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Bible preaching from the pulpit of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina
All right, well, what we're going to try to do today is, what I would like to do is finish up this kind of sub-study on our church's position on the King James Bible.
I know we've covered a lot, and this is part number five in our study of the church on this sub-study.
So let's get our Bibles out.
We'll do a little bit of review after we pray,
and then we'll try to get through the rest of our study here.
And maybe if you have any questions or something like that,
we can have some time maybe at the end for that.
Okay?
So if everybody would pray with me and ask the Lord's blessing upon our
lesson. Our Father, thank you so much for the chance to be here today, Lord, to come together
with your people, to fellowship, to encourage one another. Thank you for the quoting of Scripture,
Lord, that the Word of God is in our minds and in our hearts, and we pray, Lord, that you would use the Word of God that we memorize in this very class
to bear fruit in our lives to your glory,
to make us more like the Lord Jesus Christ who also knew the Scripture and lived by it.
And so, Lord, we just commit our time to you today in our Sunday school.
We ask your blessing upon Abby and the kids' class downstairs.
We pray that you would open the eyes of understanding of those kids,
even at their young age, to understand the truths of Scripture,
and they would profit from it, even in eternal things at this stage.
And also, Lord, please bless and help our class today
and help us to cover these things right and speak the truth and in the right manner and tone and attitude that you would be pleased with as well.
In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, so by way of review, we've been talking about the, remember, there's three main parts to our three main reasons we hold to the exclusive use of the King James Version.
Three main reasons we hold to the exclusive use of the King James Version.
Number one is the text.
Number two is the translation.
And that's what we talked about last week, and that's what we're going to finish up today.
And then the last one are practical questions, which I hope to get to by the end of our class today.
So we talked about last week, at the very end of our lesson, we were talking about the retention, the King James retention of the second person pronouns and verb endings. The these, the thous, the yees, the
yous, the yours, the thines, and those second person pronouns. And why they're significant,
again, just to reiterate, they're important because they make a distinction between singular and plural.
And that is reflected in English, whereas normally in modern English,
which is what we speak now, King James is also modern English.
It's just an earlier form.
In the way we speak English now, there is no distinction in the second person pronoun.
So there is an actual function.
Again, these and thous and the verb endings, the E-T-H, F, you know, est,
and all those things that we're familiar with are not there just to make it sound religious.
They serve a function.
And it actually has a benefit and a use to us. Not every verse that we come
across that has them, because of course it's all throughout the Bible, not every verse we come
across that's going to be a significant thing that makes a difference, but there are verses
that exist that do. And so for me, I'm thankful for that. That distinction between singular and plural is
something that is in Greek and Hebrew that is then translated into English. So that actually
preserves the text of Scripture into English faithfully. And so it's not something to be scoffed at, but I fear that oftentimes on this
subject, it is scoffed at. And I'll get to that more in a minute, so I just don't want to get
ahead of myself too much. Let's look real quick. I want to show you one more example from last week
in Acts. If you'll get Acts chapter 20 and Titus chapter 1.
We'll look at Titus first, Acts chapter 20 and Titus chapter 1.
Now among the translators of the King James Version,
there were some people that were in the Church of England.
Anglicans, they were all mostly Anglicans.
I think they were all Anglicans, in fact.
But there were some who were more mainline Anglicans.
And then there were some who were nonconformist Anglicans.
And as a result of that, remember I told you that there was, prior to the King James Bible,
there was the publication of the Bishop's Bible, which was the Bible that was published by the Anglican Church for use in the churches, right?
And then there was also the Geneva Bible, which was popular among the Protestant nonconformists.
And one of the reasons that Geneva Bible was so popular, that was the Bible of the Mayflower, when the Puritans, non-conformists, came to America in search of religious freedom.
That's the Bible they had, and one of the reasons they had that is because of this example I'm giving you right now.
They did not like the use of what are called ecclesiastical
terms, like the one we're looking at here. Titus chapter one. Sam, can you read verse seven?
