Bible translations and the peril of changing the Word of God

Let's turn our Bibles, please, to the book of Genesis. Genesis and chapter 2, please. Now, for the last number of months, I've been thinking upon the word of God.

And it's been kind of a theme that keeps coming up in my ministry the last couple of months. Used to do a lot of study years and years ago on textual critics and different Bible versions and history and church history and Bible history. And sort of all has come back to flood my mind again.

So I'm just going to share with you what I've been thinking upon. We're going to start in the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 2. Now, I know that we're all well aware of the setting here.

So we'll move quickly to verse number 15. Genesis chapter 2 and verse 15. The reason, of course, that I'm going to mention what I'm going to mention today is I believe the word of God, as you know, is under attack.

And that is the devil's first line of attack is always to go at communications from God. We're going to see that in Genesis chapter 2. And you're going to notice as we look a little bit of history, it's the same thing all the way right through history. The devil has always been attacking the word of God.

So we need to be aware of a few things. So Genesis chapter 2, verse 15. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

Now, just keep in mind at this point, the woman has not been formed yet, OK? So we come to verse number 16. And the Lord God commanded the man, so the woman is not here yet, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now, we could just pause there for a minute and we could ask ourselves, what did Adam have at this point? He had, and we will keep it in our word, the word of God. That's what he had.

He had a commandment from God and it was very simple, very plain, and it went into his head. OK, so now we come down a little bit further, verse number 21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh.

Instead thereof, and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman. So now in comes the woman and brought her onto the man. Now, come down a little further, verse number one of chapter three.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, now keep in mind this is, we're gonna read, the first recorded words of the devil. Yea, hath God said.

First recorded words. So we just found out a few verses above that here is a man on the face of this earth and he had the word of God in his mind. And what is the very first question out of the mouth of the devil? Yea, hath God said.

You shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. Now you can certainly pick up a bit of fear in her mind there behind that statement.

That's a good thing. Verse four. And the serpent said unto the woman, so now he goes even stronger the devil, ye shall not surely die.

For God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God's knowing good and evil. And when the woman, now just notice the change. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired, not feared anymore, desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat.

Now, you know the rest of the story. I'm not gonna spend too much time on that story, but I just wanna illustrate, just sort of bring before our minds just a little bit of the setting here in the book of Genesis. I really wanna contrast the woman's mind prior to the temptation and then her mind during the temptation.

If you were to take time to read in 1 Thessalonians chapter five and verse 23, you're gonna discover the proper order that God wants you and I to be educated by the word of God. If I was to ask you this, you know that we are a tripartite individual. And if I said to you, what are the three parts to you and I? You know how every single one of us talk? We would say body, soul, and spirit.

I've never heard anybody say it any different than that way. Now that is actually the reverse order which you have in the word of God. You go to 1 Thessalonians chapter five, verse 23, you're gonna discover that God wants to sanctify your holy mind, soul, and then body.

You're gonna notice that when the devil tempted the woman in the garden, and when the devil tempted the Lord Jesus in the wilderness, in the gospels, he reversed God's order. You're gonna notice that here in the garden and also in the wilderness that we're told about in the gospels, you're gonna notice that the temptation, there's really three basic areas that it focuses in on. The devil did not start with the mind first.

You just go and read them. He started with a temptation that would appeal to the body. And then the second temptation in both cases, it then it goes after the soul, the affection, the heart.

And then the final temptation goes for the mind. Now you might say, really, what are you trying to say to us? Listen, you look out around us in that world, that the devil is doing the very same thing today. His temptations, they always go for the body first.

And then once the body almost starts running after what it wants, then the emotions just, they just fall naturally. And then it doesn't matter what you know, because now there's such a desire for it. It doesn't matter if there's a direct commandment, don't do it, the mind.

But you see why God has given us the word of God is he wants the mind to be first anchored on the word of God. And once the mind is anchored full of the word of God, you know what that effect it has on the body, on the moral aspect of you and I? It literally reigns in the emotions. It controls them.

And once the emotions are controlled by the mind full of the word of God, then the body, the behavior is proper. So you cannot divorce doctrine from behavior. There's people that try to do that today.

