It is often that we are lead to specific things in order to complete our learning in an area of our Bible Study.
The question, lingering within the deep recesses of my heart is asked. It is a silent question, one that is not fully living within my mind. A verse passes before me like a feather in the wind. While surfing through the myriad mish-mash of garbage channels, it stops momentarily where a preacher speaks about the silent question and a partial answer brushes across my heart like a lock of hair blown blown across my cheek by the summer breeze. It is noticed, but brushed aside.
A short time later the words jump off the page and are noticed just like a toe notices a chair leg in the middle of the night. Although it is ignored, it has become enough of a nuisance as to be remembered if only superficially. The Word of God has a subtle way of becoming one with me. It finally caresses my heart and soul as though it were a rediscovered love. It envelopes me with His love and His tenderness and reminds me that He is a jealous God who requires my allegiance, my undivided allegiance.
And that is when the fight begins. I have a bad habit of wanting to wander off the straight and narrow all the while professing my undying love and telling everyone that I am doing no such thing.
The reason and the only reason that I am miserable much of the time is that I know what is right. I know what I do in my rebellious spirit is wrong but I insist, just as the children of Israel did, on complaining and wallowing in my self pity, and whining about what I think I should have.
But He is merciful. He is steadfast and He is God. He is The Messiah. He is the Only One who deserves honor, praise and glory. That is precisely why His Name should NEVER be diminished or left out or in any way ignored. The first four of the Ten Commandments are devoted to HIM. That ought to tell us something.
It should come as no surprise that the body of Christ is self-destructing. We are becoming consumed with working longer hours on the job in order to do a better job, saving the planet, living green, feeding the homeless, building bigger houses, more playgrounds, writing letters to politicians about spending, protesting this and supporting that until our time has been taken up with worthy causes. And we are busy at church decorating for this, cooking for that, raising money for the children's trip, the women's retreat, the gift bags for the hospital, the teddy bears for the ambulance, the blankets for the homeless, the basketball ministries, the inter-faith softball teams, the clothing for the shelters, and the prison outreach and the Angel Trees and all the other things that were never mentioned in Scripture.
We are so busy being busy that women cannot stay home with their children and are chided if they do so. Women are encouraged to act like men and men are encouraged to show their feelings. We have weeping men on the screen and women being drunk and spewing profanity like it is something to be proud of.
Our government is replete with talking heads that spout out politically correct gobbledygook which we are digesting as gospel while the real Gospel of Christ lies on the shelf collecting dust.
Rape, murder, incest and other atrocities are on the rise while women dress like whores showing their breasts and their behinds all the while wondering why they get no respect from men. They wonder why their relationships are short and tawdry. Even many churches remain silent. The older women no longer teach the younger as they are afraid they may offend them by telling them what is right and what is wrong.
Men leave children across the nation like so many Pez popping out of a candy dispenser. Male children growing up with only mothers to guide them. Angry young men becoming fathers themselves perpetuating the misery and leaving their own sons behind unless God Himself intervenes. Young girls without a proper father's love finding it where she may.
So where do we start? How do we turn things around? Can we even make a difference? Has the world gon to far over the line for a Christian to even try?
We start with ourselves. Only God can turn things around. Each one of us can make a difference in ourselves and those around us with God's help. It matters not how far gone the world is. What matters now is whether or not we are still being used of God to do HIS will instead of whining about what we cannot do. For we can do nothing. It is God who works. We are only a tool to be used for His pleasure.
We cannot save the world nor the planet. We cannot even save ourselves. The Salvation of the world, the rebuilding of the planet is His job.
If that is true then what difference does it make if we worship Him on Saturday or on Sunday? It makes a HUGE difference if it means we are being disobedient and are expecting our prayers to be answered. It makes a difference if we say we follow Him and do not follow His commandments.
It all makes a difference. It has to. He would not have said it if it was not important. We just need to listen to HIS voice and not our own. Let the Holy Spirit lead you. Be quiet and listen to the still small voice of God. One note that I will make about the following information is that the Sacrifice of Christ did not "cancel the written code" HE fulfilled the law. It may just be semantics to some, but to me there is a distinct difference.
The following was passed on to me via email. It is a bit different than the other information I found earlier. I do not know who wrote this, but credit is given to a writing by Jason Meyer at the end. I pass it on to you as complete as it was given to me.
