Does the KJV only position “blow up”?
“Seek ye out of THE BOOK OF THE LORD, and read” - Isaiah 34:16
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise” - 1 Corinthians 1:19
The one argument the “No Bible is inerrant” crowd continually throws in our face as being unanswerable is this: “Where was the perfect and inerrant Bible before 1611?”
Here are some direct quotes from a seminarian who thinks this question completely destroys our position. He writes: “I must ask you this in return, where was the Word of God prior to the KJV being written? This is where your position blows up at. You MUST claim that God didn't write an infallible Bible until 1611 if you hold to all of this. Can you name where the "complete, inspired, inerrant and 100% true wordS of God existed before the KJV was translated?" The answer needs to stay consistent with your position. Don't say they were found here or there. You MUST, to be consistent, say a specific Bible in a specific language that the "complete, inspired, inerrant and 100% true wordS of God" were located.”
Keep in mind that these King James Bible critics do not believe that there EVER existed a perfect and inerrant Bible in ANY language (including their Hebrew and Greek) and they certainly do not believe there exists one NOW. The force of their argument is that since there was no perfect and inerrant Bible before the King James Bible, then the King James Bible itself cannot be the perfect words of God anymore than their favorite, multiple choice and contradictory bible versions. They don’t defend any of their modern versions like the RSV, NASB, NIV, ESV, NET, NKJV or Holman Standard as being the inerrant words of God in contrast to the other versions. Most of them don’t claim to have an inerrant Bible but they take offence at our claim that we do.
There are only three options open to them. #1. “Only the originals were inspired and inerrant.” It should be pointed out that the originals never did form a 66 book Bible and they have not seen a single word of these “originals” a day in their lives. It also leaves us without a perfect and inerrant Bible NOW.
#2. “All reliable bible versions (NASB, NIV, RSV, ESV, NKJV, Holman, KJV, Spanish, German etc.) are the inerrant words of God.” How someone with the discernment of lime jello can say such a thing is beyond me, but I do run into this type of nonsense. These versions differ among themselves by omitting or adding literally THOUSANDS of words from the New Testament alone, and the modern versions change the meanings of hundreds of verses and often reject the Hebrew readings, and not even in the same places as the others. Not one of them agrees textually with any other in scores if not thousands of places. Try arguing that they are all “the inerrant words of God” before a court of law or even a high school debating team and you will be laughed out of the room.
#3 There really is a complete, inspired, inerrant and 100% true Holy Bible and history and the internal evidence points to the Authorized King James Bible as being the Final Written Authority and the true words of the living God. You only have these three options. There is no other alternative.
There is a huge difference between the wisdom of men and the wisdom of God. As God says in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. Far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And again God says in 1 Corinthians 1:19-20 “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”
I readily admit that “the book of the LORD” (the Holy Bible) was in a rather lengthly process of being perfected and brought to full maturity, but I and thousands of other Bible believers hold that the final product was and is the King James Bible. In general terms the Bible versions that existed before the perfection of the King James Bible followed the same Hebrew texts and the traditional Greek texts. For example, you will find 1 John 5:7 in Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, the Bishops’ Bible 1568 and the Geneva Bible 1560 to 1602. However there was no perfect and inerrant Bible until God brought forth His finished product in the King James Bible.
“God calls those things that be not as though they were”
I believe that those who say there must have been a perfect Bible before the King James Bible or our position falls to the ground as being inconsistent are guilty of using the wisdom of men rather than the wisdom of God, and their thinking is decidedly unbiblical.
Was there a perfect Bible consisting of the present 66 book canon in the year 90 A.D? No. Not all of it had even been written yet. Why is it that the God of history didn’t allow the invention of the printing press until around 1455 A.D? Most Christians didn’t even have an opportunity to have their own copy of any printed Bible till around 1550.
In the wisdom of God something can be in the process or even non-existent and yet God calls it done. This is totally contrary to the wisdom and ways of men. God refers to “the book of the LORD” before it is even finished and certainly before it was gathered into one single volume.
Read through the 34th chapter of the prophet Isaiah. Here God records the coming judgments upon all nations when the host of heaven shall be dissolved and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll. We find similar reference to these future events in the book of the Revelation. Though none of these things had actually happened at the time Isaiah wrote them, yet God sometimes referred to these events as having already happened. - “he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.”; “my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them.” (Isaiah 34:2, 16)
So too in this chapter we read about “the book of the LORD”. “Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail...” (Isaiah 34:16) What exactly was this “book of the LORD” at Isaiah’s time in history? Was it all the books of the Bible written up till the time of Isaiah? Was it just the book of Isaiah? In either case the Bible as we know it today was not a completed Book. Isaiah was still being written at this time and there yet lacked many other Old Testament books still to be written. And that’s not even mentioning the entire New Testament. Yet God calls it “the book of the LORD” and commands us to read it.
