26. King James Onlyism Part 5: Refuting Arguments w/ Bryan Townsend

And here we go. This is the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring to light the legalism and abuse in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. And to encourage believers to grow in grace through the scriptures. Now here's your host, John Holyfield. And we're back at the For Freedom Podcast. Welcome back, everybody. And it's good to be back in the chairs again. And welcome my co-host, James. How are you doing, James? I'm doing pretty good, man. How are you today? Doing great. Doing great, actually. It's been a crazy week already. And so looking forward to this coming Sunday and Lord's Day, worshiping the Lord with our people. But, you know, we're going to skip a lot of things that we normally do because we have a lot prepared for today. We're going to go right ahead and get right into it. But before we start analyzing the material that we have today, I want to welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. One of our guests, Brian Townsend. Welcome, Brian. Hey, James. Hey, John. Thank you all for having me on today. Yeah, man. Absolutely. Brian was one of our favorite guests that we had right at the beginning of the podcast. And so it's good to have him back on. And so, James, why don't you tell everybody what we're going to be doing while Brian's on with us today? Yeah, well, we thought that this material was so deep we had to bring an expert scholar in. And so we searched around high and low. And the Lord just led him to our way for him to help us today. We're actually going to be – you may have heard of this podcast. You may not have. It's called I Believe the Book. There are three episodes in. And this last episode they did that dropped last week, they began to talk about preservation, inspiration, and why the King James is the only book that we can believe. Not just the Bible, but the only book. And so we've asked Brian to come on, and we've got 14 clips that we've picked out of this podcast. It was – the actual content was only about 14 minutes long. They had the opening part where they just talked through some stuff, just some intro, and then about 14 minutes of actual theological, really getting deep in the situation here. And so we're going to take those 14 minutes, and we're going to go even deeper to talk about some of these issues that they brought up. And it goes along with what we've been talking about these last four weeks. Right, John? Yes. So we've been in a series on the King James only-ism. So we covered the history of the English Bible. We covered the history of the movement itself. Where did King James only-ism begin and start, and who are its main proponents up to today? And so now we wanted to get into the argument, and we felt like this just released, and so this would be a good way to sort of get into the argument by looking at a fresh perspective of those that are claiming some of these things with King James only-ism. Brian, do you have any thoughts before we jump into it? Yeah, to begin with, the fact that you looked for a scholar and came to me shows how few options you really have. And second, let's just rip the Band-Aid off and get into it. Okay. And you'll understand what it means by rip the Band-Aid off once you start hearing what's being said here. So we're going to start with the beginning of this, and we're sort of – the progression is actually going to go sort of along with the progression of their conversation. And so, James, why don't you go ahead and get us started? Well, when you asked me to do this, I wanted to piggyback off the idea of I Believe the Book, but the book in my hand, you know, the book that I'm holding. Specifically. Yes, and the concept that's being propagated today is that we can only trust in the originals or at the very least the original languages. Okay, so we can only trust in the originals. First of all, I want to ask you two guys, is that our position? Do we tell people we can only trust in the originals? Can you trust in English translation? Yes. Absolutely. We don't say that. That is not the position that anybody that is not King James only is saying that we cannot trust an English translation or trust the originals. Okay? Brian, why don't you further elaborate on that? I don't have much to add here, John. Most of my stuff was clips few down, but as far as trusting the originals, I mean, yes, we trust the originals, but, you know, I think one of the things that is confused is people say that people like us that are not King James only don't believe in preservation. I think that they muddy the waters when they say what we believe about preservation, when that's just not true. I believe the doctrine of preservation as it relates to God's word, certainly. Yeah, and I think when we get down to it in a little bit, and I'll say it again, I think they misconstrue the concept of preservation and inspiration. Very much. They're taking both stances and they're putting them together. It cannot be preserved if it's not inspired. Yeah. And if it's not inspired, if the King James is not inspired, then it's not preserved. They almost interchange those two words, and I don't think they should. I think it's a poor, if they're talking about translation, it's a poor translation of the word preservation and inspiration. Certainly. But, yeah, you know, the originals, I go to them when I need to, but if I can understand what the Bible is saying and I understand it pretty clearly, then I trust the English version. So I think that's the very first opening argument. I think it's pretty poor. All right, James, go ahead with the next one. And so you don't mean you have this idea that you must trust in the originals and that a translation is not good enough. A translation is not good enough. Again, that is not what anybody on the other side, or let me just speak for us, that's not what we're saying. What we deny is that the translation from either the Greek or the Hebrew into the English language, which was done way before 1611 in the King James, was actually the work of inspiration was done. And that sort of goes along like with what James just got through saying. Yes, I agree, John. All right. Yes, I agree. Okay, let's go ahead and go to the next clip. All right, this clip is a little bit longer, and so just bear with us as we play it. But in Acts chapter 9, verses 5 and 6, the Bible says, And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. Now, over in Acts chapter 26, Paul repeats this story in verse number 14 as he's before King Agrippa. Go ahead. And it says, verse 14, And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me and saying in the Hebrew tongue. Now, that's very important. Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. All right. So here he tries to give – and I'll be honest with you guys. I've been looking into this work of King James onlyism. It's actually been a hobby horse of mine. I read a book on it every year and translation issues. This is the first time I have ever heard that type of, if you want to call it, argumentation used. I have never heard this before, and it's an attempt to try to say – again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what inspiration is. The fact that God spoke to Saul on the Damascus rose during Saul's conversion in Acts chapter 9 in Hebrew, I guess he's claiming that that was inspiration, which – I'm sorry. That was not inspiration. Inspiration was the work that was done when Luke took pen to paper or papyrus and started writing things down. So I'm a little bit – Yes. That's one of those things that puts your jaw on the floor when you hear, like, what? So the King James translators had this high view of translation, but really even the apostles did. So Matthew, historical records tell us – Papyrus, I guess is how you say his name. We'll go with that. The problem is I read a lot, but nobody tells me how to say these things. But Papyrus, between 150 to 170 A.D. said that Matthew composed the words in the Hebrew dialect and each translated as he was able. Irenaeus in 170 A.D. said the exact same thing, that Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect. All right. Yeah. Can I comment here? Go ahead. Okay. So I looked up, you know, Papyrus, early church father, yes, did make a quote about how Matthew made an epistle in Hebrew to the Hebrews. Or not an epistle, a gospel. But here's the thing that we – if you look this up among scholarship, it is very debated and even these days discounted that the theory that Matthew wrote in Hebrew was translated to Greek. Here's a quote. So there may have been something, certainly, but to draw the connection that Matthew wrote a gospel in Hebrew or something – I mean, there are people think that this gospel was lost. It was outside of the Matthew gospel that he originally wrote. But, for example, here's something that – here's a quote by a guy named Matthew Pfeiffer who's speaking about why it's very likely that Matthew's gospel was not written in Hebrew and translated into Greek. He said this, Matthew Pfeiffer, Yet our Greek text does not bear the marks of a translation. And the absence of any trace of an Aramaic original casts great doubts upon this hypothesis. Okay. So you guys help me with this. It says our Greek text does not bear the marks of a translation. Let me ask you a question. When we read, let's just say the King James Version is a translation. Now let me ask you a question. Does it bear the marks of a translation? Yes. Yeah. Okay. There's italicized words, verbs, you know, things that tell us this is a translation of something. It bears the marks of it. You know, so word order, syntax, things that, you know, we in translation – you know, if you translated the Greek literally into English, there would be whole sentences that don't even make sense. Yeah. Things that have to be rearranged and reordered and edited. Well, the same would be true of Matthew. And scholarly textual critics look at this issue. And say there's no evidence, as we look at Matthew's gospel in the Greek, to say that it was translated from anything. And, you know, there's no trace of any Aramaic original cast that this is – and so what I'm getting at, to make the statement that Papias said this and said that Matthew was definitely first written in Hebrew, that's lunacy. You cannot say and automatically connect those dots. It means something that Papias wrote that, but it doesn't definitely mean that Matthew first wrote his gospel in Hebrew. You can't dogmatically say that. No. And when you – they go to this whole thing of – they pull these words out that I – like I said, when, John, I was the same beau as you are, when I first heard this, I was blown away that they were going to take these steps. Because the basic understanding of inspiration is God breathed, man wrote. And so that's just your basic definition. So God breathed these words. Man wrote it down. That was the inspiration. And they're taking it a step further and saying, well, you know, we're translating it, and so now it's not – God's words weren't even inspired when he said them. Yeah. So. Go ahead and play – I got some comments about the inspiration, but I think that'll go before we get ahead of ourselves. Go ahead and play the next clip, and then I'll talk more about the inspiration thing. The problem here for those who would say that a translation is not a good source or not good enough – or let's clarify that their argument would ultimately be a translation cannot be inspired. Right. The originals are inspired, but we need to stop arguing over whether or not the King James is inspired because a translation could not be inspired. That's the argument. That is the argument. Now deal with it on this text. Okay. So actually Shirley says – Tony Shirley says that we say that a translation cannot inspire – cannot be inspired. His wording there that we would say that a translation cannot be inspired, I don't know if that would actually be honest as well because it's not that we're saying it cannot. We're saying that basically from all the evidence and from the way the Bible has been given to us by God, it is not. It is – it just – that's not how it has happened. Could God do anything he wanted? Absolutely. Absolutely. But that is not how it came. Now the word inspiration that we talk about when we talk about this doctrine of inspiration comes to us from 1 Timothy. I always get that confused whether it's 1 Timothy. 