********************************************************
It is often claimed that “God instituted the Sabbath in Eden” because of the connection between the Sabbath and creation in Exodus 20:11. Although God's rest on the seventh day (Genesis 2:3) did foreshadow a future Sabbath law, there is no biblical record of the Sabbath before the children of Israel left the land of Egypt. Nowhere in Scripture is there any hint that Sabbath-keeping was practiced from Adam to Moses.
The Word of God makes it quite clear that Sabbath observance was a special sign between God and Israel: “The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested” (Exodus 31:16–17).
In Deuteronomy 5, Moses restates the Ten Commandments to the next generation of Israelites. Here, after commanding Sabbath observance in verses 12–14, Moses gives the reason the Sabbath was given to the nation Israel: “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).
God's intent for giving the Sabbath to Israel was not that they would remember creation, but that they would remember their Egyptian slavery and the Lord's deliverance. Note the requirements for Sabbath-keeping: A person placed under that Sabbath law could not leave his home on the Sabbath (Exodus 16:29), he could not build a fire (Exodus 35:3), and he could not cause anyone else to work (Deuteronomy 5:14). A person breaking the Sabbath law was to be put to death (Exodus 31:15; Numbers 15:32–35).
An examination of New Testament passages shows us four important points: 1) Whenever Christ appears in His resurrected form and the day is mentioned, it is always the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1, 9, 10; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:1, 13, 15; John 20:19, 26). 2) The only time the Sabbath is mentioned from Acts through Revelation it is for evangelistic purposes to the Jews and the setting is usually in a synagogue (Acts chapters 13–18). Paul wrote, “to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews” (1 Corinthians 9:20). Paul did not go to the synagogue to fellowship with and edify the saints, but to convict and save the lost. 3) Once Paul states “from now on I will go to the Gentiles” (Acts 18:6), the Sabbath is never again mentioned. And 4) instead of suggesting adherence to the Sabbath day, the remainder of the New Testament implies the opposite (including the one exception to point 3 above, found in Colossians 2:16).
Looking more closely at point 4 above will reveal that there is no obligation for the New Testament believer to keep the Sabbath, and will also show that the idea of a Sunday “Christian Sabbath” is also unscriptural. As discussed above, there is one time the Sabbath is mentioned after Paul began to focus on the Gentiles, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” (Colossians 2:16–17). The Jewish Sabbath was abolished at the cross where Christ “canceled the written code, with its regulations” (Colossians 2:14).
This idea is repeated more than once in the New Testament: “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord” (Romans 14:5–6a). “But now that you know God — or rather are known by God — how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years” (Galatians 4:9–10).
But some claim that a mandate by Constantine in A.D. 321 “changed” the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. On what day did the early church meet for worship? Scripture never mentions any Sabbath (Saturday) gatherings by believers for fellowship or worship. However, there are clear passages that mention the first day of the week. For instance, Acts 20:7 states that “on the first day of the week we came together to break bread.” In 1 Corinthians 16:2 Paul urges the Corinthian believers “on the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income.” Since Paul designates this offering as “service” in 2 Corinthians 9:12, this collection must have been linked with the Sunday worship service of the Christian assembly. Historically Sunday, not Saturday, was the normal meeting day for Christians in the church, and its practice dates back to the first century.
The Sabbath was given to Israel, not the church. The Sabbath is still Saturday, not Sunday, and has never been changed. But the Sabbath is part of the Old Testament Law, and Christians are free from the bondage of the Law (Galatians 4:1-26; Romans 6:14). Sabbath keeping is not required of the Christian—be it Saturday or Sunday. The first day of the week, Sunday, the Lord's Day (Revelation 1:10) celebrates the New Creation, with Christ as our resurrected Head. We are not obligated to follow the Mosaic Sabbath—resting, but are now free to follow the risen Christ—serving. The Apostle Paul said that each individual Christian should decide whether to observe a Sabbath rest, “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). We are to worship God every day, not just on Saturday or Sunday.
Recommended Resource: The End of the Law: Mosaic Covenant in Pauline Theology by Jason Meyer.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
The Sabbath or Sunday?