They'll try to say, well, it doesn't really matter how the outward is as long as the inward is right. That is not correct. That is not even theologically correct from the word of God's perspective.

What the word of God does for us as believers, it fills the mind. And that's what God wants. And that is what this woman had.

You might wonder, I got a few different things going through my mind here, but we'll try to pull it together for you. Remember I made the comment, it's very clear here that the commandment was given to the man. The woman wasn't made yet.

You see, Adam is the federal head of the creation. And the law of God was given to him and it was his responsibility to pass that law off to his wife. That was his responsibility.

Now you're gonna notice from her comments that whether Adam added stuff to it, I'm not too sure. But obviously she added stuff to it when the devil came into the garden and started to tempt her. And she added things and she took things away from it.

And really what you start to discover is this. She really didn't have a good grasp of the word of God. Because I'll tell you what started to happen.

The minute the devil said, yea, hath God said, all of a sudden her mind started to shift. Well, what did he say? Do you know the effect that started to have upon her? Her moral being before the temptation where she looked upon a tree and there was a level of fear that gripped her. We do not go near that tree.

We don't even touch that tree. And the second the devil started to cause her mind to sort of, well, what did the Lord say? All of a sudden that fear was replaced with desire. Yeah, now you've got to admit, the devil is so crafty to be able in a split second to cause a mind and the affections that are affecting behavior, a fear.

All of a sudden now there's like a longing for it, a desire for what is against the word of God. You see, this is something that I like to think about and I like to look at it in my own life. You know, when the devil tempts you and I as believers, he doesn't come at us with massive flashing lights and a big sign that says, hey, I'm here to tempt you.

That would scare us if that was the case. But the devil is so subtle. And isn't it amazing that this woman was being tempted and she didn't even realize it, didn't realize it.

She got so taken up with the moment, never thought about the consequences. Just everything was just, yes, I want that. And then she took it.

And then she gave it to Adam, which was with her. And what happened? The whole creation down into sin. That's the effect.

That is the end result. What happens when the word of God is dislodged in the mind and no longer is the mind full of the word of God controlling the emotions, thus controlling the behavior. Now it's the total swing and opposite.

And for those that would like to study this out, you ever wonder, that's why when the Lord Jesus, God came into the garden, he didn't go to the woman first. He went to the man first. He said, that's interesting.

The woman, she was first in the transgression we're told in the New Testament. But God, why did God go to Adam first? Because Adam was the federal head. He was responsible for everything that was gonna happen.

So God deals with the federal head first. And then he comes to the woman. And then of course he comes to the serpent.

So the only reason I'm gonna leave Genesis now, but I just want you to have that picture in our mind as we move into the New Testament. Now, just what happened when the word of God that was once filling her mind, there came a question, a doubt. And all of a sudden she started to waver.

And that fear, because of a commandment from God was replaced now with desire, which was totally against the word of God. Now let's go to Hebrews chapter four for a minute, a well-known verse way over into the New Testament. And then we're gonna get into some practical things that you might not just see where this is all going right now, but I trust you'll see it in a minute.

Go to Hebrews chapter four for just one verse, verse number 12, quote it many, many times. We'll read it as it is in our English Bible, but then I wanna just address how it's in the Greek language. I love how Greek is structured.

Sometimes they'll put different words first where the emphasis lies. And we have that very same thing here. Hebrews chapter four and verse number 12.

Notice what you have. For the word of God is quick. That means living and powerful, effectual, energetic, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to dividing asunder of soul and spirit.

Now that's a very difficult thing for us to divide between, soul and spirit. And of the joints and marrow, another very difficult thing for us to divide between, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Another very difficult thing for us to divide between a thought and an intent.

You'll notice that you have three different couplets here. Whenever I see the three, I go right away to mind, heart, and body. And you can get that there.

You just work that a little bit and you'll get there. Now that is the very unique thing about the word of God. What I love about it in the Greek language is this.

The very first word is quick, living. And as a result of that verb, which is a present participle, participle is something that ends in an ING. It's just something that's continually ongoing, has been ongoing, it's still ongoing, present, it's right now.

The Bible does not become alive once I read it. It is living. Whether I believe it or not, it's living.

It's powerful, it's able to do things. And then as a result of that, you end up having a number of adjectives. It's quick, it's powerful, it's sharper, and so on and so forth.