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy. Chapter 3 where he says all scripture is given by inspiration. Now the underlying Greek word for that is theopneustos. Theopneustos. And it really means breathed out, sort of like – and this is going to sound funny coming through the microphone, but sort of like the understanding of like an exhale. Honestly, and I'm not trying to be like – I am not a scholar by any means. I have read extensively on this. That's all about Brian on here, John. Right, right. We need a scholar. Right. Come down to this. The – probably – and I know I'm going to get crucified for this, but probably a better word that could have been used with understanding this doctrine would not have been inspiration but expiration. Meaning that God – he breathed out those words. And I think that a good illustration of this is how the book of Genesis describes Adam or man being created. It says that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Just as that's how the process came of creating man is the understanding of how he created his word given to us. It is breathed out by God to the human author. And then you go to 1 Peter 1, 20 and 21, and it talks about holy men of God being moved along by the Holy Spirit. And so there's – God used men to pen these words to paper and did not overtake their faculties. You still have the human personalities coming through. It's not what's called mechanical dictation, okay, which is actually the Islamic view of their inspiration where it's just the person becomes a robot and is now writing exactly what they're supposed to. That's not how we view it at all because the personalities and the writing styles of Luke comes through, of Paul comes through. And so we understand how John comes through, but the words that actually were penned were the words that God wanted wrote down, and that's the work of inspiration. And so if you're looking at a systematic theology, our view of inspiration, the orthodox view of inspiration is called verbal plenary inspiration, basically meaning verbal, the words, plenary, all the words were given by God, inspiration. And that's where I'll hand it over to you guys. Can I go, James? Yeah, go ahead, man. All right, so inspiration, I think, in this conversation about the King James, is it duly inspired? Does the translation – does the inspiration become lost if it goes from an original language to a receptor? You know, here's what inspiration was. So you guys remember when you open up an epistle and it says Paul and Timothy or Paul and this? And how many of you remember at the end when Paul would say and he would reference how someone has written this letter for him? So here's the scene of inspiration. Inspiration was a process. So like when Paul sits down to write Romans, I think so many people have this misconception that Paul is in a cave and God is speaking, oh, you know, and God is – it's this spooky thing where he's receiving revelation and writing. These books took great effort. They were often collaborative. They were teams of people working on them. These were not just, I'm going to sit down and write until I'm finished. I mean, these were deep, thought-out, meticulous processes that teams of people contributed to. They carefully thought about what word to insert, what word would convey the best meaning. And they would even use like an ominousis in the New Testament times, or we would probably better ascribe or someone that was dictating, that was a professional writer that would – that had the ability. So Paul was a theologian, but that doesn't mean that Paul was some gifted writer. So many times Paul and his team are giving the gist of what they want to say, and they are hiring a professional ominousis. It's a thing that was a professional writer that would say, here's how to best convey that idea. And so you'll see references to that all through the New Testament. They're projects. They're collaborative. They were these great issues. And in that process, I believe inspiration was a part of that process. You know, certainly that's how the New Testament was written and put together. And so when we think about inspiration, is the King James inspired? I think you have to say the King James was – came from inspired writings. I certainly think you have to have that. But to say that it is – the King James was not inspired – I mean, double inspiration is crazy. Okay? You know, like, inspiration fundamentally was a group project that took great amounts of time and thought. And it was not Paul sitting and writing for – it wasn't some spooky thing. But when you read Luke's accounts, Luke talks about how he did research and orderly accounts and the things that he's putting in order. I mean, they were researched. They were thought out. Mark, his gospel, he received his information from Peter. You know, Mark wasn't there. You know, he's receiving this. Luke was not an eyewitness. He's receiving this from Paul. Matthew and John were both eyewitnesses. But you go through and you read, you know, these experiences. And it was a process, not a one-off thing where God sat a man down for seven hours or 15 days and he didn't come out. It wasn't like that. It's not this spooky experience that we make it out to be. And I think that even saying that translations can't be understood, you are fundamentally misunderstanding the doctrine of inspiration. Yeah. And we'll get more of the doctrine later when he makes a couple of statements. Let's go ahead and play this next clip. It's the fifth one. And listen to this. So the issue or what we're having revealed to us here is that Jesus did originally speak these words in the Hebrew tongue. Says it plainly. Right. But when Luke wrote these words down, he wrote them in Greek. So they were already translated. They were already translated. There is no manuscript of Acts that records the words of Jesus in Hebrew. Not one. So if you use their logic, then you would be able to say that these few words that the Lord spoke in Hebrew, because they were recorded in Greek, were not inspired. Even in the originals, because they had already been translated from one language to another. Right. Yeah. Which was inspired? And we certainly know they are inspired, these words. Certainly. The words of the Lord himself. John, you look like you have the biggest headache right now. You can really speak first. Yeah. Somebody else go first. James, my brain cells are dead. You go first. Listen, when I listen to these clips, and I had to go through them several times to clip them out. I was telling the guys earlier, I would listen to a little bit. I would get up out of my chair and walk down the hallways, take some breaths, come back and have to clip them again, because it was just so frustrating. But when he says that Jesus' words were not inspired, and he makes this statement that because his words were translated, they weren't inspired, we're not talking