Republished February 25, 2009 (first published January 20, 1996) (David
Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron,
MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about
subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph
at the end of the article) –
There is a lot of debate and confusion surrounding the man-made term
"King James Onlyism." This term has been popularized in recent
years by men who claim they are concerned about an alleged dangerous and
cultic view of the King James Bible. Rarely do they carefully define this
term, though, and as a result a wide variety of Bible-believing men are
lumped together and labeled with a term the meaning of which is nebulous.
The term “King James Only” was invented by those who oppose the defense of
the King James Bible and its underlying Hebrew and Greek texts. It was
intended to be a term of approbation, and it is usually defined in terms of
the extremism.
I have been labeled “King James Only” because of my writings on the subject
of Bible texts and versions and my defense of the King James Bible. To set
the record straight, let me explain what I believe. I know from decades of
experience and extensive travels that this is also what a large number of
other King James Bible defenders believe.
I WILL ACCEPT THE LABEL OF “KING JAMES ONLY” IF IT MEANS THE FOLLOWING:
If “King James Only” defines one who believes that God has given infallible
Scripture in the original Greek and Hebrew writings and that He has preserved
that in the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received Text underlying the King
James Bible and other Reformation Bibles and that we have an accurate
translation of it in the English language in the Authorized Version, call me
“King James Only.”
If “King James Only” defines one who believes modern textual criticism is
heresy, call me “King James Only.” I have spent hundreds of dollars to obtain
the writings of the men who have been at the forefront of developing the
theories underlying modern textual criticism, and I have read them. They are
not dependable. They refuse to approach the Bible text from a position of
faith in divine preservation. Most of them are unbelievers, and I refuse to
lean upon their scholarship. I am convinced they do not have the spiritual discernment
necessary to know where the inspired, preserved Word of God is located today.
If “King James Only” defines one who believes that God has preserved the
Scripture in its common use among apostolic churches through the fulfillment
of the Great Commission and that He guided the Reformation editors and
translators in their choice of the Received Text and that we don’t have to
start all over today in an to attempt to find the preserved text of
Scripture, call me “King James Only.” The theories of modern textual
criticism, on the other hand, all revolve around the idea that the pure text
of Scripture was not preserved in the Reformation text but that the
Reformation editors, because of their alleged ignorance and or lack of
resources, rejected the pure text and chose, instead, an inferior text. In
fact, modern textual criticism is predicated upon the theory that the best
text of the New Testament (the Egyptian or Alexandrian) was rejected in the
earliest centuries and was replaced with a corrupt recension that was created
through the conflation of various manuscript readings (the Byzantine or
Traditional text) and that the corrupt text became the dominant text
throughout most of church history (for 1,500 years) until the best text was
rediscovered in the 19th century. You are free to accept such views if it
suits you. I, for one, believe this is absolute nonsense, and if that is
“King James Only,” count me in.
Similarly, if “King James Only” defines one who rejects the theory that the
“preserved” Word of God was hidden away in the Pope’s library and in a weird
Greek Orthodox monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai (a monastery which has a
room full of the skulls of dead monks) for hundreds of years, call me “King
James Only.”
If “King James Only” defines one who believes it is important to have one
biblical standard in a language as important as English and who believes that
the multiplicity of competing versions has created confusion and has weakened
the authority of the Word of God in this century, call me “King James Only.”
I WILL NOT ACCEPT THE LABEL OF “KING JAMES ONLY” IF IT MEANS THE FOLLOWING:
If “King James Only” defines one who believes that the KJV was given by
inspiration, I am not “King James Only. The King James Bible is the product
of preservation, not inspiration. The term “inspiration” refers to the
original giving of the Scripture through holy men of old (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet.
1:20-21). At the same time, I agree with the Pulpit Commentary when it says,
“We must guard against such narrow, mechanical views of inspiration as would
confine it to the Hebrew and Greek words in which it was written, so that one
who reads a good translation would not have ‘the words of the Lord.’” To say
that the King James Bible is the inspired Word of God in the English language
because it is an accurate translation of the preserved Hebrew and Greek is
not the same as saying that it was given by inspiration.
If “King James Only” defines one who believes the English KJV is superior to
the Hebrew and Greek texts upon which it was based, I am not “King James
Only.” In fact, I believe such an idea is pure nonsense, as it would mean the
preserved Word of God did not exist before 1611.
If “King James Only” defines one who believes the English Authorized Version
is advanced revelation over the Hebrew and Greek text that God gave through
inspiration to holy men of old, I am not “King James Only.”
If “King James Only” defines one who believes that we do not need to study
Greek and Hebrew today or that it is not proper to use lexicons and
dictionaries, I am not “King James Only.” God’s people should learn Greek and
Hebrew if possible and use (with much caution and wisdom) study tools. When
the Bible says that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost,” we know that the words they spake were Hebrew and Greek words. I
encouraged my youngest son to begin studying Greek in high school, and he is
scheduled to have four years of Greek and two of Hebrew when he graduates
from BibleCollege. But foundational to the study
of the biblical languages is a thorough understanding of the textual issue.
We must study the right Greek and Hebrew, and we must also be careful of the
original language study tools, because many of them were produced from a
rationalistic perspective and with great bias against the Received Text.
