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HOW WE GOT THE BIBLE . . . . . . . . . . Mobile Conference 2007
Kat:
Audio 7
GOD IS SPIRIT - GOD IS CLOSE
A lot of people (I can tell by the way they talk to me) have formal ways of doing things. They get up at a certain hour, they pray for a certain amount of time, they may read their Bible for 30 minuets. They have all this regiment and they go to church and then sometimes on Wed., they go to worship services. They have this very structured type of religion. I guess it is better than having no religion at all.
But I just can’t see what that really does for people. If their minds thinks in those terms - pigeons holes, prayer time, Bible study time, call a friend, give $50 to the missions or food bank. I mean do they say, ‘okay I’ve got it all down, I’m good until tomorrow morning and then I’ll pray again for 30 minuets.’
I pray all day long. When I see people in trouble, I pray. When I see a problem or I see a tragedy, I pray. When my thinking is not clear and I’m just not getting anywhere or when my wife is complaining because she’s hurting, I just pray all day long.
You don’t have to get down on your knees in the right position and fold your hands. You just pray instantly, constantly.
I think if you don’t do that you can’t have a feeling that God is right there. It’s like you got to get down and look up or something. God is everywhere.
Acts 17:26 And He has made all nations of men of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
v. 27 that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us:
You have to understand He is talking to the Ephesians here, they are not into all of their philosophies and all these things. So he’s kind of talking on their level, but using a little of their psychology and so on, if you will.
“He is not far from each one of us.” How far? Not far - Close. I can put my hand close to my face, it’s not far. In the back of this room, you are far from me, relatively speaking. Now you could be considered close, because we are all in the same room and somebody in Kansas City would be far from me. But this (my hand in front of my face) is close and this (move my hand away from my face) is far. God is close. Well how close?
Acts 17:28 for in Him we live, and move, and have our being (some versions say exist, in Him we exist); as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring (children, as of course parents are always close to their little children, because they have to watch after them).
v. 29 Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man.
v. 30 The times of ignorance therefore God winked at; but now he commands men that they should all everywhere repent:
Now we have the judgment verse.
Acts 17:31 because as He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness…
But the point I want to make here is God is close. Don’t think that you are praying to God in outer space, you don’t. God is not in outer space. You do not need to lift your voice, if He reads your thoughts, you don’t even need to lip the sounds. He reads you, He understands, He feels you, when you really come to understand there is a God and He is everywhere.
God is not a Spirit. God is Spirit. Not ‘a’ Spirit. So if He was a Spirit, then maybe He would be over there as opposed to over here. But He’s not a Spirit. Remember that little song - He’s in the tree tops, so tall. He’s in the sparrow, so small. Well it is true.
God is not a man. They say, ‘well the Bible says He’s a man, He’s got arms and legs. It says the hand of God, the eyes of God.’ But God is not a man, He speaks in those terms, that’s so we understand what it is He’s trying to get across. But God is not a man and He’s not a Spirit. He’s Spirit !
John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.
John 5:37 And the Father that sent Me, He hath borne witness of Me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape.
Why is that? Because God is invisible. Spirit is invisible, God is invisible. No one has ever seen Him or heard Him, because He’s not a man or a Spirit. He is spirit. When we are made in the image of God, we are not made in the physical shape of God. You have got to learn to think beyond words.
You say, ‘but Ray it says image and I looked that up in Strong’s Concordance and it means like a statue.’
Of course that’s what it means. Jesus Christ said you should cut off your hands too. This is your hand and a knife is something you use to cut it off. He said to do that. But that is not what He meant.
You say, ‘well then why did He say it?’ He said it so that those to whom it was given would understand exactly what He meant and those that think everything is literal, physical and statues, would not understand it. God isn’t like if you pour plaster over Him, it would look like a man and you would say, ‘Oh there He is.’ You think you can’t see Him as Spirit, but (with the plaster on) alright now you can see Him?
You can’t see spirit and you can’t hear spirit. Spirit is not over here as opposed to over there. Neither is it up there, as opposed to down here. ‘Ray your mixing me all up now, I know the Bible says, raise your eyes up on high and God dwells on high.’ With high we are talking lofty, as opposed to being low and demeaning. Not high up, meaning in elevation in feet.
I mean if God is up there to us and to the Chinese He is up there, well we got two different God’s, in two different locations, right. There is no up, as in outer space and nowhere does it say that God dwells in outer space. Nowhere does it say that heaven is on a rock someplace out in interstellar space. There’s a big rock called heaven? It’s got big rock candy mountains and chocolate streams and other such nonsense?
We don’t know much about God. Christ said I’ve come to declare Him, Concordant renders that unfold Him, because Christ has a closer relationship to the Father than we do. We have access to Him, but we don’t have the same relationship that Jesus Christ had and has, we don’t.
So it’s true when people get into trouble they cry out to God, but that is emotion. But you can just whisper and He’ll hear you just as well. He can hear a whisper, I know some think He can’t, but He can. He is stronger, bigger and more powerful than you might think. God is able to do amazing things.
THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY APPEAR TO BE
This universe is part of God. He did not make it out of nothing, we read that yesterday. He made it out of things that do not appear, invisible things, not invisible nothings, invisible THINGS.
You have got to come to my next conference, because I’m going to really cover some deep stuff. I’ll give you a hint. There are things that scientist know and have revealed to us and they are actually true, they are factual. We have heard them, but we don’t think about them. Most people don’t think about many things. They think about their children, their clothing, their house or what they are going to eat for dinner. They think about a TV show that’s coming up that they want to watch or what Alabama is doing and did they beat LSU and what is Britney doing with her kids now. They think about some health problem they have and maybe two or three more things. That‘s what they think about. You don’t think about life and death or God and the universe. People don’t think that way. I’m not saying if you live and die, your going to hell, if you don’t think about these things.
God said knowledge would be increased and the wise would begin to understand things that were never known before. I think we are getting there. Things are not what they appear in religion, in Christianity or in society. I see though it.
When President Bush gets up to the podium and he starts to talk, some people say, ‘this is our President we must listen carefully.’ I see through him like a window pane. There is nothing that man can say that I don’t see right through it. The rest of them too. I can see the motive behind the motive, I can read it like a book. I don’t get the same impression that other people do. You will never see me waving a ‘vote for Edwards’ plaque and yelling like a clown. Why? Because I know what it’s all about.
You think things are what they appear to be, they are not. This podium seems solid, it’s not, it’s all space. Suppose as big as this stage is (6’ x 6’) and that high, there is a big block of solid polished stainless steel. It would weight a lot, very heavy. Do you know that 99.999...% of that block of steel is space. It’s an illusion and for all practicality, it isn’t even there. If you took the space out of it, then it would be so tiny that you couldn’t see it. Why? Because it would be to tiny to see.
You have no idea how small atoms are and yet they are not the smallest things. Atoms are made of things, protons, nucleolus and electrons. If you blew up a nucleolus to the size of a baseball and go down to Hank Aaron Stadium and go out into the infield and hold up that baseball. Let’s say that baseball represents the nucleolus of one atom and we’ll use the element iron. So this baseball represents one atom of this iron of this block and you blew that up to the size of a baseball. Do you know where the electron would be that goes around it? Well picture Denny in his sail boat out in the Gulf of Mexico, holding up another baseball. That’s where it would be. Pretty amazing.