about Jesus' words here. We're talking about the Bible. We're talking about what was actually pinned down. And what was pinned down in that moment was inspired. And then God says that he's going to preserve those words. Yeah. He's going to allow those words to be preserved from generation to generation to generation. And that's why we have the Bible in our language. That's why we have the Bible in Russian and Chinese and Spanish and Latin. We have these because God preserved them. And so for him to say that our definition of inspiration goes back to say that Jesus' words aren't inspired is total heresy. It really is. Hey, James. Go ahead, Brian. When God said before man existed, let there be light, was he speaking in Hebrew? He probably was. So we don't know what language God originally spoke. No. But to say, well, Genesis 1 is God spoke. There's so many things we don't know. We know when Moses wrote Genesis, he wrote it in Hebrew. And that was inspired. You know, so like there's strong argumentation to say that in Jesus' lifetime, Aramaic was the common tongue of the Jewish people because they didn't know Hebrew. And so is it possible that some of these occurrences in the disciples' early lives was not in Koine Greek or Hebrew? You know, there's so much that we, I mean, this is, of all the gymnastics I have seen made to make this argument, I think this is the top of the pile. Yeah. Yeah. And John, are you awake yet? Yeah. She might. Yeah. So. Okay. So God talking to Paul. Take a breath, John. Take a breath. God talking to Saul on the road to Damascus. Now, it's revealed to us, like Brian was just saying, we don't know. There's certain things that aren't revealed to us of what language somebody was speaking that were given to in either Hebrew or Koine Greek, whether it's Old Testament or New Testament. God speaking to Saul on the Damascus road, it is revealed to us in the book of Acts, as that verse speaks of, that God was speaking to them in the Hebrew language. God speaking to Saul is not inspiration. God speaking to Saul on the Damascus road is divine speaking to an individual. It's him talking to an individual. It's him revealing information to Saul. Luke pinning this, this account of whether it's Paul in Acts 9 or Acts 26, Luke pinning that is the act of inspiration. All right. This next argument. I didn't pull the audio of this because it was a very lengthy audio, and we've got a lot to cover today. And so what it goes through is it talks about the book of Jeremiah and how Jeremiah's first book was destroyed. It says the second book was thrown into a river, and therefore we have a translation of the book of Jeremiah. And they take this argument and they say, well, is the book of Jeremiah even inspired? Is it even, this is where they start jumping through these hurdles of preservation inspiration. And so, Brian, what's your thoughts on that? Gymnastics, to be blunt. I mean, we can only build doctrine on the Bible when it speaks of preservation. That's the only time you can build preservation. And to go to Jeremiah and talk about this was thrown in a river, this was burned, so we have a translation of that. And then Matthew spoke in Hebrew, and then that was translated, and this happened. I mean, all of these things are, at best, small likely. It's not even possible to say, I mean, they're being dogmatic and saying these things happened. When you can't look at any of these arguments with certainty and say it went down like this. There's no, it's, it's, I could, yeah, it comes down to this. I think whenever you craft a position, such as King James onlyism, based off of evidence of your own making, then therefore it is not too far of a stone's throw to continue to make up evidence. I'm going to ask a question here, and this is off topic, but the Trail of Blood doesn't even have a footnote in it, does it? No. You know, what do you call a book without a footnote? An opinion. That's basically, like, when we, when we covered the whole thoughts on the history of the King James only movement. I mean, these arguments began that way. Yeah. Whether it's the Seventh-day Adventist Benjamin Wilkerson in the 30s that did it, or Peter Ruckman's first book. Yeah. All right, James, let's move to the next one. All right, clip number six. The King James translators wrote, Translation, it is that openeth the window to let in the light, that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel, that puteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place, that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water. So the King James translators had this high view of translation. That is exactly right. The King James. Before, James, you do that, I just want to read, like, okay, so their position is from what that clip's saying, because this is going to be completely debunked right here. I mean, this is not even going to be funny. Their position is that the King James translators were open to a position of translation being inspired. You're correct. Okay, James, take it away. All right, so I printed off the preface to the King James, because they quoted it. They said that translation is the, that opens the window to let the light, that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel, that puts aside the curtain, that we may break into the holy place, that removes the cover of the wall, that we may come by the water. They stopped there. And if you go down just a couple more lines, it says, But we desire that Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even by the very vulgar language. And so they have this view of translations, and they continue the translations. And so I'm going to read a couple of highlights. We'll talk through them real quick. But this one says that they acknowledge that those who were questioning the need for revision of the Bible. So even at this time in 1611, people were saying, Why are we revising it? We've got these other versions. Why are we revising it? And this is what they said. Zeal to promote the common good, whether it be devising anything ourselves or revising that which has been labored by others. So they went on other translations and went on other revisions. Deserve certainly much respect and esteem, but yet finding but cold entertainment in the world. It goes down to say, Many men's mouths have been opened a good while, and yet are not stopped, with speeches about translations so long at hand, or rather pursuers of translations made before. And