Pastor Robert Hammond
At Long Hill Baptist Church, we praise God for equipping us with His words! We're aware that the debate around Bible versions has, at times, been less than gracious. Our desire is to graciously communicate the rationale for a our decision to make exclusive use of the King James Bible (which is also known as the Authorized Version). We recognize at least four key reasons for using the King James Bible:
The Kings James Bible is an accurate translation of the correct version of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament.
It uses the Hebrew and Greek texts that have been received by God’s people throughout history. These underlying texts are commonly known as the Textus Receptus – which simply means “received text.” All of the other modern Bible translations used a different underlying Greek New Testament. They made this decision because, during the 19th century, additional Greek manuscripts were discovered.
The problem with those newly discovered manuscripts is that they were not consistent with each other! Despite the inconsistencies, those newly-discovered manuscripts were judged to be “older and therefore better” than the words of God that have been traditionally received by God’s people. Consequently, the newly-discovered manuscripts were used by academicians to produce a new version of the Greek New Testament (the so-called Critical Text).
The Critical Text is the Greek that underlies nearly all of the modern translations, including the English Standard Version (ESV), New Internal Version (NIV), New American Standard Version (NASB), New Living Translation (NLT), The Message, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the New Living Translation (NLT) and others.
This Greek that underlies the modern translations is missing hundreds of words — and entire verses. For that reason, Bibles like the English Standard Version (ESV) are missing verses, including: Matthew 17:21, Matthew 18:11, Matthew 23:14, Mark 7:16, Mark 9:44, Luke 17:36, John 5:4, Acts 8:37 and more.
At Long Hill Baptist Church, we reject the notion that God could have hid his true words from his people until the 19th Century.
To do so would have made it impossible for God’s people to live according to His words – as required by Matthew 4:4. In Matthew 4:4, Jesus taught that we are responsible to live according to his words:
“…It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4
Furthermore, the clear Biblical teaching that God promised to preserve His words obliges us to reject the idea that His true words would need to be restored by man through an academic process. In Matthew 24:35, Jesus said that his words would never pass away.
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)
In the Old Testament, the Book of Psalms teaches:
“The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” (Psalm 12:6-7)
We recognize that some of the modern Bible versions used an undesirable approach to Bible translation.
The so-called dynamic equivalence (or paraphrase) technique was used to produce many of the modern Bible translations, including the New International Version (NIV) and the New Living Translation (NLT). This approach to translation attempts to preserve the basic ideas of each scriptural passage – without attempting to make a word-for-word translation. While this approach produces translations that are generally easy to understand, it necessarily denies readers access to “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt 4:4). Thankfully, our King James Bible uses a more rigorous technique – formal equivalence. This approach attempts to preserve the meaning of each individual word and phrase – and therefore results in a translation that is closer to the original Greek and Hebrew.
The King James Bible reflects a level of grammatical precision that can’t easily be achieved with contemporary English.
In John 3:7, Jesus told a man named Nicodemus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” The pronoun “ye” is the second-person plural form of “you.” Jesus used the plural form to make it clear that all men must be “born again” by repenting and placing their faith in him alone. He desired for people to understand that it wasn’t just Nicodemus that needed to be born again. However, most modern translations read, “You must be born again.” By choosing to use more contemporary English, modern translations cloud the true meaning of the words that Christ spoke.
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