Now if you are flying over in a 747, you couldn’t see Denny’s sail boat, let alone Denny or the baseball he’s holding up, could you. You might see Hank Aaron’s Stadium and you think you see somebody standing in the infield. But you wouldn’t see the baseball he’s holding up. So for all practicality if your looking down at Hank Aaron Stadium or the Gulf of Mexico, you can’t see the atom or the nucleolus and then you got these miles and miles of space in between. Well that’s what solid iron is. A baseball here at Hank Aaron Stadium and another one in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s what solid iron is, space.
Why can’t you take a sharp pointed nail and drive it through a block of iron? Why? We’re not even talking about the different atoms, we’re talking about one. So say one atom that you are holding up in Hank Aaron Stadium and the next atom of iron would be out in the Gulf of Mexico and you’ve got miles of space in there. So why can’t you?
There are a couple of problems involved. First you’ve got the baseball/atom in Hank Aaron Stadium and the one in the Gulf of Mexico, that is the next atom of iron. Then you have another one up there so many miles and another down there so many miles and they just keep going and that’s solid iron. But why can’t you drive a nail through the middle here? Well because the surface of the point of the nail would be about 40 or 100 square miles. You couldn’t get it through because the point is hitting all these baseball/atoms, that’s one problem. The point is hundreds of times bigger than those spaced out atoms.
The other problem is there is a force between those atoms, you can’t pick one of these atoms off there, they are held together by force. What kind of force? I haven’t a clue. The scientist haven’t a clue. It’s not gravity. Gravity doesn’t hold iron together. One block of iron is attracted to another block of iron a little bit by gravity. But the block of iron doesn’t hold together by gravity. What holds it together? I don’t know.
Why is it if I take two pieces of iron and push them together, why don’t they join? If you can’t pull this piece of iron apart, how come you can’t take two and put them together and they stay? Now it’s one piece of iron, it doesn’t need glue to hold together. So if you take two, why can’t you just touch them and they stick? Why don’t the atoms from this one go mixing with the atom of the other and mix up and then they are bound into one piece? Why?
By the way there is no iron in the stars. But there is iron on the earth. How come there is iron on earth and there is no iron in the stars? There is iron in our sun apparently, but not in the stars. Well isn’t our sun a star? Yes, but it’s a new one, it came from a dead star. A star has to die before it can make iron. Stars don’t have heavy metals, they come about with a super nova, when a star dies. It’s got to cool down.
SCIENCE AND THE MYSTERIES OF GOD
There are so many magical things out there in science. It all goes down to these little things that you can’t see that we call atoms. But then the atom is made of other things. They are made of quarks and things. Then they’ve got alpha and beta quarks. So it just keeps going on and on.
Well it says that God created everything, out of that which does not appear. Yet when we look, the closer we go… Only now can science do that, it couldn’t do that 100 or 200 years ago, now they can. It’s made out of stuff that once you take the atom apart it’s no longer solid material. Now it’s energy and has no specific shape and it starts to loose it’s weight. How much does a light ray weight?
Well there is another problem. Light is a beam, a particle beam and light is a wave. But it can’t be both, it’s got to be either a beam or a wave. Light is both. Scientist can’t figure it out, how can it be both? It just is, light is both. But it can’t be both, but it is. I mean there is a lot of mysteries out here.
The point is, God is behind it and God made it. He didn’t just make it though, it seems apparent now that He put wisdom into the material itself. Scientist are starting to see that the material itself contains it’s own wisdom. I didn’t say a brain. It doesn’t exactly have a brain, it has built in wisdom. It knows what to do under certain circumstances. You say, ‘no it just reacts to laws.’ No, that’s what scientist always thought. They are seeing now that it’s way too complicated. What matter does or is capable of accomplishing when it is heated or cooled and interchanges and all that, is way beyond a law. It has it’s own wisdom built in.
It’s like the DNA molecule that tells a fetus what color eyes and hair and male or female. All that information was built into the DNA. The DNA molecule is the most crammed packed piece of intelligent information in the universe. No where in science or in the heavens or stars or mountains or rocks or volcanoes or anywhere is there so much knowledge and information crammed together, as in a DNA molecule. It is so incredible, scientist look at it and it almost scares them. They don’t know what they are seeing, it’s like something out of a science fiction movie. It’s just unbelievable. They thought it was rather simplistic, each one of those simplistic little motions are made up of a million computers. It’s like where does it end?
KNOWLEDGE WILL BE INCREASED
Well it ends with God, because it started with God. But I want to expand our minds a little bit. For whatever reason I think God is teaching this generation some things that were not known in the past. The Apostle Paul and Elisha and Moses didn’t know these things. Why do we know them? I don’t know. I don’t know why we have all of this knowledge, but it must be going to serve a purpose, some how, some way.
But you know scientist are seeing it, but they don’t all see a connection with God. That’s where we come in and we see a connection with God. You got to get this magic Jennie in a lantern out of your head, this is God. God doesn’t sit like Abraham Lincoln up on a throne, on a rock in outer space. God is all that there is, a billion times over. That’s God, all wisdom, knowledge, design, intelligence, beauty and all of that is God. Without God there is nothing in the universe, even the evil. We read about in Isaiah 4:45, God created it.
When the sun goes down or actually when the earth turns away from the sun, it gets dark. God says He created the darkness. But you say, ‘no everything just naturally is dark and when He created light and it lightens up the dark. The dark was always there.’ No it wasn’t, God created darkness. You say, ‘well Ray you are loosing me now.’ Things are not what they appear to be.
I just want to expand your thinking a little bit. So that you don’t need to convince God with an emotional argument, that He should do something for you. Like you can wear Him down, if you just keep on or whatever. Now there is a certain amount that comes into play, to be persistent and all of that. But it has nothing to do with convincing God, that now it’s time for Him to do something, it has nothing to do with that. It all has to do with you. It all has to do with your growth and your maturity, it has nothing to do with God. God is already doing quite well, thank you.
God doesn’t need anything that you have to offer. But He will gain something from you, by what He has to offer you. It will come back to Him. That is a Scriptural principle. What God sends out comes back to Him, but not void. It produces something that He likes and wants and desires.
So on the one hand God is not this human person with all the emotional hang ups. Yet on the other hand, does God have emotion? Well I know theologians say absolutely not, because then you make Him into a man. Well what does emotions have to do with a man? Man has emotions, but who put them there? Is love just hard cold facts? It’s doing the right thing for people, at the right time with the right attitude. Is there no emotions involved in love? Does God have no emotions? Well then, where do emotions come from and why do we have them?
Now we get back to this thing of spiritual attributions, which come from God’s Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5 God lists 9 fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, faith… But then we have things like patience. If patience is a fruit of the Spirit of God, does God have patience? Well I guess He would have to. But patience is having a good attitude and having hope and confidence, towards something that you don’t have or can’t have. You have to wait on it. What can’t God have? What does He have to wait on or did He ever have to wait on anything? How did God develop patience? Well I found a couple of Scriptures that will blow you away. Either that or you just won’t understand it, I guess. But I’m telling you I found some Scriptures. Because I’ve wondered a long time if God gives us patience, does God have patience? But patience by it’s very nature is something you have to exercise, when you desire something that you can’t have. What can’t God have? You say, ‘well He can have anything He wants.’ But could He always? You say, ‘well God lives in eternity, there is no always, there is only the eternal now.’ Now we are getting into Christian theology though, and I don’t see that anymore.