ask, What may be the reason? What necessity of this employment? Has the church been deceived? Say they all the while. Was the translation good before? Why did we now mend it? Was it now good? And why then was it obstructed to the people? And so just in their opening argument, they are saying, Listen, we've got some translations and they were good. We're going to translate it to the common tongue. So why then can't we say the same thing? The King James was a good translation. Why can we not translate it to the common tongue? Using their same argument. What's your guys' thoughts on that first statement? John? Well, I mean, there you have it. They said themselves that they're open to translation work. I mean, you had the King James born out of the fact that King James Stuart did not like the Geneva Bible because it took out basically any type of construing the doctrine of the divine right of kings. And so he didn't like the Geneva Bible, which is what the popular Bible was. And then you had the Bishop's Bible. And so it was born out of the king wanting a Bible that supported his claim to have divine rights in the land, which gave a list to the translators of what they could and could not do when it came to translation. And listen, I'm not going to get into the debate on whether this guy was a homosexual or not. I've seen way too many independent sources saying that he was and saying that he wasn't. All right. I don't think that's something that we can be dogmatic about on either side. But was he even a believer? I don't know if we can answer that. But this guy having that kind of sway over the translation? But yeah, this is the translation we want to claim as being inspired. Did the translators believe that what they were doing was the work of inspiration? And I think that's a definitive no, they did not. I agree. Yep. Brian, any thoughts on that before I read this next statement? He did, we didn't show the recording, but he did quote Papias, Irenaeus, and then he makes a quote from Haley's Bible Handbook about Clement of Alexandria. And then he even makes the claim that the apostles had a high view of translation. I'm like, show me that scripture. Show me Matthew, Mark, Luke, John through Revelation. He actually claims that the apostles had a high view of translation. No, that's a great point, Brian. And this is something that I was going to say on this idea of inspiration of the translation. All right. So where do we get the idea of the Bible itself? Not talking about translations, but the Bible itself being inspired. Why do we come up? Why do we have that doctrine? Why do we have the doctrine that the Bible is God's word? Because it tells us. Yeah. We go to the word of God. Now, some may say that's circular reasoning. I prefer presuppositional apologetics. And I think that, you know, that pretty much defeats it on its head because everybody has their presuppositions about anything that comes. And you can go towards outside evidence to prove that the claims of the Bible itself are true. One thing that the Bible never claims is that an English translation is inspired. So you can't refer back to Scripture that your English translation is inspired. So where are you coming up with the idea that it is? But even in that clip, and so if those of you at home that are, you don't have this clip, like you can find this podcast and write about the 12 minute mark between 11 and 12 minutes. He's actually going to say that the apostles had a high view of translation. You cannot find that in the context of Scripture. I mean, this is academic dishonesty. This is twisting history to make the viewpoint. Nowhere can you put a translation anywhere. It's impossible to prove. Yeah. All right, let's look at this next statement that I pulled out of the preface to the King James. It says, So even they are saying that they didn't think there needed to be a new translation. Nor yet make a bad one a good one. But to make a good one a better one. Or out of many good ones, one principle good book. Not justly to be accepted against. That has been our endeavor. That is our mark. Yeah, and we can talk about all day long about the manuscripts behind the King James and all the Greek behind the King James. But one of the facts of the matter is people that have done this work have established that the King James version of 1611 is 80% of William Tyndale's work. Meaning they only improved upon William Tyndale's work. One man who was translating on the run, you know, by candlelight. They only improved upon his work about 20%. Yeah, it's crazy to think of that. And I said that when we talked about it a couple weeks ago. But one man did that much work. And they took his work and improved it slightly. They took it and just were able to really improve it just a little bit. And they were doing what they said they were going to do. They were going to make a good work a better work. Yeah. And so when we have a modern translation, that's what they're doing. They're making a good work a better work. And they're taking a better work and making it best. And so this thought of being stuck where we're at and not improving and not taking some things and making it better. I don't know why we have stopped at 1611, 1769. However you want to go with it, you know, that's sort of the thought here. Which, as you all have said, Dissidious Erasmus kept improving his additions and said so. Yeah. He said, I am improving the more evidence I have to work with, more manuscript. I am improving on my own work, which, as we know, is foundation for Texas Receptus. Yeah. And so I guess, yeah. Yeah. The last statement I want to bring out, I sort of want to just mention this. It says, they acknowledge the usefulness of a variety of sources. It says, neither did we disdain to revise on that which was done. So they took other things. They revised it. Yet before we end, we must answer the third complaint and objectives of theirs, those that are against us, for altering and amending our translation so often, wherein truly they deal harshly and strangely with us. For to whom was it imputed for our fault to go over that which we had done and to amend it where we saw the cause? And so they were saying, listen, there were some things that we have evidence that this is a better word here. This is a better translation. So we're going to alter it to make it a better translation. So the King James altered previous translations. So that's to say that there could be a new