Sabbath: God's Gift to Mankind is a great site to go to for a study on whether or not we should, as Christians. be observing Sunday instead of Saturday.
Another site that has a comprehensive study of the questions is Seventh Day Sabbath or Sunday.
I want to state that I am not a Seventh Day Adventist. I attend, send my tithe to and am a member of a Southern Baptist Church. I use the King James version almost exclusively for study although I have others on hand. After I was saved by the Grace of God (reborn, born again, regenerated, etc.) on February 22, 1992 at about 7:30 pm, I attended a Gospel Hall (Non-Denominational church) for 8 years. After a meeting and I saw that my presence was causing some strife, I left and after about 2 years of not attending anywhere regularly, my husband and I went to the small Baptist church about 2 miles from home.
I find myself getting ever more exasperated at the failure of mainline and non-denominational churches to follow the Word of God in even the smallest thing. Besides looking at the failures of the churches, I can overlook my own failures.
We are (us Christians) as a whole wandering woefully far from the Bible. We allow, in fact encourage, those who are living in sin to participate in the choir, teach Sunday School and head committees. We have Christmas trees on the altar, Santa comes to visit the children in Sunday School or the Fellowship/Family Life buildings, we have festivities on Halloween encouraging our children and grandchildren to dress up in costumes and we wonder why they no longer attend church when they become teenagers or young adults. I can tell you why they quit coming. They just found better entertainment elsewhere.
We have puppet "ministries" that take the place of worship services. We have slide shows on missionary work on prayer meeting nights. Family night segregates the family and breaks in down into "age appropriate groups".
A child professes Salvation when he is 7 and a Sunday School teacher asks him what Santa's going to bring him for Christmas. He states that he does not believe in Santa. She then castigates him for not believing in anything when a somewhat disturbed onlooker interferes and says the child believes in Jesus Christ as his Savior, what more does he need? And we wonder why our children are confused.
Shame on us. We have become so much like the world that extremely few of us would be immediately arrested if Christianity became illegal.
Are we so much like the world that we let the world dictate when we are to worship? After reading the Scriptures associated with the articles, I am leaning in the affirmative.
After years of going along with the crowd, I am beginning to see that the world of Christianity may actually, more accurately be called "Christendumb".
"Good" Christian parents leave the rearing of their children to the schools. Children used to start school at the first grade at around age 6. Now the government would prefer that we take them home from the hospital and dump them in government sanctioned day care while we work to support the government.
If we have failed to follow Scripture in so many ways, it might just be, that like the sheep we are compared to we have followed the wrong voice when it comes to the Sabbath. Just because we have always done it a certain way, does not make it so. The traditions of men should never replace the commandments of God.
We fight over silly things in the church: carpet color, paint color, redecorating the vestibule, putting in another bathroom and on and on. I was even talked about once because I showed up with a hat on in church. I know this because the man approached the preacher about it within earshot and he obviously wanted me to hear what he said. The preacher had to tell the man that actually it was proper and a woman should have her head covered. I did not wear a hat again because it caused strife. I should have kept doing what was right instead of "going along" with the crowd.
What do I think? I think we just might be wrong by changing to Sunday. I think we go along with things and say, "What's the harm?" The harm is it is just another step away from what is right in the sight of God.
What am I going to do about it? I don't know just yet. That is a matter for prayer and study. I need to be absolutely certain. I have to read those Scriptures again and again and ask HIM for guidance.
Another site that has a comprehensive study of the questions is Seventh Day Sabbath or Sunday.
I want to state that I am not a Seventh Day Adventist. I attend, send my tithe to and am a member of a Southern Baptist Church. I use the King James version almost exclusively for study although I have others on hand. After I was saved by the Grace of God (reborn, born again, regenerated, etc.) on February 22, 1992 at about 7:30 pm, I attended a Gospel Hall (Non-Denominational church) for 8 years. After a meeting and I saw that my presence was causing some strife, I left and after about 2 years of not attending anywhere regularly, my husband and I went to the small Baptist church about 2 miles from home.
I find myself getting ever more exasperated at the failure of mainline and non-denominational churches to follow the Word of God in even the smallest thing. Besides looking at the failures of the churches, I can overlook my own failures.