Titus one, verse seven.
The word bishop, you know what that is?
That's an ecclesiastical word.
And it has a meaning that's very simple.
A bishop, in this case, you can actually see the meaning because the same word is translated in a different place in Acts chapter 20.
If you'll look there, if you would.
Acts 20, verse number 28.
Acts 20.
Take ye therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock
over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.
That's what the word bishop means, okay? In this
place, it's the same exact word. Same word that's translated in Titus as bishops is translated
as overseers here, and that's on purpose. Remember, we've covered this already. The translators
intentionally chose to use a variety of words if the words were accurate, right? And that's a case here. Now, the Geneva,
the people that use the Geneva Bible, the Puritans and the nonconformists, they did not like the
words like bishop because they were so much attachment to it with the Church of England
and Roman Catholicism. And so they didn't like that. And when you hear the word bishop, like,
do we use the word bishop at our church? No, why not? It's certainly biblical. Why don't we use it? We use the requirements when we're
looking for a pastor, right? We use the requirements, but we don't use the word. And that's okay.
And one of the reasons is because of the association of that word in ecclesiastical
circles. People misunderstand what we're talking about. The word is perfectly fine
though, right? So in the Geneva Bible, they wanted the word overseer. Bishop's Bible, of course,
they wanted the word bishop because they use the ecclesiastical words. So in the King James,
they use both, right? And the benefit to that, and this is just one of many examples, the benefit to
that is we can compare the two and it helps us understand the
scripture better by comparing the usages of the word. And so when we read Acts 20, 28, we see
that that word is the same word that's bishop in other parts of scripture. And we understand the
meaning better and we understand it without the religious baggage, without the religious baggage, which a lot of times clouds
our understanding of Scripture, all the religious baggage. We've covered that before in our studies
previously. So as you can see, this is some of the methods of translation. And just going back
to the original thing I said last week to wrap this up is this.
I mentioned that the these and the thous are a benefit and a feature of the King James Bible.
But and as much as they are, I would say, hated now, they were actually retained in the English Revive Version, ERV.
They were actually retained in the English Revived Version, ERV,
and they were retained in the American Standard Version,
which were the first two major translations from the modern Greek text,
the eclectic Westcott and Hort Greek text.
Even though they translated from a different text, they kept the these and thous, and that hasn't been that long ago.
That's been about 120 years since that was first done. So what I'm telling you is that the hatred for the these and those. And that hasn't been that long ago. That's been about 120 years since that was first done. So what I'm telling you is that the hatred for the these and those when it comes to
Scripture has less to do with understanding and more to do with a narrative about them. Okay?
And I'll get to that in a minute. Okay. So let's move forward now.
I'll get to that in a minute. Okay, so let's move forward now. I want to give you an argument that's often used on this subject. The argument, how many of you are familiar with the word koine,
or as it's pronounced, koine? All right, that's, whenever they use it, they're referring to Greek,
the koine Greek, right? It's referring to, it it just, all it means is common. That's all the
word means, common. So you have a difference between classical Greek, which goes back about
four to five hundred years before Christ when it was popular, and then you have the Greek of the
time of Christ, which is common Greek, right? Now, the Greek written in the New Testament that the Lord used to give the Scripture in the New Testament was Koine or Koine Greek.
So it was common Greek.
It was Greek that was understood by most people.
It was the Greek they used on a regular basis.
And so the argument goes like this.
Since the New Testament was written in koini common Greek,
the style of Greek spoken by the common man and not in classical Greek, this means that God,
who was the one obviously who chose the language to put the New Testament into,
this means that God is indicating to us that he wants his word to be put in the common language in English translations.
So this is the argument.
In this view, the ESV is considered to be a translation that is in the common language,
I put air quotes, common language, by most who hold this view.
