Hermeneutics Lesson 09

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We have more than a 'God breathed' word of God in English.  We have a God translated and God preserved word of God in English.

1. 'God breathed' and man altered copy of God's Word is an attack on God's Character.
A lot of people support doctrinal error on this point without realizing it.  Some people do not realize that what they believe supports doctrinal error.  Other people realize the consequences of what they believe but believe that the error is correct.  So we need to look at the various beliefs and consider the consequences of each belief.  In addition, we need to see how these errors are actually an attack on the character of the God of the Bible.
1. The partial truth of 'God Breathed'.
1. a. Many preacher has preached about the inspired  ('God breathed') word of God.  We find this truth stated in many places within the Bible including Matthew 4:4, 7, 10; 5:17; Mark 12:24; 14:21; Luke 4:21; 16:31; 24:25, 27, 44-46; John 5:46-47; 10:35; 1Corinthians 2:13; 14:37; 2Timothy 3:15-17; 1Peter 1:10-12; 2Peter 1:19-21; 3:15-16.  The problem is not in the claim that the word of God is inspired  ('God Breathed'), but in denying other related truths or leaving them out so that the deniers have no opposition.  Remember that when Satan tempted Jesus that the part of the Bible which he quoted was correct.  The error was not in what he quoted, but in what he left out.  2Timothy 3:16-17 says: All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works..  Notice that the very scripture sentence that people use to claim a 'God breathed' word of God  says that the reason (that)  why God did things this way is That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.  The man of God  can only be perfect  if the word of God  that he uses as a basis is also perfect.  If God did not preserve His Word,  in a way that we have access to it, then what we have is not perfect  and God's purpose for the man of God  is defeated.  It is impossible for the man of God  to be perfect  if his word of God  is less than perfect.
2. The part that most people leave out when they talk about 'God Breathed' is that God said that He would preserve His Word to a thousand generations  (Exodus 34:7; Deuteronomy 7:9; 1Chronicles 16:15; Psalms 105:8).  Those thousand generations  have not yet expired.  Further, 'the Greek' has not been preserved unto  the generations since the KJV 1611 was written.  At the time that the KJV 1611 was written, most scholarly books were written in Greek, Latin or German.  Greek was still the 'trade language' that has been replaced by the English of today.  So, when scholars (who had different native languages) met, they often held conversations in the Greek or Latin of the Bible.  However, Biblical Greek is no longer a 'conversational language' and that is a critical requirement for accurate interpretation.  Yes, God does use other tongues,  including 'the Greek', but Isaiah 28:9-11 delegates it to enhancing what was already understood from the 'God preserved word of God'.  The details of this truth will be presented later but think of it this way.  If you have built a building and want to add trim to enhance it but the trim doesn't fit, you add to the trim, or cut it, to match the building.  You do not tear down the building and build new from the foundation up just to match your trim.  God uses 'the Greek' for 'trim' on His 'God preserved word of God'.
3. The verses referenced above tell us that God uses His mercy  for forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin  and that God's 'preserved mercy' is also dependent upon the 'God preserved word of God'.  Our salvation is based upon God's mercy  (Nehemiah 9:27; Psalms 6:4; 31:16; 57:3; 86:16; 109:26; Hosea 1:7; Zechariah 10:6; Titus 3:5).  Therefore, our personal salvation is based upon God's 'preserved mercy' which is based upon God's 'preserved Word'.  Thus, denying the preservation of God's perfect Word  to our current generation and beyond not only calls God a liar but also eliminates salvation.
2. Emphasizing that God's Word 'is preserved in Heaven' is a partial truth lie that denies Earthly preservation.
First, this calls God's promise to preserve His word to a thousand generations  a lie.  If God's Word is not preserved here on Earth and in a fashion that we can understand, then it is not preserved to  our generation.  Remember, Isaiah 28:10 and 28:13 say line upon line  4 times between them.  We can not have line upon line  if the Bible we can read does not have God's lines  in it.
3. Denial of a 'God preserved word of God' is an attack on the character of God.
There are 36 verses in the Bible which include the word righteous  and the word judge.  These include the statement that God is the righteous judge.  How can God, or anyone else, be a righteous judge  if He uses a standard for judging that the judged person never had a chance to see? But what is claimed is worse.  Some people claim that God deliberately let people put their trust and obedience in a wrong standard by letting 'men of God' claim that the wrong standard would be the basis upon which we are judged.  The God of the Bible does not say one thing and then do another.  He does not tell us He will use the standard that we have access to (written 1611 KJV Bible) and then use some other standard ('Heavenly version') when He judges us.  That is a lie and matches the character of Satan.  It does not match the character of God.  This lie comes from Satan and is an attack upon the character of God by claiming that God is like Satan.
4. Denial of a 'God preserved word of God' is a denial of the spiritual nature of the Bible.
God is a Spirit  (John 4:24).  His Word is, therefore, also spiritual and requires the Spirit of God to understand it according to the first 4 chapters of 1Corinthians.  Interpretation of tongues  is one of the spiritual gifts listed in 1Corinthians 12:10.  These people who want to correct the KJV 1611 offer no evidence that they have this spiritual gift.  Neither do they offer evidence that the translators of the KJV 1611 did not have this spiritual gift.  They simply claim that they can do a spiritual job in their own physical power and do a better job that God led men who has a spiritual gift which was designed to do the job in question.
5. Denial of a 'God preserved word of God' is an attack on the power of God.
If God had the power to use holy men of God  to speak  His word (2Peter 1:21), then He also has the power to use holy men of God  to translate His word.  A denial of a God translated and God preserved word of God is a claim that there are no more holy men of God.  This claim is put out by sinful men to enhance their own authority and get God's people to turn to them from true holy men of God.  This is also a claim that God no longer has the power to create and lead holy men of God.  Thus, this identifies the speaker with lying sinful representatives of Satan who pretend to be ministers of righteousness  (2Corinthians 11:12-15).  Simply put: if your God doesn't have enough power to preserve His own Word, then He lacks the power to preserve your soul when Satan, or others, use the same attack upon your soul that they used upon God's Word.