We are (us Christians) as a whole wandering woefully far from the Bible. We allow, in fact encourage, those who are living in sin to participate in the choir, teach Sunday School and head committees. We have Christmas trees on the altar, Santa comes to visit the children in Sunday School or the Fellowship/Family Life buildings, we have festivities on Halloween encouraging our children and grandchildren to dress up in costumes and we wonder why they no longer attend church when they become teenagers or young adults. I can tell you why they quit coming. They just found better entertainment elsewhere.
We have puppet "ministries" that take the place of worship services. We have slide shows on missionary work on prayer meeting nights. Family night segregates the family and breaks in down into "age appropriate groups".
A child professes Salvation when he is 7 and a Sunday School teacher asks him what Santa's going to bring him for Christmas. He states that he does not believe in Santa. She then castigates him for not believing in anything when a somewhat disturbed onlooker interferes and says the child believes in Jesus Christ as his Savior, what more does he need? And we wonder why our children are confused.
Shame on us. We have become so much like the world that extremely few of us would be immediately arrested if Christianity became illegal.
Are we so much like the world that we let the world dictate when we are to worship? After reading the Scriptures associated with the articles, I am leaning in the affirmative.
After years of going along with the crowd, I am beginning to see that the world of Christianity may actually, more accurately be called "Christendumb".
"Good" Christian parents leave the rearing of their children to the schools. Children used to start school at the first grade at around age 6. Now the government would prefer that we take them home from the hospital and dump them in government sanctioned day care while we work to support the government.
If we have failed to follow Scripture in so many ways, it might just be, that like the sheep we are compared to we have followed the wrong voice when it comes to the Sabbath. Just because we have always done it a certain way, does not make it so. The traditions of men should never replace the commandments of God.
We fight over silly things in the church: carpet color, paint color, redecorating the vestibule, putting in another bathroom and on and on. I was even talked about once because I showed up with a hat on in church. I know this because the man approached the preacher about it within earshot and he obviously wanted me to hear what he said. The preacher had to tell the man that actually it was proper and a woman should have her head covered. I did not wear a hat again because it caused strife. I should have kept doing what was right instead of "going along" with the crowd.
What do I think? I think we just might be wrong by changing to Sunday. I think we go along with things and say, "What's the harm?" The harm is it is just another step away from what is right in the sight of God.
What am I going to do about it? I don't know just yet. That is a matter for prayer and study. I need to be absolutely certain. I have to read those Scriptures again and again and ask HIM for guidance.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Faith
As you may well expect of me, I disagree that simply because someone other than the JW's use "a god" to describe The Messiah that it becomes correct. I find it offensive to refer to HIM as "a god" (lower case g as well). Others may not find it so. Because of what has been revealed in Scripture to me, it matters not if all the world refers to HIM as "a god". I will continue to refer to The Messiah as The GOD, Incarnate. I take it by faith not be the simple written words of supposed learned men in their years of study through their commentaries.
I also do not care much for commentaries either as they can sully the Word of God with their inane droning about the opinion they have regarding the Word of God and what they think it means.
The JW's pick where to put the articles (a, an, etc) within their translations as the original Hebrew did not have articles.
Language is translated not only by each individual word but by the intent of the writer as well. It is within that area that errors are most generally made. Who can discover the "intent" of a writer who has been gone for thousands of years? The only intent that I am concerned with is that of God the Father. I really do not care what might have been going on in the minds of the writers of Scripture 2 or 3,000 years ago. Man's mind change with the wind. The Will of God remains steadfast and what was correct in the Garden of Eden is still correct today.
I am rather single minded in my approach to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. God said it and I believe it. The ramblings of men or women have no effect upon me. If they did, I would no longer know what to believe.
I also do not care much for commentaries either as they can sully the Word of God with their inane droning about the opinion they have regarding the Word of God and what they think it means.
The JW's pick where to put the articles (a, an, etc) within their translations as the original Hebrew did not have articles.
Language is translated not only by each individual word but by the intent of the writer as well. It is within that area that errors are most generally made. Who can discover the "intent" of a writer who has been gone for thousands of years? The only intent that I am concerned with is that of God the Father. I really do not care what might have been going on in the minds of the writers of Scripture 2 or 3,000 years ago. Man's mind change with the wind. The Will of God remains steadfast and what was correct in the Garden of Eden is still correct today.
