The Origin of the Modern Bible Translations

We're going to pick back up here this evening with Dr. Sorensen,

and we appreciate him coming and going through these things.

And just do make a note, if you are interested in this stuff,

they do have some slips back there.

You can get the books.

I think a lot of the books that they brought have already been gone,

but if you want some, they're not gone completely.

You can get them ordered, okay?

And so they'll be back at the table to get that.

So I encourage you to do that.

Lots of good stuff there to follow up on, on this material here, even tonight.

And so we'll go ahead and have Brother Sorensen come

and share with us tonight here as we continue on.

Well, amen.

Good to see you here on this Tuesday night.

Good crowd here, and I'm excited about being here at Plains Baptist Church.

As the pastor said, the book table's kind of picked over, but you can.

I don't have one with me, but Pam will give you a little yellow slip.

You can fill it out, and we'll ship them either to your house or to the church, whichever.

And I just wanted to mention two books.

One's back at the table called Broad is the Way.

You've all heard of fundamental colleges and churches,

which in some cases have gone away.

In other cases, the churches have gone very liberal and contemporary

and become rock and roll churches.

And I'm talking about solid fundamental churches.

And there is a reason.

By the way, one of the things that happens is they change the Bible.

And another thing is they change the music.

But anyway, that book is back there, Broad is the Way.

It's used in Bible colleges around the country.

Then another book that's already gone off the table,

but just to tell you a little bit about it, it's entitled Have a Heavenly Marriage.

Pam and I have been married for 54 years, and we have had a heavenly marriage.

And folks, it's all her fault.

But I wrote a book about that years ago, and it's published by the Sword of the Lord.

It's been in print now for about 28 years, something like that.

And let me just tell you a little bit about Pam, how she got saved.

Pam grew up in a godless home.

They weren't bad people, but they for sure were ungodly people.

There was no religion of any flavor whatsoever in the home, nothing.

But when she was a teenager, they had moved from Duluth to Minneapolis.

And when she was 15 years old, a classmate at a public high school

invited her to a youth activity at the old Fourth Baptist Church in Minneapolis.

And in those years, back in the 1960s,

Fourth Baptist probably had one of the most powerful youth programs in the nation.

And their policy was that if that, and they had several youth pastors,

but their policy was that they'd have a youth activity every Saturday night

and do something, but if the kids didn't bring some unsafe visitors,

they canceled the activity.

And so there almost always were visitors.

And so Pam got invited to one of these activities.

They went roller skating on a Saturday night in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

And one of her friend's cousins said to Pam,

as they were getting ready to go,

whatever you do, don't get saved.

Pam thought, saved? Saved from what?

I'm not drowning.

And so they did their roller skating,

and then the youth pastor, I guess they took their skates off.

I wasn't there, but they took their skates off

and set all the kids down on the floor, and he preached.

He just didn't have devotions. He preached.

And after preaching a salvation message, gave an invitation,

and they had an accordion there, and sang verses of Just As I Am.

And on the last verse of Just As I Am,

Pam got up and went forward,

and a lady from the church sat down and led her to Christ on that Saturday night.

And folks, when she got saved, she got saved.

And she hit the ground running.

Arrangments were made to pick her up on the Sunday school bus the next morning.

And within a year, by the time she was 16 years old,

she was leading one of the junior churches there at Fourth Baptist Church,

a big church.

They had several layers of junior church.

And she was leading the four- and five-year-old junior church program.

And she's been going full blast in children's work ever since.

But she's a sweetheart, and I'm so glad, thankful the Lord gave her to me.

By the way, her father was an American Indian,

in fact, grew up on the reservation there in northwestern Wisconsin.

And her mother is Finnish.

Her parents came from Finland.

They were grandparents.

And they were atheists.

But anyway, so her mother was a Finn.

Her father was an Indian.

That makes her a Findian.

And we've got a bunch of them up in our part of the world.

Anyway, take your Bible this evening and turn to 2 Corinthians 6 and verse 17.

We're going to read one verse here this evening.

2 Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 17.

2 Corinthians 6 and verse 17.

Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,

and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you.

And, Father, this evening, again, as we would look at this matter of the Bible translation controversy

and the texts that underlie,

Lord, in this hour tonight, my name be glorified and your word magnified.

And, Father, help me to help your people to understand the issues tonight.

And I ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, as I said Sunday, the issue is not that I like this translation better than the King James,

or this translation is easier to read, or maybe this translation is more accurate.

