In this sermon, the speaker shares the testimony of a man named Dr. Frank Loxton, who had a significant involvement with the New American Standard Version of the Bible. Dr. Loxton initially dismissed criticisms of the version but eventually realized that they were valid and could not be refuted. He wrote a difficult letter to a friend expressing his concerns. The speaker emphasizes the importance of using a holy book, such as the King James Version, as unholy books can produce unholy people. The speaker also highlights the confusion, discouragement of memorization, lack of concordances, and potential for perverting the truth that can arise from the use of various Bible translations and versions.

Well, we welcome you to On Eagle's Wings today. I'd like to start off with 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 1. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified even as it is with you, and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men. For all men have not faith, but the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you from evil. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the assurance of your word. We thank you for the comfort that it gives us. We thank you for the Savior who shed his blood for us, was crucified, buried, and rose again, and is coming again. We pray for those listening that they would truly be born again. As you said in the word, you must be born again. Father, thank you that you give us hope and you give us life. You say that he that has the Son has life, and we pray that all listening would know Jesus as their Savior. If they don't, that they would repent of their sins and trust him as their Savior. We thank you for this time. We commit it to you now in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to do a little interesting thing today, sharing with you the testimony of a man that was well known, is still well known, because of his involvement with the, actually I guess it was the New American Standard version, the version that I used for a long time. And I think you'll find this very interesting as we go through this. And we need to remember that the Lord said that we're to preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves, teachers having itching ears. And they, listen to this, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. Okay, today we have from the New American Standard version to the King James version, a testimony of a committee member of the New American Standard version. And as we're trying to make contact with different leaders around the country and get their testimony on different things, here's one from Dr. Franklin Loxton. He lived from 1907 to 1987. He passed away about 10 years ago. And he was a respected evangelical pastor and a popular Bible conference speaker during the 40s and the 50s. In the 50s, Loxton was invited by his businessman friend, Franklin Dewey Lockman, to prepare a feasibility study which led to the production of the New American Standard version. He also helped interview some of the men who served as translators for this version. He wrote the foreword which appears in the New American Standard version. As we see in the following testimony, in the latter years of his life, Loxton publicly renounced his association with the modern versions and stood unhesitatingly for the King James Bible. In a letter dated June 9, 1997, Loxton wrote, When questions began to reach me pertaining to the New American Standard version, at first I was quite offended. However, in attempting to answer, I began to sense that something was not right about the New American Standard version. Upon investigation, I wrote my very dear friend, Mr. Lockman, explaining that I was forced to renounce all attachment to the New American Standard version. I can say that the project was produced by thoroughly sincere men who had the best of intentions. The product, however, is grievous to my heart and helps to complicate matters in these already troublous times. Loxton moved to Largo, Florida in his senior years and died there August 13, 1987. Now, in the following message, Dr. Loxton delivered at a speaking engagement regarding the New American Standard version. Dennis, you want to share with us a little bit about that? Two questions were handed me tonight which, if I could answer them, would take care of almost all the other questions. Number one, please tell us why we should use the authorized version and why the New American Standard is not a good version and the background from which it came. Number two, what is your opinion of the 1881, 1901, and other variations of the Bible in relation to the authorized version? May I point out to you very specifically, not that you do not know, but to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. We are in the end time, and this end time is characterized by a falling away. And, of course, that is apostasy. That is the meaning of the word. Falling away from truth. And when there is a falling away from truth, concurrently there is always confusion because they are sort of Siamese twins. The devil is too wise to try to destroy the Bible. He knows he can't. He can't destroy the Word of God, but he can do a lot of things to try to supplant it or to corrupt it in the minds and hearts of God's people. Now, he can only do it in one of two ways. Either by adding to the Scriptures or by subtracting from the Scriptures. And you mark it down in your little red book. He's too wise to add to because those who have been in the Word for a long time would say, wait a minute, this is not in the Bible. So he subtracts from it. The deletions are absolutely frightening. For instance, there are in the revisions of 1881 and 1901, so we are told 5,337 deletions. Subtractions, if you please. And here's the way it is done. It is done so