I am rather single minded in my approach to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. God said it and I believe it. The ramblings of men or women have no effect upon me. If they did, I would no longer know what to believe.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
What is Truth?
There is much debate over which translation or version of Scripture to use.
What I am going to give here is my own experience with a variety of translations.
First of all, few of us reads the actual translation according to Kings James' 1611 English translation. The wording is definitely archaic and hard to understand. The version that we read today is actually the 1769 Baskerville Birmingham version. When the Bibles have been printed, there have been changes made such as spellings of words are updated, some misspelled words in earlier editions have been corrected and so forth.
Up until about 130 years ago, the 14 Apocryphal books were included in every Bible translation. In the 1880's the English Revised Version (ERV) was printed without them. That was when the books of the Bible went from 80 Books to 66. They were not a "Catholic" set of Books, but books that were included in all translations until the ERV.
The segmentation of Scripture into verses is a fairly modern one if we take into account the whole of history since the first written Scripture in 1400BC when Moses was given the Ten Commandments in stone. It was 1560 that the Bible was first printed with numbered verses added to each chapter and was still printed with 80 Books.
One website that gives a lot of historical information regarding Bible translations is GREATSITE.COM. It is the first site that I have found that offers the information in an understandable manner. If you do a search for "Bible History" you will find many others.
As far as which translation is the best and which one contains more truth than the other, you will have to judge for yourself. My first experience was with the King James when going to a Baptist Church in Washington, DC. That was when I knew I was going to Hell for my sin. I was six (1951). About 6 years later when my mother started going back to the Catholic Church, I was exposed to Catholicism and everything was in Latin. My exposure to their Bible was minuscule.
At the ripe old age of 13 I went to a Church of God camp meeting in Manassass, Virginia with my Aunt where I became a "Church of Godder" (my words in a letter written to my mother). They used the KJV exclusively. I still have that Bible my Aunt gave me and I saw where key verses had been marked but I never really grasped the concept of Salvation.
When at the age of 14 went to Catholic School while living with my father, I still remember very little about Bible Study, it was more about learning the Catholic Catechism. While in High School I attended the Catholic Church, mostly to get next to the cadets that attended the local Military Academy. Some really cute ones went to the Catholic Church.
I was never a Catholic. I liked their rituals, their legalism and the mystery. That changed in the mid 1960's when the Church changed and became more modern and started having mass in English and those changes turned me away from the Catholic Church. It changed at a time when I needed sameness.
After graduation from High School, I traveled and bummed around a lot. I looked into a variety of religions. I actually purchased and read the Satanic Bible. I was involved with all kinds of New Age crap. I was involved with witchcraft, seances, Buddhism, Scientology and I even have a book of Mormon. I wound up in Washington, DC where there is a great concentration of ideas.
After I left Washington, DC, I married and had a child. Having a child gives you a desire to make yourself better so you can do better by your child than your parents did by you. Since my mother sent me to church, I figured going to Church with my child would be better. We joined his family's Presbyterian Church.
They asked me all the right questions to which I responded in the affirmative. I knew the right answers but I also knew I was lying. While going to Church, I began a Bible Study with the Jehovah's Witnesses. We actually studied the Bible. It was with a twist. Their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God Incarnate is missing. I studied with them for 2 years. I never joined their Church because they could never convince me there was no Hell. Their structure was actually closer to Biblical than any Church that I had gone to.
There were years when I went to no Church at all and after many years of wandering the wilderness in circles, "I" decided it was time to look for THE "Truth." I started reading the only Bible I had available which was "The New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures." This is the Bible that the JW's use. What I found is that there are some striking, might I say, obvious, errors in their translation.
John 1:1 in the KJV states, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
John 1:1 in the NWTHS it states, "In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God and the Word was a god."
If you were reading a familiar passage quickly, you would hardly notice the difference. I took note of it and read on anyway. By the time I got partially through the third chapter of John, I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior. I knew he was the Son of God. I knew He died on the Cross for my sins.
There was nothing that was going to stop me from finding THE TRUTH and reading an erroneous Bible in that search was not to be an impediment.
The fact that there are errors in whatever translation you may be reading is not as dreadful as one may think, as long as the seeker is genuinely searching for THE TRUTH. I was once told that a searching sinner and a seeking Savior will eventually find one another.
