Deceptions that affect great numbers of Christians are like a virus that makes the whole body, the body of Christ, sick. This metaphor just occurred to me and I hope it's not silly. Seems like I'm some sort of virus detector, not that I always get it right, but I get it right enough to be always in some state of distress about the state of the Church. Yes I'd like to know I'm wrong if I'm wrong but so far when I do my best to investigate some of my strongeest alarm reactions I end up being convinced even more that I'm right.
I have my o9wn little limited bailiwick, it's not as if I'm alert to all the ways the Church is compromised these days. I didn't know anything about the book Jesus Calling for instance, I had to research it recently after becoming aware of its great influence in the Church. I hear about teachers like Joel Osteen and Beth Moore but I don't delve into their influence until I'm forced to. I'm so put off by such a popular book as the Shac that it took me forever to get around to learning what it's all about, and not to any depth either, just the bare bones.
So I'm sensitive to these viruses only within a very limited sphrere. The fact that the woman's head covering was abandoned on the basis of a totally bogus argument is very distressing to me. There are others who agree with me that First Corinthians Eleven is about a literal head covering that applies today as well as it did for the whole last two millennia, but we are all marginalized in the Church. The false teaching has captured the biggest and best names in the Church and the seminaries.
Samew with the Bible versions. While I'm getting an ulcer, as it were, ove these things, the seminaries are teaching the pathogen instead of the remedy. The churches are suffering from the new Babel as so many different translations are used by the members of the congregation. But there are also congregations where a particular translation is favored by the leaders and and that at least makes for less confusion, but by my virus detector they have usually chosen a bad one.
And by a bad one I mean one that is based on the Greek manuscripts foiseted on the Church by Westcott andHort.
It makes my ulcer throb painfully to hear someone say for instance that there are four literal translations of the bible, listing the King James, the New King James, the English Standard and the New American Standard. Yes they are faithful translations except for some bad bad bad ways of construing the Greek text as JW Burgon makes clear in his book The Revision Revised but the bitgger problem is that the Greek manuscripturs are wrong, a Trojan Horse delivered to the Church by two misguided men. The King James and the New King James are based on the trustworthy Greek texts, although the New King H James is compromised in other ways, while the ESV and the NASB are based on Westcott and Hort's corrupted Greek texts.
Burgon jshows how. His books should be better known, though I know that he isn't given the recognition he deserves while Westcott and Hort get the approbation they don't deserve.;
It turns my stomkach to hear a good Christian preachers mention that a couple of lines in the pasasge about the pool of Bethesda are in doubt because they aren't in the "earliest and best" Greek manuscripts and are understood to have been added later.
it makes me sick to hear Martyn Lloyed Jones, one of the best of the best in his time, mention that the passage where Jesus tells His disciples that they couldn't drive out a demon because that kind only go9 out by prayer and fasting. Jones mentioned that "fasting" is not in the earliers and best manuscripts.
This is a slander on the Christian Church that was made up by Westcott and Hort. They favored these bogus heretical and possibly forged Greek manscuprtives and thnerefore explained how they don't have some of the best known passages wse find in the King James as having been added later by overzealous scribes. This is saying that those translators were adding to scripture, a horrific sin according to the bible itself. How did W and H get away with that? No, the fact is that certain pasages were left out of the "early and best' mansccripts they liked so much because the heretical possessors of them left them out. Burgon saiy the Church had recognized this line of manuscriptus as heresies. or the produ ction of heretics. Later it becomes a distinctr possibility that they were later forgeries. The fact that they exist aqt all is testimony against them since to have survived from the early years means nobody ever read them. AAnd they weren't read because they were recotgnized to be false.
This is one of the ways today's Church is comprompised. The translations too are bad, accordinbg to Burgon, just plain bad English because Westcott and Hort had a deficient understnading of Greek according to him. So we have to suffer through phrasing sthat are abomiable English on top of being assaulted with the attack on Bible inerrancy in the accepted idea that our best known passages were added later.
..on is the main critic of the new manuscripts and translations, but Chris Pinto has also done documentary films that expose the problem. I think it's Tares Among the Wheat where he goes into most detail about the problem, one of the films in his series on the history of the Bible.
By the way I think I should add that I probably shouldn't go on about my being a virus detector as if I were in some special position on these subjects, it's just that I do have strong almost physical reactions when I encounter them and I do think I'm right in those reactions, but I certainly don't think I originated the observations, I had to research these things to have the opinions I have. I've given my ousources for the head covering in the blog on that subject and it's J W Burgon who is the main source of the k,nowledge I have about the bible versions, although Chris Pinto has added a lot. I'm just one of the receptrs of the information and I try to disseminate it, which is a joke since I just hang out here writing mostly to myself.
And I'm also arrogant enough not to give the Lord thanks for His gift if I do have a good virus deteector. May He enlighten me. Soon Lord.