2. God preserved Biblical truth.  All that disagrees is error.
This should be a simple concept.  Romans 3:3-4 says For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.  Men refuse to believe God and then demand that we accept that their lack of faith is greater than the truth that comes from God.  The word let  is the action verb used in creation (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, 20, 22, 24, 26).  Therefore, our sentence in Romans is telling us that God uses the power of creation to preserve the existence (be)  of His truth.  Men do not have the power to set aside creation.  Therefore, their doubt has no effect upon God's truth,  exactly like our sentence in Romans tells us.  In addition, God does not change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8) and, as pointed out in the Word Study on Truth, God's truth does not change because it is based upon the personal character of a never-changing God.  All of the arguments about God not being able to preserve His Word are based arguments of men and upon 'manuscripts', that were perversions of God's Word when they were first written, and that were created thousands of years after Genesis was written.  We have older versions of Genesis which show us that God preserved His truth, including His covenant with Abraham, which is the basis of our salvation.  If God can preserve the basis of our salvation, then it is a lie to claim that He could not preserve additions to that salvation which have existed for thousands of years less time.  Bottom line: God preserved the word of God and made it available to every generation in a form that they can literally and physically handle and in a language that they can understand.  All disagreements with this truth are a lie.


3. Problems caused by the New Testament.
Most people have a wrong idea about what 'Old Testament' was replaced by the New Testament  .  There is no denying that the 'Old Testament' was replaced by the New Testament  .  The problem is that our Bibles label Genesis through Malachi as the 'Old Testament'.  However, that labeling was done when the 1611 KJV was compiled from several independent manuscripts.  People had multiple scrolls and parchments before that, but not a single book that was the entire Bible in a single unit.  Therefore, since the New Testament  was defined within the Bible at least 1500 years earlier, we have to use the definition that is within the Bible itself in order to have the accurate definition of what was replaced by the New Testament  .

In Hebrews 9 we have the explanation of the New Covenant / New Testament  replacing the old.  A covenant  is a legal contract enforced by God's court.  A 'Last will and Testament' is also a legal document that men also use.  The 'will' portion God ignores because He is going to burn up this entire physical world and replace it with a new earth  (2Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1).  The 'testament' portion is ignored by men because they got tired of listening to 'the old man' while he was alive.  They don't want to hear 'last words' but only want to know who gets all of the stuff.

