Needed to hear Chris Pinto's recent radio show again, titled Bible Skeptics and Progressive Christian Heresy NOTR - BIBLE SKEPTICS & PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIAN HERESY - 3.4.21 - Show Downloads - Noise of Thunder Radio with Chris Pinto
When I manage to have my wits about me, which is iffy these days, I realize that it all comes down to the churches. We can go on and on about how the nation is being dismantled by evil doctrines, we can document them and lament them but we seem to have no power against them. We get silenced, our best arguments don't persuade many if any, and i for one think "Oh well, we're doomed, we're under God's judgment, it's all over, the next step is most likely the absolute End Game before Jesus comes back -- the Rapture, the Tribulation, the world rule of the final Antichrist and then the End," .
And that may well be, but as I also say, sometimes i get glimmers of hope that it doesn't have to work out that way... yet. And that takes me back to the churches which is where it all stands or falls. We're supposed to be "salt and light" to the world, but if the salt has lost its savor, said Jesus, it is fit only to be trampled under foot.
Here we have access to the power that runs the universe and we seem to have lost the connection. We're supposed to be the "Church Militant," (as opposed to the Church Triumphant which is in heaven) but we're more like the Church Impotent, losing ground every day. We're supposed to be able to do battle with the Principalities and Powers in the heavenlies, we can't even win an argument on earth. Some of us are personally compromised, but the root problem has to be that the foundations of Christian doctrine and faith are compromised. Our strength is God's strength and if we've abandoned His word we've lost our "sword of the Spirit."
And the sad thing is that we've abandoned His Word and DON'T KNOW IT. Chris Pinto gets at this problem very clearly in that radio show. Just about all the churches have bought into the Great Bible Hoax of 1881, accepted the bogus "scholarship" that identifies two Greek manuscripts as the most ancient ever discovered which has given them an immense authority, an authority that has undermined the previous Authoritzed Version, the King James. As Pinto explains, there is NO evidence whatever for the claim that these manuscripts are so ancient and most authentic. NONE. Dean William Burgon protested their elevation in his truly scholarly Revision Revised but the 1881 revision prevailed.
Why do lies prevail in the churches? This is a supernatural thing. It's the way God's Law works. If there is already sin in the churches there will be more sin, if there is also doctrinal error in the churches there will be more doctrinal error. It takes a constant vigilance and constant repentance to overcome these things and we lose the fight by not fighting or not fighting with the right weapons. In the earlier 19th century the discipline of Textual Criticism had already been compromised and undermined biblical inerrancy, leading to Liberal Christianity. It was the liberal churches in Germany that capitulated to Hitler.
The Bible was already in doubt thanks to those earlier trends so that when the Revising Committee that was taken over by Westcott and Hort produced the bogus Greek manuscripts it was taken for legitimate scholarship and we got all the modern Bible translations based on it. The original objective of the revising committe was to do only the absolutely necessary changes IN THE ENGLISH of the King James Bible to bring it up to date. Instead W and H introduced these bogus Greek manuscripts and corrupted the whole undertaking to the detriment of the churches ever since.
I tried to document some of this in my blog on the subject. Chris Pinto's documentaries on the Bible go into the greatest detail in studying the problem. The series is "A Lamp in the Dark" and the two that deal with this problem are "Tares Among the Wheat" and "Bridge to Babylon."
The Greek manuscripts in question are Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. In this radio show linked above Pinto says Vaticanus has had the most influence on the modern Bibles through the Critical Text on which they are based. It is known to have appeared in 1475 and there is no evidence whatever of any earlier existence of it, but Westcott and Hort purely speculatively place it back in the fourth century. Also Sinaiticus which showed up in 1859 and also has no known previous history but has been given the same history that puts it back in the fourth centur4y. On the basis of this purely speculative reasoning these manuscripts acquired an authority that overthrew the Greek rexts that undergird the King James Bible that have documentary proof back to the tenth century and testimony much further back than that. Erasmus considered Vaticanus to be a forgery. Pinto talks about all this.
The problem with these manuscripts is that they leave out certain well-known passages. They leave out the last twelve verses of the book of Mark, they leave out John 8 and they leave out Luke 23. The absence of these passages is taken to represwent the original authentic Greek manuscript because of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Dean Burgon considered them both to have been tampereed with by early heretics and says the whole Church had known of such tamperings which is why they were rejected. Westcott and Hort managed to prevail, however, in giving them an undeserved authenticity which now dominates Bible scholarship in the seminaries and is accepted in the churches.
Westcott and Hort made up the theory that the passages left out of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus but present in the Textus Receptus which underlies the King James, were added to the Bible in the early years and are not authentic. Although this is pure speculation with nothing to support it the idea took hold and now undermines belief in Biblical inerrancy. Even some who insist on Biblical inerrancy, insist that the Bible is indeed God's Word, such as James White, by accepting that the absense of some passages represents the authentic original Bible, accepts a view that undermines Biblical inerrancy. And even if they won't admit to this others see how it does and promote it very aggressively. Chris Pinto starts out his radio show with the teachings of a church in Nashviolle Tennessee which actively says the Bible is not inerrant and is not God's word. Thanks to Westcott and Hort's bogus manuscripts.
All that needed to be spelled out for the purpose of identifying it as a major way the churches have lost the superntural power we shouild have to be the salt and light in the culture that might be able to put the brakes on the current downslide into complete destruction. I've noted many times that the churches have not had a genuine revival for many years, and I suspect that the very few places where a revival did occur were churches that had not given up the King James and most likely also where the women covered their heads in church. I'm guessing but for sure there hasn't been a REAL revival in America probably during the entire last century. Some pretty odd charismatic "revivals" yes but if you watch some of them on videos I think the lack of genuine Christian doctrine and Chriwstian feeling is clear
Certainly there are many good pastors and Christians who use one of the revised Bibles who stand by Biblical inerrancy and preach it, but how do they avoid the endless footnotes in those Bibles that cast doubt on those passages not found in the bogus manuscripts which are of coure referred to as the oldest and best? Althnough they are included in their Bibles for tradition's sake, tradition is all the authenticity they have if Westcott and Hort's theory is believed.
I've argued strenuously for the literal head covering for women based on 2 Corinthians 11, in my blog Hidden Glory and I do think think that itsw abandonment is based on bad Bible exegesis. Since it is an emblem of God's creation ordinance of the headship of man over woman I don't think this is a trivial thing and that its abandonment is likely one of the doors to other heresies that have undermined the churches over the last century.
The acceptance of the modern Bibles is another door to heresy.
So my thesis is that if we want to be restored to the power we should have as God's people these are two major issues we have to reverse and repent of.
Sure, I'm nobody. Ask God.
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