I don’t see eternity as being a point of stagnation. As it neither goes forward nor backwards, it’s just frozen like a rose in a block of glass you know like you see. It’s stiff and frozen, that’s eternity? It doesn’t move ever again? I don’t see it. The eons come to an end. These mapped out, charted out periods of time that certain things have to happen. Well I don’t see in the Scriptures where time comes to an end.
Kat:
NEXT CONFERENCE - GENESIS
So did God exist through time? Everything you suggest opens up a whole new avenue, of how do you even think about these things. One thing I want to go into is Genesis. Where are the dinosaurs? These big old things from here to the end of the parking lot and 6 stories high and weighting 100 tons. Where are they in Genesis? I mean if thousands of them lived for millions of years… of course people think they only lived for a couple hundred years, right before the floor or whatever. But where are they? He talks about grasshoppers and little creeping things. Where are the dinosaurs? Well I think they are in here. I can even tell you which verse, Genesis 1:21.
It’s going to take me about a year to get ready for this conference, it might take me two years. There is a lot to learn. I mean here I am and I though I’m going to study Matthew and Mark and now I’m reading books on quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. It’s interesting though, if it weren’t I couldn’t do it.
I do some Bible studies on books that are not all that interesting to me and it really is tedious work. Sometimes they are not so interesting to me, but most things are interesting to me.
I don’t know, it’s just like God shows me things. Like when I started looking and I wanted to know about the land and the mountains. It doesn’t say God made any mountains back there in Genesis you know. He made the dry land and He made the sea, then He made trees and all the animals. But it doesn’t say anything about mountains or valleys in the first two chapters of Genesis. You have to go up to Noah’s flood until you find the word mountain. So when God created the heavens and the earth, did He make mountains? When He made the earth did He put mountains on the earth? If God didn’t make mountains, where did they come from? In the flood the waters covered them, it didn’t created them. The earth made mountains! God made the heavens and the earth and the earth makes it’s own mountains. God didn’t make mountains, He made the earth that makes mountains. How long does it take to make mountains? Billions of years. So is the earth 6000 years old? No.
Now that was a really fascinating study. My wife is working on a degree and she has a geography book. I started reading and I learned a lot from that book. But on TV they have this series about how the earth and the continents were made. The earth makes mountains, it then wears them down, then they go under the ground and into the volcanoes and then they come back up again. It’s kind of like when you make dough, it rises and then you punch it down and it rises a second time.
Granite for example, where did granite come from? Granite is a mountain that went through a volcano twice. How long did that take? Billions of years. They know about this and I studied it and I can see it. You got your igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks.
But we talk about some of these things and we relate it to the Bible. We see how God made the universe and the earth and humanity and maybe a little bit of where it’s going. We are not going to die and go to heaven and sing gospel music on some rock in outer space. Trust me, we’re not. That is strictly fairy tale nonsense.
God has got a master plan. The more I think about it… When we are born, fully born into the family of God, it's like when a child is actually born. We know what it’s like when a child is begotten, ecause after a few weeks or a month, the mother realizes something is going on. She say, 'I think I’m pregnant.’ Then there is a certain period it grows, for 9 months and the baby is born. But when the baby is born, is it mature?
So I’ve been looking at that the last few years. I don’t believe when we are born into the family of God we will be just like God. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe we are going to take that quantum leap in one flash, at the last trump. Boom and we will be patting out Father on the back and saying, ‘good to see ya Dad.’ I don’t think it’s going to be like that at all. I think then (when we are born into the family of God) we’re on the outside of the womb, so to speak. We’ll be on the outside of the spiritual womb and it’s going to be a whole new world.
I think about as much as a fetus sees in the mother’s womb, that’s what we see right now. When we are born, we are going to come out of this and we are going to see a whole lot more. Then we are going to start to grown up. But that’s just what I think. Hey I might be a heretic.
THE CHRONOLOGY OF TRANSLATIONS AND MODERN VERSIONS
We’re going to get into the chronology from this section I took from Greatsite.com, who sells books.
The history of the Bible is a little different then a lot of people think or the way it’s even presented. I looked at a lot of material before I would ever print this section here from Greatsite. Because there are so many contradictions out there, it’s just so many and not just contradictions, but out and out lies.
I mean how many of you heard that this King James Bible was translated directly from the Textus Receptus, how many have heard that? It’s not true. Do you know what this Bible really represents? It’s not a translation at all. This is a revision of the Bishop’s Bible. What is the Bishop’s Bible? That’s a revision of the Great Bible. Well what is the Great Bible? Well it’s a revision of the Geneva Bible. What is the Geneva Bible? It came out of the Coverdale Bible and where did the Coverdale come from. It’s a revision of the William Tyndale Bible and where did that Bible come from? Well it came from William Tyndale.
The first English Bible was translated in Germany. How many knew that? So how many translations of the Bible are there? About one, that’s all. Tyndale went to Germany to translate the English Bible. Did he have any help? Yes, Martin Luther, he’s a German. Did he have any documents? Yes, Martin Luther had a Erasmus collection of Greek manuscripts, that later became known as Textus Receptus. Martin Luther translated his Germany version from those Texts and the Vulgate. When in doubt, look at somebody that’s already done it, you will learn things.
Jerome translated the Vulgate in 382 BC.I mean he was no fool, this man’s a genius and he did a good work, I mean considering what he had. But that was not a translation, it was a renovation of all the bad Latin versions that were scattered around. The versions were so bad, so corrupt, so chocked full of errors and just not scholarly works at all. Jerome said that we need a decent copy of the Scriptures in Latin and so he did it.
Now we have such things as the Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. They didn’t have any of that stuff. The oldest manuscripts that they had back when Coverdale and Luther and all these guys had, was from the 10th century. They had nothing older. So really in the last 100 years a lot of stuff has been found.
The Sinaiticus and that stuff was all found in the 1800’s, not back in the 13th, 14th or 15th century. So we have the benefit of all this stuff now and we can look at it and it has been studied so much.
I mean you can’t even phantom how many tens of thousands of people, scholars and theologians have poured over these manuscripts and compared them and tried to figure out where they come from and who wrote it and what was their motive and is it pure.
Then you have these manuscripts like the Sinaiticus, which is the oldest complete New Testament in Greek. It’s the entire Greek New Testament from Matthew to Revelation. Before 350 AD there is not a manuscript on the face of the earth that contains the Old and New Testament, none, not one. But there is lots of fragments.
DISCOVERING AND PRESERVING THE PASS
It’s amazing, they’ll have this fragment about 1 inch big that archeologists will find someplace and it will have maybe 8 words from the book of Zephaniah. They will study those words and find it in another more recent one and see how it compares, in the shapes of the pen strokes and all this technical stuff. Then they can date it, see. They will notice the shape of some of the letters and then they will compare that through history. They will look at those from 300, 400, 500, no, now they go to 200, 100 BC, yes. Here’s a tomb of some famous person and they know it was 70 BC and it has the same letters. Now 100 years later these letters are changing, so this fragment is at least 100 BC. You see how they put this together, it takes years and years and years.
Have you ever wondered how they date stuff? They got the old dynasty and the new dynasty and you got Muhutmos II and all these different kings and he lived in this year. Did you ever wonder, how do they know that? How did they know that was 1874 BC? Did they find that on a calendar some place?’
Well it’s an amazing study, how they do that. You know back in the 1800 or 1900’s they had all the kings lists of Egypt. They had kings and which ruled after each other. They were different king lists in Syrian and Babylon, all these kings lists. But they didn’t know where any of them connected. You know should this list be up there or down here. Then they started getting them in relationship with each other. Okay these kings lived with this set of kings, because he married this kings sister, because we just saw it on a tomb. So they start getting the lists coordinated, but they still don’t know where all the lists go.