I don't wanna spend too much time on that. Now here's my challenge to you today. How much time do you give to the word of God? What's your desire when it comes to the word of God? Do you spend time memorizing it? You know, it's been said by many, many preachers, this book will keep us from sin, and sin will keep us from the book.

This is God's line of communication. You know, in a battle, a war, the very first thing that the enemy tries to do is knock out lines of communication, very first thing. And once you get the person isolated, they're done.

So I'm challenging young people. I mean, we got so much stuff coming at us today, don't we? Literally, our minds are just whirling. You ever sometimes find you got a whole hour and you've been so like, you sit down in a chair, you're just like, you're vibrating.

You don't even know how to just settle down. It's almost impossible just to settle the mind so that it can just think, meditate, ponder the word of God. You find silence difficult.

Sure we do. It's almost like we sit down in an empty room with silence, it's like, I got to have something on. I got to turn my iPhone on.

I got to play music. I got to have something stimulating me. You see what's happening in the world? The devil has got us so ramped up, so busy that when it comes to the word of God, you ever have this problem, you do your readings for the day and you're in the car on the way to work and you go, yeah, where did I read today? Was it in the Old Testament or the New Testament? You ever do that? My, you're looking all so angelic.

Of course, that doesn't happen to you folks in the United States, does it? Only happens to us in Canada. I told them here just recently at a conference, I was, when my wife Wilma and I were just newly married, we were, of course, in the meeting there in Charlottetown where I come from and Mr. Albert Ramsey, he was a great man for encouraging people to memorize the word of God. And he stood up one day, I might've told you this, but I'm getting forgetful now at 49, it's amazing.

So I said, he said, listen, he said, I'll give anyone $50 if you memorize the first five chapters of 1 Peter. So we thought, well, why not? We're young, we've got no kids. Let's memorize chapters one, two, three, four, and five.

The first Peter. Well, you know what? We got through chapters one, two, three, four, and we got halfway into chapter five. Dear Mr. Ramsey went home to glory.

And we missed out on our $50. Jonathan, I said that at a conference here just recently and a brother came up and he gave us $100. First of all, he said, did you finish chapter five? He said, no.

Well, he said, here's the $100 anyway. I'm not here asking you for 50. Well, you want to give me 50 bucks, I'll take it, whatever.

But you know what? It wasn't the fact that we missed out on telling Mr. Ramsey, we got it. It was so enjoyable. Do you know what we would do? We would sit at the table and I would quote first Peter one and one.

She would quote first two, three, four, five, six, seven. And we go right through the whole thing, right into chapter five. Wonderful.

Now, when someone stands up and starts to read from first Peter, do you know what happens? My mind just automatic. I know where they are. And your mind is going with them.

Now, the reason I'm saying this is I am 49. I said that to you a couple of months away from 50. Hard to believe.

I cannot memorize things like I used to. It hurts. It physically hurts my brain.

And I want to encourage younger people with a mind that is so fresh. Give it to the word of God. Commit, challenge yourself.

Just don't be sort of like a passive Christian, just like whatever I get in my readings today, I'll get. No, no, no, no. Set yourself a goal.

Dedicate your mind to something. I used to take my mother's recipe cards and I used to work out, write out two or three verses a day. And I'd put them in a little folder and put them in my pocket at work.

And as I was working away, every couple of times throughout the hour, I would pull that little thing out and I would just line one, line two, put it back in. And just force the mind to go over those words. Then I'd add another line to it, go over it again.

I still have that stack of verses. It's amazing when you pick up those cards again, how your mind can just be filling in the words. You know what was happening? I didn't realize the effect that the word of God was having upon me, but it has the ability of keeping things out of your life.

And you might say, well, why are you going to all of that length to describe all that? Because dear child of God, here's my great concern. It's very important to you and I, what Bible we are reading. It is.

Someone says, oh, oh dear, here we go. You're gonna get into the whole KJV verse. No, no, I'm not.

I'm gonna give you some just general principles at picking a Bible to read. You know, I mentioned this in Heightsville last month or two months or a month and a half ago, wherever I've been, can't remember now. I'm on the conference carousel and I can't get off.

