Q The identity factor is very important because the New Agers say that ”the Christ is coming,” or ”the Christ is here.” Certainly they are not talking about Jesus Christ. Our next question comes from a pastor who is a faithful listener to the Southwest Radio Church. While he does not object to your defense of the King James Version, he is concerned that you may damage or harm the faith of those who have accepted the newer versions as the inspired word of God. This pastor asks: Can the New King James Version be trusted? What is wrong with it? Why do you call it a counterfeit?

A I think many of the men on the New King James committee were godly men who had the best intentions in mind. As a matter of fact, I have received positive responses to my book from two different men on the New King James committee. One of them is now buying my books by the case and passing them out at churches where he goes; the other one has given me an endorsement for the book. Many of these men are sweet, godly men who had little control over how it turned out and are justifiably disappointed.

We have to remember that in the bible, deception always takes the form of a counterfeit or imitation of the real thing. Galatians 1:6-7 says there is “another gospel: Which is not another; but... would pervert the gospel of Christ.” So they change it just a little bit. Remember in Isaiah 14:14 Lucifer said, “I will be like the most High.” He did not say he would be like Charles Manson; he said he would “be like the most High.” He wants to be as much like God as he can.

Second Timothy 3:8 says, “as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these....” These magicians copied Moses exactly. Satan is a counterfeiter; he tries to copy Jesus Christ and the Father as closely as he can. Jesus is the Light of the world; how does Satan appear? He appears as an angel of light. When Jacob tried to disguise himself as his brother, his words betrayed him. I am afraid the words of the New King James betray it as a counterfeit. It has about one hundred changes per page. This amounts to about sixty thousand changes in the New King James Version. Compare that to the four hundred changes in orthography (spelling and punctuation) which took place in the 1700’s to the original King James Version.

I am so reminded of the verse in Jeremiah 6:16 which says, “ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” The churches today are without rest, and I think they need to take the “old paths.” Let me give you some examples of some of the verses that have been changed in the New King James. The deity of Christ has disappeared in a number of places in the New King James. The devil said to Jesus Christ, “IF you are the Son of God...” (Matt. 4:3,6). He was questioning whether he was “the Son.” The mockers said to Jesus on the cross, “IF you are the Son of God, come down” (Matt. 27:40). They were questioning whether or not he is the Son of God. His Sonship is an essential doctrine. In fact, 1 John 2:22—23 says, “He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.”

The KJV verses in Acts 3:13, 26 that say Jesus Christ is the “Son” of God, is changed in the New King James to say he is a mere “servant.” Something very similar to this happens again in Acts 4:27, 30. The King James says that Jesus Christ was God’s “chiId”; the NKJV changes that to “servant.” Now, the problem with this rendering is that the New King James and the new translations, in John 4:51, take the same Greek word and translate it as “nobleman’s son,” so they know that the word can be translated as “Son.” Yet they take the Sonship away from the Lord Jesus Christ. We see his deity being watered down in the NKJV again in Matthew 20:20 where instead of saying “worship,” it just says “kneel.” Matthew 26:64 talks about “the right hand of power”; the New King James capitalizes “Power,” and says that Jesus is “at the right hand of the Power,” implying that the “power” is something other than Jesus Christ. But as we read the context of that verse and go down to Matthew 28:18, we see that Jesus said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” So the power is Jesus Christ.

Another change made in the New King James is in Revelation 1:6. The King James says, “God and his Father”; the New King James says, “His God and Father.” Genesis 22:8 is one of the saddest renderings in the New King James. It is a prophetic comment. Abraham said, “God will provide himself a lamb.” The New King James says, “God will provide for Himself the lamb.” We know this was prophetic because a ram was provided for Abraham, not a lamb; God himself is going to be a lamb.

There are a lot of New Age renderings in the New King James. They consistently substitute the term “the Christ” for “Christ.” Liberty University’s dean, Norman Geisler, says, “We should be particularly wary when someone refers to Jesus Christ as ‘the Christ.’” The worst component of the New King James is its use of the term, “the One,” capital O-n-e, for the masculine pronoun “he.” This word gives credence to the monism, pantheism, and the neuter god that is so prevalent in the New Age movement. The February edition of Pat Robertson’s Christian American magazine quotes one of the new version editors. She boasts of her “monism” and refers to “god herself” as the neuter One, capital 0-n-e. She believes that God is a female god and a neuter kind of a god. So when we see the 0-n-e in the New King James, instead of “he,” the masculine, we are moving away from the historic God of Christianity to this monistic neuter god. We also see this monism in the New King James in John 4:24. The King James says, “God is a Spirit.” The New King James says, “God is Spirit.” Now we know that there are plenty of spirits that are not God; the NKJV makes similar changes in Revelations 15:3.

The most frightening thing that I found in the NKJV was its rendition of Luke 7:19—20. The King James says, “he that should come.” The New King James has dropped “he,” capitalized “Coming,” and capitalized “One,” and says, “the Coming One.” They do not know what this is and I suspect they were deceived when the devil got them to put this in there. The New Age and Luciferian matriarch, Alice Bailey, has a chapter in her book entitled “The Doctrine of the Coming One.” Who is her “Coming One”? Let me read what she says:
”Humanity in all lands today awaits the Coming One.... Let death fulfill the purpose of the Coming One.” (The Reappearance of the Christ, pp. 64, 188)

 Now Christians know who this “Coming One” is. Second Thessalonians 2:9 says it is the Antichrist, “him, whose coming is after the working of Satan.” By using the title, “Coming One,” that is so pervasive in New Age literature, the New King James is giving us that “common vocabulary” once again that we really do not want to see in our Judeo-Christian bible.

