John MacArthur on the Reality of Hell

J W Burtgon Could Have Saved the Church From the Bogus Bibles

Oh Oh please please please please please please.   At a Ligonier conference John MacAethur mentioned that Mark 16 "is not in the Bible."  this is SO upsetting, and yes I know I've said this so many times if anybody did read my blog it would be so annoying they wouldn't read muc more of it.  

Who said it's not in the Bible?  Westcott and Hort.  Westcott and Hort.  All sorts of thingsx that for centuries were known as Bible truth were declared by W and H not to be in the Bible   Because their preferred Greed manuscr9ipts, known as the "earliest" we have, don't include them.  It was their manuscripts that became the bedrock of the modern translations while the King James was treated as a poor translation from a bad set of Gree Manscripts.  On their sayso.   The fact that their 
earliest" manscripts are extant today, in nearly peperfect condition after nearly two millennia, doesn't seem to raise any doubts in anyone's minds.  They are dated back to the fourth century and there they are in all their pristine glory and it's just accepted that the tradition on which the King James ghad been based is the wrong one and this earlier stuff the true one.  Well, golly gosh, it IS earlier, right?  Isn't that all you need to know?

Bamboozled by the :scholars"   Mac Arthur, R C Sproul, Martyn Lloyd Jones.  all these and many others of the best of the best have accepted thje work of Westcoot t and Hort of the revising committie that produced its new bogus Bible in 1881.  I've heard all of these speak of passages that are not really in the Bible although they are included for tradition's sake in most of the newer translations.  they've bought the lie foisted on the Church by the Westcott and Hort dominated revosomg cp,,ottee/  

Unfortunately the main opponents, or the best known, the King James Only people, have credibility pro0blems of their own, so when James White did his book against them it had a lot of authoritative clout.   But although they are maybe the biggest group of opponents to the new fersions, and I'm not even sure of that any more but they certainly were a couple of decades ago, ... lost track of what I qas sayhing and insce I ca n't see what I'm writing I have to leave it there.  Sorry

I don't condser myself to be KJV Only althoughn I end up on their side from a different angle.   I read enough of DSean John Willion Burgon's books to be his staunch supporter and I  consider him to t bbe the one who should be taught in tbhe seminaries, not Westcott and Hort.  Burtgon is very convincing that W and H were not only Crypto Catholics who hated the King James Bible for reasons of their own, but deficient scholars to the point of operating at what he called "schoolboy" level/.  He wrote a lengthy book on Mark 16that I wish MacArthur had read, and he wrotge The REVISION revised which takes apart the Greek manuscripts they smuggled into their revision as well as their bad translation which Burgon says mangle the English on top of giving us a bogus Greek man uscript.

Burgon identified the Gree,k manuscripts preferrs by W and H as the word of early heretics.  they took out some of the most famous passages that had come down to us as the "textus Receptus which underlies the King James, and W and H made up the explanation that this was because scribes must have added in those passages along the way wince obviously to their mind these supposedly earliest manuscripts were the authentic ones and they couldn't be at fault.  Except that Burgon says they are at fault, and that is in fact why they are in such pristine condition.  the textus Recepturs exists only in fragments back to the tenth century because it was USED, while the W and H manuscripts are in such condition because they were never used.  

Anyway in my opoinion Buregon is the authority we should be trusting.  

Somehow or other MacArthur and others who accept this bamboozle nevertheless don't let it affect their belief in the Bible's inerrancy.  I'm  not sure how they manage this but somehow they do.  If pasages were added in later how can we accept them and how can we believe the Bible is inerrant if the original authorts cid not include them.  ???  

QWho am I to say anything at all?  I'm no scholar.  I just happen to think burgon makes the best case and what I've read about Westcott and Hort show them to be supre,e;lu iuntrustworthy.  For on e thing they did not even stick to the instructions given them for the revising committee.  Bringing in a new set of Greek manscripturs was a sneaky act of their own that was not warranted by the defined task of the committee, which was only tu up[date the King James Bible.

