Q
Our next question is one that we passed over earlier, so we will back up and retrieve it. Billy Graham, Hudson Amerdine, Harold Lindsell, John MacArthur, Harold Ockenga, and Bill Bright have all recommended the Living Bible or other newer versions. Are we to believe that all of these men are deceived or are New Agers?

A
They are not New Agers, by any stretch of the imagination. Even Mary and Joseph went a day’s journey without Jesus and did not know they were proceeding without his presence. We certainly would not call them New Agers. Much of the information in my book has never come out before.

Each person in the body of Christ has a function. Many of these men have been doing evangelistic, pastoral, or administrative work, allowing no time to read and research extensively, or sit, as I did, for twelve hours a day for years on end, collating new versions, critical editions, and manuscripts. I would hope that they would see me as a helper to them and not an antagonist.

Jesus said in Revelation 3:19, “As many as I love, I rebuke.” Most of the churches in Revelation got both a commendation and a rebuke. Are we any better than they? “Judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Pet. 4:17). Peter himself was wrong twice. Acts 5:15 says Peter was so spiritual that when his shadow passed over people, they were healed; he even raised the dead. Acts 11:24 says Barnabas was “a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” This sounds like some of the men you have just listed for me. But it says in Galatians 2:14 that both Barnabas and Peter were wrong: “They walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel.” Paul had to rebuke them, and they took that rebuke.

When Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus said unto him, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:16 — 17). Six verses later Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” So the Holy Ghost can reveal something to someone, and then five sentences later Satan can use them for something else. It was no shame for Peter to be wrong, but it would have been a shame if he had refused to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18).

All of the best men in the Bible were deceived at one time or another. Joshua was a great man of faith. He and Caleb were the only two of their generation whom God allowed to go into the promised land. Yet he was deceived by the Gibeonites and “dry and mouldy” bread (Josh. 9:5). I suspect that many of these good men, who like Joshua, are being deceived by the “dry and mouldy” bread of these new versions.

 David was deceived by Ahithophel, his counselor (2 Sam. 16 — 17).
 Abraham was deceived by his notions about Hagar (Gen. 16).
 Isaac was deceived by Jacob (Gen. 27).
 Jacob was deceived by Leah and her father (Gen. 29).

So the question is not, “Can great Christians be deceived?” Of course, they can. The question is, “Do they react with humility and repentance when they discover this?” Some however, refuse to hear. Proverbs 18:13 tells of this kind of person: “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” Others hear but do not heed. Of these Peter says, “For this they willingly are ignorant of” (2 Pet. 3:5). Two such critics of my book come to mind. Their inflamed rhetoric kindles only those who have never read the book. They bring a straw man to the pyre. Only those who are grasping at straws will be mesmerized by their flaming fiction. (Affected also are those who, “when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended” — Mark 4:17.) The NIV Translation Center directs queries about the version controversy, not to a scholarly detailed defense of their word choices, but to two copied pages written by a self-proclaimed, “apologist working in the front lines in dealing with the claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints [Mormon]....” NIV champion Jim White spent all of several “days,” at his own admission, researching the topic. Three examples of his careless and unlearned comments follow:

Jim — “We are told that new versions delete the call to take up the cross, when in fact they do not.”
Fact — They do delete it. See Mark 10:21, NIV, NASB, et al.

Jim — “All the Greek texts read as the new versions do in Revelation 14:1.”
Fact — They do not. See Greek Ms P, 1, 5, 34, 025, 141, 246, 2049, 2053, 2065, and 2255mg.

Jim — “Gayle [sic] Riplinger repeated her charge that Edwin Palmer denied the role of the Holy Spirit in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.”
Fact — Neither I nor my quote from Edwin Palmer mention the incarnation at all. Palmer does not believe the word “beget” (John 1:14 et al.) refers to the incarnation. In spite of the fact that the verse is talking about his “flesh.” Palmer’s “begotten God” (John 1:18, The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation, p. 143) is no more accurate theologically than the Mormon notion, “The head of the Gods appointed one God for us” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 370, 372).

Jim — “She misspells the names of both Longenecker and Carson on page 343.”
Fact — He is really grasping at straws. The early printings of the 700-page New Age Bible Versions did accidentally drop the “e” from the name Longenecker and add an “1” to Carson. I only reluctantly fixed it, since these men advocate removing the name of deity from the bible about two hundred times. Misspelled names exemplify “horrifically poor research” according to Jim. (He misspells my name thirty times in his four-page critique.)

Pastors from historically sound groups, like the Christian and Missionary Alliance, are now using a similar two-page paper shield to hide behind when members question the denomination’s switch to new versions. The author, Bob Morey, is another “apologist,” this time to the Masons and Muslims. Floods of callers to the radio program “Crosstalk,” protested his un-Christian tone and slanderous remarks about me and the KJV (he called it the “Queen [queer] James”), forcing the stations to cancel the scheduled replaying of his program. His newsletter, The Researcher, and its little critique of my book is heating up copy machines in panicked NIV pastor’s offices. Their red-faced anger at critics of new versions will quickly be red-faced embarrassment as the outright lies contained in his review of my book come to light.

Bob — “Her so-called documentation is incomplete, erroneous, or misleading.... One clear example is found on page 2 where she quotes from Dr. Ed Palmer and from Dr. Ken Baker [sic] but then attributes both quotes to Palmer.”
Fact — His “clear example” is clear only to those who never check the actual quotes in question. Both are by Palmer. Morey is lying; apparently he has never actually seen the book in question, The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation, but merely looked at my footnote citing its editor, Ken Barker. Edwin Palmer wrote chapter fourteen.

Bob — To rebut my chapter called “The Holy One vs. The One,” he fools his reader again, saying Psalm 16:10 calls God the “One” in the KJV.
Fact — The KJV uses the term “Holy One.”

Bob — “Erasmus was into the occult” (Colin Wilson, The Occult, p. 242). The Encyclopaedia Britannica and The Encyclopedia of Philosophy present Erasmus as a occultist and not a Christian.
Fact — Page 242 never mentions Erasmus or any occult activity engaged in by him. The section is about the occultism of Peracelus. I beg the reader to go to their library and read the latter two articles about Erasmus. You will read, “In the mind of Erasmus, there were no metaphysical inclinations” (p. 679). He advocated only “the teaching of Christ by studying and meditating on the scriptures” (p. 489). In the Encyclopedia of Philosophy you will read of his “appeal for a return to the simple spirit of early Christianity” (p. 42).

Three strikes — you’re out, Bob!

Erasmus, editor of the magnificent Greek New Testament underlying the KJV, said in 1521 that his critics could not point to any indisputable errors — just inflamed rhetoric.

“The New Testament... provoked endless quarrels. Edward Lee pretended to have discovered three hundred errors. They appointed a commission which professed to have found bushels of them. Every dinner table rang with the errors of Erasmus. I required particulars and could not have them.” (Froude, Erasmus, p. 267)

As Paul said in Acts 25:7 and 24:13, “The Jews... laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove.” “Neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse me.”