Then one thing that was a major key was found. It was some piece of absolute historical documentation on some event in history, that fall on an eclipse. Now they could go back in planetariums and pin point the day of that eclipse. Then the whole thing fell into place. They now know the date of that eclipse and that event. So that tied to this event, that tied to this other event and this event down in China and over in Russia and it all started coming together. Because of one event, an eclipse. Absolutely amazing stuff how this happens.
God says people will be running to and fro and knowledge shall be increased (Daniel 12:4). Now they are putting this stuff together. You might think there is a lot of history being lost, it’s really not. History was lost for many centuries, now it’s being found and when we find it we preserve it. We put it under glass and humidity controlled, we are preserving stuff now.
So it is kind of an exciting time to live, because I think there is some real things around the corner and some people are afraid of it. Some people are kind of afraid of science. But I’m telling you I’m just becoming more and more convinced, you know, bring it on, because it fits.
You say, ‘well we thought that God created the heavens and the earth 6000 years ago. Now you are telling us it’s more like 6 billion. My faith is crumbling.’ No, I’m going to build some of that faith back up. You are going to see this first chapter of Genesis falls right in line with what scientist are now seeing. It does not fall in line with what theologians have said for 2000 years. It does not. But it does fall in line with true science, it absolutely does.
What about the dinosaurs? It doesn’t tell us much. But how much must you know if it’s truth and God shows it to you. Do you see what I’m saying?
Did you ever notice how in the Scriptures, when something was revealed to the Apostles, just some little thing opened up their understanding. Christ mentioned a word or a prophecy and then they understood. Why? That’s the way God does things. I don’t have all these mysteries solved yet.
I know it takes hundreds and hundreds of years for a acorn to turn into a giant oak tree. Why does it take so long? I think part of it has to do with this earth thing I was telling you about. God takes hundreds of years to grow a tree. The Bristlecone pine trees in California, do you know that some are almost 5000 years old? A 5000 year old tree. It was alive long before Moses came across the Red Sea, it was full grown by then. Thousands of years old.
Why does God take billions of years to build mountains? I mean He could do it quickly, but He doesn’t. That’s the whole point, He doesn’t. You say, ‘well I wish He did. It would make more sense if God would do the magic trick, like I always thought. Boom, there’s the stars, boom the earth, boom the mountains and hills.’ What is greater is how He did do it.
It’s one thing for 100 construction men to go out and they build a big building or something. It’s another thing to level off a piece of land and carry out all the materials and have the building build itself. Imagine that. Just say, ‘okay go.’ Anybody can get a group of men and build a building. But put the materials out there and I’m going to tell the building to build itself. That’s what God does. He says, ‘watch this, I create what’s necessary. I give the raw materials, but watch this.The earth is going to create itself, over billions of years.’ Why does He do that? I only have some glimpses into it.
But like this table, things are not what they appear. God is bigger than we ever thought. He’s just so much bigger, so much wiser, so much everything. That’s why it says what it says here.
I Cor. 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
v. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches…
Well why not? Why not teach us these things in the words of man’s wisdom? What’s wrong with that? That’s not the way it’s done.
Paul knew about man’s wisdom, he knew about words, he knew about meanings, he could write a full sentence. He could carry through a thought, like the philosophers or poets and all of that. But notice.
v. 13 …not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things (things should not be in there) with spiritual.
v. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
v. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
v. 16 For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
Well we should have the mind of Christ, we are suppose to have the mind of Christ. But this is a quantum leap from…
Jesus loves me this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
What will happen when you die and go to heaven. What do you do there? They say, ‘well we sing and eat candy on big rock candy mountains.’ It’s just fairy tale nonsense. Church is fairy tale nonsense. On Sunday you go down here to Dauphin Way, a huge church and maybe some of you would listen and say, ‘I thought that was okay.’ It’s nonsense, it’s total childish, unscriptural, foolish, nonsense.
One day I’m just going to write out what some of these say and then analyze the words and you will see what utter garbage it is. Just total foolish, silly nonsense. I mean they talk this flowery stuff and they all got this lingo down, it nonsense, it’s meaningless nonsense. It’s all totally unscriptural, all of it.
Kat:
Audio 8
WHERE DID MAN COME FROM ?
All the sand on the seashore use to be mountains at one time. Now how long do you suppose it took to grind all the sand on the seashores? A long time. This earth is very old. It’s just hard to understand though, even from an evolutionary point of view, modern man has only been here 50,00 or 100,000 years. Now that’s a little longer than theologians would say Genesis was. They would put it maybe 6000 years, or some would say 8000 to 10,000 years. Alright say 10 times that, 100,000. That’s nothing. What is 100,000 years in 4½ billion? 100,000 is nothing. If it’s the hours on a clock, it’s like one second before midnight that man appears.
That is what is so amazing, he did, just appear and everybody knows it. This idea that you can link man way back, is nonsense and most real scientist know it’s nonsense. Modern man just showed up. 50,000 or 100,000 years ago there was no modern homo-sapiens men. It was just boom, there they were. Where did they come from?
They figured the dinosaurs lived from 165 million years ago to 50 million years. 115 million years dinosaurs existed! Mankind a couple of thousand years. Where did he come from? Boom, here’s modern man. Where was he before? He’s not there! All these other animals we have now and then you go back to the lizards and the dinosaurs, but there is no man there. Well we’ll talk about that next year.
ENGLISH BIBLE HISTORY
Excerpts (in italic) are taken from Greatsite.com, where Ray printed the ‘English Bible History’ page in the notes and referenced it frequently. Here is a link to the page.
http://greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/index.html
The 1000 years of the Dark and Middle Ages was a period where the only Scripture available was Latin. Except for the Hebrew and Greek and not many people on the planet earth could read Hebrew or Greek.
It’s interesting that Jerome supposedly translated the Vulgate in 382 AD and Wycliffe translated the first English Bible in 1382. Exactly, I mean exactly 1000 years. Isn’t that interesting. How did that every come about, exactly 1000 years to the year.
Wycliffe, you’ve got to give the man credit. He’s the first man to venture out and make a English Bible and it was frowned upon.
The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!
I mean just out of sheer hatred. This is the Pope, a descendant of Peter supposedly. I don’t think so.
It is amazing that Wycliffe’s Bibles are hand written. Now he didn’t write them all. I’m sure he wrote the first one and then there were scribes that looked at that one and they made copies. If you have seen the hand printed page of a Wycliffe Bible it is so beautiful and so flawless, it look just like print. It actually looks like it was printed on a printing press, that’s how good it is and it’s all done by hand. Absolutely mind boggling. But they didn’t have television and all that stuff to distract them. They just sat there is the noonday sun and whatever.
There were several editions of Wycliffe’s Bible. I think they all made corrections in it. These men were scholars and students of the Scriptures. They would say, I’ve got to change that verse. Then every 5 or 10 years or whatever, they would come out with a new edition. Because they were being slowly produced, they weren’t easy, even when printing press came out. They could just change a few lines of type and it’s a new edition, because they made some corrections and some improvements and so on. So the first one from Wycliffe was in 1384 and 26 years later they had the 1410 edition. Greatsite.com has one for sale, you can buy a Wycliffe hand written 1410 Bible. It’s two million seven hundred and fifty thousand ($2,750,000). That’s probably a good bargain, I don’t know. This was the first Bible translated into the English language, but it was translated from the Latin Vulgate. But we can’t pooh pooh the Vulgate completely.