Burgon criticized W and H for their translation of the Greek word "aeion" as "age" and he argues that at some langth.  But their translation has stuck and people take it as an apt criticizm of tyndale's "wold" as opposed to "age."  He also criticized their ustranslation of a Greek tense which I think is called the Aorist?   aorist tense, which they translated with the awkward and unnglish phrases ending in "indg" supposedly because English doesn't sufficiently get across the ongoing nature of many of the Greek phrases which are more clearly expressed in the Greek.  As Burgon says this is ludi crous, and it reads badly in mty opinion.  I cringe everytime someone quotes such a phrasef from the NASB.  It's bad English.  The Eordinarly English past tense is just fine for conve nyhint gwhat needs to be conventy in most of those cases where they have mangled it with their schoolboy understanidng.  Where something more emphastic is required to get across the ongoing meaning of a pphrase the King James uses the "ing" form but for the bast manjroity of places wehre the Greek uszes the aorist tense it is not needs ed in the English.  Burgon knows what he is talking about.  i wish he were the authority the seniminaries use.

But whole generations of seminary students are now bamboozled about the Greek language, and ofcourse they aren't in any position to know any better. Idf MacArthur and Sproul and >Llloyd Jones don't knjow any better then the poor student new to Greek doeshnj'[t stand a chance.

Chris Pinto has covered a lot of territory on the subject of the bogus Greek Manuscripts used by Westcott and Hort in his filom series on the history of the Bible.  tares among the Wheat is one of them where it comes up but I think Bridge to Bablyon is where he gets more deeply into it.

Mark 16 belongs in the bible.  It wqas wsritten by Mark.  

I suppose it must be because the Church is under God's judgment that we are now subjected to this kind of insanity that undermines our Bibles.

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Mea

Meant to poihnt out that in one of the supposedly earliest manuscripts so revered by W and H, the Siniaticus I think, there is a big gap in the text where tMark 16 appears in the tradition that undelies the King James.  Certainly d\suggests thatcontrary to the theories of Q and H that passage had been there before and was left out of this version.

Also want to add that I just heard R XC  Spro7ul  call the King James Bible "a bad translation" because of how it used the word "evil" instead of "calamity""y.  But isn't it just that the word had more of that connotation when the translation was done?  Why call it a bad translation?  that's part of the legacy of Westcott and Hort.  Distressing to me but then who am I ?  Most Christians have accepted the W and H frame of reference.  the fact that the King James Bible had a very high place in english speaking cultrue for centuries no longer carries any weight.  We now accept inferior translations of possibly heretical or even forged Gre4ek manuscraupts 

John MacArthur on the roman Catholic Abomination

Found a great talk by John MacArthur about the Roman Catholic Spostasy, including a discussion of the Reformers' view of the papacy as the Antichrist.  

John MacArthur - The Pope and Catholicism - YouTube

He's always been a strong opponjent of the RC oman Church but I hadn't seen a protracted discussion of the subject.   And this one is just an introduction as he says he'll go into more detail in a later discussion

but he holds out the possibility that the final Antichrist might not be a Pope.  I guess that does have to be a possibility but after the Pope has stood in that place for so many centuries I still have to suppose he;; go on in that role to the end.

I'd add that the way the number 666so precisely fits the Roman Numberals of the Latin title Vicar of the Son of God, Vicarivs Filii Dei, seals it for me.

Where Will You Spend Eternity?

My latest posts have ended up on the Fantasy of Evolution blog rather than on Faith's WQindow and since I don't know how that happened I don't know if the same thing will happen to this one as well.  

According to my eye doctor I am now legally blind.  I'm in touch with an organization called Services for the Blind that may have some mechanical aids that will help me continue to read some things for a while at least, wait and see.  What I'd really like is someone who could adjust the settings on my computer to enlarge print on the menus, blond it, and change everything to white on black because the white glare is hard on my eyes.  But I don't think that organization offters that help.  My son in law enlarged tghe cursor images a few years ago which helped a lot but he' hasn't been around to help with other things during the COVID period and probably won't be for a while yet.

Meanwhile the Lord helps me make outg some words when I ask Him for the help although it's all getting fainter and fainter.  

Anyway.

What's on my minjd for this post is the afterlife, mine and others'.   I mentioned a few posts down that I'd been through a period of doubting y salvation and it was pretty terrifying.  I'd never really thought about the reality of Hell before and it hit me very hard.  What if I'm beyond being saveable>  it can happen.  I'd heard enough of the best teachers saying that in many ways, how many who think they are Christians will not be saved in the end but go to Hell and what a shock it will be if they don't wake up and recognize the problem and try to remedy it.  If it Can BE REMEDIED, AND IT USUALLY CAN, THE UNFORGIVEABLE SITUATION IS PRETTY RARE.