But anyway, you're all confused. There's a world of difference between a translation and a paraphrase. There are people that don't even know that there is a difference.

Now, in Heightsville, we took up 1 Corinthians 2, which is really your key passage when it comes to the inspiration of the New Testament. And what the word of God teaches about itself is what we are obligated to follow. And the word of God teaches about itself what's known as verbal inspiration or unit inspiration.

And that simply means this, God gave a Greek word and a Hebrew word, and we are to the best of our ability to translate that into the receiving language so that what we have is equal, equal. But when you are dealing with a paraphrase, you now have an individual who stands in the middle. Now, this is what God said, but I'm going to interpret it for you.

I'm going to paraphrase. I'm going to add words to it. I'm going to subtract words from it because really I'm occupied with just you getting the thought, the general drift of what it says.

Now, that's what I find is happening today when it comes to... I'm a big supporter of our authorised version of King James. An awful lot of people are judging the King James version because it's not a paraphrase. It was never given as a paraphrase.

It's a translation. It's a word-for-word translation. And you'll get this common... Because it's just lack of information, you'll get this common comment, well, it seems so hard.

It seems so difficult. Well, your complaint is with the Spirit of God, not with the translators. Because all the translators are going to do, all the translators of any English Bible up to including the King James, all they were occupied with this.

We want the people to receive not what we think God said. We want the people to receive the exact words that God gave. So if there's a difficulty in the English, you know where the difficulty came from? Right out of the word order in the Greek or the Hebrew.

Now, that shouldn't surprise us. Because there is Peter reflecting upon Paul's writings and he said this about Paul. Now, this is an apostle talking about the writings of another apostle given by God.

He says, things which are hard to be understood. You see, we are living in a society where everything is fast food, spoon-fed. Right? Nobody wants to think today.

We all want to be entertained. We all want to be amused. You know what amused means? It just means no thinking.

No, I don't want to think. It's almost like our meetings today. It'd just be great if we could all unscrew our heads and put them under the chair.

We don't want to think. But the Word of God is given to challenge us. It's not an easy book to understand.

It's not. It's God's things. They're far beyond our mind.

I find it amazing when I listen to gifted men minister from the Word of God. I could mention names, but I won't. And I sometimes scratch my head and go, when these fathers read the Bible daily, do they get something new? Because it seems like they have so much information.

And then you listen to them and they talk. I never saw this before, and I saw it before. I saw it.

And then you start to let your mind go off to eternity. Do you think eternity will exhaust the Word of God? Never. There are depths in the Bible that will never be plummet.

Never. So that's just a little bit of an encouragement to us. Keep on looking at the Word of God.

Like I said about a paraphrase, there are lots of paraphrases today that are becoming very common. Recently, I just got an email from publishers. You know, you've probably heard of Eugene Peterson's paraphrase called The Message.

I mean, am I telling you that I would never read a paraphrase? No, I read a paraphrase. I do read them. But I would never make them my primary reader.

I make a translation my primary reader. I judge all others by my primary reader, because I want what God has given me. That's another interesting thing I notice in a lot of newer English Bible today is they've done away with italicized words.

It's amazing to me these simple things that people don't know. Like in 2005, do you know what italicized words are in any English Bible? That is the translators carefully telling you that there is no equivalent Greek or Hebrew word for this English word. And that's a good thing to tell them, because those translators want you to have what God gave, not what we have added.

So therefore, it's a very hard thing to translate from one language to another language, because there's some things that just don't translate over as easy as pie, as we would say. So sometimes the translators have to add in a couple of words to help with the flow of the sentence. That's why, dear child of God, I would encourage you.

I would not read a translation that does not use italicized words, because I want to know when I'm receiving God's words and when I'm receiving added words. It's often been the illustration has been given. I mean, if your mother and father were dying in a hospital bed and they had words for you, would you stand at the door of the room and have someone in the middle kind of tell you what they're saying? No.

You would come right over to that bed as close as you get, and you'd put that ear of yours right to their mouth, because you want to hear every single word that they're saying. Well, listen. The one who sent his son to die for me, I want to hear carefully every word that he wants me to hear.