There are others, so in other words, the argument for something like the ESV or any one of the NIV
or something like that, the argument is, we don't like all the these and thous because nobody can
understand all that. So we're going to put it in a common language because after all, when God gave
the word originally, he put it into common Greek so that everybody can understand. That's the argument, okay? Some people take it a little
bit further though, and they say that when we refer to common Greek, a lot of times you might have heard, for those of you that have studied would use in the market, okay? And so some people
take it the next step and say what actually Koine Greek is referring to is street talk, street lingo.
And in this view, those people then push it a little bit further and advocate for a loose translation of the Bible with the goal of making it as, air quote,
understandable as possible with something like the NIV or the message. How many of you have heard
of the message? That's a Bible version that has gained some popularity. And so what they do is
they push the boundary of how accurate it is in order. In other words, they sacrifice some accuracy to make it
understandable. Everybody with me? So if you want to say it like this, in the
order of Bible versions, you have the King James and you have the ESV, which are going to be, now again, we're talking
about the way they translated, are going to be similar as far as how picky they were at being
accurate, okay? You go a little bit further out, you get the NIV. The NIV is not going to be as
picky to make sure everything matches because they want people to understand. And then you go a little bit further out, and you
get the message. The message is going to be pushed even further, and you'll see what I'm saying in
just a minute. So that's how the argument goes. I'm going to give you a three, we're going to look
at three different verses in just a minute. In fact, let's go ahead and look at them. I want to go
ahead and look at those. If you want to turn in your Bible, that way you can follow along.
Matthew 28, 19.
Matthew chapter 28, verse 19.
Matthew 28, verse 19.
These are, I pick common, fairly common verses.
There's so many verses I can pick from, but I'm just trying to illustrate a point here.
We're not trying to do a doctoral class, not that I could,
but we're not trying to do that.
We're just trying to get you a kind of an overview of this subject.
In the King James, the Matthew 28, excuse me, 28, 19 says,
Go ye therefore and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
In the ESV, it says,
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Now, ask yourself this.
King James, you just read, ESV.
Is there a big difference in how intelligible those two are? No.
They sound essentially the same. In that verse, in fact, they are almost practically the same.
There's a couple of differences, but all right. Now listen to the NIV. Therefore, go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is an example where the NIV is pretty close. It doesn't alter
it too much. And then the message, go out and train everyone you meet far and near in this way of life,
marking them by baptism in the threefold name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Is that different? That's
substantially different. You see what I'm talking about? They're pushing the limit for
understandability, okay? Another example, look at Matthew 27. Matthew chapter 27 and verse 46.
And verse 46. Matthew 27, verse 46. King James says this, your Bible says,
And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying,
That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Okay? If you keep your eyes on the text there, as I read the ESV, you can note the
differences. ESV says, in about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani. That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Again, very similar, almost
word for word, a couple of changes. NIV, About three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice,
Eli, Eli, lemme sabachthani, which means,
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Okay, that's a little bit different.
Note, though, in the King James and ESV, it says the ninth hour.
But in NIV, it says three in the afternoon.
That's what I'm talking about.
Why did they put the ninth hour? Why make it all confusing? It's not nine o'clock in the morning, like ninth hour, you know, if we were just thinking naturally. It is three in the afternoon,
but why did they put ninth hour? Here's why. Because there is a Greek word for nine,
and then there's a Greek word for hour, and to translate it accurately, you have to put ninth hour. Here's why. Because there is a Greek word for nine, and then there's a Greek
word for hour. And to translate it accurately, you have to put ninth hour. And in the NIV,
they interpreted that to give you three o'clock in the afternoon, but they did not translate that.
Do we want a translation of the Bible accurately, or do we want an interpretation
of a translation? You want a translation, okay? Now, I'll go a little bit further
to the message. It says this, around mid-afternoon, Jesus, so they just left out the time altogether.
So they just left out the time altogether.
Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly,
which means, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Again, pushing it a little bit further.
One more, Ephesians chapter 2.
If you look at that, Ephesians chapter 2.
Ephesians chapter 2, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 21.