Genesis 4:1 in the KJV states, "And Adam knew Eve..."
Genesis 4:1 in the NWTHS states,"Now Adam had intercourse with Eve..."
The difference in the above two translations is purely semantics. There are those who think that the KJV version is the correct one while the other is crass and irreverent. They are both correct. One is aesthetically pleasing while the other is almost salacious in its depiction. Some have described the one as being just "awful".
Acts 12:4 in the KJV states, "And when he had apprehended him, he put [him] in prison, and delivered [him] to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people."
The mention of Easter is an error in the KJV that I find fascinating. Easter is not a holiday that had its start in Christianity. Easter is a bastardization of a pagan holiday which actually had its beginning as a fertility festival. Then there is the Easter bunny. When did rabbits start laying eggs? Why are we promoting heathen fertility symbols on a day that is supposed to be a celebration of THE LORD rising from the dead? Have Christians totally lost their minds? Easter is a word that originates from the Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility which was known by a variety of names such as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos. Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Call it Resurrection Day instead. It has also been associated with Ishtar who was a Sumero-Babylonian goddess of love and fertilty. We take their symbols and twist them to meet our needs so we can keep on having a holiday, another time for parties.
It would be better if we dispensed with the Pagan holidays and only celebrated those Holy Days that coincide with the Jewish Holy Days. Jesus was, after all, Jewish and continued to follow the Jewish traditions throughout His life on earth. The Jews were never told to dispense with the observance of the feasts and other observances. The Gentiles who were converted were told that they did not have to be circumcised in observance of Jewish tradition. The Lord's Day is Sunday instead of observing the Sabbath as the Jews did.
And that is what I think of different translations. If you seek HIM with all your heart, you will find HIM. Even if you do not have the written Word, creation and the Word is in all that is around us. We have only but to look for it. Once we have HIM then we need to prayerfully find in HIS Word what he has for us. While there are obvious human attempts to distort the Word of The Lord, HE will convict us of our sins IF we are indeed a child of GOD. Christianity should never be tolerant of error and sin against GOD but should do as was done for them - forgive and show the right way. Sin is sin. There are only degrees of sin in the eyes of man. God only turns His head away from sin and one sin is as bad as another.
What I am going to give here is my own experience with a variety of translations.
First of all, few of us reads the actual translation according to Kings James' 1611 English translation. The wording is definitely archaic and hard to understand. The version that we read today is actually the 1769 Baskerville Birmingham version. When the Bibles have been printed, there have been changes made such as spellings of words are updated, some misspelled words in earlier editions have been corrected and so forth.
Up until about 130 years ago, the 14 Apocryphal books were included in every Bible translation. In the 1880's the English Revised Version (ERV) was printed without them. That was when the books of the Bible went from 80 Books to 66. They were not a "Catholic" set of Books, but books that were included in all translations until the ERV.
The segmentation of Scripture into verses is a fairly modern one if we take into account the whole of history since the first written Scripture in 1400BC when Moses was given the Ten Commandments in stone. It was 1560 that the Bible was first printed with numbered verses added to each chapter and was still printed with 80 Books.
One website that gives a lot of historical information regarding Bible translations is GREATSITE.COM. It is the first site that I have found that offers the information in an understandable manner. If you do a search for "Bible History" you will find many others.
As far as which translation is the best and which one contains more truth than the other, you will have to judge for yourself. My first experience was with the King James when going to a Baptist Church in Washington, DC. That was when I knew I was going to Hell for my sin. I was six (1951). About 6 years later when my mother started going back to the Catholic Church, I was exposed to Catholicism and everything was in Latin. My exposure to their Bible was minuscule.
At the ripe old age of 13 I went to a Church of God camp meeting in Manassass, Virginia with my Aunt where I became a "Church of Godder" (my words in a letter written to my mother). They used the KJV exclusively. I still have that Bible my Aunt gave me and I saw where key verses had been marked but I never really grasped the concept of Salvation.
When at the age of 14 went to Catholic School while living with my father, I still remember very little about Bible Study, it was more about learning the Catholic Catechism. While in High School I attended the Catholic Church, mostly to get next to the cadets that attended the local Military Academy. Some really cute ones went to the Catholic Church.