If “King James Only” defines one who believes the preserved Word of God is
available only in English, I am not “King James Only.” The Masoretic Hebrew
Old Testament and Greek Received New Testament translated properly into any
language is the preserved Word of God in that language, whether it is German,
Spanish, French, Korean, or Nepali. There is a list of Received-text based
translations in the “Directory of Foreign Language Literature” at the Way of
Life web site. (See the Apostasy Database.)
If “King James Only” defines one who believes that translations in other
languages should be based on English rather than (when possible) Greek and
Hebrew, I am not “King James Only.” (I also believe that a good translation
can be made directly from the King James Bible when necessary if it is done
by men who are capable in the use of dictionaries so that they understand the
somewhat antiquated language of the KJV properly.)
If “King James Only” defines one who believes that a person can only be saved
through the King James Bible, I am not “King James Only.” It is the Gospel
that is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16), and even a Bible that is
textually corrupt contains the Gospel.
If “King James Only” defines one who believes that the King James Bible’s
antiquated language is holy or who believes the KJV could never again be
updated, I am not “King James Only.” I doubt the KJV will ever be replaced in
this apostate age, but to say that it is wrong to update the language again
after the fashion of the several updates it has undergone since 1611 is not
reasonable, in my estimation. Having dealt constantly with people who speak
English as a 2nd or 3rd language, I am very sympathetic to the very real
antiquation problem in the King James Bible. At the same time, I am not going
to trade an excellent Bible with a few problems due to old language for a
Bible filled with error due to a corrupt text and/or a corrupt translation
methodology.
If “King James Only” defines one who believes he has the authority to call
those who disagree with him silly asses, morons, and jacklegs, and to treat
them as if they were the scum of the earth because they refuse to follow his
peculiar views, I am not “King James Only.”
THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY: HERE COMES SOCIALISM By Dick Morris 01.21.2009 Published on TheHill.com on January 20, 2009
2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.
Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation. In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished.) When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.)
But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the Depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes.
Obama’s record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative-energy sources to school renovations, infrastructure repairs and technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. But freed of any constraint on the deficit — indeed, empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible — Obama will do them all rather quickly.
But it is not his spending that will transform our political system, it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population.
Will he raise taxes? Why should he? With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans.
In the name of stabilizing the banking system, Obama will nationalize it. Using Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to write generous checks to needy financial institutions, his administration will demand preferred stock in exchange. Preferred stock gets dividends before common stockholders do. With the massive debt these companies will owe to the government, they will only be able to afford dividends for preferred stockholders — the government, not private investors. So who will buy common stock? And the government will demand that its bills be paid before any profits that might materialize are reinvested in the financial institution, so how will the value of the stocks ever grow? Devoid of private investors, these institutions will fall ever more under government control. Obama will begin the process by limiting executive compensation. Then he will urge restructuring and lowering of home mortgages in danger of default (as the feds have already done with Citibank).
Then will come guidance on the loans to make and government instructions on the types of enterprises to favor. God grant that some Blagojevich-type is not in charge of the program, using his power to line his pockets. The United States will find itself with an economic system comparable to that of Japan, where the all-powerful bureaucracy at MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) manages the economy, often making mistakes like giving mainframe computers priority over the development of laptops.
But it is the healthcare system that will experience the most dramatic and traumatic of changes. The current debate between erecting a Medicare-like governmental single payer or channeling coverage through private insurance misses the essential point. Without a lot more doctors, nurses, clinics, equipment and hospital beds, health resources will be strained to the breaking point. The people and equipment that now serve 250 million Americans and largely neglect all but the emergency needs of the other 50 million will now have to serve everyone. And, as government imposes ever more Draconian price controls and income limits on doctors, the supply of practitioners and equipment will decline as the demand escalates. Price increases will be out of the question, so the government will impose healthcare rationing, denying the older and sicker among us the care they need and even barring them from paying for it themselves. (Rationing based on income and price will be seen as immoral.)
And Obama will move to change permanently the partisan balance in America. He will move quickly to legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and to smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can in order to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and African-Americans will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. If they go by top-heavy margins for the Democrats, as they did in 2008, it will assure Democratic domination (until they move up the economic ladder and become good Republicans).
And he will enact the check-off card system for determining labor union representation, repealing the secret ballot in union elections. The result will be to raise the proportion of the labor force in unions up to the high teens from the current level of about 12 percent.
Finally, he will use the expansive powers of the Federal Communications Commission to impose “local” control and ownership of radio stations and to impose the “fairness doctrine” on talk radio. The effect will be to drive talk radio to the Internet, fundamentally change its economics, and retard its growth for years hence.
But none of these changes will cure the depression. It will end when the private sector works through the high debt levels that triggered the collapse in the first place. And, then, the large stimulus package deficits will likely lead to rapid inflation, probably necessitating a second recession to cure it.
So Obama’s name will be mud by 2012 and probably by 2010 as well. And the Republican Party will make big gains and regain much of its lost power.But it will be too late to reverse the socialism of much of the economy, the demographic change in the electorate, the rationing of healthcare by the government, the surge of unionization and the crippling of talk radio.