Now, one thing I forgot to ask you.
Now, in the verse we just read between the King James and ESV,
was there a big understanding difference between those two verses? No, they were about the same, all right? Ephesians 2.21, King James says that at that time you were without
Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and Ephesians 2.21, is that not it?
And Ephesians 2.21.
Is that not it?
Okay.
Let me get to the... I'm reading off my notes.
I must have misput my notes.
Verse 12.
I must have a little bit of dyslexia. Same numbers. What's it matter? Just switch them.
No big deal. That's rather timely, isn't it? It's the same. Both one and two, same thing.
Same difference. All right. Ephesians 2, 12. That at that time you were without Christ,
being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
ESV, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of
Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Is that a lot easier to understand? No, it says about the same thing, right?
NIV, remember that at that time you were separate from Christ,
excluded from citizenship in Israel,
and foreigners to the covenants of promise,
and without hope and without God in the world.
Similar, but pushing it a little bit.
The message, I'm just starting where the verse starts,
so that's why it sounds funny.
Had no idea of any of this.
Didn't know the first thing about the way God works
and hadn't the faintest idea of Christ.
You knew nothing of that rich history
of God's covenants and promises in Israel.
Hadn't a clue about what God was doing
in the world at large, dude.
I put the dude part.
The message is way different. You agree? Even if it is arguably understandable. Okay. the whole argument is, well, if God gave the Bible in Koine Greek,
then it's supposed to be easy to understand because it's street talk.
But as you can see, one of the most popular modern Bible versions,
at least in the examples we looked at, is not measurably easier to understand, which tells you that this
is not really what it's about. It's not really about how understandable it is. Now, we'll get
to understandability in just a minute. This is a narrative, okay? As you can tell, it's not really that much different in understandability.
The idea that the King James is just so hard to understand,
it's just like speaking Ethiopic, so hard, just so old,
we just can't understand anything is a narrative.
It's a narrative.
It's a narrative.
Okay?
Yeah. I find it interesting that we will subject ourselves to go to school to learn a new language,
whether it's architecture or biology or something.
You have to learn all the vocabulary words to integrate into that society.
But you can't do it with a book that's early years old. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
The argument goes that modern versions present a huge improvement in understandability
when you use something like the ESV, and that's just an error. It's just not true.
It's a false narrative that the King James is super hard to understand,
and it's an Old English translation. No, the King James is written in modern English.
Old English is totally unintelligible. You should know that, having gone through
literature in school where you read portions of Old English,
you couldn't read them because they're unintelligible.
The King James Bible is modern English.
Yes, it is older, but it's still intelligible for sure.
When you actually examine it, you find that the language is just as intelligible as the versions that are claimed to be easier to understand.
And usually when people say the King James is hard to understand,
they're referring to the these and thous and the verb endings.
That's really what we're talking about here.
There are a few words that are out of use in the way they're used in the Bible.
I admit that, no problem at all.
But generally speaking, that's not what they're talking about
because those are actually rather few and far between.
But as we've already seen, the these and the thous and the verb endings serve a purpose.
But the problem is when a new Bible translation is put out as their first order of business,
the first thing that goes are the these and the thous and the verb endings,
because that is, if you want to just boil it down to just the elements
and the essence of the whole argument,
that is real. That when you talk about the Bible's hard to understand, that's all you're talking
about. Take five minutes to understand why it's there. And all of a sudden it makes sense.
No modern Bible version uses these and those. Why not?
Because it's so old.
No, it's because it's the first thing people think of
when they think of hard to understand.
You don't see people changing Shakespeare though.
Shakespeare is actually far more difficult to understand
than the King James Bible,
even though it's of the same era.
It really is.
It's hard.
You see, the King James uses a formal, like the ESV, but simple style of translation.
The purpose of the translators was to make their text clear, not ambiguous, like Shakespeare. Shakespeare is intentionally ambiguous if you've read it. Listen to this. This is by the translators to the reader.
