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Originally Posted by BrianT
Brandplucked, I'm sorry but it still feels like you are evading the heart of my question, and still not being clear. Let me be blunt and direct: Do you, or do you not, believe that there was a single "hold in your hand" complete inerrant perfect Bible in the year 1600 A.D.? Yes or no?
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Hi Brian. To the best of my understanding at this time I would have to say there there was not a perfect, ENTIRE Bible as we know it today which contained both the New and Old Testaments. It seems that God preserved His perfect words in the majority of the Hebrew texts for the Old Testament, and the New Testament may well have been found among a majority of the Waldensian believers around the time of the Reformation. Can I prove this to your satisfaction? No, not at all. The Waldensians were true believers whom the Catholic church persecuted for hundreds of years and burned their Bible manuscripts. This is history.
Satan is always trying to discredit "The Bible, the words of God, Scripture" or however you wish to name it. Textual corruptions creep in and God begins a process of purification. This is what I believe He did in the English language until we finally get the finished product in the King James Bible. This is right before the world wide missionary movement began. God is in control of history.
There is absolutely no need nor promise from God that every nation or every individual would have a perfect, inerrant and complete Bible in their language. For centuries there was only one nation that had the ongoing (it was not at all complete) revelation of the true words of God, and even then there were no printing presses and I seriously doubt most individuals even had a copy for themselves, but God says: "He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not done so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD." Psalm 147:19-20
It was not until the 16th to 17th century that the church in the main finally settled on the 66 book Canon. It was only after the King James Bible came out and was well established among English speaking people that the church began to make their formal declarations concerning the inerrancy of Scripture. I and many other Christians believe that we do have a single Book that contains all of God's perfect and inerrant words. It is called the King James Bible.
It seems that your view is that God's true words are STILL scattered "out there somewhere" among the remaining thousands of variant readings in obscure languages that the vast majority of people cannot read, and not one of you can know for sure which ones are right and which are not. You end up being Bible Agnostics, and every individual becomes his own little authority as to what God may or may not have said, and each one differs from everybody else.
Belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is at an all time low and professing Christians read and believe their "bibles" less and less every day.
God Himself said He would send a famine of hearing His words and that there would be a falling away from the faith in the end times. I believe this is happening now. If we see any truth at all and believe His words and His Book, it is all by the grace of God. Not because we are any better, smarter or holier than anyone else.
I sincerely hope that God will give you the faith to believe His Book.
Will Kinney