That’s what I hear in some quarters.

These folks seem to picture God at a table, writing a book, then passing it to us on golden plates. Kinda like the Book of Mormon.

No. Never happened. Not that way.

Some say the Earth is flat. We now write this off as silly talk. Well, most of us. Some have never let go of the concept and would fight to the death over it. Really. Some things are hard to let go of once you’ve taken a stand on their behalf.

Oh, and there was no Holocaust either…

Lots of myths out there, and this KJVO thing is a tough nut to crack.

All Scripture was indeed inspired of God. God spoke, men listened, and men wrote. In Hebrew. In Greek. We do not have those original writings. And it is they, the originals, that were inspired. Left to us is the task of finding, through a long series of translations, exactly what was said. We get constantly closer…

The message is unchanged from the beginning.

But all men and all translations are flawed. Tyndale. Coverdale. Luther. Erasmus. Westcott. Hort. But a perfect God has given us a perfect message that shines through every translation, calling us off the printed page into His Presence, where only is perfection.

Most pew sitters reading their pew Bibles have no idea what this King James battle is all about. They cling to the KJV because that’s how they were raised.

They got used to it.

It reminds them of their childhood days.

As with all prejudices.

Or the pastor insists.

Or it is the only Bible available at church.

John Macarthur and many lesser lights in the theological world were raised on the KJV. But they don’t prefer it now. I wonder why?

Did you know that a person can be saved, filled, sanctified (name your process!) via any recognized version of the Bible? Some of the finest believers on earth have never read the King James Version of the Bible. And never will. Nor will they ever need to.

My contention in the following work is that, just as the Reformation did not stop with Luther, but continues to this day, so the translating of the Bible did not stop in England, 17^th century. Improvements are always being made… not improving on God’s Word, don’t even imagine that I said that! But improving on finding exactly what that Word is.

However, write it down: there is enough correct text in that Christian Bible you own [excludes Jehovah Witness and other cult types, of course] to get you to Heaven in perfect shape if you will obey It.

English.

The apostles never used it. I say this in jest, but I would not be surprised if there are some who believe that the KJV was handed down from that august group.

No. The English Bible, English itself, does not date to the first century! That’s obvious, but a related topic must be mentioned:

The English Bible does not exist in most of the world today!

How do the King-James-Version-Only (henceforth KJVO) people explain away the fact that English, though an important language, is not the language of the entire planet, and therefore not the language of the local Bible?

Over a billion people speak Chinese. Number one language of the planet.

Second is Spanish. About half as many as Chinese.

Third is English, with nearly 400 million speakers, though combined with ESL folks, the number approaches one billion. English is the main language of business and travel and a lot more, but say what you will, it is by far not the only language where the Christian message is communicated Biblically.

Do we dare even speak of the thousands of tribal languages that shall never have one word of the KJV in their language?

The argument for the King James as the “only” translation to read certainly weakens with these facts.

Languages change.

Truth does not change. Languages do. The KJV may be correct textually (and that still needs some proving) but it is way off, linguistically. Grammatically. In vocabulary.

All of these matters were not an issue in 1600, obviously. It was correct in all these ways then. It is not correct today.

Words matter! The wrong words in a Biblical text provide an unnecessary stumbling block for those wanting to get at God’s truths.

Why should I speak like Shakespeare when I am reading Paul aloud, or Moses, or David?

More importantly, why should I give cause to unbelievers for ridicule? The Gospel itself already does that. Are we not despised enough as a people without presenting to the world a book written in another tongue?

Why add meaningless assaults on Christian teaching? Why increase the ignorance level of Christianity by a book whose language is obsolete? One educated man recently told me that he was convinced that “thy” in the Bible simply means “the”.

That’s just one example in millions…

Because you understand the KJV, having been fed it since childhood, you can’t assume that others do, or want to.

There is an anti-scholarship attitude that prevails among many KJVO folks. “Don’t touch my KJV with your book-learnin’”, they imply. What they do not understand is that without scholarship, there would be no Bible at all.

The KJV may have been the best when it came out, though it was attacked in many quarters. It is definitely not now. Not because of the Greek text, but because of the clear evolution of the English language.

But the KJVO people disagree. They not only will fight for the superiority of the KJV, but for its exclusivity. Here is where I must part company with them, or rather, they with me. Once you have reached that conclusion, that the KJV is the only Bible we should read, you enter a cult-like group whose hateful doctrine divides families and churches for no good reason.

It is that spirit that has caused me to put a few paragraphs together for the edification of the church.

Yes, “God wrote one Bible”, and that Bible has been copied by men countless times in many translations, most of which, though flawed in the minutiae, are gloriously complete in the message they convey.