Let's see. He's referring to the Roman Catholic translation. He says,
He's referring to the Roman Catholic translation.
He says, the sense that since they must needs translate the Bible yet by the language thereof it may be kept from being understood 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. So this whole idea that the King James
is not common language is too hard to, that was expressly opposite of what
they stated as their purpose, which was to make it clear. And that's actually what we find.
Now, let's talk about some issues of readability in the King James. Again, we're in search of truth
here. There are some passages that have words that are difficult to understand
simply because the meanings have changed or are no longer in use.
I'll give you a few examples.
1 Corinthians 10.25.
We're not going to turn to these.
I'm just going to keep going.
But you can note them if you like.
1 Corinthians 10.25.
Whatsoever is sold in the shambles that eat,
asking no question for conscience sake.
Shambles is not a word we use a lot,
at least not in this way.
Shambles is just a market.
A dictionary will tell you that.
Shambles, okay?
2 Kings 10.27,
And they break down the image of Baal
and break down the house of Baal
and made it a draft house unto this day.
A draft house.
It's a bathroom.
Okay, it's a bathroom.
Now, you could have figured that out if you had followed that word draft in the King James, but we're not going to do that.
But you want to study, look up, follow the word draft, and you'll be able to figure out what this is talking about. Those of you that are students, look up that word.
Not D-R-A-F-T, but D-R-A-U-G-H-T, okay?
Romans 7, 8.
But sin, taking occasion by the commandment,
wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.
It's a good word.
I like that word, concupiscence.
Just refers to sexual immorality. But again, not a word we
commonly use. James 1.21, wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.
We kind of have an idea of what that's talking about. Superfluous, that's a word we use, but
in our day. But anyway, there's one. So why don't we just, so here's the problem.
So there are a few words that are a little bit harder to understand
because the language has changed in 400 years.
Okay, fine.
That's fine.
So what are we going to do?
Let's just chunk the whole thing and retranslate it from a completely different text altogether
and take out all these words that we don't like,
most especially the these and those.
Does that follow?
these words that we don't like, most especially the these and those, does that follow?
And when you do that and you produce something like the ESV, it doesn't solve your problem because then you come across verses like this, Matthew 540 in the ESV.
And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. What's a tunic? The word tunic is actually, was actually listed as one of the difficult words used by the Catholics to obscure
the text of scripture that I, in the passage I just read in the translators to the reader,
the word tunic. Do you know what a tunic is? If you've never studied Roman dress, would you know what a tunic is?
You know what you need? A dictionary. Just like us, right? I tell you, this is Luke 11, 8 in the ESV.
Though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. If you've not,
listen, if you've not read books that go back a ways, you're not going to know what the word
impudence is. And there it is in a modern Bible. You know what you need? A dictionary.
Just like you need with any work of literature, right?
Why not just update the language? Well, as history has shown,
when you update the language,
the first thing that goes are the these and thous,
and then they change the text from which the Bible's translated,
which alters what verses are there and not there,
which is part of the whole problem.
You see, so this has been tried.
This has been tried.
All right.
Readability.
The next thing I want to show you is this.
I call it in my notes, I have excesses or poor arguments.
Now, we in our zeal can have zeal toward the Bible we use
and believe it's right and accurate and all that,
and that's good, and we should,
but not to the point that we use bad arguments
or arguments that aren't true,
because that doesn't really help.
And people who use the King James exclusively
have been guilty of this a lot,
almost to the point of, like, conspiracy theory theory. Really. Like the stuff you read on the
internet, just you better research it because some of it's true and some of it's not.
All right. What are some of these arguments? I'm going to like this.
The King James Version is the only Bible without a copyright. Okay. You know how many,
you know how many years the people who promote modern Bible versions have been
hearing that argument? And so what they've done is they produced a Bible that has a copyright,
is they produced a Bible that has a copyright, the ESV,
but is allowed to be printed and used freely.
See how they got around that.