The Vulgate was a pretty good translation over all. Jerome’s original Vulgate did not have all these errors of ‘for ever and ever,’ this never never land nonsense. They had these Latin words eternous - eternium, but it did not mean eternity like the word does today. It meant an age. In fact, Alexander Thompson, a Scottish theologian from not too long ago, about 50 - 60 years ago that he died. But he traced eternity back to the Latin eternous and eternium and right back to the Greek aion. The word eternity comes from the Greek word aion - age. It absolutely does and it never meant endless time.
Justinian in about 558 AD started reasoning and you know what the Bible says about human reasoning. He said, ‘if the saved Saints never die, then the wicked never die either. So when it says that we are going to receive eonian life, then the wicked must receive eonian judgment. So since we know that eonian life never ends, judgment must never end.’
Now the Scriptures does not say that. But he knew that the word eonian didn’t mean endless, so he tacked a word onto it, ‘endless’ eonian. So there you go, he solved the problem. Now the Saints receive endless eonian life and the wicked received endless eonian punishment. By the very fact that he had to interject a word that wasn’t there, proves conclusively that eonian never meant endless. You don’t put the word endless in front of the word endless. You don’t have endless endless life, you see. But he came up with his endless eonian. Why? Because eonian doesn’t mean endless and he wanted it to be endless, so he put endless onto it, endless eoian - endless ages. It’s heresy! It is not in the Scriptures, it heresy.
Jerome used the word eternium and eternous, but it never meant endless. I mean it was in the 6th century before somebody started talking about endless eonian, which is just a fabrication.
Okay so here we have the first English Bible. One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus , promoted Wycliffe’s ideas. I mean Wycliffe knew that the church was not following the Scriptures, because they had learned Hebrew and Greek. That is an interesting story, how they learned it, too.
There was a lot of scholars in the Byzantine Empire and there was a period where they had to run for their lives. Some of them fled into northwestern Europe and they brought the knowledge of ancient languages with them. But it wasn’t until 1350 or so, before Oxford University or maybe it was Cambridge, but I think Oxford was first to offer a course in Greek. You know how everybody says ‘it’s Greek to me.’ Well then people started learning Greek.
But for all practicality even Latin was not known in Europe that well. The only people that could read a Bible were theologians and scholars. The farmers and the shoemakers couldn’t read it, they didn’t know Latin. Well the church people wanted it that way, they were in total control and in charge of these people. Not only their physical lives for the here and now, but their eternal destiny. Everybody thought it was in the hands of the theologians.
Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450’s. I’m sure they made a few experimental runs, but the first major thing that they published on the printing press was the Gutenberg Bible. So it was the first thing that came off the first printing press in the world.
What amazes me is, I think there was around 185 copies made and 48 of them are still around. Some of them have pages missing, like my old German Bible. But somewhere between 3 to 10 copies are considered to be in perfect condition, with no missing pages, cover still attached. That’s amazing, it’s been 562 years, that’s a long time to have a book around and it still be in perfect condition.
This line in the notes is interesting;
The Latin had become so corrupt that it no longer even preserved the message of the Gospel… yet the Church still threatened to kill anyone who read the scripture in any language other than Latin… though Latin was not an original language of the scriptures. So they were not allowed to read it in Greek, just Latin.
Erasmus is a key person in how all our modern and English Bibles came about, because he compiled these Greek manuscripts. I think he had like six different Greek manuscripts. Where they get this term ‘Textus Rectus’ is he made a compilation of the six manuscripts. These were Byzantine texts, I mean they were Greek, but came out of the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantine was the eastern empire after Rome fall, Turkey and Constantinople (Istanbul same city). That was the center of the Byzantine Empire. Where as Rome, northern Africa, Alexandria and those places were the seat of learning and libraries for the western part of the Empire.
So Erasmus was a Swiss scholar. They say he was a very brilliant man, just an absolute genius. He had some how, maybe it was through trade or something, but he learned about six Byzantine Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. So he compiled a work where he put the best representation of the Greek on one side of the page and Latin on the other side;
a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. The Latin part was his own rendering of the text from the more accurate and reliable Greek. This milestone was the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture to be produced in a millennium….
Remember that Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382, to make a descent revision of all these Latin Scriptures that were then in use and had been corrupted. It employed the everyday written Latin style of the fourth century, in contrast to the more formal, elegant Latin of Cicero and came up with a pretty good Vulgate. Now the Vulgate went through it’s own revolution, it’s not like we had the Vulgate for a 1000 years, no. We had the original Vulgate from 382 and 482 and 582 and then in 682 they started making revisions of that. That is where these words start evolving and they start interjecting other words and other meanings and so on.
Wycliffe’s first English translation in 1382, a thousand years from the original Vulgate. It’s sometimes called the English Vulgate, because his translation is from the Vulgate, only in English.
In the early 1400’s the Germans were translating German Bibles from the Vulgate. I mean the Vulgate was the source of everything. Then we come up to 1516 and Erasmus puts together from the six Greek manuscripts and apparently they were not all complete, but between them all he got a complete manuscript. Then he did the parallel thing with the Greek and the Latin.
Latin really was the scholarly language in Europe no matter where you lived. If you were a scholar, a teacher or educator and lived in Switzerland, you spoke Latin or if you lived in Germany, you spoke Latin or if you lived in England, you spoke Latin.
There were 50 men that were selected (4 didn’t show up) by King James to revise the Bishop’s Bible into the King James version. So they were working on the English Bible, talking in Latin. They had 10 companies, groups or committees that they called them companies. One would work on the Pentateuch, one on the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Joshua and Judges, one on the Megilloth, one on a couple of the major prophets and on down to Revelation. Then they would periodically get together and see how they were all doing and see if they were learning something that would benefit each other. All the discussions were always in Latin. It was kind of ironic wasn’t it. They are living in a English speaking world, translating a new English Bible and are all speaking Latin. This shows how powerful that language was and how prominently it had to do with the translating the Scriptures.
Martin Luther, 60 years before the King James came out, he is putting together a German Bible. But he’s not going to translate this one from the Latin, he used the recent Greek edition of Erasmus, the parallel of the Greek and the Latin. He puts that into German. So this is the first Bible in the European language that’s translated from the original language, Martin Luther’s Bible.
William Tyndale is who we have next. Now this is the real King James Bible and all translations. It is Tyndale that put this unique rhythmic and poetic flow to what we call the King James Bible. It doesn’t have to come out quite that way, you can translate it using all the words and proper euphuism. As I read the 23rd Psalms from the Concordant and it was very awkward… “Your club and Your staff, they are comforting me.” “My cup is satiated.” Instead of “My cup runneth over.” It’s just very awkward, you know choppy, it’s kind of guttural words. The King James just flows. But it’s not the King James, it’s Tyndale, it’s all Tyndale.
Tyndale went to Germany because they wouldn’t allow anybody to print English Bibles in England. They were death against that. So he worked with Martin Luther, because it was only maybe two years earlier that Luther had come out with his and now Tyndale wants to do it and they said fine we’ll just work together. They used the same thing, Erasmus’ compilation of a half dozen Byzantine Greek texts with the Latin next to it. That’s what they used to produce it, rather quickly, because Luther had just worked for years on his and Tyndale knew Greek. So I can see how on almost every verse, Luther saying this, that or the other thing and they would just instantly see it. He didn’t have to do a second independent study. So within one year he had it translated from the Greek and the Latin, they could compare them both because they know both languages. But at least they had the original Greek manuscripts now to produce his Bible. Martin Luther produced the first complete Bible in 1522. The King James is almost a century later in 1611.
