That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ; Philippians 1:10. Do you have an excellent Bible? Do your people carry one? To this day, I have resisted adding a clause about adhering to the King James Bible in any of our church documents. Most churches that have such clauses are rife with sermons and study materials that make a mockery of those declarations by running to silly lexicons and planting doubt in their hearers' minds as to just how accurate their Bible really is. If my church comes to the point where only a clause in a document keeps its pastor straight, it is shot already.
Let's face it, most conservative, blah, blah, blah preachers today cling to their King James Bible more as a symbolism of their loyalty to the old fashioned faith than as a guide to their beliefs. They rank it somewhere on the level of a three piece suit and well shined shoes. If we could just ignore their shallow fruitless lives, and the silly little programs that they run in their churches as substitutes for power with God, we would see the good reverend standing in a sincere pose dressed well and clinging to the old book. Such men can never carry their churches into the future. As a result more and more churches are slipping out of any semblance of a true Baptist faith.
Take an inventory of your church. How many church members are carrying King James Bibles that say Joshua instead of Jesus in Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8? Check the Bibles on your shelves. How many of them say thoroughly instead of throughly in Genesis 11:3? (Hint: if you burn something thoroughly, there is nothing left but ashes.) How about II Timothy 3:17, does your Bible tell you that you are thoroughly prepared for any good work such as CPR, brain surgery, or translating old Phoenician writings for modern history books? Or, does your Bible tell you that you are throughly prepared for such works meaning that if you did endeavor to do any of those things that throughout your doing them, you would be holy in how you did them? There is a difference in the two words. Does it bother you that you have church members that carry small untruths in their infallible Bibles? Does it bother you that you have such Bibles on your shelves? After all, they do say King James Bible on the cover. Isn't that good enough? If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you know that my principal objection to Bible printers today is their handling of jots and tittles. Are we ready to surrender those as immaterial? Does all of our boasting on the King James Bible fall short of God's promise that he would preserve the jots and tittles? Or, perhaps we think that only meant the original Greek and Hebrew.