Folks, that's not the issue.

The issue is that there are two different Greek texts.

On the one hand is the traditional received text,

and it's from whence the King James Bible is translated.

We'll see tomorrow night.

This can be traced right back to the years not long after the death of the Apostle John.

On the other hand, all, and this is just a fraction of the modern Bible,

there are literally scores of them.

But almost all of them are based on the modern critical text,

and we're going to talk about this tonight.

And we'll see that the modern critical text,

you say, why do they call it the modern critical text?

Folks, because it's the text of the critics.

And we're going to see that most of the people associated with the critical text,

from whence these modern Bibles come,

most of these people, it's a litany of heresy, apostasy, liberalism,

in some cases the occult.

And in one case, there's strong suspicion of adultery.

I mean, these are the people that are giving us this.

Now, I am a fundamentalist.

And the twin pillars of fundamentalism are, one,

an adherence to cardinal Orthodox Christian doctrine,

and number two, separating from apostasy and heresy.

I am a fundamentalist by conviction.

Some folks today are nervous about using that term.

But, folks, there's a rich history there behind it.

We won't get into that tonight.

But, again, the critical text crowd, the editors,

and the origins of it is a who's who of liberals and apostates,

and heretics.

And so tonight, let's just talk a little bit about the origins

and the editors and the developers of the critical text.

We touched on last night how that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus,

and if you haven't been here, there are two major manuscripts

that undergird the modern critical text.

One is called Sinaiticus.

It was found at Mount Sinai in Egypt.

And the other was called Vaticanus.

It was found in the Vatican.

And those two manuscripts comprise about 98% of the modern critical text.

And there's about 45 other fragments that have been woven into the modern critical text.

But Sinaiticus and Vaticanus had their roots in there from whence they were copied.

They were copied from something, even though, as we saw Sunday morning,

they're really not old.

Sinaiticus was made in 1840, and Vaticanus probably in 1435.

And by biblical standards, that is not old.

But the sourcing of these goes back to Alexandria, Egypt.

We touched on this last night.

And how that Alexandria, Egypt was the hotbed or the seat of the philosophy called Gnosticism.

And we saw last night that Gnosticism, as among many other things,

but one part of it is that they believe that anything physical or made of matter is evil,

and only that which is spiritual is good.

And therefore, they did not believe or they do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth

was the Christ because he had a physical body.

That is heresy.

But that has profoundly influenced these manuscripts,

and we won't go much at this point or at this moment.

But the very origins of the critical text are rooted in Gnosticism.

Well, if we fast forward a little further into history,

coming into the 1700s, things were developing in Germany.

And folks, in the last 300 years, a lot of bad stuff has come out of Germany.

Not the least of which was the Nazi Party in the 20th century.

And it was rooted in the fact that the religious intelligentsia in Germany in particular

had rejected the word of God.

And it was called German rationalism.

Now, German rationalism today would be just modern liberalism.

But the philosophy was that if something in the Bible is not rational,

we'll forget what the Bible says and go with that which is rational.

For example, in the Bible where it talks about Israel causing the Red Sea,

the rationalists or the liberals will say,

well, it really was the Reed Sea and it was only ankle deep.

Well, what happened to the Egyptians when they went through that ankle deep sea?

Or they say, well, when Jesus walked on the Sea of Galilee,

what really happened is that there were rocks just beneath the surface of the water.

You're just stepping from rock to rock to rock.

Have you ever stepped on rocks underwater?

Yeah, they're slippery, aren't they?

But, I mean, they try to explain away.

And so rationalism does not believe in the virgin birth.

They do not believe in the inspiration of the scriptures.

They do not believe in the miracles of the Bible.

They certainly don't believe in a literal hell.

Everybody's going to go to heaven, but for sure nobody's going to go to hell.

And it's just liberalism.

They denied the deity of Christ.

They denied the physical bodily resurrection of Christ.

This is German rationalism.

Now, I belabor that point because this philosophy of rationalism

had a profound influence of English editors by the name of Westcott and Hort.

We'll come to it in just a moment.

But Westcott and Hort had great respect to a German rationalist

by the name of Johann Griesbach.

And he produced what was probably the first critical text back in the 18th century.

But Westcott and Hort were, in their biography written by their sons,

said they venerated the name of Griesbach, a liberal, a rationalist.

It tells us something about Westcott and Hort.

Well, another German rationalist that is a part of the story,

and we spent some time on this on Sunday morning,

was a man by the name of Tischendorf.