I was never a Catholic. I liked their rituals, their legalism and the mystery. That changed in the mid 1960's when the Church changed and became more modern and started having mass in English and those changes turned me away from the Catholic Church. It changed at a time when I needed sameness.
After graduation from High School, I traveled and bummed around a lot. I looked into a variety of religions. I actually purchased and read the Satanic Bible. I was involved with all kinds of New Age crap. I was involved with witchcraft, seances, Buddhism, Scientology and I even have a book of Mormon. I wound up in Washington, DC where there is a great concentration of ideas.
After I left Washington, DC, I married and had a child. Having a child gives you a desire to make yourself better so you can do better by your child than your parents did by you. Since my mother sent me to church, I figured going to Church with my child would be better. We joined his family's Presbyterian Church.
They asked me all the right questions to which I responded in the affirmative. I knew the right answers but I also knew I was lying. While going to Church, I began a Bible Study with the Jehovah's Witnesses. We actually studied the Bible. It was with a twist. Their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God Incarnate is missing. I studied with them for 2 years. I never joined their Church because they could never convince me there was no Hell. Their structure was actually closer to Biblical than any Church that I had gone to.
There were years when I went to no Church at all and after many years of wandering the wilderness in circles, "I" decided it was time to look for THE "Truth." I started reading the only Bible I had available which was "The New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures." This is the Bible that the JW's use. What I found is that there are some striking, might I say, obvious, errors in their translation.
John 1:1 in the KJV states, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
John 1:1 in the NWTHS it states, "In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God and the Word was a god."
If you were reading a familiar passage quickly, you would hardly notice the difference. I took note of it and read on anyway. By the time I got partially through the third chapter of John, I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior. I knew he was the Son of God. I knew He died on the Cross for my sins.
There was nothing that was going to stop me from finding THE TRUTH and reading an erroneous Bible in that search was not to be an impediment.
The fact that there are errors in whatever translation you may be reading is not as dreadful as one may think, as long as the seeker is genuinely searching for THE TRUTH. I was once told that a searching sinner and a seeking Savior will eventually find one another.
Genesis 4:1 in the KJV states, "And Adam knew Eve..."
Genesis 4:1 in the NWTHS states,"Now Adam had intercourse with Eve..."
The difference in the above two translations is purely semantics. There are those who think that the KJV version is the correct one while the other is crass and irreverent. They are both correct. One is aesthetically pleasing while the other is almost salacious in its depiction. Some have described the one as being just "awful".
Acts 12:4 in the KJV states, "And when he had apprehended him, he put [him] in prison, and delivered [him] to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people."
The mention of Easter is an error in the KJV that I find fascinating. Easter is not a holiday that had its start in Christianity. Easter is a bastardization of a pagan holiday which actually had its beginning as a fertility festival. Then there is the Easter bunny. When did rabbits start laying eggs? Why are we promoting heathen fertility symbols on a day that is supposed to be a celebration of THE LORD rising from the dead? Have Christians totally lost their minds? Easter is a word that originates from the Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility which was known by a variety of names such as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos. Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Call it Resurrection Day instead. It has also been associated with Ishtar who was a Sumero-Babylonian goddess of love and fertilty. We take their symbols and twist them to meet our needs so we can keep on having a holiday, another time for parties.
It would be better if we dispensed with the Pagan holidays and only celebrated those Holy Days that coincide with the Jewish Holy Days. Jesus was, after all, Jewish and continued to follow the Jewish traditions throughout His life on earth. The Jews were never told to dispense with the observance of the feasts and other observances. The Gentiles who were converted were told that they did not have to be circumcised in observance of Jewish tradition. The Lord's Day is Sunday instead of observing the Sabbath as the Jews did.
And that is what I think of different translations. If you seek HIM with all your heart, you will find HIM. Even if you do not have the written Word, creation and the Word is in all that is around us. We have only but to look for it. Once we have HIM then we need to prayerfully find in HIS Word what he has for us. While there are obvious human attempts to distort the Word of The Lord, HE will convict us of our sins IF we are indeed a child of GOD. Christianity should never be tolerant of error and sin against GOD but should do as was done for them - forgive and show the right way. Sin is sin. There are only degrees of sin in the eyes of man. God only turns His head away from sin and one sin is as bad as another.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)