God can and does refer to the Book of the Lord as being a real object even though it is still in the process of being written and perfected. Yet He sees the end from the beginning and refers to a future event (from our point of view) as a present reality.
Let’s look at some other Biblical examples of where God calls something that is not as though it were. In Genesis 17:5 God tells Abraham: “Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; FOR A FATHER OF MANY NATIONS HAVE I MADE THEE.”
The Bible critic using human logic and wisdom can easily say: “Hey, wait a minute. Abraham didn’t have any children at this time. There was no Isaac nor Ishmael; no Esau nor Jacob, and certainly not the nation of Israel much less other nations (plural). God must be wrong. The Bible can’t be true and inerrant.”
Yet the verse is repeated again in the New Testament were we read in Romans 4:17 “(As it is written, I HAVE MADE THEE a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and CALLETH THOSE THINGS WHICH BE NOT AS THOUGH THEY WERE.”
What we see here is God naming something as real and yet it wasn’t fulfilled in history till some 2000 years later. God was in a long process of gradually bringing about the fulfillment of His promises, yet He referred to them as something He had already accomplished.
Psalms 12:6-7 says: "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever."
I believe that these verses, like many other Scriptures, have a double fulfillment. It can only be seen in the second way after it has happened, not before. How many prophecies of Christ Himself were not understood until after they had happened? Many if not most of them.
Even at the time of the writing of Psalm 12 not all but maybe half of God's words had been penned, yet they are and were pure at that time. Are all the rest of the O.T. books that were written after David penned Psalm 12 part of the words of the Lord? Yes, we believe so. How about the whole New Testament, are they also part of the pure words of the Lord? Again, we affirm that they are. If God was going to keep them from this generation for ever, then He must have included what He knew would be written in the future as a present reality - the words of the LORD. Obviously God's words over the centuries had become corrupted through false readings, omissions and additions. If God did not purify them, then there never would have been a perfect Bible.
We see the same Biblical principle in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in John 17:4 where He says: “I have glorified thee on the earth: I HAVE FINISHED THE WORK which thou gavest me to do.” Again, the Bible critic will protest. “Now just hold on here a minute. Jesus hadn’t gone to the garden where He prayed with great drops of blood. He hadn’t yet been betrayed nor handed over to the Roman authorities. He certainly hadn’t yet died on the cross for our sins nor risen from the grave three days later. How can He then truthfully say that He had finished the work God gave Him to do? He must have been mistaken.”
Yet in the wisdom of God the thing was so sure that He refered to it as a present reality - a finished work - even though in human terms His redemptive sacrifice was not accomplished till some time after these words were spoken by our Saviour.
A third Biblical example that shows the principle of how God can refer to something as already existing (the book of the Lord) when from our point of view it doesn’t at all, is found in Ephesians 2:4-6. Here we read: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are ye saved
And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
God speaks of this glorious redemption and new life from the dead as being a present reality which has already been accomplished - “quickened together with Christ, raised up and seated in the heavenly places” - Yet multiplied millions of us all over the world had not even been born yet, let alone had made some kind of a “decision for Christ”! Yet God refers to them as already done. We are seated together in the heavenly places.
In the same way, the King James Bible believer does not need to somehow trace all the way back in history to try to find any perfect and inerrant Bible that existed before God brought the finished product of the King James Bible on the scene in 1611. The Sovereign God of history sees the end from the beginning and He can refer to the true “book of the LORD” even when, from our point of view, it wasn’t yet complete nor perfected.
As the King James Bible translators themselves wrote in their Preface: “Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought, from the beginning, that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; but TO MAKE A GOOD ONE BETTER, or OUT OF MANY GOOD ONES ONE PRINCIPAL GOOD ONE, NOT JUSTLY TO BE EXCEPTED AGAINST that hath been our endeavour, that our mark."
The King James Translators also wrote: "Nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are the thoughts to be the wiser: so if we build upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by their labors, do endeavor to make better which they left so good...if they were alive would thank us...the same will shine as gold more brightly, being rubbed and polished."
The King James Bible believer is the only one today who consistenly, historically and logically stands for the doctrinal truths that God has kept His promises to preserve His inspired words and that there really exists such a thing as a complete, inerrant and 100% true Holy Bible.
Remember, God says: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? ...even God who calleth those things which be not as though they were.” (1 Cor. 1:19-20; Romans 4:17
For some additional thoughts on the subject Where was the word of God before 1611 and its purification process please see my article here:
http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/before1611.html
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Matthew 11:15
Will Kinney