subtly that very few would discover it. For instance, in the New American Standard, we are told that 16 times the word Christ is gone. When you're reading through, you perhaps wouldn't miss any of them. Some you might. And 10 or 12 times the word Lord is gone. For instance, if you were in a church when the pastor is speaking on the words of the Lord Jesus in the Temptation, get thee behind me, Satan. If you have a New American Standard, you wouldn't even find it. It's not even in there. And there are so many such deletions. Nevertheless, when there is an omission that might be observed, they put in the margin, quote, not in the oldest manuscripts. But they don't tell you what those oldest manuscripts are. What oldest manuscripts? Or they say, quote, not in the best manuscripts. Well, what are the best manuscripts? They don't tell you. You see how subtle that is? The average man sees a little note in the margin which says, not in the better manuscripts. And he takes for granted they are scholars and they must know. And then he goes on. That's how easily one can be deceived. Now, Rome is a custodian of the critical text. There are two copies of those Bibles in existence, A and B, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. And where are they? They are in the custodial care of Rome. Now, almost all of our revisions of recent years, in particular, came through that stream. And that necessitates this comment. There is the false and the true streams of manuscripts. And either our manuscripts come through the false stream or they come through the approved stream of manuscripts. So what do you do? I don't argue with them anymore. I'm not going to argue with any of them. I'm just going to ask, on what manuscript or manuscripts is this version based? And if it's based upon a manuscript that came down through this Roman stream, I don't want anything to do with it. In case you just tuned in, you're listening to On Eagle's Wings, and we're giving the testimony of Dr. Franklin Loxton, who was instrumental in the New American Standard Version. We'll continue on with his testimony. You say, how can we know? Well, when God was ready to tell the world through a converted monk that the just shall live by faith, he raised up a man. And I'm sure that God raised him up. Couldn't be otherwise. By the name of Erasmus. Erasmus has said, by those who seem to know, scholars, we have to take the word for something, that he was the wisest man this side of Solomon that ever lived. It was said that he could do ten days' work in one day. Brilliant. I forgot how many languages he spoke. They say he was at home in 18 or 20 different languages, as easy as we can move around in the English language. He knew the manuscripts that were available, and he brought about a Greek text. Now, he was so brilliant that the Pope offered him, that is to keep him, I suppose, from doing this Greek text, offered him the position of a cardinal, which is a high-ranking position for those in the Catholic Church. But how could you speak against a man claiming that he is a Roman when he turned down the offer of a cardinalship and campaigned against monasticism, against the liturgy of the Catholic Church, and was detested by the Catholic people? And not only that, but listen to this. Do you know one of the reasons the Jesuits came into being under Loyola? Their main project was to supplant the Erasmus text, to get it out of the way somehow. Just undermine it. And this is their pledge. You can go to the library and get this directly if you care. They said, in order to supplant the Erasmus text, we'll send our men to Protestant seminaries, Protestant Bible schools, we'll get them into teaching positions in seminaries, and we'll get them into pulpits of churches. To do what? The whole aim around the world is to destroy the Erasmus text. And the authorized version, of course, came from the Erasmus text. Folks, are you listening to what we're saying? I'll continue on with this testimony. I think I mentioned the other night, since there is so much concern about these versions and paraphrases and so on, it is a marvelous opportunity for the devil to get in his strokes. Through computerized procedures, they have tried to determine the accuracy right down the line. You have lists of those in various books. The authorized version is right at the top. Friends, you can say the authorized version is absolutely correct. How correct? One hundred percent correct. Because biblical correctness is predicated upon doctrinal accuracy, and not one enemy of this book of God has ever proved a wrong doctrine in the authorized version. You've never heard of doctrine in the authorized version. You've never heard of anyone's intellect being thwarted because he believed this authorized version, have you? And you never will. You've never heard of anyone, anytime, going astray who embraced the precepts of the authorized version, and you never will. I tell you, I used to laugh with others when a person would try to slander the intelligence, perhaps, of some who say, well, if the authorized version was good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me. You get a lot of ha-ha's, say, that perhaps is true. If this is the word of God, and Paul had the word of God, then things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. We have the book that Paul had. It's true there could be, and perhaps should be, some few corrections of words that are archaic, and a few places where it could read just a little more freely. When I say corrected, I mean just some of the archaic words, such as he who lets will let until he be taken out of the way. Now, we don't use the word that way, but you can find out what it means by taking just a moment to look it up. Back in Jeremiah 4.22, we read, My people are stoddish. There wouldn't