Q
Isn’t holding to one specific version as the true word of God akin to idol worship or making it an icon?

A
Webster defines an idol as a false god. Having more than one version is idolatry. Let me explain why. With one version, God is the authority. When there are conflicting authorities, as there were when the serpent challenged God’s words in the garden, man becomes the arbiter, choosing which “authority” to follow. Hence man usurps the authority of God.

“God is not the author of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33). If there is only one road, there is no confusion. When a second road forks to the left, confusion is created. It is apparent that someone is trying to seduce the traveler off of the straight and narrow path.

First Corinthians 1:10 describes the key to unity in the body of Christ. “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you.” The divisions are caused when we do not “all speak the same thing.” Anyone who has ever been to a bible study where numerous versions are present has experienced this. Divisions and conflict will arise at that study over what the bible says. The attendees will “be as gods” (Gen. 3:5), deciding for themselves which rendering is “good” and which is “evil.” Instead of the word correcting, dissecting, and judging us, we judge it. The multiplying of languages at the tower of Babel divided mankind; the multiplied voices of the different versions divide the church.

Romans 8:28 can be applied, however. First Corinthians 11:18—19 says divisions serve, “that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” Since the word of God is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4: 12), the bible version issue has a way of separating the good men from the bad boys.

Satan knows, just as he knew in the garden, that by not saying “the same thing” as God, he could create division and discord. Today the sons of God, just like Adam, yield to the same temptation. It happens under the same umbrella — the tree of knowledge. The bait, just as it was in the garden, is “good,” “pleasant,” and “to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). The initial temptation is never to be “bad,” although that is the result; the temptation is always to usurp the final authority of God. It occurs in the church today in the form of subtly dismantling the authority of the word of God and re-directing that authority to man or a man-made source. The Greek lexicon is the icon of choice today “to make one wise” and to change God’s authoritative voice. The tree of knowledge has been recycled, its pulp pressed to create these paper popes. Lucifer boasted that he would “exalt” a “throne above” God’s (Isa. 14:13). Both he and mankind vie to perch there via the corrupted bible versions.

The word of God is our only way of hearing God’s voice and is his means of communicating with man. To the Laodician church he had to say, “If any man hear my voice.” His word, the KJV, has been moved outside of many churches, replaced by a pulpit hewn out of the tree of “knowledge.” Jesus Christ is seeking the people in this church; he has not abandoned them. He is standing outside, at the door (Rev. 3:20). Christians will have to “go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach” (Heb. 13:13).

Reproach, “ah, and there’s the rub,” said Shakespeare. The hidden idol man has set up “in his heart” (Ezek. 14:7) is freedom from persecution. Staying within the camp, starving church members try to fill the void and “experience” Christ through goose bumps, pew jumps, psychological pumps, signs and wonders, and music that thunders. They are, as Jude 19 described, “sensual, having not the Spirit.” Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit” (John 6:63). With his word out of many churches, all that remains are the sensual “desires of the flesh and of the mind” (Eph. 2:3). “Denying the power thereof,” that is, rejecting the true word of God which is “powerful” (Heb. 4:12) leaves only a “form of godliness.” This brings us back to Webster, who further defines an idol as a form or appearance but without substance. The real idols today are those “forms of godliness” which Christians devise when the word, with its “Spirit,” “power,” and “life,” are gone. “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead” (Rev. 3:1). True spiritual life comes not from programs and high attendance, but from “the word of God, which liveth” (1 Pet. 1:23). Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Only a living thing can reproduce itself. That is why new versions die when their copyright holder dies. The KJV is alive and keeps going from generation to generation. The bible is “spirit,” just as God is a spirit. It has a living nature because it is the voice of God, “the voice of my beloved” (Song of Sol. 2:8).

That is why there is such a close association between the words of God and the Word, Jesus Christ. Revelation 19:13 says, “And his name is called The Word of God.” John 1:1 further states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” As important as these names of God are, Psalm 138:2 says, “Thou hast magnified thy word above alI thy name.”

The parallels between Jesus Christ, the Word, and the word of God are manifold. John 17:17 says, “Thy word is truth”; Jesus said, “I am the... truth” (John 14:6). Psalm 119:105 says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path”; Jesus said, “I am the light ofthe world” (John 9:5). Psalm 119:50 says, “This is my comfort... thy word”: Isaiah 51:12 says, “I, even I, am he that comforteth you.” They pulled out his beard; they pull words out of the bible to alter how we view Jesus Christ. Isaiah 52:14 says, “His visage was so marred more than any man.” They have marred the face of the written word so that we cannot detect the counterfeit when he comes. They mocked Jesus Christ; they will mock the KJV and those who hold it dear.

Actually, it is scandalous for rich Americans to have ten versions of the bible, instead of just one. Four million dollars was invested in the New King James Version; subsequent to that, several million dollars was spent on advertising campaigns. Many tribes and peoples around the world have no King James type bible at all; the Albanian bible was destroyed during the communist regime. Many of the tribes in New Guinea do not have a bible in their language. But, these countries have no money to pay the publishers. The publishers are not interested in giving these people bibles; they are just interested in making bibles that can produce a profit for their operation.

Did not Jesus say, “He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none” (Luke 3:11). I believe the disciples fed the five thousand equally; we need to be content with just one version. I understand that before the communists took over in Norway, they had a national turkey shoot. After everyone shot their turkey, they were given the turkey to take home, but were told, “We’re going to keep your weapons.” Likewise before the devil can defeat a person, he must steal their sword. Our only effective weapon against the devil is the sword of the spirit which is the word of God.

There are four ways the devil steals the sword from people. From the brutal reign of Diocletian until the 1400s, bibles were burned along with their owners. It is against the law now (we are all quite cultured, you know). The new versions are the second method of taking the word from Christians via their sixty-four thousand missing words. The third method is to destroy people’s confidence in the bible, saying from the pulpit, “It should read this,” or “A better reading would be this.” By correcting the word of God, they are taking away people’s confidence in the word of God. If a wife corrected her husband in front of the children, they would soon lose respect for their father. Likewise, when the bride of Christ corrects the voice of the Father, in front of the babes in Christ, a generation grows up that no longer “tremble at his word” (Isa. 66:5). The fourth and final way the devi1 steals our sword, for those who do not fall prey to the first three, is to keep us from our daily bible reading.

Revelation 22:19, one of the last verses in the bible, says, “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life.” We can see how serious God is about this when we look at the genealogy in Matthew 1, it says, “Josias begat Jechonias” (vs. 11). Jehoiakim actually begat Jechonias. Josias was his grandfather. Why does it say that? God took Jehoiakim’s name out of the book of life, acting as if he had never existed. Why? Jeremiah 36 tells us Jehoiakim took a penknife to the word of God. It says he was not afraid, and when they warned him, he would not hear them. So God took his name out of the book of life.