Why? Because look at the devastating effect in Genesis when the mind started to doubt the word of God. What really did God say? Do you know what I find? I find it a little bit sad today. Do you know what I find lacking in our prayers and lacking in our preaching? It's just the amount of Bible that's quoted.

Listen, dear child of God, when you preach or when you give ministry, you don't need to use your human wisdom to back up the Bible. You forgot the verse in Hebrews 4. The word of God is. It's not something that becomes.

The word of God is. And in this intellectual age that we're in, it's almost like we feel a necessity to somehow back up the Bible, the quotes of the Bible. I just love how Genesis opens up.

In the beginning, God. So simple. No preamble as to why there is a God or why we should believe there is a God.

God just comes straight out and says, in the beginning, God. I've worked with this man enough in the gospel to learn this. Visits with sinners are short.

Under five minutes. You know what he does? He just gets them to the book. That's it.

Oh, you say you don't have to stand over and say, now, put your name in there. Why don't you let the spirit of God do that? You think the spirit of God can do that? Oh, you mean you don't stand there and say, now, almost take them through a bit of a sinner's or you believe you're a sinner, you believe Christ. Why don't you let the spirit of God do that? The power is in the word of God.

It's not in what I can add to it. So I want you to keep that in mind. Now, here's something I want to mention to you.

The reason I'm coming back to this translation versus paraphrase, because I started it with a thought there. You might have thought I forgot about it, but I didn't. The message.

Well, they've just re-released the message. It's called The Message 100. You can read the Bible in 100 days.

Isn't that wonderful? Great. Do you know who they got to put notes throughout the Bible? Familiar with the lead singer of U2, Bono? And I see some people shaking their heads. Yeah, a non-godly wretch.

And we're going to make the Bible appealing. And he makes these comments that the writers are just like musicians and all, just a bunch of garbage. You see, that is where we are in Bible translation today.

I'm going to read you a quotation. This is a man that developed a paraphrase back in 1913. He was a professor at Greek.

It amazes me how many of these individuals, so educated, they actually taught the Bible, but yet they did not believe it. Listen to the quotation from this man in the preface of his Bible, OK? But once the translation of the New Testament is freed from the influence of the theory of verbal inspiration. Did you get that? Would you like to know what that paraphrase is called? That's the James Moffat paraphrase.

1913. There was a man producing a Bible for people to read. And he didn't even believe in the inspiration, unit.

And to him, it was a restriction, to be actually restricted to this unit is equal to this. No, no, no, no, no, no, he says. My intelligence is far greater.

I'm going to stand in the middle between what God gave you and what you can receive. And I'm going to paraphrase it for you. Did you find that kind of almost like hard to take in? My mind just goes, does not compute.

I can't factor that in. You might remember, I always like, of course, I'm in America. I've got to remember where I am.

Do you remember your third president? I might have mentioned this in Heightsville. Thomas Jefferson, just so in case you forgot. Did you know that he produced his own Bible? He had, you actually had a president that produced his own Bible.

Do you know what he was? He was a deist, didn't believe in Jesus Christ was God, didn't believe in the supernatural, didn't believe in miracles. Do you know what he did? He went from Genesis all the way through to Revelation. And you know what he did? He removed every miracle, every supernatural act.

He removed it out of the Bible. And then he got them to publish his own little Bible. And there you go.

That's the Thomas Jefferson. You can buy it today. There's another famous American you had here.

He was an evangelist in the South. You know what the Bible is he produced? It's called the Cotton Patch Bible. Cotton Patch Bible, kind of a cute little thing.

And he was, he had, I can't knock his desire. He had a desire to reach the workers amongst the cotton fields. So he was scratching his head there.

And he said, you know what? These people don't understand Egypt. Do you know what Egypt became in his Bible? Mexico. Pilate.

Who's this governor called Pilate? No, no, no, we're going to make Pilate become old gene. This is what he did. He tried to take the Bible out of its historical setting.

And he tried to bring it right into American present day so that the people could relate. And all the different characters of the old, of bygone day, he took them right to present day individuals. And he gave them a Bible.

Would you want someone reading that? I would not want anyone reading that. So we really, what am I telling you? We have to use caution when we are encouraging and giving advice to young people what to buy and what to read. The NIV is another popular translation.

