriptures… are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:15).

This clarity does not depend on technical knowledge of biblical languages but on the faithful translation and illumination of the Holy Ghost.

The Danger of Modern Lexicon-Based Interpretation

In modern practice, it is common for Bible readers and teachers to appeal to Hebrew or Greek “word meanings” using lexicons (e.g. Strongs, Vines, Thayers, BDAG, etc.) to reinterpret or challenge what has already come to us in our correct English Bible.

God has worked with the Reformers and the KJB men and the Protestants and believers to have a great tradition of upholding the rightness of the KJB. To have that as a standard then means we cannot allow an intervening standard to that necessarily challenges it or starts from a different foundation.

The approach of the modern lexicons and their makers is:

  • Inconsistent with believing Protestantism, since lexicons are compiled by scholars with varying theological presuppositions, often shaped by modernist or critical methodologies.
  • Subjective, because unlike the traditional and accepted translations of the KJB, modern users are given a selection of various options and told that ancient languages don’t translate nicely and so they have to use their own modern day human judgment to decide whatever context-sensitive meanings means that they think are best, often allowing them to change meanings to suit the bias of the interpreter.
  • Undermining the manifest truth, because it subtly tells the average believer that the historical and present standard of the English Bible is insufficient, and that God apparently has a special hidden truth only decipherable by specialists.

This creates a functional priesthood of scholars, the very thing the Reformation sought to dismantle.

“Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” (1 Peter 1:20).

Confidence in God’s Providence and the English Bible

To trust the English Bible is not to disregard the original languages, but to affirm that God has been faithful in preserving His Word through translation, just as He promised.

Think about the old Protestant position of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and what it says about our relying upon translation:

“But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have a right unto, and interest in, the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come; that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner, and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope.”

Notice that the Puritans, who were the greatest sticklers for truth, claimed here that the Scripture for doctrine, use and comfort was in English. They rightly acted as if the Scripture was fully in English.

The King James Bible, in particular, was produced by godly scholars with reverence for the Scripture, with unparalleled skill in the original languages and deep theological commitment. It stands as a high point in the providential preservation of Scripture in English.

We do not need to revisit the foundations with every new generation of scholars. Instead, we should stand on the work God has already done, and honour the Spirit-led tradition He has used to preserve His Word for the English-speaking world.

Thus, we do not need to go to the Hebrew or Greek and claim some varying concepts to whatever is already overtly stated in English.

A Call to Confidence and Simplicity

The believer does not need to look beyond their English Bible to know what God has said.

We must reject the creeping idea that truth is hidden in linguistic complexity or scholarly authority. Instead, we affirm with the Reformers and with Scripture itself:

  • That God has spoken clearly,
  • That His Word is preserved faithfully,
  • And that the English Bible is sufficient for life, doctrine and godliness.

“The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” (Psalm 119:130).

Pure Cambridge Edition of the KJB!