be two people in a congregation that would know what that means. But I like it because when I looked it up, I found that it had more meaning than any other word you could put there. It means thick-headed. God says, I can't get through to you because you are thick-headed. And maybe he wants it to stay there. If a person looks it up, he gets a better understanding of it than if another word were put in there to change it. There are places where I believe the Spirit of God led the translators of the Authorized Version. You read their biographies. They were mighty men of God, spent as much as five hours daily in prayer, and some of them knew twenty-some languages, and it was before modernism filled the air, and before their attention was diverted by so many other things, television and so on. Actually, after I've listened in so many places to all these arguments, and I've listened to the scholars, and sat with the translators, to be honest with you, I haven't found anything seriously wrong anywhere with the Authorized Version. Really. Really. Just a couple of archaic words that are not in usage today. Well, they could be changed. I personally don't think that those and that these should be changed. God's thoughts are above our thoughts. Higher than our thoughts. And these words are expression of His thoughts. And I like to see it a little different here and there from men's ways and men's thoughts. Actually, I don't think there's anything wrong with this. The Authorized Version has been tested for almost 400 years. Actually, He said at this time 362 years back when He was still alive. Are you ready to throw it overboard because the scholars have come along and said, Well, now, this is better. Reads better. You can understand it better. I mean to tell you, with all their self-justification of the new, easier-to-read versions, people know less and less about God's Word. The 1881 English Revised Version. To begin with, the revisers for the 1881 weren't to be revisers. They weren't to bring out a new book. They were revisers to bring some of the words up to date because the language had changed. They were to be revisers. But the fact is, and believe me, this can't be refuted, there wasn't enough in the Authorized Version to revise, to make it worth the while, to cater to the ego of the scholars. But nevertheless, they didn't have enough to revise, so what are they going to do? Well, two brilliant Cambridge scholars by the name of Dr. Hort and Dr. Westcott had been collaborating on a new Greek text built on the Codex Sinaticus and the Codex Vaticanus, which they believed were the very best manuscripts held by Rome. So they said to the committee, when they saw there wasn't enough to revise, I don't know if they said these exact words, but they said, we would suggest that we bring about a new version. And they had those men pledge themselves to secrecy that they wouldn't tell anybody about the text they were using until after the book was out. Afraid, I guess, that they would be curbed, that the King of England or somebody would prevent them. Twice British royalty refused to have anything to do with the 1881 revision. But at any rate, it was deception to begin with. Their own text hadn't even been published yet, hadn't stood the scrutiny of the public. So the 1881 was built upon that. And the only fundamentalist who stayed on the board was Dr. Schreiber. And before he died, he felt he had to break his promise to this group of men. And he let the world know that they took advantage after advantage in the text. That's where we've gotten the number of something like 5,337 deletions. That was his count. And he said, every time I raised an objection, I was voted down. And they took liberties with God's word. He was right there at almost every meeting. And he revealed that to the world before he died. Now, the 1901 American Standard Version. Within ten years, they started communicating with spiritual leaders on this side of the water to work with them on another printing called the 1901 edition. Feeling, I suppose, that if the Americans cooperated, that they would have a wider sales range. And immediately they discovered that the 1901 was not trustworthy. And it didn't go very long until it died out. In all of my pastorates, I can only remember one person who ever owned one of those 1901 American Standard Bibles. In case you just tuned in to this broadcast, we're reading a short message given by Dr. Frank Loxton who was instrumental in the translation of the New American Standard Version. Back in 1956-57, Mr. F. Dewey Lockman of the Lockman Foundation contacted me. Dr. Loxton said, well, he discovered that the copyright on the American Standard Version of 1901 was just as loose as a fumbled ball on a football field. Nobody wanted it. The publishers didn't want it. It didn't get anywhere. Mr. Lockman got in touch with me and said, would you and Ann come out and spend some weeks with us and we'll work on a feasibility report. I can pick up the copyright to the 1901 if it seems advisable. Well, up to that time, I thought the Westcott and Hort was the text. You were intelligent if you believed the Westcott and Hort. Some of the finest people in the world believed in that Greek text. The finest leaders that we have today. You'd be surprised if I told you you wouldn't believe it. They haven't gone into it just as I haven't gone into it. They're just taking it for granted. At any rate, we went out and started on a feasibility report. And I encouraged him to go ahead with it. I'm afraid I'm in trouble with the Lord because I encouraged him to go ahead with it. We laid the groundwork. I wrote the format. I helped to interview some of the translators. I sat with the translators. I wrote the preference. When you see the preference to the New American Standard, those are