And Tischendorf was a German rationalist.

He was a liberal Lutheran.

And he began with a premise that we have lost the original documents of the New Testament,

lost the autographs.

And therefore, he was on a mission.

He set out on a mission to find old manuscripts,

to find out what the New Testament really said.

Folks, I don't need to find an old manuscript.

I already know what it says.

It's right there.

He did not believe in preservation, much less verbal preservation.

We saw last night where Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away,

but my words, plural, shall not pass away.

Tischendorf did not believe that.

And so as we saw Sunday morning, he wound up going to Mount Sinai,

the Greek Orthodox monastery there,

and cooked up this story of finding a manuscript in the wastebasket

that they're using for kindling.

And I won't go into that story far here tonight.

And what he in fact did is stole it and took part of it away in 1843

and took the rest of it away in 1859.

But the point is, here was a rationalist who also was dishonest

and frankly a thief.

Nice guy.

And he also went to the Vatican in 1843,

and at a time when the Catholics were very hostile to Protestants,

but nevertheless he had a very cozy relationship with Tischendorf,

and allowed him to copy an old manuscript in the Vatican library

that came to be known as Vaticanus, the Book of the Vatican.

Now both these manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus,

made their way to England in the 1850s and 1860s.

And there were two British scholars,

and we're going to park on these for a while tonight.

One was the name of Bruce Voss Westcott, or just Dr. Westcott,

and the other was Fenton John Anthony Hort, or Dr. Hort,

and more commonly referred to Westcott and Hort.

And these are significant figures.

I'm going to drop a lot of names tonight

and have over the last couple of days,

but on the bad guy side, you ought to remember Westcott and Hort.

And if you've studied the issue at all, you know that they're key figures.

And so they took this, they were given copies, not the actual manuscript,

but they're given copies of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus,

and from about 1851 to 1881, now they didn't do it full time,

Dr. Hort was a professor at Oxford University,

and Dr. Westcott was a bishop in the Church of England.

But over the next 30 years, not full time, but part time,

they worked on co-leading these two manuscripts.

And by the way, though they are both supposedly Alexandrian manuscripts,

they differed in thousands of places.

In fact, one British scholar, Dr. Burgon,

said that it's easier to find two verses that disagree,

or agree than those that disagree.

I mean, it's just riddled with contradictions.

But anyway, and so they labored for 30 years,

and in 1881, they released their revised Greek text,

their new Greek text of the New Testament,

based primarily on Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.

Here it is.

And this has become the granddaddy.

As we'll see in a few minutes, it evolved into,

and that's a good word in this case, very accurate,

evolved into the modern critical text,

because they're very similar, though they're having some changes.

But let's talk about Westcott and Hort tonight,

because they are truly the granddaddies of the modern critical text.

As I mentioned a moment ago,

they venerated the name of Griesbach,

who was one of the original German rationalists.

What some folks don't want to hear and don't want to believe,

but it's verifiable historically,

and that is that Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort,

over those 30 years that they were putting together their Greek text,

get the right book out here,

working on their Greek text,

they also were dabbling in the occult,

and that's not a suspicion or an allegation, that is a fact.

Their sons both wrote extensive biographies of their fathers,

and both sons very definitively talked about how their fathers

were involved in the occult,

seances,

trying to raise the spirits of the dead.

And it was fashionable in England of that era.

They founded or were on the ground floor in England

of an organization called the Ghostly Guild.

They believed in ghosts

and tried to resurrect ghosts in their seances.

And that Ghostly Guild later was changed to the name

the Society of Psychical Research.

You can go online and read about it.

It still exists.

And in the history of the Society of Psychical Research,

two of the organizers of it originally

were Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort.

But what is particularly concerning

is that they practice something called

the communion of the saints.

Now that sounds like an innocuous thought

and a religious thought,

the communion of the saints.

But remember with me that in England,

and I've seen this in New England as well,

in upstate New York,

we don't much see it in the Midwest,

but quite a few churches will have a cemetery

right next door to the church.

I mean, the next lot over is a cemetery

where members of the church are buried.

And in some of the large cathedrals

of the Anglican Church in England,

Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral

and other major churches like that in London,

they sometimes buried important church leaders

under the floor.

And you can go today and tour Westminster Abbey,

and there in the marble floor will be plaques

of that Saint so-and-so or whatever

is buried beneath.

Now, what is significant about that

is that Westcott and Hort, along with others,

would go into such cathedrals

at night, at midnight, on a dark night

with all the lights turned out.

