Genesis 3:4 – And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

Hello readers, talking about the King James Bible vs all others. That’s what it all comes down, you can lump the myriad of different versions of the Bible into one camp and the King James into the other. Today we will go back to Genesis 3 and see how Satan works. Satan is behind the scourge of new Bibles. Confusion is not of God, Satan sows confusion. We shouldn’t be confused or confounded, but confident in God’s word. Satan is subtle so he’s not going to change the Bible to “In the beginning Satan”… no. Although he is quite audacious in changing “Lucifer” to “Day Star” right… day star is a title that belongs to Jesus Christ in 2 Peter 1. Satan is smart, and just like Absalom was smart in turning the hearts of Israel from David to himself which is an excellent study in itself… Satan will be the master of your life even while you think you’re serving “God”.

Genesis 3:1 says that the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. This is the first thing we learn about the devil. We can never overestimate this aspect to him. He is subtil. What does that mean? He’s sly, he’s sneaky, he’s crafty, he’s cunning, he’s devious, he’s smart, he tricks, he fools, he deceives. And in the Bible issue his subtlety has mislead and deceived the masses. They say “the devil is in the detail”… those people knew what they were talking about.

The first thing Satan said was “Yea, hath God said?” That question is still posed today. That question has seeped into the churches. But in these words, you know what Satan does. He attacks God’s word. He casts doubt. He questions. They had no reason to doubt God’s word, God’s goodness, God’s intentions… but he introduced a seed of doubt. And that is his seed ever since, the seed that doubts, that questions, that perverts God’s word. While God’s word is the incorruptible seed, Satan also can plant seeds, seeds that start as doubt and blossom into disobedience… just as in the first sin. Satan had a parallel narrative, a narrative similar to God’s word, but different, and it produced something very terrible.

Satan isn’t somewhere else off, he trafficks in God’s word. He goes to and fro in the earth… he doesn’t rest. Our faith depends on God’s word, so in order to hinder, harm, prevent, and derail faith, he attacks God’s word. Satan went from questioning God’s word to saying… actually this is more accurate. He said, thou shalt not surely die. That’s a lie… because God said they would die. Satan had a more accurate version of events didn’t he. He also said this is what God knows. You see, people who follow the devil are also keen to say what God means… here this is what God means. That is what Bible revising is… actually God meant this. These new Bibles are marketed as “more accurate”, because they field other manuscripts which are older, or superior, or closer to the originals… so they say. It seems incredible that it could be more accurate to delete a verse like 1 John 5:7 or Acts 8:37 or change Daniel 4 from “The Son of God” to “a son of the gods”.

The godfathers of modern Bibles are people like Westcott and Hort, two men who were distinctly anti God in their beliefs. Their Bibles show it. At every turn they cut away at the text, consistently undermining and altering words that exalt Jesus Christ as God, as the Son of God, as virgin born and on. They did this in the name of “accuracy”. It’s clever isn’t it. It’s more “accurate” for 1 John 5:7 not to be in the Bible right. Textual criticism… well Satan was the first textual critic. Adam and Eve hadn’t questioned or doubted God’s word before Satan came along. But he planted doubt and introduced his lies. Wikipedia (great resource I know) defines textual criticism as “Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books.” Before Satan came along in Genesis 3, there were no “textual variants” were there? There was one truth. And undisputed truth, and an undisputed meaning. God’s word was clear to Adam. God said what he meant and meant what he said. You shall surely die… that’s clarity, that’s not giving a vague sense by which may also get our own sense of what he’s saying. God is clear. Satan came with a more accurate version of God’s word. Satan gave his version of events, which paralleled God’s word closely, but was not the same. It produced disobedience, it produced death.

God’s word is not to be critiqued, it’s to be obeyed. It’s to be trusted. It’s by which we are saved. Of course proud creation want to be the God… just like in Genesis 3 right? Ye shall be as gods. That was the appeal. You see, Genesis 3 is the formula that has been followed ever since. The woman, Eve, swallowed the lie. Satan certainly helped her get a different “sense” of what God had said and what God meant. You see, God’s word defines what he means, God didn’t give us his word for us to get a “sense” from which can differ between all of us… no, just like the common salvation ONCE delivered unto the saints. The church today has done just like Eve. When Satan asked her what God had said, she spat out a version of what God had said, but it was altered. When there is doubt over what God has actually said, the door is opened. Because the door was opened and Satan instantly said she wouldn’t die. If you think about this practically, if there is doubt over if God has spoken and what he has said and where it is, if you don’t know… how will you be able to detect a lie? How will you be able to walk by faith… as in not just blind faith making up a God of your imagination, but walk by faith like Abraham did… hearing God’s word and obeying it, to the letter.

Satan was saying… here’s what God really means. Here’s what God is really up to.  Textual criticism is the same today, here is what God really said. The new Bible issue proves itself again, you hear the doubt dripping from the scholars… as the new Bibles produce doubt and weaken faith. What did God say of Satan in Isaiah 14? He is the weakener of the nations. You see, the Bible issue may not mean you are saved or not, but it sure can weaken your understanding of who God is and what God has said. Satan wants to weaken you, and these Bibles are weakened Bibles. The Bible is weakened for not having 1 John 5:7, for replacing “Joseph” with “father” in Luke 2:33. Satan has weakened the gospel, weakened Christians by muddying the word of God.