In 1525-1526 the Tyndale New Testament became the first printed edition of the scripture in the English language. Luther had done the New Testament and then the Old. Tyndale, then did the New Testament and he started to work on the Old Testament and didn‘t finish it.
The King of England was death on Tyndale’s version. He would have merchants buy up all the versions and then they would burn them, just burn them up. But Tyndale kept getting money for them, so he had money to keep printing more and more and eventually he won out.
But you couldn’t even get caught with one of these Bibles, now alone preaching from it. That’s the iron fist that the religion had on them. So they tries to discredit it and said it was really a corrupt version and had thousands of errors in it and so on. Which was really pretty ridiculous, because not to many years later the same kings and same country and same scholars that criticized this, are now using it as the primary version to make the King James Bible.
There is only two known copies left of Tyndale’s 1525 first edition.
Kat:
This excerpt from Greatsite tells why the church was so frantic about people getting the Bible in their own language.
Having God's Word available to the public in the language of the common man, English, would have meant disaster to the church. No longer would they control access to the scriptures. If people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income and power would crumble. They could not possibly continue to get away with selling indulgences (the forgiveness of sins) or selling the release of loved ones from a church-manufactured "Purgatory". People would begin to challenge the church's authority if the church were exposed as frauds and thieves. The contradictions between what God's Word said, and what the priests taught, would open the public's eyes and the truth would set them free from the grip of fear that the institutional church held. Salvation through faith, not works or donations, would be understood. The need for priests would vanish through the priesthood of all believers. The veneration of church-canonized Saints and Mary would be called into question. The availability of the scriptures in English was the biggest threat imaginable to the wicked church. Neither side would give up without a fight.
A clergyman hopelessly entrenched in Roman Catholic dogma once taunted Tyndale with the statement, “We are better to be without God’s laws than the Pope’s”. Tyndale was infuriated by such Roman Catholic heresies, and he replied, “I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause the boy that drives the plow to know more of the scriptures than you!”
Well they feared that because the church had this iron fist, iron hand rule over the people. They were selling indulgences and all kinds of things like that, collecting tithes and they taught Purgatory. But if you paid the church so much it would get you out of Purgatory, you could buy your way out.
Now Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales,’ you ought to read it, because he talks like I do. He talks about these different priests in the church and how they were just blatantly corrupt. These priests just admit it and say, ‘hey this is a living.’ That’s what they would do, they would sell trinkets and religious junk to people and make a living doing so. They freely admitted that they had wench, like a sailor had a girl at every port, well they had a wench in every town. These priests freely admitted it and you would say, ‘well that’s just Chaucer, he had a axe to grind or whatever.’ But no, this is a poetic book and it is very long and I think it’s history. I mean it was just that corrupt. You should read the Canterbury Tales, but of course you can’t read the original, that was written back in 1300’s or 1400’s.
Have you ever seen English from the 1300 or 1400’s? It looks like Germany and it sounds like German. If I were to read you old English you would think I was speaking German to Dutch. I can catch some words, because I know a little German. It is interesting to me that Dutch sounds just like German, but my wife can not understand Dutch. She says it might sound the same, but it’s not the same. Oh she knows what they are talking about, because bread is baard and in German it is Brot. Some words are pretty similar, but others are totally different.
In the next section we will get into the gothic version. There was a European version of the Bible back in the 300’s, not the 1300’s the 300’s, yes there was. We will talk about that when we come to the chronological dates.
Myles Coverdale was a man likewise who was a early reformer and a friend of Tyndale. Tyndale started to do the old Testament. He had finished the New Testament and printed it and then he wanted to do the whole Bible, so he started on the Old Testament. But he didn’t finish the Old Testament, they killed him. But Coverdale finished it. So there is a little bit of Coverdale in Tyndale’s complete Bible.
John Rogers went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537. It was, however, the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Hebrew & Greek. A considerable part of this Bible was the translation of Tyndale, whose writings had been condemned by the English authorities. The complete Bible was put out under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthew in 1537. John Rogers used the assumed name “Thomas Matthew” to avoid persecution and prosecution by the authorities who continued to forbid under penalty of death, the printing of the scriptures in the English language. It is a composite made up of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament (1534-1535 edition) and Coverdale's Bible and some of Roger's own translation of the text. Rogers also contributed the Song of Manasses in the Apocrypha which he found in a French Bible printed in 1535. It remains known most commonly as the Matthew-Tyndale Bible.
Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1539, hired Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King Henry VIII to publish the "Great Bible." It became the first English Bible authorized for public use, as it was distributed to every church, chained to the pulpit, and a reader was even provided so that the illiterate could hear the Word of God in plain English. It would seem that William Tyndale's last wish had been granted... just three years after his martyrdom. Cranmer's Bible, published by Coverdale, was known as the Great Bible.
See how they all overlap. We have Martin Luther, and working with him was Tyndale. Then finishing Tyndale’s was Coverdale, then Tyndale’s Bible, then John Rogers.
Then you got Cranmer who hired Coverdale to make an official copy for the king. It became the first English Bible authorized for public use. In other words they pretty much knew, there is no keeping the English Bible out of the peoples hands, they were going to get them. I mean they had the presses over there in Germany, so if they could not print them there in England, they would print them over there and keep pumping them out. So there thing was, let’s bring out our own version and at least they will be reading our version, rather than somebody else’s.
It is amazing to me, how you’ve got the original scholarship behind the King James Bible. I’m not saying this because I’m German and my wife is German. I was born in America and my people have been here for a long time, but she just came over on the boat. But it’s true, Martin Luther worked with Tyndale and he must have had a lot of influence with Tyndale. Because they knocked out that New Testament in one year.
So you have Luther, then Tyndale and Coverdale finishes Tyndale‘s, then Coverdale does the Great Bible. But it’s all Coverdale that is coming forward and we come all the way up to the King James Bible. The authorities admit it is 80% Coverdale. This is not a new version, this is a revision. I heard that years ago and I had no idea what they were talking about. I heard someone say, ‘the King James is a revision of a revision of a revision of a revision.’ I said what are you talking about? I said, no they translated that out of the original Hebrew. No they didn’t. They did not. They did have Erasmus’ Greek Scripture. They sure did, but they only consulted it. When they consulted the other translation they said, ‘boy you can’t improve upon this Tyndale.’ That was as good as it gets and especially the rhythm and rhyme and the meter how it flowed.
Then we have the Great Bible and that was the first English authorized Bible. But Coverdale was a protégé of Tyndale’s and he’s the one that did that.
Queen Mary, she use to like to burn people at the stake, she was a real witch.
The religion in England went back and forth. The powers that be would either promote Catholicism or this reformation that was beginning. But understand, the Anglican church or what they called the English Anglican church was never really Protestant. They even brought out their versions, as a counter against what they consider, this Protestant Bible.
I guess the first real Protestant Bible would be the Geneva Bible that Calvin instituted. But Catholicism was kind of stamped out there, for a while. But when Queen Mary came back, she brought it back in. She started burning a lot of people at the stake and she was criticized for it. She said, (this is what she was reported to have said) ‘I’m only doing to these heretics what God is going to do to them for all eternity, I’m just doing it now.’ That’s how she justified burning them at the stake.