Sounds kind of spooky, doesn't it?

And try and conjure up

the spirits of those departed dead.

And they reportedly did.

Now, I don't think they were communing

with the spirits of the departed dead, folks.

They were communing with another type of spirit,

and that is demons.

But they would commune with them,

converse with them.

Folks, that is of the devil.

And here are the guys that are in the process

of developing this modern Greek text,

which is going to become the foundation

of all these modern Bibles.

That is verifiable history.

But most people don't know about that.

And so, in the year 1881,

Dr. Westcott and Hort released

their new Greek text.

And we saw last night

some of the 16 verses

that are omitted from it.

And just a few of the many verses

that have been altered or changed

by changing a word or adding a word

and mostly just omitting words.

And particularly,

a disconnect between Jesus as Lord

and Jesus as Christ.

And, well, that was in 1881.

Incidentally, in 1883,

in England,

based on the Westcott and Hort text,

came the first modern language Bible.

It was called the English Revised Version,

the E-R-V.

Now, I doubt if you could find that

anywhere today.

You can even go on the internet.

You might read about it.

But I doubt if you can order it.

I think it's totally,

completely out of hand.

And so many of these

modern language Bibles,

like I said last night,

have a shelf life of about 30 years.

And then another one comes along.

But anyway,

that was the first

modern language translation

in England.

Well, let's cross the pond.

Let's come to America.

In the year 1901,

an American church leader,

again, a theological liberal,

took Westcott and Hort's text

and had it translated

into what became known as

the American Standard Version,

the A-S-V.

When I was in seminary

in the late 1960s,

when I was in seminary,

we were told

that the A-S-V,

the American Standard,

was the bedrock

of biblical honesty.

Well, it was based

on the critical text.

And I think you'd be hard-pressed

to find an A-S-V today.

Now, you can find

a new American Standard Bible,

which revised

the original American Standard.

And we'll get to that here

in just a moment.

But anyway,

Philip Schaaf,

let's talk about him for a minute.

Not only was he

a liberal theologian,

but Philip Schaaf,

in 1893,

organized the

first world parliament

parliament of religions.

Now, if you recall

in American history,

in 1893,

was the Columbian Exposition

there on Lake Michigan

on the south side of Chicago.

It was a world fair.

And people came

from all over the world

to the Columbian Exposition.

One building still survives,

and that is

the Museum of Science and Industry

there on the lakefront

in Chicago.

But anyway,

Philip Schaaf

organized the

world parliament

of religions.

And he brought together

Catholics and Protestants

and Hindus

and Muslims

and Buddhists

and Confucianists

and American Indian religion

and African Native religion

and all the religions

of the world.

He tried to bring them together.

Folks,

that's the beginning

of the ecumenical movement.

And guess who was going

to be the final leader

of that ecumenical movement?

That's the Antichrist.

Now,

Schaaf wasn't the Antichrist

or the false prophet.

But he began the movement,

and it's still out there

lurking in the shadows.

And the liberal elements,

and the Catholic Church

particularly,

is trying to get all the Protestants

to come home to Rome.

And they make no pretense

about that.

And so,

there is the English

Revised Version

in England.

1901,

the American Standard Version

in America.

Well,

let's go back to Germany.

Because there are other

important characters

coming on the scene

there of Westcott and Hort

had already gone on

to their reward,

which I don't think

was in heaven.

I don't think

they were born again,

man.

But in Germany,

there was a father

and son team

by the name of

Eberhard and Erwin Nessel.

I can't think of

Nessel's chocolate.

It's spelled that way.

I don't think it has

anything to do

with those guys.

But anyway,

Eberhard and Erwin Nessel.

And the father died,

but the younger man

continued to be

tinkering with the text.

And as a new fragment

of a manuscript

was found someplace

in Greece

or in Egypt

or someplace,

then he and another man

I'll mention in a moment

would integrate that,

incorporate that.

And so,

from then to now,

this critical text

keeps evolving.

I hold in my hand

here tonight

a Nessel Alon

Greek New Testament.

And the guy

he collaborated with

was a guy

by the name of

Kurt Alon.

I'll come back to him

in just a second here.

But the Nessel Alon text

today is in its

28th edition.

That means since

the 1920s

till now

it's gone through

28 changes.

In the modern sense

of editions,

there are

some of my books

in their second

or third edition.

That means we changed

something.

There was a mistake

in the book

or we added something.

So it's a little different

than it was before.