translation that could alter it because of a better translation of that word. Well, I don't think a King James only would actually find an issue with that. They probably sort of champion what they're saying there. But I think that the attitude of the translators were not saying that where they're improving, it can never be improved again. Exactly. And let me point out as well that what we're saying is not that the word of God can be approved upon, but that the work of translating into our recent language, and I say recent because when you look at the scope of history and even history since the time of Christ, the English language is a new language. Yeah. And speaking of improvement, John, I think when we looked at Erasmus' work, he had five texts to work off of. Is that correct? His first time? Yes. Well, you morph from that process of his beginning to five, you know, just a few, a handful of manuscripts. By the time the King James translators go to translate, you know how many manuscripts they had to work off of? The King James translators themselves. Yes, they had 50. So 100 years later, after the first version of Erasmus' work comes out, he's copying off a handful of manuscripts. And 100 years later, even the King James translators were improving on the original part of Erasmus' work because more was available to them then than when Erasmus first started. Today, so Erasmus had five, 15, 16. 100 years later, 1611, they have 50 manuscripts. Do you know how many we have today? Thousands. We have 6,000 New Testament manuscripts to work off of. Why can we not move forward in translation work just as the King James translators had on Erasmus' work? Why are we limited? You know, anyhow. Anyhow, go ahead. It's a good point. And it's really, it makes mute the whole argument, which I don't think these, do these guys make the manuscript argument? They do. They do at the very end. They mention the amount of manuscripts, the time of manuscripts at the very end. We'll get to it. But to me, it doesn't make any sense. If you're going to hold a position, right, that the 1611 was inspired, then anything that happened before it, in your mind, is a mute point, right? I mean, who cares? Because it doesn't matter because God did that work in 1611. And it's like, okay, but even those that do want to rest on the majority manuscripts, and therefore they say, we're King James because of the majority text. Well, I think Brian just shot that out the window because the guys that had, you know, it might have been that text type tradition is the majority text and what's considered the majority text today. But they only had 50. That's hardly a majority. Yeah. All right, let's listen to this next clip as we go through it, continue to go through. We were only not even halfway through the clips yet, guys, so we may need to speed up a little bit. Pick up the pace, yeah. You know, we're probably like 30 minutes in. Their whole podcast was 14 minutes. Strongly, and we'll talk about this a little more, we believe strongly in the promise of preservation. And if preservation is not inspired, I believe Brother Sam Giff has a quote about that. Yes. What is it that he says? Do you remember that one? Inspiration without preservation is a divine waste of time. That's right. And so the very promise of preservation implies a promise of continued inspiration. So the promise of inspiration or preservation means continued inspiration. Did I hear that right? It implies continued inspiration. Where did that come from? Where in Scripture a promise of preservation means continued inspiration? Literally, guys, that's the first time I've heard that before. The promise of preservation is inspiration. I've never heard it before. I don't know where they're getting it from. Who wrote that the first time? Because it's not in my Bible. It's not in the Bible that I'm reading. I've read the entire King James cover, and I've never read that before. Okay, help me. All Scripture is what? Given. Given. Given. Given. Given. Not will be given. But the promise of preservation means continued inspiration. Is that second hesitation? Is that the book of Chick-fil-A? Is that North Carolidian, West Virginian? Like, wow. James, let's move on. Yeah. All right. Next one. Well, the ultimate argument that we have on this topic is where did God preserve his words? Where did God preserve his words at, guys? That's what we've got to look at. Where did he preserve it? Was it maybe the thousands and thousands of years over many, many different regions, over oppression, over the Dark Ages, over burning of books? Where did he preserve his word at, guys? In the manuscripts. I want to. So you have to look at. Go ahead, Brian. Go ahead, John. No, no, you go ahead. I talked last time. I want to encourage anybody that has it, if they're listening to this, that hasn't done this so far. Go to YouTube and look up James White debating Bart Ehrman. And I think that would be a great source of information and understanding this whole idea of how God preserved his word. Now, Bart Ehrman is an apostate. And I'm not saying that as like, you know, a dig at him. He's actually a self-proclaimed apostate in the real sense of the term, meaning he once claimed a faith that now he does not claim, which is the definition of apostate. And so he has spent a lot of his efforts at trying to prove that the Bible is not God's word. So James White debated him, and he brings out a point that Bart Ehrman had to agree with. And I think, Brian, you actually said it to me yesterday, and you said it better than I did. So why don't you tell them what the statement was about the attestation of the New Testament manuscripts in antiquity? Okay, so we have, again, in just Greek manuscripts that we have, we have just shy of 6,000 manuscripts to work off of. When you compare that to the amount of manuscripts of ancient books, whether you make that the Iliad and the Odyssey, whether you make that the Koran, whether you make that, you know, Homer's work, Socrates' work, Plato's work. I mean, it is an embarrassment. It's an absurdity of riches that we have in the number of manuscripts compared to any other book in antiquity. And so the very fact that we have so many copies of the manuscripts tell us that, you know, how, what God was doing in humanity about how we can be more sure of our Bible, what it says, then we can trace back to the Iliad and the Odyssey, which was a work of high classical Greek culture and Hellenism