In spite of these different perspectives, Hebrews 9 teaches us that the legal principals of a 'Will' apply to the Bible's 'Testaments'.  That shows the error of the Mormon claim of 'another testament' because, as we all know, there can be only one 'Last Will and Testament' in effect at a time.  We also have Hebrews 9:16-17 which tells us For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.  So who died to put the Mormon 'other testament' into effect?

In addition, to those things, no one can legally change the 'Last Will and Testament' that belongs to someone else.  If what we have is not what Jesus Christ died to put into effect, then what we have is a totally useless perversion from man that will be rejected by God's court.  The only way that these perversions that are written by man can have any effect is if a testator  died to put them into effect.  So who died to put the perversions written by men, into effect?

Hebrews 9, Galatians 2 and Acts 15 tell us that what was replaced by the New Testament  was only the religious part of the Mosaic Law.  The Mosaic Law has three parts intertwined.

1. The Civil part was how the government was to be run and God always tells men to obey the law of the land that they are in.  The Moral part told people how to act personally, especially with their relationship to God and their relationship to God's people.  The Moral part only wrote down what God had already established before giving the law to Moses.  The Religious Law had all of the sacrifices, the observance of the Sabbath and circumcision. 
   
   An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth  was actually part of the Civil Law, not the Moral Law.  Therefore, there was no conflict when Jesus told people to turn the other cheek  as how we are to act personally (Moral Law).  Since we do not live in a country that has the Civil part of the Mosaic Law as the law of the land, we do not have to obey it.  However, the principals within it were given for our admonition  (2Corinthians 10:11).
   
   However, what is more important, for our current point, is the fact that this New Testament teaching did not replace the Old Testament teaching like many religious groups and people claim.  This is just one example of many erroneous claims which are made by 'religious authorities' based upon people not understanding the structure and divisions that are in the Bible.
2. The Moral part of the Mosaic Law was kept, as we see in Acts 15 and in Galatians.  Notice that Galatians 3:17 says And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.  God gave us promises,  which are the basis of our personal relationship with God.  When the law  was added,  it only clarified what God had already established.  Notice that Acts 15:19-20 says Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.  We also see this repeated in Acts 15:28-29.  These things are not the only part of the Moral Law that were preserved, but examples of all that dealt with our personal relationship with God.
3. That leaves the religious part of the Mosaic Law, which dealt with sacrifices and holy days.  Hebrews explains how our personal relationship with Christ replaces the Religious Law.  When the Jews in the Jerusalem Church refused to accept this change from God; and kept sending out preachers telling people to keep the Law; and accepted the lie from 'many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law  (Acts 21:20-21); and demanded that Paul do a religious ceremony 'to prove his innocence'; and when the end result of that demand was the beheading of Paul; God used the Roman Army to destroy that church and all who supported their doctrinal error and to tear down the Temple so that it was impossible for people to keep the Religious part of the Mosaic law.  Hebrews and Galatians make it clear that God has replaced the Religious part of the Mosaic law with the personal relationship that is in Christ  (the New Testament).


4. The English Bible is more reliable, for us, than Bible in Original languages.

Let's start with something simple.  There is only one KJV-1611.  The only changes made were to standardize spelling, change the font, and remove the Catholic books which were added for political reasons but should not have been there.  Yes, there were minor corrections in the few years right after 1611, but nothing since.  Compare that to about 5,000 manuscripts (non-original copies) in the 'original languages'.  Which one will you use as your God given authority, what are your God given reasons for rejecting the others and how will you access all 5,000 manuscripts in order to verify your claim?  How about the people who claim to believe the 'Textus Receptus'?  Which of the half dozen versions will you claim is the inerrant word of God and how will you prove your version right and the others wrong when you are not enough of a scholar in the Greek of the Bible to make that claim?

Quite simply, many people claim to be Bible 'experts' and get away with it because God's people don't know how to prove  those claims to be right or wrong.  God's people have failed His command to prove all things.  Please see the Study called Prove for how to use God's way to do this.