But the Nessel Alon text

today is in its

20th edition.

The text has been

changing about every

four or five years.

For a hundred years.

I thought the word of God

never changed, folks.

But in their world,

as they find a scrap here

and a fragment there

and they thought,

well, we probably

didn't get it right before,

they keep monkeying with it,

tinkering with it,

changing it.

And so,

in the years

before World War II,

Erwin Nessel

began collaborating

with a man

by the name

of Kurt Alland,

another German.

Kurt Alland

was on the ground floor

of what then

was called

the Neo-Orthodox Movement,

which is just

another flavor

of liberalism.

Neo-Orthodox,

it would use

orthodox terms,

that is correct terms,

but in part

a liberal meaning

to them.

And just a different

type of liberalism.

Kurt Alland

was married,

but he took up

with his secretary,

divorced his wife,

and married his secretary.

Nice guy.

And he and his

second wife,

Barbara,

continued along

with the Erwin Nessel

to work on their

Nessel-Alland

Greek New Testament.

After World War II,

and you recall

some of the history there,

he wound up

on the east side

of Germany,

which became known

as East Germany,

and you older folks

here tonight

will remember that.

East Germany,

I mean,

was not only

a communist nation,

of course,

it was a Soviet state,

a puppet satellite state,

but it was probably

the most communist

state in the world.

I mean,

East Germany was

the communist

of the communists.

And Kurt Alland

went to work

for the communists.

He's the guy

that's giving us

this modern Greek text

from which these

Bibles are coming from.

Taught in a communist

university there

in East Germany.

Later went to West Berlin,

escaped to West Berlin.

But from the 23rd edition

of the Nessel Alon text

came the New American

Standard Bible

in about 1863.

And when I was

in seminary

long ago,

that's back when

Abraham Lincoln

was president,

by the way.

Oh,

I said 1963,

not 1863.

But,

but we were told

in seminary,

you ought to get

the New American

Standard.

And I did.

I didn't know

any better.

I was taught

and trained

and schooled

in this philosophy

of the critical text.

And the general

philosophy was

a smorgasbord

of Bibles.

In other words,

you go to a buffet

restaurant or a smorgasbord.

They don't have

smorgasbord anymore,

do they?

I mean,

that's a Swedish name

for a buffet restaurant.

But you go to

a buffet restaurant

and you pick

and choose what you want.

Well,

back then,

and it still is true today,

probably even more so today,

you pick and choose

which Bible you want.

And they don't care

as long as it's based

on the critical text.

But,

oh,

don't pick anything

that's based

on the traditional text.

And so,

Kerdeland

migrated to the West

with his next wife.

And they continued

up,

he died

late in the 20th century.

It was before

the turn of the century.

I forget the exact date.

Now,

as a side note,

we've been focusing

almost exclusively

on the New Testament.

But there is also

a critical text

of the Old Testament.

Now,

the traditional text

of the Old Testament

from which

the King James Bible

is based

is called

the Ben-Kaim

Masoretic text.

The Masoretes

were scrupulously careful

in copying

the Hebrew text

to the point

if they made a mistake,

they would tear up the page,

throw it away,

and start all over again.

Masoret would be

M-A-S,

I'm not sure

if there's two S's,

I think there's two S's,

M-A-S-S-O-R-E-T-E.

Maybe there's one S.

I have to check here.

I don't see it

on my notes.

The Masoretic text

and the particular

was Ben-Kaim,

that was the Hebrew name.

The son of Kaim,

Ben in Hebrew

means a son,

the son of Kaim.

That's the traditional text.

Now,

there is a differing,

a slightly different,

it's not as egregious

as the New Testament problem,

but there's a differing

critical text

of the Old Testament

called the Ben-Asher

Masoretic text.

And it's based

on a manuscript

found in Russia

and it's called

the Leningrad Codex

or the Leningrad Manuscript.

And they give credence

to that because

it supposedly

is the oldest

Hebrew manuscript,

you know,

the oldest and best business.

And it was developed

in Germany again

by a man

by the name

of Rudolf Kittel,

K-I-T-T-E-L.

His father,

Gerhard Kittel,

was a Nazi

and was a part

of the Nazi party.

But anyway,

Rudolf Kittel

produced this new

Hebrew critical text.

Are you ready

for what I'm going

to tell you?

He called it

Biblia Hebraica

Stuttgartensia.

I know you're blessed

in hearing that.

But it just means

the Hebrew Bible

or Stuttgart.