bUT MANY WON'T GET THE MESSAGE.  aND OF COURSE BESIDES THOSE THERE ARE THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE HUMAN RACE WHO WILL NOT BE SAVED.  i FINALLY HAD SOME REASSURING EXPERIENCES THAT REINSTATED MY TRUST IN MY OWN SALVATIONM, AND i'VE BEEN GROWING IN THAT TRUST AND AM VERY HAPPY NOW, GROWING INTO DEEPER LOVE OF gOD AS i CONTINUE TO SPEND TIME ON GOOD PREACHING AND LISTENING TO THE bIBLE.  

bUT THE THOUGHT OF ALL THOSE PEOPLE GOING TO hELL, ALONG WITH MANY i KNOW HAVE ALREADY GONE THERE, RECENTLY GOT TO ME AND i CRIED A LOT ABOUT IT.  i DON'T THINK i'D EVER THOUGHT OF hELL AS A REALITY BEFORE AND NOW IT'S BECOME A VERY SCARY REALITY TO ME.  i DON'T DO MUCH EVANGELIZING, JUST SPORADICALLY NOW AND THEN, BYUT NOW i WAYT TO TRY TO DO MORE IF i CAN.  

i HAD A COUSIN WHO REFEUSED TO BELIEVE AND LIKED TO SAY THAT hELL IS REALLY JUST IN THIS LIFE.  bUT THEN ON HIS DEATH BED HE WAS OBVIOUSLY AFRAID OF DYING, KEPT GETTING OUR OF BED AND DIDN'T WANT TO LIE DOWN.  i*T WAS TOO LATE FOR HIM TO BECOME A BELIEVER EVEN IF HE COULD HAVE.  yOU CAN'T JUST MOUTH THE WORDS AND EXPECT TO BE SAVED, SALVATION IS FROM THE HEARLT.  nO DOUBT SOME HAVE BEEN SAVED AT THE LAST MINUTE, THE THIEF ON THE CROSS WHO SAW THAT jESUS WAS THE cHRIST WAS ASAVED, BUT CLEARLY THAT WAS FROM hHIS HEARD AND THAT'S VERY UNUSUAL.  

sO IT'S BEEN HITTING ME THAT THERE ARE ONLY TWO OPTIONS AFTER DEATH, hEAVEN OR hELL, AND THERE IS NOTHING ELSE.  aND THE ONLY WAY TO hEAVEN INS THROUGH FAITH IN jESUS cHRIST

S DEATH ON THE CROSS TO PAY FOR OUR SINS.  THAT'S IT.  "i AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, NOBODY COMES TO THE fATHER BUT BY mE."  hE'S THE "DOOR" THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO SALVATION.  iT'S SOMETHING A cHRISTIAN "KNOWS" BUT i COULD SAY i NEVER REALLY KNEW IT UNTIL RECENTLY.  

Oh good grief, I think I've been wqriting in all capts.  Sorry, I can't fix it now.  I don't know how must of the text is that way.  Sorry.

So now everyone I knw who is not a Christian, and even some who are for that matter, I see as destined for Hell and I desperately want to turn them away from it, but there is s8uch resistance to the gospel message it's hard to know how to approach it.  I'm praying about it.

Very sad thoughts.  Everybody I see now seems to me to be living a totally futile life if they aren't true believers in Christ.  Ande that's  cours the mjajority of humanity.  Walking around in a fog, living for short term objectives if any objectives at all, wandering in a mist of ignorance.  Why am I only now coming to see things this way?   And most of them won't accept the gospel no matter how it's presented to them.  Some will though, they have to be the focus.

So many good teachings.  MacArthur on Who Is The Antichrist.  And now I've forgotten what the other one is that MacArhur preached.    but I do remember the one by Spurgeon aboutr prayer and here is the link:

rue Prayer, True Power! - Charles Spurgeon Sermon - YouTube

Book Recommendation: Murder, Motherhood and Miraculous grace

Pilgrim Radio has a daily program where someonbe reads a book a half hour at a time and the one that is being read right now is a dramatic true story that makes me wih I could still read because instead of waiting for wach daily installment I'd have bought the ook by now and read the whole thing.  It has an audible version but I haven't been able to figure out that feature so oh well.

This is the book "Murder, Motherhooe and Miraculous Grace" told by a foster parient who had a part in a murder trial in Wyoming back in the nineties.  That's all I'll say in case anyuone wants to get the book and read it.

I should add though that it's a sad story, about children as victims of irresponsible adults.

