February 2012

Again and again David and I have warned against the corrupting influence of money inside the church. We've warned about the large profits Evangelicals haul in through royalties, conference speakers' fees, copyright licensures by publishers and Bible societies, salaries of pastors and missionaries and parachurch staff workers, donor gifts; and the list goes on. We've proposed that everyone disclose their profits, pay, and perks for all to see.

We know men hate for us to write about church profits. We feel their anger.

University of California, Berkeley is an odd place to turn, but maybe it has something to teach men of God...

You guys all noticed there hasn't been any response to appeals for the Grace to You men to admit their unfaithfulness to Scripture and repent of it, right? The discussion of money and its corruption of decisions caused Grace to You to express their utter rejection of such considerations. But when it came to the infinitely more serious matter of amending and deleting and gagging Scripture, no response at all. (They may still be considering an admission of their failure; time will tell.)

Listen brothers, responses are significant and should be studied closely. And a non-response is a response...

Here's a list of a few of the additions and deletions and amendments to God's Word contained in the new NIV2011. There are countless similar changes across the Old and New Testaments. The vast majority of them are an effort to gag God in showing His Fatherhood in the affairs of man.

This list is the work of the PCA pastor Andrew Dionne. (TB)

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James 3:1

NIV2011: Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

NIV1984: Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

(DB) In the 1980s I couldn't take John MacArthur. Every time his voice came on WMBI in Chicago, I turned it off. My mother would say to me that he was a better man than I thought. I didn't care. Something snide and self-assured seemed to emanate from from the radio when he was preaching.

And then in 1985-86, I spent a year in Fullerton, CA, as a pastoral intern under Paul Sailhamer at the Fullerton Evangelical Free Church while Chuck Swindoll was senior pastor there. As part of the year, Paul took the two interns to visit significant California churches. We did a trip to San Diego (on which Chuck accompanied us) and a northern trip to the Bay area.

We also went to visit Grace Community Church, where Paul, Dave Butler and I had breakfast with John MacArthur. 

During breakfast I asked John if he was willing to preach on abortion. I had a private interest in the question: I had been trying to convince friends at Fullerton that Chuck should preach on abortion, something he hadn't yet done (he did the following year). Fullerton was willing to have then-surgeon-general C. Everett Koop preach on abortion, but not Chuck. So I secretly scored a point when John answered emphatically, "Yes, I'm willing. I've already preached two series on it."

Les traductions ressemblent aux femmes – lorsqu'elles sont fidèles, elles ne sont pas belles, quand elles sont belles, elles ne sont pas fidèles. - French proverb

Since first seeing an early proof (pre-publication) of one of the new translations being done by renowned Evangelical Bible scholars like Don Carson and Gordon Fee back in the early nineties, it became clear to me that the English-speaking church's blessing of many translations was about to become a curse. All through these proofs, words inspired by the Holy Spirit had been changed or deleted. And the ordering principle was fear of offending groups with certified victim status in the Western world--principally women and Jews.

If the original Greek was 'men,' it was removed and the gender-neutered 'those' took its place. If the Greek was 'brothers,' it was removed and the gender-neutered 'Christian friends' (and later 'Christian siblings') took its place. If the Greek was 'Jews,' it was removed and 'they' or 'Jewish leaders' took its place. If the Hebrew was 'adam,' it was removed and the gender-neutered 'human being' took its place. It's all a project called the removal of "phallogocentricism in language."

Today, almost twenty years later, Evangelicals have been betrayed by their Bible scholars and are reading, preaching from, and memorizing Bibles that have, in countless places, betrayed the Greek and Hebrew inspired by the Holy Spirit. And now we read that...