That's where he worked

and lived

and did his work.

But that is the text

of almost all

the modern,

the Old Testament

texts of the modern Bibles.

And some of the things

notable about that

is that Goliath

has changed

to Elhanan.

Well, I thought Goliath

was killed by David.

But they talk

about Elhanan.

But what is

particularly egregious

is in Isaiah 53,

53, 8,

where it describes

the suffering Messiah,

they change the pronoun

so it's referring

to Israel

as being the

suffering servant,

which is significant.

I mean,

if you witness

to a Jew,

I mean,

you point out

how that here

they're talking

about the Messiah

and how he suffered.

And they say,

no, no, no,

that's talking

about Israel

and how it has suffered.

And so that's

a major problem

in Isaiah 53.

But anyway,

so that's the critical

text of the Old Testament.

But again,

as we've so far gone

and we're not done yet,

the critical text

is a listing

of rationalists,

in some cases

unbelievers.

We didn't talk

about Karl Lachman.

He was another

German guy

monkeying with the text

around the time

of Westcott and Hort.

German,

or Karl Lachman,

studied the Bible,

but he just believed

it to be another

old book,

like you'd study

Plato or Socrates

or something like that.

Again,

unbelief.

Unbelief.

Liberalism.

The occult.

But it continues.

Karl Lachman died

late in the 20th century.

But before he died,

he was involved

in some other things

which I'll tell you

about here momentarily.

Coming across the ocean

to America once again,

out on the east coast

was a man by the name

of Dr. Bruce Metzger.

Dr. Metzger

taught at Princeton

Theological Seminary,

which is in New Jersey,

basically just across

the river from Philadelphia.

But Princeton Theological Seminary,

which is a Presbyterian seminary,

but what's significant

about Princeton

is that it was

and is one of the most

liberal seminaries

in the world.

And he went from

being a professor

at Princeton

to the dean

at Princeton

and eventually

the president

at Princeton Seminary,

which is an adjunct

of Princeton University.

Bruce Metzger

was the managing editor

of the Reader's Digest

Condensed Bible.

Any of you remember that

back in about

1987?

And what Bruce Metzger did,

he was the managing editor,

the controlling editor.

He chopped out

40% of the Bible

and said it's irrelevant.

And so we had

the condensed Bible.

Doesn't Revelation 22

and verse 19

have something to say

about taking away

from the words

of this book?

Yes, it does.

But Metzger

chopped out

40% of the Bible

for the Reader Digest Company.

Well,

in the late 1950s

and early 1960,

Bruce Metzger,

Kurt Alland,

Cardinal,

as in Catholic Cardinal Martini,

another man

by the name of

Alan Wickren

and Matthew Black,

these five men,

formed a textual committee

of the United Bible Society

Now,

you hear the word

United Bible Society,

you think,

boy,

that must be something good.

It's a Bible Society.

Well,

folks,

it was liberal

from the beginning,

from day one.

And they produced

what came to be known

as the United Bible Society

Greek Text,

or abbreviated UBS.

And from the UBS,

about third edition,

comes the NIV.

Now,

the United Bible Society text

and the Nessel Alon text

are kissing cousins.

It's almost no difference.

Very,

very similar,

but they're different flavors

and published

by different parties.

And I sometimes say this

because I'm an author

and a publisher.

Folks,

being an author

is literary.

Being a publisher

is business.

And business means

dollars and cents.

I mean,

you're signing contracts

and hiring printing companies

and you're hiring advertising

and you're selling it.

I think the reason

between the Nessel Alon

and the UBS

was money.

And that's the rationale

behind many of the

modern translations.

That's crass,

but that's just the bottom line.

As they often say,

follow the money.

And so,

today,

the United Bible Society text,

the UBS,

and the Nessel Alon text

are the twin kissing cousins,

almost identical.

But the basic starting point

in all of this

was Westcott and Hort.

And it's not deviated much.

Whereas Westcott and Hort

was about 100%

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus,

today,

it's about 98%

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus,

with the other 2%,

like I say,

of little fragments

that have been found

here and there

along the way.

And so,

these gentlemen

have all gone on

to their reward.

And to be honest with you,

I don't think any of them

were born again.

Whether it's dealing

in the occult

or being a radical liberal

or divorcing your wife

to marry your secretary,

and I mean,

there's just a litany

of ungodliness.

And folks will say,

well, you know,

when you go to the dentist,

you don't much care

about the dentist

personal life.

Well, maybe.