The Church is Limping from the Devil's Attacks on the Bible Manuscripts and on the Women's Head cCovering and on the Identity of the Antichrist

It gets to me, sometimes it makes me angry.  I do wonder if I'm wrong, Lord please please correct me if so, or motivated by self and pride and I suppose there's always going to be some degree of that influence but again Lord please please correct me.   When they, meaning otherwise good solid Bible teachers, refer to the "earliest manuscripts as their authoritative source on some passage where the King James tradition of manuscripts differ from it, I either cry or get mad.  Same when I hear the interpretation of the women's head covering twisted by that false claim that it's really all about the sucultural context of Paul's time and not about a literal head covering, or when I hear the End Times prophecy foloowers say we aren't going to know who the Anticrhist is because he is only going to be revealed after the Rapture.

Sounds arrogant of me I'm sure.  There are people on my side but they aren't the BIG guys.  TThey aren't the seminary professors.

I just heard a praecher interrupt his sermon on the book of Ephesians to note that the "earliest manuscripts" don't have the word" Ephesians' in the first line of it although for the most part it is there in the current versions anyway.  What's the implication of this?  That the earliest manuscripts are true to what Paul actually wrote and that somebody somewhere along the line added the word into later copies.  Which is a SIN.  That idea came from Westcott and Hort, that all kinds of things that aren't in those earliest manuscripts were added later into the line of manuscripts that underlies the King James Bible.

I've heard Westcott and Hort referred to with reverence by otherwise decent pastor.  Two men who violated the directive they were under on the committee called to update the King James, by addint a new set of Greek manuscripts, besides in the opinion of Dean JQ Bufgon, producing a very bad translation because of their inferior understanding of both Greek and Englihs.   Burgon is my standard, a highly qualified scholar of Greek as well as a true man of God.  Nwither can be said of Westcogtt and Hort.

It CAN be said of the King James translators though.  And besides Westcott and Hort I doubt it can be said of ANY of those who have produced any of our modern translations which are based on their corrupted manuscripts.   If the revising commiittee ohad done its job we could have had a decent updating of the King James.  Instead we have a babel of inferior translations based on a set of Greek man7uscripts that were known to Burgon as at least corrupted by earliy heretics, or possibly, as is explored in documentariesby Chris Pinto, even later forgeries.  

In any case those manuscripts arfe, amazinglyh, still intact, though they go all the way back to the early centureies of the Church.  How did they manage to remain so pristine?  Consider that the textus receptus, the line of Greek manuscripts on which the King James was based, only exist now in fragments, some five thousand of them, that go back only to the tenth century.  Which is what you'd expsect of Bibles that were actually USED.  For some reason those earliest manuscr9ipts were not used.    That's the only reason they could have survived for so long in such good condition.  IF rhey do in fact go that far back, which may be untrue.  T3ehy may be forgeries.  At least Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.

But the Church has accepted the Westcott and Hort production and takes it all very seriously.  Dare I suggest this is just a form of captivity by the devil?   Over what is at least the majority of the Church?

BDoes it really matter?  Well, I think it does.  I think the very fact that we have so many different translations in itself has a crippoling influence on the Church.   We need a common la nguage in order to share the scriptures with one another without always having to stop and correct and second guess everything, and certainly for the purpose of memorizing scripture.  And there is no need in MOAT of the cases for any change to the King James wording.  I was listening to the Book of Revelation read on the radio the other day in the NASB version and it was hard not to turn inte radio off.  There is no reason to have changed the word "V8ial" into the word "bowl,: or to make "fornication" reduceable to the vague term "immorality."  And that's just a couple of the problems I kept hearing in the reading.

Well, nobody is likely to isten to me.  I'm nobody a nd nobody readds my blog anyway, or not many.   I also strenuously object to the devil's work on the women's head covering too.  Scholars even of very good reputation can err but when they err they getr taken seriously as in this case.  The passage is about the HEAD, over and over and over it is clear it is about the HEAD, because it is about the order of headshi9p or authority God gave to His creation, God over Chirst over man over woman.  It is not about cultura,l expressions of femininmity.  I would think that would be prestty obvioujs.  Besides, as I like ot point out, we require men to uncover their heads in church, and that also came from that same pasage, so how on earth do we justify chanigng the meaning of the passage onlyu to apply it to women and remove the meaning that it's really about which is covering the head.

And then there is the Anticrhist.  He's been identified by ttrue Christians down the centuries as the Pope and the Reformers discovered thatat fact in their turn.  He's the Pope.  There's no reason to think some other figure is going to show up as a new version of the Anticrhist.  The number six six six fits him as it does no otgher person and he's been known for centuries as the Anticrhist.  We just aren't required to read the right histories any more.