You know, the NIV has got more flavors than Baskin-Robbins got ice cream flavors. It's terrible what they've done to Bibles. Interpretations.

They got a Bible for the mother. They got a Bible for the electrician. They got a Bible for, oh, they got a Bible for the university students.

You know who did the notes in that one? That was Woody Allen. Imagine. His comments are, I want to take biblical truth and I want to add comedy to it, to make it lighthearted so that people can readily accept it.

You see what's happening? You want to know what it boils down to? You have people today producing Bibles and all they're interested in is money. We don't care what you do with it once you buy it. Just buy this new flavor.

So dear child of God, it's very important. Remember what we learned from Genesis. The devil is the very first textual critic in the Bible.

And basically, hath God said. Now my time is just about gone. Let's go to the Gospel of Mark for just a couple of examples of this.

And you can, there's so many, many more. If you were to look at the situation of, this will surprise you. If it doesn't, it should.

If you were to look at some new arrivals today, some of the verses they want to remove from the Bible, do you know what that is equivalent to? First and second Peter. Two whole epistles removed from the Bible. Now I believe in the canonization of Bible.

I believe in the 66 books that we've been given. But present day textual critics do not believe that the Word of God is complete. And that is shocking.

And that's why they feel they can add and take away from at whatever they want to do. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples that you can judge newer Bibles by. And you just listen to the devil's hiss.

If you can't hear it, I can hear it. Go to Mark chapter one, verse number two. Now this is going to show you just the difference one little letter makes, okay? Because I believe in the absolute inspiration and the preciseness of the Word of God.

Look at Mark chapter one. We'll go quickly through this. Mark chapter one and verse number two.

As it is written in the prophets, just notice the plural, prophets. Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. Now that's a quote taken from Malachi chapter three.

That's the last prophet of the Old Testament. Verse number three. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

That's a quotation taken from Isaiah chapter 40. Do you know what newer translations will do? Well, Mark made a mistake. It's not prophets with an S. Verse two, as it is written in the prophet.

That's how you can just pick up any Bible, any newer version, just pick it up. And right off the bat, you'll know what is behind it. But it's very obvious when you look at the quotations, it's actually taken from two Old Testament prophets.

So my question is this, who's telling the truth? Now, I need to emphasize this for a minute. You might say, well, you're up there, you're up there saying that the King James is the only, listen, you go back hundreds of years to every English Bible that we ever had. They all read prophets, every one of them, okay? You go back and you look at the Greek texts upon which that is based.

And that goes right back to AD 400, right back. So here's my comment to you. Are you trying to tell me that God allowed the church to be misled for 1400 years into thinking it was prophets? And all of a sudden these humanistic, atheistic individuals came along and now they're telling us Mark made a mistake.

It should only be prophet. I will tell you right off the bat, I find that hard to swallow, okay? Let's go a little further. Let's go to the gospel of John.

John chapter seven for another one. This is really, really critical, this one here. John chapter seven.

Look what it says in verse number six. John chapter seven and verse six. Another way to test whatever version you're reading to see if it's got the hiss of the devil behind it.

Hath God said, John seven, verse six. Then Jesus said unto them, my time is not yet come but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you but me it hated because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil.

Go ye up onto this feast. I go not up yet. Underline the word yet, unto this feast for my time is not yet full come.

When he had said these words onto them, he abode still in Galilee but when his brethren were gone up then went he also up onto the feast. Now, newer English Bibles remove the word yet. They say, no, John made a mistake.

And when you remove the word yet, read it. Verse eight, go ye up onto this feast. I go not up onto this feast.

Look at verse 10. But when his brethren were gone up then went he also up to the feast. Do you know what the newer versions have done? They've turned the Lord Jesus into a liar.

You remove that one little word. You don't really what the word yet is doing. The Lord Jesus is telling his brethren, I will not go up when you tell me to go up.

I will do things on my own time. I'm the one that controls it. But they say, no, no, that word shouldn't be in there.

Now, do you find that shocking? The last place I spoke on this, I had a young lady come up to me. And she said, I read that. Now, this is a young girl, say three years.

I read that two weeks ago. And she said, it bothered me all day. That sounds like the Lord Jesus told a lie.