I mean,

if I knew my dentist

was involved

in all that stuff,

I'd probably change.

But folks,

when it comes to

the production,

the printing

and the publishing

of the Word of God,

that does mean something.

And my Bible says,

come out from among them

and be ye separate.

Touch not the unclean thing.

Now,

they have all

departed the scene.

But there's another man

in America today

who's continuing

to monkey with the text,

tinker with the critical text.

His name is Bart Ehrman.

He is the leading textual critic

in the world today.

And let me tell you

a little bit about

his lineage

and his legacy.

He began his educational career

back at the old

Moody Bible Institute

in Chicago

when Moody Bible Institute

called itself

a fundamentalist institution.

They don't today,

unfortunately.

But he began

as a fundamentalist.

And then he went

to Wheaton College,

which is a suburb

on the western suburbs

of Chicago.

And Wheaton College,

oh my,

for the last hundred years,

has been an evangelical,

that is a new

evangelical college.

Evangelicalism

or new evangelicalism

is a step

between being fundamental

and liberal.

It's moving

in the leftward direction.

And so,

Bart Ehrman went to Wheaton

and he came out

of there as a new evangelical.

Got his master's degree.

But then he decided

that he was going to go

and get his PhD.

And so he enrolled

at Princeton Theological Seminary

and sat at the feet

of Bruce Metzger.

And he became

a liberal.

Today,

Bruce Metzger

is an agnostic.

An agnostic.

He said that

if God inspired

the Bible,

then he also

would have preserved it.

But since he did not

preserve it,

he did not inspire it either.

Folks,

that's heresy.

He's on record

in one of his books

as saying that

this God,

if he exists,

cannot be

Jesus Christ

or the God

of the Bible.

Well,

that's blasphemy.

But that's

where the logic

of the critical text leads.

If scripture

is not inspired,

then it hasn't been preserved

and we really

don't have an anchor.

Folks,

I have an anchor.

That's right there.

It never changes.

It's the word of God.

I do not believe

that God

preserved his word

through the prophets

of Baal.

But what we've

tracked here tonight

is essentially

the prophets of Baal.

I mean,

Gnosticism

being at the roots

of Vaticanus

and Atticus,

the two major manuscripts.

German rationalism,

which is basically

liberalism.

Westcott and Hort,

who,

by the way,

forgot to mention,

they were part

of the broad church party

of the Church of England.

Now,

you say,

what's the broad church party?

In the Church of England

hundred and some years ago,

and by the way,

Church of England

was much different

in the 19th century

than it was

around 1600

when King James

came on the scene.

We'll get into that

tomorrow night.

But the broad church party

was a segment

of the Church of England

which people could

voluntarily associate with.

It was radically liberal,

denying the inspiration

of scripture,

denying a literal creation,

denying the miracles,

denying the deity of Christ,

denying the physical

resurrection of Jesus Christ,

denying a literal hell.

I mean,

that's liberalism.

National Council of Churches

today on Easter say,

well,

you know,

Jesus didn't really arise

physically,

he arose spiritually.

Well,

that's unscriptural.

But that was

the broad church party

and that is where

Westcott and Hort

voluntarily joined.

And so,

there's been Gnosticism

and German rationalism

and liberalism

and the occult

and you get down

to Bart Ehrman

even an agnostic.

What a litany.

I want nothing

to do with that.

And that's just

the external.

We saw a little bit

of the internal.

We're going to see

just a bit more

in just a second.

But I believe

that the traditional

received text

is the preserved

Word of God.

Now,

you can't read Greek,

but God has seen to it

in our language

that he's given to us

in English.

And the English

translation has begun

in about 1516

through William Tyndale.

We're going to go

into this,

by the way,

much detail

tomorrow night.

But it went

through about 80 years

and we talked

about seven

different translations

last night.

And here is

the purified

final English

translation.

Now,

someone will say

to me,

and often ask

if we have a

question and answer

time,

Brother Sorensen,

what about the

New King James Version?

The NKJV.

It purports

to be based

on the received

text,

the traditional

text.

And they did

begin there.

But if you

go pick up

a New King James,

I think there's

one on the stack

here.

But if you

go and pick up

a New King James

Bible,

I'm not talking

about the economy

models you'll find

in a hotel desk

drawer or bed

stand drawer.

But if you buy

a little better

quality New

King James,

which has

marginal notes

and most of

the later,

the better versions

or better editions

do,

marginal notes

and footnotes,

you'll notice

that there are

numerous places

in the New Testament

where there'll be

a citation

footnote out

in the margin

that says NU.

