The King James Bible versus the Modern Paraphrase

Rev Dr Carl McIntire

The Bible is the Word of God, the only Word of God that there is. It was delivered by the prophets, the apostles, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit with the approval and the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Head of the church. It is not an ordinary book; it is God’s Book. It has been the confession of the church through the centuries that it is indeed “the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” It is inspired of God in a way that no other book ever has been or ever will be inspired. It is without error as given by the Holy Spirit to its authors.

Our twentieth century has been characterized primarily by an attack upon the Word of God— what was called modernism, higher criticism, claimed that the Bible had mistakes in it, and the statements of the Bible concerning itself were questioned and rejected. With the rejection of the truth and inspiration of the Holy Scripture came of course the questioning of the common doctrines or the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Faith. Once the trustworthiness of the Book was destroyed, away went its infallibility and its authority.

The ungodly are blind; the unregenerate do not see. This is why the scholars who translate the Bible should be born-again men, who have the Spirit within them. This was the case with the King James translators.

It is the whole Word of God, the whole counsel of God, the fullness of what God has revealed to us which we must maintain. The revealed things are for us and for our children, but “the secret things belong to the Lord our God.” But once it has been revealed it is for us to guard, to protect, to cherish, to make certain that exactly what God has said will be communicated to those who are lost and who needed to be saved and be given to those who are saved that they may therefore be edified by it. It is the Word of God that is the means of grace, not a paraphrase.

The tragedy of it all is that that which is not the Word of God is now being offered as the Word of God, and it carries with it the historic connotation that the Word of God itself has sustained in the esteem and the love of God’s people throughout the world. There is a twist here that is deceptive. “Take heed that no man deceive you,” our Lord said. What the world needs is the unity, the authority, the glory of an accurate, honest translation of the text as given by the Holy Spirit to the prophets and the apostles of old.

The King James is still the best and most generally accepted version. The world needs the Word of God, not just what one man thinks the Word of God ought to say, or how he can adjust it so he thinks it will be more acceptable to a generation of the twentieth century. These accommodations of man to man, and the adjustment of God’s Word to sinful men, so that what man has is not indeed the fullness of God’s revelation or even His Word and truth, will only contribute further to the confusion that exists about whether there is a Word from God or not.

Jesus Christ said, “Thy Word is truth.” Let us have it, love it, believe it, obey it, and die for it. Here are the words of eternal life!

If we are going to believe that the Scriptures are infallible, inerrant, and that every word of God is pure, then why should anyone even attempt to give us a paraphrase? Did not God give His Word to His church in all time and to the world? Must we improve on what God Himself designed and planned and did? No wonder we are having trouble with the young people, who demand that Christianity and the culture which is produced be conformed to them rather than their being transformed.

The King James Version still remains to be the best translation. The arguments of the liberals to destroy it, to take it away from the church have failed. It is a version; it is a translation, but it is the truest, the best, the most beautiful, the most beloved. The tragedy of these various translations is that they have produced a condition in which there is no longer any common text that the church memorizes and lives on. God’s people should insist that the King James continue to be read in the public worship and that it be used in their private ministry, for who can possibly improve upon John 3:16, the most beloved text of all Scripture?

Let it be recognized that the first assault upon the Scripture in our century has come from the modernist, now it comes from the Neo-Evangelicals for the very purpose of unsettling the church and weakening her commitment and her knowledge both of the Word and of her Lord.

God’s people need and must have what God has been pleased to give to His church. It is the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments, which are indeed the Word of God, “the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” A paraphrase of what God has said has nothing to offer, for who on this earth could possibly improve on what God Himself has said? All of this tampering with the Bible affects the prophecies and especially those that relate to the end time.

The old Devil is determined to break the blessings that belong to God’s people as the remnants of the last days. He wants confusion so that people will not understand that God is going to deal with him. And He wants the way to be prepared for his man, the Antichrist, the man of sin, the beast of the Book of the Revelation, to arise who will deceive the whole world.

Let Christians come back to the Bible, love it, read it, delight in it, honor it, and recognize that in it God speaks directly to their souls and satisfies their minds and gives them the grace they need to serve Him until our Saviour appears and gathers to himself His bride, the church. In these days every true Christian must stand as John the beloved said, “For the Word of God, and for the Testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:9).

(An abridgement of Carl McIntire’s sermon, “The Living Bible: Word of God or Thoughts of Man?”)

Versions, Versions, Confuversions

Rev Dr Jeffrey Khoo

Ken Walker reported in Christianity Today, 30 September 2010,

In his research for a book on translations, Phoenix Seminary professor Paul Wegner identified nearly 100 English versions by 1950. He estimates there are twice as many now, although only a handful controls a dominant share of the market.
“We’ve probably reached the saturation point,” Wegner said. “It may be doing more damage than good. It’s gotten to the point that people are making money.” In other words, profit may be prompting more translations than readability concerns demand.
Leland Ryken, literature professor at Wheaton College and a member of the translation oversight committee of the English Standard Version, labeled the CEB’s [Common English Bible] title “ironic,” saying numerous versions have created a lack of common understanding of Scripture. “With the proliferation of Bibles, the public has become confused,” Ryken said. “There’s no longer a genuine search to find an authentic Bible.” (Ken Walker, “Good News Glut: Common English Bible Joins the Crowd,” http://www. christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/septembe rweb-only/49-41.0.html).

There was a time when Satan tried to destroy the Gospel by burning every copy of the Bible, or hide the Gospel by banning people from owning and reading the Bible for themselves. That failed. The Bible cannot be broken nor bound. Today, Satan adopts a new strategy. He floods the market with new Bibles, with hundreds of new and different versions, creating confusion! Peddling the Bible for profit, these Bible publishers corrupt the Word of God and confuse the people of God. 

The hundreds of modern versions seek to drown out the good old Bible—the King James Bible. Again the authentic Bible cannot be shut out or overthrown. The King James Bible has lasted for 400 years. This is surely God’s doing. God is keeping His Word pure, and is preserving His inspired Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Words by His singular care and providence. The King James Bible is the most faithful and accurate translation of those inspired and preserved Words of God.

We are of the One Bible Movement! God gave us only one Bible—the Bible He originally inspired and continues to preserve. We have this Bible today. It is in our hands to have and to use for the extension of God’s Kingdom and the edification of God’s people.

Satan is not happy with this at all. He goes all out to destroy the faithful and true. Just like in days of old, the faithful will continue to be hated, persecuted, bullied and ridiculed even by those who profess Christianity. There is a whole lot of false and hypocritical Christianity today. It is the end times.

But one thing is for sure: God’s perfect Word cannot be destroyed and His remnant church cannot be defeated. Jesus the Author and Keeper of His Words promised three times, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt 24:35, Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33). Jesus the Rock of our salvation also said, “upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18).

The dual promise of Psalm 12:5-7 holds true; God will protect His faithful saints and preserve His inspired words from the proud and wicked, “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. 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.”

Our God is a God of order, not confusion (1 Cor 14:33).