and way of life and Greek culture. We have more certainty in that based on the manuscript evidence we have than some of the greatest works in our history of antiquity. And so we can be confident that God preserved His Word because of what we call the absurdity of riches of manuscript evidence that we have far more than any other book in the ancient world that we have records of. Yeah, and Ehrman's argument goes like this, like, you have whoever penned it first, penned it, and then it was copied, and that guy made mistakes. And the next guy copied it, and it made mistakes, and the next guy copied it, and it made mistakes. And he said on and on and on, you have mistakes. And his argument goes, how can we know that we have an argument, or that we have, you know, what they actually said? And my reasoning of understanding what he's saying is, if that was the case, if it happened just like he said to conclude him to the argument that he has, then by the time you get to 1000 or 1200 AD or, you know, any time after that, then, and you look back at a manuscript that is found, that is found in the early hundreds, I mean, that'd be completely different. Like, you wouldn't even be able to tell her the same thing if you go by the progression that Ehrman is perpetuating. But actually, work has been done to compare the manuscripts that we have. And, you know, while we have many textual variants, thousands, hundreds of thousands of textual variants, you find agreement in 99% of the attestation of New Testament manuscripts they have. And you don't call that a divine work of preservation? Yeah. And, you know, you have to consider that manuscripts in antiquity were being translated as far west as in Spain, as far east as in, you know, what we would call Syria, and as far north as in Europe, as far south as in Africa. And all of these people are copying manuscripts. And the ones we have today, there are variants in the text, but in 99 places out of 100, they agree with one another. And that is a strong, that's a strong reinforcement that what we have has been preserved because in far corners of the Roman Empire, people are still saying the same thing. Yeah. Even that. So. All right, let's go to this next point. And so that word there being plural, it's not thoughts and ideas. That's right. And that's what a lot of people talk about when they say the word of God. Gotcha. You know, we have the word of God. Well, it goes deeper than just the word, like a thought or an idea. Right. But it goes to the level of jots and tittles. I got you. A very minuscule words would not pass. Words, not thoughts and ideas. This is this thought here of the actual, not just the concept. He's trying to debunk here, in my mind, these amplified message Bibles, where they're just taking a concept and they're writing it down. And so I think this point is specifically trying to debunk those thoughts, those translations. It's really when he says that. I don't know of any translators that translate based on thoughts and ideas. They translate the words. Well, there's two things. There's formal equivalence and then dynamic equivalence. Formal equivalence is an ESV approach where we're going to try to make this as close to the Greek as we can. And then there's formal equivalence, such as the message like, hey, yo, James, Jesus did say unto you, yeet, yeet, what you doing? You know, there's that. That's right. There's that. In which I would have to say, you know, not all dynamic equivalence is evil, I don't think. But you do have like the message I would not give to anyone. But not all dynamic equivalence are bad translations. But yeah. Yeah. I would kind of agree with him in some regard, but also. Well, I would say this. We believe, we hold to that, that it is the words of God that are, you know, that we need to hold to, not the thoughts and ideas. But he's taken it to a perspective of it's got to be these words that are written in the King James Version from 1611 that were inspired, the very words that were put in there. And I would just ask him, if he goes down to this idea of the jot and tittle of perfection in the King James Version, I would just ask him, like, which King James Version? Come on. Which King James Version? Because there's, they've had at least seven revisions of the King James Version where words have been changed. And it was funny because I actually was sitting in the bed the other night and all the kids and all that were just hanging out. And my daughter's eight years old and I had a copy of a 1611 there and I handed it to her and I said, hey, can you read this? Read this verse right here. I think it was like the first verse in Luke 24 or something like that. And she was like, the, you know, and she's actually can read pretty well. And she's like, Dad, I don't know what it's saying. But, I mean, you get to the 1769 Blaney Revision and you can come up with over 160 changes when it comes to words. So, which level of perfection are you talking about? Are you talking about the 1611? Are you talking about the 1769? Are you talking about the Cambridge edition or the Oxford edition? So, that's my question. Which one are you talking about here, man? Yeah. Yeah. And that is tough because, you know, we even talked about it. The gender Bible, the he-she Bible that they have at Pensacola. Is it that one? Is it the one when they messed up the pronouns, he or she? You know, where do you go with that? Let's continue on because this next one, we're going to start spending some more time. And so, I want to get to them. This next one, he says this. And, guys, let's try to give some examples because he says that they mess up major doctrines by just changing small words. We don't even believe the thoughts and concepts travel clearly when you start changing the King James Bible. They mess up major doctrines by changing just small words. I don't know what he's talking about. Do what? I don't know what he's talking about. What major doctrines are changed that they're speaking of? I would assume he's talking about textual variance here again by changing just small words. And, again, we're talking about these textual variance, which we're going to talk about down a little bit further. But there are only a small handful of these variants that even change how you understand a sentence. You know, nowhere in the textual variance are theological issues challenged. I think we probably shouldn't spend too much time here because we're going to talk