Preserved or Inspired

The words of the Lord are pure words: As silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, Thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

Does anyone know why we use the KJV?

The Bible you hold in your hands is it Inspired?

No!

The Word of God is Inspired

You say Pastor, isn’t this the Word of God?

Let me explain.

Inspiration is defined :

1. a divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation. 2. the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions the act of influencing or suggesting opinions.

Dr. H. D. William’s book The Miracle of Inspiration –Inspiration is the miracle whereby the Words of Scripture in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek were God-breathed and “once delivered” using “holy men of God” and their vocabulary, who perfectly recorded them ‘once’ as they were “moved” along by the Holy Spirit in such a way that “all” the Words written are infallible and inerrant in the sixty-six books of the canon of Scripture. (See 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21; Jude 1:3).

“Inspiration” took place when God took control of a person and spoke His words through them or caused them to write down His words

Is the KJV Inspired?

I do not believe that the KJV is “inspired”

Inspiration can only happen once.

This happened when God took control of a the person and spoke His words through them or caused them to write down His words. 2Pet.1:21

2 Peter 1:21 KJV 1900

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Does this mean that there are weaknesses or any inferiority in the KJV?

No, the KJV is pure, perfect and inerrant. There is nothing in this book that needs corrected or improved.

For us to take a stand that this is the inspired Word of God, would be flawed and open us up for fight that God never intended for us to fight.

Why did William Tyndle die at the stake?

Was it for his belief that his translation was the Word of God, No William Tyndle died because he believed that God’s Word was true and he would not be persuaded otherwise.

Have others died through the ages because they believed the KJV to be the inspired Word of God?

NO. They died because they believed God’s Word was inerrant, infallible.

They believed that God’s Word was the basis for all faith and practice.

When we take a stand and say that the KJV is inspired we open ourselves up for a hard fall into a ditch.

Believing that the KJV is inspired means you believe in double-inspiration.

That means you believe that God moved on the translators just like He did on the apostles.

But we cant just stop there we have to say, we believe in triple inspiration and quadruple inspiration.

The KJV was not translated straight from the original manuscripts. It was translated from the received text and other reliable copies. While using six other English translations as cross references the Geneva was one of them so was Tyndles

So in order to say the KJV is inspired we have to say the copies are aswell.

God inspired His words only once, when they flowed from the tip of the pens of the various Scriptural authors.

He has NOT done it again!

The Words of God have been settled in heaven.

God gave some of them to Moses to record on earth. He gave some to Jeremiah, some to Paul, some to Peter and so on.

They recorded the exact words that God gave them. God finished delivering His words to men as John finished the Book of Revelation. That is how inspiration works.

Taking a stand of KJV inspiration is taking a fools stand and you will fall.

However, there is something else to consider

The preservation of God’s Word(s)

God has preserved His words!

He preserved His Words since the original authors wrote them.

God’s preservation of His Words maintains all the authority and power that God originally placed on and in His Words.

Inerrantcy and infallibility are carried forward to this very day through the process of preservation.

Dr. Edward F. Hills states that the Scriptures have been preserved by God in His providence so that the Church would always have the Words as a lamp to her feet and a light to her path.

Dean John Burgon wrote in his work The Traditional Text, “There exists no reason for supposing that the Divine Agent, who in the first instance thus gave to mankind the Scriptures of Truth, straightway abdicated His office; took no further care of His work; abandoned those precious writings to their fate.”

Our Lord assured us that His Words would not pass away (Matthew 24:35).

We know that God’s righteous judgments endure forever (Psalm 119:160).

The Lord told Isaiah to write His Words on a tablet and a scroll and He would preserve them. (Isaiah 30:8)

The verse says, “Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever:” (Isaiah 30:8).

In Christ’s day there were NO original manuscripts of the Old Testament, but He quoted the copies as authoritative and exhorted the people to live by every word that God had spoken (Matthew 4:4 quote from Deuteronomy 8:3).

Clearly Jesus believed God had preserved His Words.

We believe that God Inspired His Words once and that God has preserved His Words in the Hebrew, Aramaic Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Traditional Text of the New Testament.

That brings up another question then.

Is the King James Bible the Providentially Preserved Word(s) of God?

Clearly God has providentially, if not miraculously preserved the Scriptures in the Greek Received Text and the Hebrew/Aramaic Masoretic text of the Bible.

But, has God preserved the English King James Bible in the same way?

I believe He has!

Think about it this way

Did God providentially work in the heart and life of King James the first to authorize a project that would produce an official translation of the Bible in English?

Of course.

Was God aware in advance that the KJV would become the most influential and most widely published translation of the Bible in human history?

Of course He was.

Is it therefore incredulous to assume that He therefore gave providential care and direction to the greater process of preparation, translation, and publishing of that translation?

To assume that God had nothing to do with the greatest translation of His Word in human history is naive to say the least.

Facts about the KJV (Taken from the article by David Brown On Inspiration, Preservation and The King James Bible – King James Bible Research Council (kjbrc.org)

It is the most widely known and distributed translation of the Bible from the traditional texts of the Old and New testaments.

It is the most accurate English translation of the Traditional Texts.

(Though critics allege the KJV has problems and errors, I am not aware of any error in the King James Bible. I have seen the various allegations of errors or problems therein. But all of these allegations or errors evaporate upon close examination.)

There were a total of 47 men that were on the council to translate

These translators were in all likelihood, the greatest assemblage of scholars of the biblical languages into the English in church history.

they worked in six committees checking and cross checking each other’s work over a period of seven years.

the King James Bible went through a number of editions which in each case purified either editorial or printer errors.

Their work was based upon six preceding generations of English translations going back to Tyndale.

They consulted other major translations of the Traditional Text such as Luther’s translation, the Reina Valera, the Diodati, the Olivetan, and others.

There has never been before or since a more thorough and exhaustive translation project of the Bible than the King James Version.

The translators were more linguistically qualified than any other group of translators before or since.

They were godly men. Some were pastors, some missionaries, some evangelists, others professors in Bible colleges.

All were in the gospel ministry.

All had repudiated Rome.

All were Bible scholars in their own right, even apart from their linguistic skills.

Some knew the biblical languages since childhood.

The translational expertise, the intensive editorial cross checking, and the careful revisions over a period of 150 years have produced the greatest Bible translation in the history of the world.

British Bible historian Adam Nicolson has estimated that more than 5 billion copies of the King James Bible have been published and distributed over the past 400 years.

That is more than any other translation of the Bible in any other language. That also is likely more than all the rest put together.

Having explained the intricacies of how the King James Bible came together, this is NOT double inspiration. What we believe is this -the King James Version is providentially preserved, by the accurate translation the Greek Received Text and the Hebrew/Aramaic Masoretic text for English speaking people and by that accurate translation of these texts our King James Bible maintains all the authority and power that God placed on and in His Words.

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