NU,

NU,

NU,

NU.

It's all over

peppered.

Say,

what in the

world is NU?

Well,

do you recall

that we talked

about the

Nessel-Alon

text?

Take the first

letter N.

Talked about

the UBS text,

United Bible

Society text.

Take the first

letter U,

NU.

It's an

abbreviation for

the critical

text.

And the

New King

James editors

reference you

to be the

reader to

the critical

text over

and over

and over

again.

And in

my view,

the New

King James

is a

compromised

Bible.

It's an

adulterated

Bible.

And folks,

well,

it's a little

easier to read.

Folks,

why compromise

when you can

have the

truth and

pure word

of God

instead of

something that's

been watered

down and

adulterated by

many cross-referencing

and I believe in

some cases

actually

translating from

the critical

text at

various points.

I'll stick

with my

King James

Bible.

Now,

I want to do

something here

tonight and

it'll be a

little different

than what we

did last

night,

but I'd like

for seven

volunteers to

come up with

the pulpit.

And it won't

be a trick like

it was last

night.

I need to

really,

seriously,

I'd like seven

guys to come

up here right

now.

There's one,

there's two,

there's three,

four,

five,

or is that

six?

I think we

need at least

one more.

I'll even

take a lady.

Here it

comes,

another one.

Okay,

good.

Now,

there's a

stack of

Bibles there

gentlemen,

I want you

each to

take one.

These are

all modern

Bibles.

I think

there's one

little one

there.

Okay.

Now,

let's turn,

everybody turn

here tonight

to Romans

chapter five.

We could go

anywhere and

do this,

but I'll

just turn

to Romans

five.

It's kind

of an

interesting

point.

Romans

chapter five.

Okay,

does everybody

have it?

All right,

on the count

of three,

I want all

of you to

read out

loud.

We'll just

read the

first three

verses.

Okay,

Romans

chapter five.

All right,

one,

two,

three.

Okay,

what did

you just

hear?

Give me a

word that

just illustrates

what you

just heard.

Confusion.

Confusion.

Thank you,

gentlemen.

Thank you.

But that's

what's going

on today.

It's

confusion.

And you

go into

other churches

and sometimes

there'll be

seven different

translations out

there in the

pew.

And it's

hard to

memorize

scripture when

there's such

confusion.

Thy word is

truth.

His words

endure forever.

Stick to the

old King

James.

Now,

tomorrow night,

now tonight

we've fallen

the lineage and

the track of

the liberals,

the apostates

who have given

us the modern

critical text.

Tomorrow night,

we're going to

follow the

lineage of the

received text.

In some cases,

men who gave

their lives so

that we can

have the

Bible in our

own language.

People who

were literally

burned at the

stake.

And it wasn't

just William

Tyndale.

There were

others.

And we're

going to see,

in contrast,

a godly

lineage of

people who,

when they

studied the

New Testament,

they got

saved.

Erasmus,

for example,

we'll get

into tomorrow

night,

was a

Catholic

priest,

but he

got saved,

and by

the time

he was

near the

end of

his life

and his

career,

he'd

basically

become a

Baptist.

Folks,

if all you

have is the

book,

if all you

have is the

word of God

and you

study it,

you'll

become a

Baptist.

I mean,

if you don't

go off in

some other

theology and

matrix of

somebody else's

theological

ideas,

but Erasmus

became a

Baptist.

And we're

going to see

similar things.

of men who

studied the

New Testament

so they

could print

it,

read it,

and got

saved.

Led others

to Christ.

And so we'll

see tomorrow

night the

life of King

James, for

example,

which in his

early years,

he was a

godly man.

Later in his

life, he kind

of went off

the rails,

but in his

early years,

when he

authorized the

King James

Bible, he

was a

godly man.

man.

We'll see

the character

of the

translators

of the

King James

Bible.

They were

godly men.

Men who

are not

only erudite

in linguistics,

but they

were godly in

their character,

and they

loved the

Lord.

It is such

a profound

difference from

the group that

we saw tonight.

Well, come back

tomorrow night,

same time,

same place,

same station,

and we'll

have a good

time tomorrow

night.

Father, thank

you for the

word of God.

Thank you that

we can rely on

how you have

transmitted your

word to us to

this day.

And bless these

good folks who've

come out on a

weeknight.

Bring them back

again tomorrow

night, and I ask

it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.