At the heart of the new Bible versions is man saying here is what God is really saying. It’s a battle over what he really said. But what he really said has been said all along. 1 John 1:1 – That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life… why did we go away from God’s word? But it’s nothing new. People were sending letters in Paul’s name, there have always been those who are against God’s word, like the king who burned to scroll or the many Paul wrote of that pervert God’s word. God knows how to retain his truth, he is God, across language. Because God’s word is not bound by language… just like Psalms 19:3 -There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. At Pentecost, they all heard the gospel in their own tongue, and they all knew the same truth. Paul carried the gospel throughout Asia, and yet it was the same truths being declared. God can preserve and keep his word, and he has preserved and kept his word… how about we take hold of it?

You don’t need to be a scholar or an expert in Greek and Hebrew to know the true from the false. You don’t need to enter into endless genealogies and fables… you can simply just compare the Bibles, like what does 1 John 5:7 say? How could you delete that? Luke 9:49,50 – And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us. There is a reason for quoting these two verses. You see, they say that a “well intentioned” scribe added 1 John 5:7. Well the verse exalts Jesus Christ as God. It is doctrinally correct. Three that bear record in heaven (that’s where Jesus is!)… being in heaven means he’s accepted in heaven meaning our sins are paid for and he is on the right hand of the Father as promised… and the verse says these three are one. Jesus said… I and my Father are one. So even if a “well intentioned” scribe added in a verse that exalts Jesus Christ (which isn’t true anyway), why would you be against it? By the way, adding to the Bible is a damnable offense warned of in both Old and New Testament, and it is Satan who perverts God’s word. Why would Satan want something added into God’s word that further glorifies Jesus Christ… he’s always been after God’s glory. It doesn’t make sense right, how could you be well intentioned doing something so wrong as to add to the Bible? The verse is not against Jesus Christ. By the way, there are a lot more changes than just 1 John 5:7, these new Bibles change verse after verse after verse, from adding, to changing, to deleting. Changed word, changed image of God, because we can only formulate our image of God through the word of God. Nobody has seen God, our only conception of God is through the Word.

The reason these Bibles cater to the masses is because it plays to our flesh. Satan played to Eve’s flesh, he appealed to it. New Bibles are an appeal to the flesh. When Eve looked and saw and was pleased… she sinned. They’re fleshly Bibles. Just look at the rationalizing. They’re trying to make it “easier to understand” (even though they aren’t), because man can’t make God’s word easy to understand… you need the Holy Spirit to understand it. That’s why they can’t understand it. The KJV was understood for centuries… it is more readable and memorizable than any other version, and if you can’t understand things… it doesn’t mean you should change them, maybe it means you should LEARN them or STUDY them… maybe people don’t understand it because they don’t got the Spirit of God? They’re trying to make a Bible that can be understood in the flesh. EASIER… what a promise. Satan sure made it easier for Eve. It’d be easier to take the fruit rather than to trust God wouldn’t it?

These new Bibles please our flesh. And they produce flesh. Look at the new Bibles and how churches today are flesh pots with rock and roll, nakedness, all sorts of lies being spoken and God’s word noticeably absent. Sure they’re big churches, but devoid of the Spirit of God. There is a big song and dance… but it’s all substitute. You gotta remember the flesh loves to do religion. They loved their golden calf religion, Ahab loved hearing from his plethora of prophets… but he hated the one guy who spoke the truth. But he didn’t want to hear from that guy, so he chucked him in prison. These new Bibles produce fleshly Christians. Easier to understand right, nah just changed to cater for people that cannot endure God’s word. New Bibles, new beliefs, new lifestyles… God’s word is no longer the authority. When you have multiple versions of his word, you are now the one in authority picking and choosing the Bible as convenient. The Bible is not a smorgasbord… it’s thus saith the Lord. And ultimately God is still on his throne in heaven… and he has let all this happen, just like he let Satan tempt Eve… because he wants to prove us, and see if we love him, to see if we will obey him, to see if we will put him first.

Satan said nah, this is more accurate. But it was a lie. He is the father of lies. Genesis 3 gives us the blueprint for who he is and what he does and how he does it. But with doubt came disobedience, with the changing of the word of God, with the altering of the meaning, with “textual criticism”… and Eve having a discussion where she shouldn’t have entertained the lies of the devil… came the fall. Maybe your life is falling down today, get to God’s word, why settle for less? Removing verse and changing words to detract from Jesus Christ and steal his glory and dumb him and it down is not the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Not at all. It’s not legalistic to stick to God’s word, neither to contend for the faith. And it’s very good to be black and white, after all God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. God gives us definites, and we can definitely know, and his word for us English speakers is in the King James Bible. And sure, that will put you at odds with others, and you’ll cop opposition for it, but that’s what discipleship is, that’s the price of following Jesus Christ. Just remember God’s word is all we tangibly have from God, if you don’t have God’s word that you can read and trust today with your very soul… you’d want to make sure you’ve got the real thing. You don’t need a phd. You don’t need endless questions. You don’t need to wonder. It’s just simply not more accurate when it denies and disputes and diminishes from and deletes the Lord Jesus Christ.

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