my words. And I never really looked at it. I just took it for granted that it was done as we started it. You know, until some of my friends across the country began to learn that I had some part in it, they started saying, what about this and what about that? Dr. David Otis Fuller in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I've known him for 35 years, and he would say, Frank, what about this? You had a part in it? What about this? What about that? And at first I thought, now wait a minute. Let's don't go overboard. Let's don't be too critical. You know how you justify yourself at the last minute. But I finally got to the place where I said, Ann, am I in trouble? I can't refute these arguments. It's wrong. It's terribly wrong. It's frighteningly wrong. And what am I going to do about it? Well, I went through some real soul searching for about four months, and I sat down and wrote one of the most difficult letters of my life, I think. I wrote to my friend Dewey, and I said, Dewey, I don't want to add to your problems, but I can no longer ignore these criticisms I'm hearing, and I can't refute them. The only thing I can do, and dear brother, I haven't a thing against you, and I can witness at the judgment of Christ and before men, wherever I go, that you were 100% sincere. He wasn't schooled in language or anything. This is in quotes. He was just a businessman. He did it for money, and he did it conscientiously. He wanted it absolutely right, and he thought it was right. I guess nobody pointed out some of these things to him. I must under God renounce every attachment to the new American standard. I tell you, dear people, somebody is going to have to stand. If you must stand against everyone else, stand. Don't get obnoxious. Don't argue. There's no sense in arguing. But nevertheless, that's where the new American stands in connection with the authorized version. I just jotted down what these versions, translations, and paraphrases are doing. Consider this. Number one, they cause widespread confusion because everywhere we go, people say, what do you think about this, and what do you think of that? Well, what do young people think when they hear all of that? Number two, these versions, they discourage memorization. Who's going to memorize when each one has a different Bible, a different translation? Number three, they obviate the use of a concordance. Where are you going to find a concordance for the good news for modern man and all these others? You aren't going to find one. We're going to have to have a concordance for everyone. You're going to have to have a lot of concordances. Number four, they provide opportunity for perverting the truth. There are all these translations and versions, each one trying to get a little different slant from the others. They must make it different because if it isn't different, why have a new version? It makes a marvelous opportunity for the devil to slip in his perverting influence. Number five, these many translations make teaching of the Bible difficult, and I'm finding that more and more as I go around the country, I mentioned this thing the other night. How could a mathematics professor or instructor teach a certain problem in a class if the class had six or eight different textbooks? How about that? How could you do it? Number six, they elicit profitless argumentation because everywhere we go, they say, this one is more accurate. Which one is more accurate? How do you know? And this is not a reflection against those saying it, because I would have done this a few years ago. And concluding on Dr. Loxton's testimony, and by the way, you can get this off the internet, he said, as I said to you a couple of minutes ago, you don't need to defend yourself, and you don't need to defend God's Word. Don't defend it. You don't need to defend it. You don't need to apologize for it. Just say, well, did this version or this translation come down through the Roman stream? If so, count me out. Whatever you say about Erasmus and Tyndale, that's what I want. And besides this, we've had the authorized version for 362 years. It's been tested as no other piece of literature has ever been tested. Word by word, syllable by syllable, and think, even until this moment, no one has ever found any wrong doctrine in it. And that's the main thing. He that wills to do the will of God shall know the doctrine. Well, time is up. Let's be people of the book. It took my mother to heaven, and my dad, my grandfather, my grandmother. It was Moody's book. It was Livingston's book. J.C. Studd gave up his fortune to take this book to Africa, and I don't feel ashamed to carry it the rest of my journey. It's God's book. Our Father, we thank Thee and praise Thee for Thy Word. Help us to love it and preach it and teach it and tell everybody we can the good news through Thy Word. In Jesus' name, Amen. Dr. Frank Loxton, his testimony. My friends, the Word of God says, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. If you have an unholy book, it'll produce an unholy people. You have a holy book, you read it, you obey it, heed it, it will produce God in us. Well, until next time, we trust that God will continue to work in your life. Get you a book that says King James on it. That's the Word of God. The enemy's working to deceive us. Let's humble ourselves if we've been deceived. And let's receive that which God has given to us, which the martyrs paid with a high price. Oh, God, have mercy upon us as believers to turn away from Your Word. God, would You turn us back to Your Word. Lord, help us not to defend some corrupt book that's come down from Rome all the way down to origin. The figment of some man's imagination spread on by demons, doctrines of demons. Oh, Lord, help us. We pray for revival in Your church today, in Jesus' name. Amen.