Another example of the retrograde nature of the New King James is its Jehovah’s Witness readings. They have taken the historic title of the Holy Spirit, the “Comforter” (John 14:16) and changed it to “the HeIper.” The Jehovah’s Witness bible has always called the Holy Spirit “the helper” there and elsewhere because they do not believe the Holy Spirit is a person. They believe the Holy Spirit is a wind or a force, or something like that, something that just sort of helps God. So now the New King James has the identical rendering the Jehovah’s Witness bible (The New World Translation) has had for years and years and years.

The New King James omits the word “hell” numerous times, ten times I believe, and substituted it with the word “Hades,” which has numerous New Age interpretations. They have also taken away the word “hell” in the Old Testament and replaced it with the word “Sheol” about thirteen times. So again, we have a translation that needs to be translated, using words that have no exact meaning and can be given any sort of definition or meaning that anyone would like.

The New King James Version is carving a platform to support the idol worship that will fill the globe during the tribulation, when they “worship the image of the beast” (Rev. 13:15). Paul’s harsh rebuke to the idol worshippers in Acts 17:22 (“ye are too superstitious”), becomes a hearty compliment in the NKJV (“you are very religious”). The Greek word that is translated “superstition” contains the root word for “devil”! The Greek word for “religious” is nowhere in the verse. The sharp distinction between the saved and the unsaved fades from the page of the NKJV as “the heathen” (Ps. 79:1), a word with religious connotations, is transmuted into the politically correct “nations.” Sorcerers no longer “bewitch,” but merely “astonish” (Acts 8:9). Ask yourself, “Which terms fit in with the one-world religion’s theme — Toleration for Religious Diversity — ‘too superstitious heathens who have been bewitched’ (KJV), or ‘very religious nations who are astonished’?”

We have time to mention only one more pro-New Age rendering in the New King James Version. The Bible talks about “the end of the world.” The NKJV changes that to “the end of the age” in Matthew 24:3 and in most of the New Testament. This is what New Agers have taught all along. They believe in a series of ages — one age follows another age — you merely change the page on your calendar. They do not believe that the world will end in a cataclysmic explosion (2 Pet. 3:10 — 12). New Agers believe time is cyclical and think we are approaching the end of the age and the dawning of a “new” age.

Expanded Greek lexicons like the ten-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (vol. 10, pp. 203 — 204) reveal that the KJV’s use of the term “world” for the Greek aion, when the context refers to “space,” and “age” when it refers to “time,” is correct within the historic Judeo-Christian tradition. The exclusive use of the word aion as “age” is Platonic in origin and implication. New versions admit that the word “world” is a valid rendering of aion, using it in Romans 12:2, 2 Timothy 4:10, and other places where the verse cannot be twisted to adapt to this Platonic notion.

The New King James publishers boast that it “continues the great tradition” of the KJV. Its New Age readings are not its only divergence from the traditional text. The 1881 New Testament text of Scrivner and that of the New King James do not represent the text followed by the King James translators in 1611. Estimated variance is between fifty-six and two hundred and eighty-seven differences. Harvard alumni, Dr. Jack Lewis, author of The English Bible from KJV to NIV, also notes the NKJV’s divergence from the KJV’s Old Testament tradition, citing the NKJV’s use of “current Old Testament text criticism” and “the 1966/1977 edition of the Stuttgart [German] Bible” (p. 332). The historic ben Chayyim Rabbinic Bible, used by the KJV, was altered in 1937 by liberal German theologian Rudolf Kittel, using Leningrad Ms B 19a (ben Asher text). His family’s conviction for their involvement in the death of millions of Jews during Hitler’s holocaust makes his alterations to the Old Testament highly suspect. The NKJV’s use of recent discoveries like the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Dead Sea cave manuscripts (see NKJV preface) contradicts the bible’s doctrine of preservation (Ps. 12:6-7) “to a thousand generations” (Ps. 105:8). Did God skip the generations from the fourth century to the nineteenth century? The secular notion of continual progress and evolutionary development cannot be applied to the scriptures.

Many people have asked about the subtle 666 logo on the cover of the New King James. The publisher, Thomas Nelson, says that this is an ancient graphic device that represents the Godhead. Since the bible is our final authority for all matters of faith and practice, we must look at Acts 17:29 to see if we are allowed to have graphic devices representing the Godhead. “... we ought not to think that the Godhead is like [anything]... graven by art and man ’s device” (emphasis mine).

There are no verses in the bible that allow or encourage pictorial representations, whether naturalistic, stylized, or abstract. Images are very pagan. The bible begins with a warning against imagery in the second commandment (Exod. 20:4) and ends with people worshipping the image of the beast (Rev. 19:20). The warning was not heeded.

God communicates through words. Man has always tended to move away from this. This is why we have moved from a word-based culture to an image-based culture. Children do not read the bible anymore; they watch bible videos or look at bible picture books and get their image of Jesus Christ, not from words. but from pictures or images which pretend to portray Jesus Christ.

Thomas Nelson is correct in noting that the NKJV logo is an “ancient” design. Pattern Design by Archibald Christie says of the trifoil, “They are of Oriental origin.” The shape refers to the pagan trinity of the Father, the Mother, and the Son, popular in ancient Egypt and Greece (or Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma, the trinity of the Hindus). Therefore, this is not a Christian device, even though the Church of Rome adopted it for use in cathedrals. Thomas A. Nelson, a Roman Catholic himself, signed letters, “sincerely yours in Christ and Our Lady” — wrong trinity.

This same 666 symbol design, sans barbed outer edges, appears on the cover of the most popular New Age book, The Aquarian Conspiracy. Esoterics believe the number 666 is a powerful occult number and should be used, whether subtly woven into logos or displayed openly. I do not think either the pagan trinity or the number 666 belong on the cover of a bible.