John Foxe wrote the famous ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.’ In the 1550's, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was very sympathetic to the reformer refugees and was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people. Many of them met in Geneva, led by Myles Coverdale and John Foxe. as well as Thomas Sampson and William Whittingham. There, with the protection of the great theologian John Calvin and John Knox, the great Reformer of the Scottish Church, the Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible that would educate their families while they continued in exile.
John Calvin, everybody considers him one of the greatest theologians of all times. I think he is one of the most evil heretics that ever lived. The Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible by John Knox and Calvin and we have the Geneva Bible. One thing interesting about the Geneva Bible and it really was a step forward, is they were the first to number the Scriptures. I mean how in the world could you find your way before.
Do you notice how when it says Christ went into the synagogue and He found the place;
Luke 4:17 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
You had to find the place. He had to find the place by what it said before and after what he was looking for. Now we just say John 3:16; go to John, then you go to chapter 3, then down to verse 16, it’s boom boom boom, it’s great. So that was an improvement for sure.
But notice this in the notes;
Between 1560 and 1644 at least 144 editions of this Bible were published. Examination of the 1611 King James Bible shows clearly that its translators were influenced much more by the Geneva Bible, than by any other source. The Geneva Bible itself retains over 90% of William Tyndale's.
So no matter what they were translating, nobody could improve upon Tyndale. The guy was apparently totally honest, understood Greek and Latin and made a concerted effort to make a very accurate translation. But not only did he make a accurate translation, he did it in a magical rhythmic meter, that you have in the King James. You don’t have that in other Bibles, unless they are copies of the King James. But it was not the King James, let’s give credit where credit is due, this is William Tyndale’s work.
Then you got the Catholics into it. Remember they are the ones that said, you can’t make a copy of the Scripture in anything but Latin, are you will die the death. But everybody’s got these English translations and they said, ‘well we might as well get in on it too. Because if all the people are going to read English and if we don’t have an English Bible, well guess what they are going to read? They are going to read these Protestant’s English Bibles. So we better make an English Bible.’ So they made a English Bible, the Douay Rheims Bible.
Because it was translated at the Roman Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was known as the Rheims New Testament (also spelled Rhemes). The Douay Old Testament was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609 at the College in the city of Douay (also spelled Doway & Douai). The combined product is commonly referred to as the "Doway/Rheims" Version.
I have a copy, it’s a Rheims Douay Catholic Bible.
Kat:
Audio 9
King James
King James, actually Prince James IIII of Scotland was King James.
The Geneva Bible that was pretty popular at this time. But the Geneva Bible, I believe was the one that had all the commentary, which is great. I love all that stuff. But a lot of it was not to flattering to the king. He wanted a Bible that would elevate kingship, so the one thing he did not want in a revision was all the marginal notes and commentary. If you see some of these old Bibles that were printed, you had other whole sections of writings and marginal notes. I think over the years some of those marginal notes got put into the Scriptures and we will cover a few of those later.
But the king never called for a translation, a new translation. The Geneva Bible was doing fine… so he wanted a revision of the Bishop’s Bible. But he also wanted, if possible, to make it better. So they could look at Coverdale and Tyndale and even the Douay Rheims Catholic Bible, they could compare those and the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible. They looked at all of those. Also there was Erasmus’ Byzantine manuscripts, with the parallel Latin. So they had all of that, they had a lot of stuff at their disposal.
But the bottom line is, it’s a revision of the Bishop’s Bible. Which is connected to the Geneva Bible, the Great Bible, the Coverdale Bible and the Tyndale Bible. It’s all the same Bible with just certain additions and so on. So by the time we come to the King James, it’s still 75-80% or more the Tyndale Bible. If you were to get a Tyndale Bible, and you would read Scripture after Scripture and you would say, ‘this is The King James.’ No, it’s Tyndale, same thing though.
It’s interesting, that the King James Bible was not immediately popular. It was competing with all of these Bibles. The Geneva Bible I think was kind of the reformers choice. But the most popular was the Bishop’s Bible. Of course in Germany it would have been Luther’s Bible. So they were in competition for a while and so for the first probably 50-60 years or so the King James didn’t catch on that much.
By the time they came to America, it was not the King James that the Puritans or the pilgrims brought with them. It was the Geneva Bible.
Protestants today are largely unaware of their own history, and unaware of the Geneva Bible (which is textually 95% the same as the King James Version, but 50 years older than the King James Version, and not influenced by the Roman Catholic Rheims New Testament that the King James translators admittedly took into consideration). [From Greatsite.com - English Bible History.]
The Geneva Bible was 95% King James. But really the King James was a revision of the Bishop’s Bible and so it had to be 95% of that one too and that one was 80-90% of the Tyndale Bible. So it’s Tyndale all the way. The man responsible for all these early editions, 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s and all these Bibles go back to Tyndale.
Now we have John Eilot. It’s interesting that the first Bible printed in America was for the Algonquin Indians. I’ve never seen one, I don’t even know what it looks like. I don’t think it was a very big Bible, because you would just have to simplify it something fierce. First he had to take the Algonquin Indian language and figure out how, using the English language and then getting the phonetic sounds using the alphabet that the Indians would speak. I don’t even know a Algonquin word. They had to teach the Indians the words that they spoke, looked like certain letters, that made certain sounds. But they learned, Indians are smart.
Clearly the Word of God was something these people needed if they were to stop worshiping creation and false gods, and learn to worship the true Creator… but God’s Word could not realistically be translated effectively into their primitive pictorial drawings. So Eliot found a wonderful solution: he would give the native Americans the gift of God’s Word and also give them the gift of true literacy. He agreed to learn their spoken language, and they agreed to learn the Western world’s phonetic alphabet (how to pronounce words made up of character symbols like A, B, C, D, E, etc.) Eliot then translated the Bible into their native Algonquin tongue, phonetically using our alphabet! This way, the natives did not really even need to learn how to speak English, and they could still have a Bible that they could READ. In fact, they could go on to use their newly learned alphabet to write other books of their own, if they so desired, and build their culture as the other nations of the world had done. What a wonderful gift! [From Greatsite.com - English Bible History.]
But the first European language Bible printed, was one like I have and there was three printings, 1743, 1756 and 1776, I don’t know which one mine is. So the first Bible printed in a intelligible language, was Martin Luther’s German Bible in 1743. It was 43 more years before there was an English Bible printed in England and that was the King James. Not the original one they brought over, but it was the King James.
Noah Webster, who gives us the Webster’s dictionary and he didn’t really make a translation, all he did was take the King James and put it into a little more modern English. But it never caught on. Most people don’t even know there’s a Webster’s Bible.
Then we come up to the next major Bible revision, a British Bible, The English Revised Version in 1885, made in Britain. Then a few years later in 1901 you had the American version of that, The American Standard Version.
Another point that a lot of people don’t know or wouldn’t know and I even make reference to it wrongly too. I talk about our King James Bible being in archaic (old) King James English. No it’s not. It is not King James English. This Bible was revised in 1879 or there about and every King James Bible printed in the English language since then is 1879 English. The only way you get King James English is to get a facsimile of the 1611 Bible. Now that was the true King James English. But it is different and it takes a little while to get use to reading it. Because they had no letter J, it wasn’t Jesus, it was Esus. And a U was a V. So it takes a little getting your mind coordinated to even read it.