Find several people who grew up speaking only one language and then learned a second language as an adult.  Most of them should admit that they still think in their native language and translate what they hear into their native language in order to understand what was said, then think of a response in their native language, and then translate their response to the other language before responding.  The problem with this is that it causes several problems which prevent complete understanding.  When there is a thought process that is basic to one language, it has a simple expression.  Sometimes only a single word (run) is needed to express it.  If the same thought process is not common in another language, there will not be a single word to convey that same thought process.  Thus, someone might be taught that one word in the new language has the same meaning as another word in their native language, when the truth is that the proper translation can actually vary depending upon the context in which it is spoken.  For example, there are supposedly more than 35words in the Alaskan Native language that we translate to 'snow' in English.  There are 6 or 7words in Biblical Greek that we translate to wine.  Baptize is a Greek word forced into English because we didn't have anything equivalent.  Most other modern human languages have forced the English word of 'computer' and other technical terms into their language because they didn't have an equivalent.  I saw one humors discussion on if the Spanish version of 'computer' should be male or female because (supposedly) all nouns are male or female in Spanish and the difference has significant secondary consequences.

All of this is leading up to the fact that we do not have a smooth translation from one language to another.  Further, lots of people insist upon proving their ignorance and foolishness by thinking that they can take some Greek class and then translate (what they are told is) the Greek Bible into English and have something better than the God directed translators of the 1611.  Listen to one simple illustration. I have worked with people from India for over 25years.  The language that they use at work is English because they have over 30 different native languages and English is their only common language.  They grow up with at least two languages, English and their native language.  Now, how many Americans have complained about not understanding people from India when they answered Customer Service numbers? How many have complained about the people in India not understanding them? We have this communication problem with people who have 16 years of formal language training and over 20 years of experience.  Now, how good is your few months of training in Greek compared to a reality in life?

Let's return to the Alaskan Native language.  A visitor to Alaska was in a restaurant when a native came in and said something in the Alaskan Native language.  When the visitor asked another person what he said, the other person said 'He said that there is snow out there'.  The visitor thought 'That's obvious for January in Alaska' and want outside and was killed by a polar bear.  Later it was determined that his death was caused by the translator.

In Alaska, there are ice bridges that are created over deep chasms.  People travel over these bridges until the spring when they become too dangerous because the bridge melts from the bottom of the bridge and, eventually, becomes too thin to support the weight of the person trying to cross it.  This type of situation, where there is a hidden deadly danger, is quite common in Alaska and the Alaskan Native language has a unique expression for it.  Thus the real message from the Alaskan native was 'There is a hidden deadly danger out there' but the translator interpreted the message as 'There is snow in Alaska in January'.

As precious as a physical life is, souls are more precious.  There are many errors of the same type being made with the Bible because prideful people who have no idea about these culturally based secondary meanings are claiming to be some expert translator.

Pastor Russ at Rochester Hills Baptist Church recently saw this first hand.  He typed an English verse into 'Google Translate' and then compared the results to the Spanish Bible.  The difference was dramatic.  If 'Table Lookup' worked then the US would have used it in WWII and around the world since then.  Looking up an English word in a Greek-English dictionary and then thinking that you can correct the God led translators of the 1611 KJV Bible only proves how foolish you are.

One more point: who watched and preserved the 'Greek' version that you are using? We have the history of people watching the English so closely that they cried 'perversion' when people changed the font or spelling.  We also have 1John telling us that the blood  is a witness from God and our history tells us of people literally dying for the 1611 KJV.  However, there are about 5,000 Greek manuscripts and they do not agree with each other 100%.  In addition, there is (reportedly) more than one 'Greek' version of the 'Textus Receptus'.  So, how do you know what the source and history is of the 'Greek' that you are relying upon? Further, who watched the version of the 'Greek' that you rely upon and who died for it as a witness that it is the preserved inerrant word of God?

Bottom line: The wrong use of the 'Greek', for interpretation, is pure religious pride which God resisteth  (James 4:6; 1Peter 5:5).

5. God does use Original languages,  but only to enhance the truth found in English.
Having said all of that, we must recognize that God does use other tongues.  The problem is not in the use of the 'Greek' but in the way that people use it.  The web page called 'Prove' deals with the proper way to use the 'Greek', along with other requirements for 'Proving' that your doctrine comes from God.

Bottom line: Once more we see that the problem is not what people argue about or wave in front of people as 'the source of a problem' but it is the way that people use God's Word.

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