Q
A recent survey in U.S. News and World Report claimed that only thirty- four percent of church members today believe that the bible is the word of God. The vast majority believe that the bible contains the word of God. Would you care to comment on that?

A
The King James Bible is the word of God. New versions contain some of the word of God. As new versions replace the KJV in sales and use, it is no wonder people sense this void. Unsaved scholars have pointed out for years that the omissions in new versions are not wholesale. The doctrine is removed only fifty to eighty percent of the time. As long as the doctrine can be found somewhere in the bible, apostates claim that version is acceptable. This contention fails when tested by scripture. The bible says that “a little leaven leaventh the whole lump” (1 Cor. 5:6). So, when there is an error one place, the poison destroys the entire version. The bible also says: “In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established” (Matt. 18:16).

God made four gospels. A doctrine needs to be there several times to prove its authenticity. You cannot proof text when you have only one bible verse. If you were leaning on a table and someone removed one of the legs, it would be unstable. If your employer omitted fifteen days pay from your salary, protest would ensue, yet the NIV’s fifteen omitted verses do not raise an eyebrow. (Matt. 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; Mark 7:16; 9:44, 46; 11:26; 15:28; Luke 17:36; 23:17; John 5:4; Acts 8:37; 24:7; 28:29; Romans 16:24, just like the NWT!) If you went outside and found that someone had stolen one of the tires from your car, you would strongly object. Why are some Christians reluctant to object when words and verses are removed from their bibles? Luke 12:34 says tellingly, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

I think that only those who see the bible as a textbook, and not as Job 23:12 says, “more than my necessary food,” would approve of a bible like the NIV or NASB where there are sixty-four thousand missing words. Most of the people of the world today do not even have a whole bible, and so if new versions remove the doctrine in only one portion, that may be the only portion that these poor people have.

A well-known Christian often tells his story of bringing a suitcase of bibles into communist China. When he and his suitcase found their way to an underground house church, he was dismayed as he watched them tear the covers from his bibles and then tear the pages from the bindings. He was then told, to his surprise, that due to the scarcity of bibles, members could receive only one of the books of the bible, or several chapters of the bible. Within the confines of that one book, the member should find the essentials of the Christian faith to sustain him daily. God knows that we need a complete and balanced diet every day. We need three meals and three chapters of the bible every single day. Within those three chapters, we need to find all of the essentials of the faith: the deity of Christ, salvation by faith, and the comfort of the scriptures. The enemy knows that God’s soldiers cannot oppose him strongly if they have spiritual food that has been depleted of many of its nutrients. Anyone who would contend that these new versions contain the truths of the faith, somewhere in them, does not really understand that the bible is more than our necessary food. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). Is that in your NIV? We need every word!