So this is a revision of the King James English, it’s not a revision of the King James Bible. But only the more awkward English words that have changed meaning and spelling. Of course a lot of these 1879 English words have changed even now, because that is 125 years ago and things have changed a lot since than. You have words that have changed meaning, some mean the exact opposite. A carriage was something that you carried on a wagon, now the carriage is the wagon. Things like that have changed over time.
Then we have the New International Version and the New King James Version and the English Standard Version. These are all in the last 25-30 years. Well the New International Version is pretty popular, but the New King James Version never caught on. If somebody is going to use the King James, they don’t want a new one, they would use the New International Version.
For a lot of years people used the Revised Standard Version and now they have a New Revised Standard Version. Then there was the American Standard Version and now there is the New American Standard Version. Actually the ASV is the Scripture of choice apparently for theological seminaries, except for your King James only people. For scholarly works and doctrinal dissertations, they wouldn’t quote from a King James, they would use the New American Standard Version.
I had a NASV with a bright red cover, a big thick 1400 pages. Quite frankly it is pretty helpful and I’ll tell you why, it’s got thousands and thousands of foot notes, 10, 20 or 30 on a page. I mean they are not going to teach me anything new about doctrine per se, but you learn a lot of historical, traditional and cultural things. You will also learn about words or phrases that are not in most older manuscripts, they’ll have it and it’s helpful. I use it quite a lot as a reference book.
Ray’s Three Main Reference Bibles
My three main references and that’s other than my King James, are the Emphatic Dioglott, a little blue book that the Jehovah Witness publish. But I think you can buy it on Amazon books. The Emphatic Dioglott is only the New Testament. Concordant, you ought to be able to get on Google or Amazon too. But you can get it at Concordant.org. and I hate to send people there though. Because they are seeing all the other stuff and start reading and pretty soon they get into this 2 administrations - 2 gospels - 2 resurrections - 2 everything nonsense and I don’t want people lead astray. So sometimes I’ll send them to Amazon and they’ll come back and say, I can’t find it. Then I will say here’s where you can get one, but don’t get tangled up in their doctrine.
The Concordant doesn’t have the old Testament yet. But they are working on it as we speak. They do have it, but they don’t have it in one volume. So they either will put it in one volume or maybe they will put the whole Bible, Old and New into one volume. Because right now you have to buy all of them separately, at least a dozen or more of the Old Testament books. They are $6-$7 a piece, so they are over a $100 if you buy the New Testament and all the Old Testament books.
This one you can buy at any Bible book store, Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible. That‘s nearly as good, in some ways it’s better than Concordant and some ways it’s not. But it’s very equal. Same way with the Emphatic Dioglott, in some places it‘s better than Concordant and in some places not quite.
If you say, ‘well how can you make such a judgment?’ By studying. When you study the word aion or something, as often and as long as I did, you learn a few things. You can pretty much tell if somebody is either prejudice or lacking knowledge, when they say something.
But I would say if you don’t have an Concordant, at least get a Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible, they are not very expensive. But it at least will not have all this ever and ever, eternal and all that, it will have the right words. All of those words are right. In other words, I would say 99.99% of the Scripture are translated properly.
Maybe in some places Concordant has it a little better and some places not as good. But at least it’s on target, I mean there are few places where they are flat out wrong. But in the Concordant, Heb. 11:3, we were talking about that, “the things were made from things that do not appear.” I mean they just totally butchered that, you can just take the Concordant there and x it out, just put a big X over it, because it’s pathetic. It’s just gobbledygook. But mostly it’s pretty good.
But notice this little chronological order, this is neat.
Consider the following textual comparison of the earliest English translations of John 3:16:
1st Ed. King James (1611): "For God so loued the world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life."
Rheims (1582): "For so God loued the vvorld, that he gaue his only-begotten sonne: that euery one that beleeueth in him, perish not, but may haue life euerlasting"
Geneva (1560): "For God so loueth the world, that he hath geuen his only begotten Sonne: that none that beleue in him, should peryshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe."
Great Bible (1539): "For God so loued the worlde, that he gaue his only begotten sonne, that whosoeuer beleueth in him, shulde not perisshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe."
Tyndale (1534): "For God so loveth the worlde, that he hath geven his only sonne, that none that beleve in him, shuld perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge lyfe."
Wycliff (1380): "for god loued so the world; that he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that eche man that bileueth in him perisch not: but haue euerlastynge liif,"
Anglo-Saxon Proto-English Manuscripts (995 AD): “God lufode middan-eard swa, dat he seade his an-cennedan sunu, dat nan ne forweorde de on hine gely ac habbe dat ece lif."
Tyndale didn’t do to good on that one, but actually it makes all the same mistakes, as the King James, right, 75-85%. So he does not have that right. But you know overall it is a good translation, it‘s just a few words. So if you correct aionios and maybe the word hell, then you have a new Bible. That’s all you need to do, now it involves many Scriptures, about 78 Scriptures. But just correct the translation of that word and this Bible is pretty descent for sure.
Although there are other problems with it, but you understand they did not have nearly the amount of scholarship or codices when they did this, that we do today. I mean the Sinaiticus, the Alexandrinus and all these really old manuscripts, they did not exist back then. Well they did exist but nobody knew where they were.
Then you have Wycliffe, he has “euerlastynge liif,” and look how he spells life - liif, anyway.
Because that came from the Vulgate, sure they will say everlasting life.
But notice the last one, the Anglo-Saxon, “habbe dat ece lif." Where is everlasting? “ece” does not mean everlasting. Actually you won’t find ‘ece’ in most dictionaries, my big 2600 page Unabridged Webster’s has the word ‘eke.’ It’s the same word eke - ece and it means - to add to, to prolong, to last. But not EVER-lasting, not eternal, but lasting. We still use the word. Where do we use the word eke in modern language? Well if you say to somebody, ‘how are you doing?’ They might say, ‘I’m just barely eking out a living.’
Timeline of Bible Translation History
1,400 BC: The first written Word of God: The Ten Commandments delivered to Moses.
500 BC: Completion of All Original Hebrew Manuscripts which make up The 39 Books of the Old Testament.
200 BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek Manuscripts which contain The 39 Old Testament Books AND 14 Apocrypha Books.
1ST Century AD: Completion of All Original Greek Manuscripts which make up The 27 Books of the New Testament.
Comment: Now the first real translation that we can follow back in any language, that has been reproduced like the Greek manuscripts, would be the Vulgate in 382AD. But we are back 200 years before that and possibly the oldest translation from the Greek known, is the Peshito/Peshitta. It was translated from Greek into Syriac as early as 160-180 AD. Some refer to it as the Aramaic, but it’s Syriac. They don’t have a copy that goes back that far, but they have a historian quoting from the Peshito in Syriac in 1660 AD or somewhere in that area. So if he is quoting from it, it must have existed, see what I’m saying. But the earliest copy that they have is maybe around the 5th century or so. Pershito means - simple or easy to understand. So it’s a very precise, almost word for word translation.
This is a English translation of the Peshito, it’s called the ’Queen of the Versions’ and ‘The Syriac Vulgate.’ The reason they call it the Syriac Vulgate is because it apparently was a renovation of all these poorly done scriptures that were floating around.
Some say this was translated at Antioch. Remember in the Scripture the followers of Jesus Christ were first called Christians at Antioch. So it would make sense that they would want to have a translation of Scripture in their native tongue.
315 AD: Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identifies the 27 books of the New Testament which are today recognized as the canon of scripture.
Comment: But it isn’t that he said, ’okay these are the books.’ Those were the books that he got. These were passed on for 200 years from after Peter and John. So they knew there were 27 books.
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