about that at length at the end. Yeah. Unless you guys want to go forward with that. The only thing I want to mention is I did find an article. It was written by Paul Freeman on av1611.com because I typed in major doctrines that have changed in a search bar just to see what was coming up because this is the first time I've really heard that the small words are changing doctrinal things. And so I pulled it up and I went through the epistles and I went through line by line of this article with my new King James because I've got a new King James. I've got an ESV. I've got a King James. I've got an MEV. And so I just pulled out my new King James because it was the closest. And I went through each one of these arguments and every single one of those arguments still had those words in it. Yeah. And so it didn't change the doctrine in any of the epistles that we get a lot of our doctrine from. And so I don't know where he's getting this from. I don't know where he's saying he's getting these from, but apparently they're there and we're just missing them, I guess. Yeah. Let's move to the next one and we'll cover the textual variant thing at the end. Another way to phrase this is what is scripture? Yeah. Okay. The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 3.16 that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. And so there's a direct correlation with scripture and inspiration. But you know what's not in 2 Timothy 3? The word translation. Yeah. I don't know what he's getting at there, but I guess he's still trying to hammer out this idea of like the inspiration continues. And that seems to be sort of the theme and the understanding. They're trying to perpetuate this doctrine of continual inspiration. Which I have to... Let's remember. Go ahead, Brian. Which I would re-echo what I said earlier. And inspiration was not a one-off sitting down. Inspiration was a process of collecting information, sifting through ideas that took a very, very, very long time, you know, at times. Like as far as New Testament, like inspiration was not a man in a cave. It was in Romans. It's Paul and a team of people working on a letter, working with an aminousis. You know, it's not a spooky phenomenon. It was a process in many ways. Yeah. I agree. This next one, he really takes the argument, and I don't want to refer to anyone as a kindergartner. I don't want to degrade anyone. That's not where I'm at. I hate when people degrade me. But when he says this argument, it's almost like I'm arguing with my son Brody, who's seven, and I tell him to do something. He goes, well, you just hate me. I got to clean my room because you just hate me. That's how I took this statement, because he says, well, if no scripture is inspired, then we don't have scripture. And that's sort of the mentality of, well, you just don't like me. And so listen to this. Sorry, I had a little rabbit trail there for me. So those who are anti-King James only, you know, they say that no translation can be inspired. But if that's true, then their ESVs aren't inspired. Their NIVs aren't inspired. The King James is not inspired. And so therefore, we don't have scripture. We don't have it. Not in the English language, at least. Right. I don't know how. Okay. So we believe in inspiration in the originals. And then to say, therefore, we don't have scripture in the English language. I don't necessarily connect that logically. Like, I don't. I guess I don't understand what they mean by that. Maybe. I would dare say that these two guys do not speak another language than English. Because when you start thinking about, you know, communicating to somebody in another language, let's just pull out the common one. We're talking Spanish. We're talking Spanish. And you're going to talk to somebody in Spanish. Or you're talking with somebody who cannot speak Spanish. And you're trying to relay their words to a Spanish-speaking person. And you're playing the role of translator. I mean, are you sitting there saying, well, I'm giving this guy these words, but I really don't have what you're trying to say. Because this inspiration is not happening right here in this three-way translation thing. So he can't have exactly what you're saying. That's ludicrous. Yeah. I heard something the other day. I was listening to a podcast. And a lady said she was of Hispanic origin. She was a Spanish lady. And she said, there is no exact translation of words like we think. She said that, you know, when you use the word cold beans, it would be frio fritos. Okay. She said, if you go up to a Spanish person and you say that, frios fritos, they're going to look at you like you're crazy. Yeah. Because it doesn't translate word for word like we're thinking. You have to actually change that around. And she used the statement. And I'm not a Spanish guy, so I don't know. I don't know Spanish well. And she used, as we would say, just cold potatoes or cold beans. She made it some long sentence because it has to translate right into their language. Right. Like in Greek is the same way. Like if I would say, if I would say James is sending in Greek, I would say James. One second. I would say James. Maybe. And that would translate to James. He is sending. You know? And so we eliminate the pronoun, even though when you translate it in Greek, it's James. He is sending. We reduce the he because it's redundant. You know, James, he is sending. Or we would just say, no, James is sending. You know. So that happens in language translation all the time. Yeah. All right. Let's listen to this next clip. The original autographs are non-existent now. The promise has failed. The closest that we can get to them in any manuscript, good or bad, is right in the 300s. 300s AD. Right. Okay. So that's as close as we can get to the originals. And that, unfortunately, is where we are going to have to stop today. And we will finish this discussion and have Brian back to finish out discussing and refuting these arguments put forth on, I believe, the book podcast and talking about the King James only-ism. But we appreciate everybody listening. We appreciate all the support for the podcast thus far. And make sure that if you enjoyed this to give it a share on social media and also rate us on Apple Podcasts and leave a comment in the comment section as well. And until next time, guys, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. Thank you. Thank you.

Auto-generated transcript · 9,647 words. May contain errors.