And besides that, the King James actually does have a copyright.
Does anybody know who holds the copyright of the King James Bible?
The Crown of England.
If you get a Bible that's published in Britain,
there's a copyright statement.
Here's another one. A person must learn English to have the pure word of God because it's, because the pure word of God is only found in the King James Version.
Yeah. You don't have to learn English. You just need a Bible that's accurately translated
into your language. That was the whole argument of the translators to the reader,
to put the Bible in your language, right? The King James corrects the texts from which it is translated. That's kind of a circular argument.
It doesn't correct it, it translates it.
That's what the translators say.
That's what's happened.
Psalm 12, 6,
which says,
the word of the Lord is purified seven times.
Because the King James is the seventh English
translation from the received text, Psalm 12, 6 therefore refers to the King James. But you have
to remember that in church history, modern English is relatively new. What did we have before?
The seventh English translation from the received text? And don't forget the Wycliffe
because that kind of messes you up because that makes it eight. But what did you have before that?
Psalm 12, 6 was written by David a thousand years before Christ. It's not referring to the King
James Bible, right? Okay. The scripture has, because God promised to preserve it, it therefore has been preserved. Okay?
Can a person be saved out of another version?
What I'm going to do is I'm going to call into question the question.
I don't think that's the right way to ask the question. I don't think that's the right way to ask the question. Look at 1 Peter chapter 1.
If you would, 1 Peter chapter 1.
Can a person be saved out of another version? I don't know how many times I've heard this.
I don't know how many times I've heard this.
1 Peter 1.23, this verse by itself is the sole support for the argument that a person can only be saved
if they're reading from the King James Version, okay?
Being born again, not of corruptible seed,
but of incorruptible by the word of God,
which liveth and bideth forever. So here's how it goes. And this is a perfect example of a poor
hermeneutic. Because you see the words, word of God in the verse, you assume that the seed is
talking about the word of God, but it's not.
The seed is not the word of God.
In fact, we know it's not the word of God
because the Bible says that the word of God
can be corrupted.
It actually says that.
You change the word of God, you are corrupting it, right?
What is the seed then?
The seed is the spirit of God. 1 John tells us that.
So the one verse in the Bible, and so the argument goes, because the King James is the
incorrupted seed, therefore, if you're not reading King James, you didn't really get saved.
Okay? Number one, the seed in this verse is not the Word of God. The Word of
God is actually mentioned separately in this verse. Number two, what happened before we had
the King James Bible when people that spoke French or German or a multitude of other languages prior?
that spoke French or German or a multitude of other languages prior.
And besides that, we're born again by the word of God,
that is the truths of scripture, not by reciting a text.
It's not like magic.
What is required, for I am not ashamed, Romans 1 16,
for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, the gospel of Christ,
for it is the gospel, the power of God unto salvation. I don't even have to have a Bible. I don't even have to
quote a verse to lead someone to Christ, but I do have to tell them the truths of scripture, right?
The gospel. I mean, we often do quote verses, but if I say Christ died for sinners, if you trust in
him, you'll be saved. And I don't quote a verse and that person gets saved. There's nothing to indicate that Cornelius was quoted the King James
Bible or anything like that when he trusted in Christ in the book of Acts. In fact, there's
nothing to indicate that Peter was quoting the Bible at all directly. You see, it's a bad argument for people that...
What I'm saying is this.
We should avoid bad arguments.
They don't help us.
They really don't.
In fact, it is because of arguments like that.
You remember several weeks ago,
I was talking about someone that I talked to that made a distinction between being King James only
or only King James.
Remember that?
It's because of arguments like this that they have made that distinction.
And they have defined us for us using these bad arguments that are promoted mostly on the Internet.
So if you want and you desire to know the truth in the matter,
you can take that thing to God and ask the Lord to show you the truth.
And we don't have to rely on arguments that are half-truths or untruths or whatever.
We just can stick with the truth, and that's the best thing to help our position.
Let's pray.