It just so happened I spoke upon it, gave her a little bit of history behind it. And she wasn't too quick to change her Bible version to read a proper one. So let's come a little bit further.

Let's come over now to, let's go to Acts chapter seven for a minute. This is, I'm gonna try to do these in order. I'm just about done, Acts chapter seven.

Sorry, Acts eight, Acts eight. Now, if you haven't been shocked by the other ones, you'll be shocked by this. Acts chapter eight and look at verse number 36.

Of course, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, lovely story, man hears the gospel, he accepts Christ as his savior. Acts eight and verse 36. And as they went on their way, they came onto a certain water and the eunuch said, see here's water, what does hinder me to be baptized? And verse 37, and Philip said, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.

And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Do you know what newer translations do? Y'all listen, they totally remove verse 37, gone, out of the Bible. And you know what I find amazing? They don't even renumber the verses.

Pick up any newer translation and you'll see it. Acts eight, 36 and the very next verse 38. You scratch your head, you go, oh, where did verse 37 go? Oh, no, no, they say it shouldn't be in the Bible.

Here's a man confessing that Jesus Christ is the son of God. It shouldn't be in the Bible. Now, you know where my mind goes? My mind goes over to John eight.

You know what the Lord Jesus said to people? If you don't believe that I am, you will die in your sins. And where I am, you cannot come. That is a vital, that is this whole story of the eunuch.

Just surround that tremendous truth of verse number 37. And they say it shouldn't be in the Bible. Well, the church believed it should be in the Bible for the last 1,400 years.

And it has been. Tyndale, when William Tyndale held up his Bible, it wasn't missing. When all of these great men, the Matthew's Bible, when they held up, you know what the church believed? You say you're getting, yes, I am getting worked up because we don't realize that we are under attack.

And the subtlety of the devil is just, and what's he saying? Hath God said? That's almost like we're sitting around dumb. Oh, there's nothing wrong with this. There's nothing wrong with this.

And I'm gonna get stronger here. You say, well, you should be sitting down. Well, maybe I should be sitting down.

We have got men standing on our platforms that are reading from these versions. And I don't think they've looked into the history of it. This is the foundation upon which we stand, brother and sister.

If I was on a six foot step ladder here in front of you, and I had a sledgehammer in one hand, and I'm at the top rung, and I start going like this to the leg, you'd be horrified. You say, man, you're not gonna stand up there too long. Once we start eroding the foundation of the word of God, we're done, we're finished.

Let's go with one final one, then I'm finished. Philippians chapter two. Philippians chapter two.

There's many more I could read. I could take you to Titus chapter one and verse two. It's amazing.

I'll just quote it as we're coming to Philippians two. Titus chapter one, verse two. You know what our English Bible say and what English Bible says? God that cannot lie.

Do you wanna know how newer translations translate that? God who does not lie. World of difference. Let me give you help.

Which is a stronger statement? Jesus Christ cannot sin, or Jesus Christ did not sin. One is the foundation out of which the other springs. And the reason God does not lie is because God cannot lie.

And what the newer translations are doing, they're only giving you half the truth. He doesn't lie. It's just, it does, it does get me fired up a little bit.

Okay, Philippians chapter two. I'll end with this. Very, very important.

This is fundamental. This is fundamental. Keep in mind English Bibles, all English Bibles right up until the Bible we're reading, all worded this way.

Philippians two, verse number six. Talking about the Lord Jesus. Who being in the form of God.

That word being is what's known, and once again, as a present participle, and I-N-G, it's always ongoing. Do you know how the newer translations translate that? Are you listening? Who was in the form of God. No longer in their mind is he in the form of God.

That is not supported by the word of God. The Lord Jesus is as much God in human flesh as he was from eternity. He always is, he always will be in the form of God, but not according to them.

And they changed that little word being. No, no, no. Who was in the form of God.

So I trust you were kept awake for the last few minutes. Stimulate it to go, wow, what's coming next? Because this is important to your child. This is our foundation, the Bible.

And we need to do a little thinking if we're thinking of changing. Because it's very important what we are reading, what we are memorizing, what we are basing our faith upon. And always remember the very first words out of the devil that took that woman and caused a fear of doing something against the word of God.

He replaced it with a desire to do what was wrong. And all he had to say was, have God said?