A brother in Christ asked me a simple question.
Have I ever seen anyone treating the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus
as if they were alive?
Let me ask the question to you: have you ever seen anyone
treating the Greek Codex Sinaiticus or Greek Codex Vaticanus
as if they were living?
I'll tell you my answer.
But I hope this short video will give you
an alternate perspective about text critics.
Ready?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications
The word of God is alive.
Let me read a few scriptures to you.
Hebrews 4:12 "For the word of God is quick,
and powerful, and sharper than
any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder
of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow,
and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents
of the heart."
"Quick" means "alive."
God's words are quick and powerful, not dead and powerless.
Isaiah 55:11 "So shall my word be
that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
God's word accomplishes what God wants.
And it will prosper in the task for which God sent it.
Jeremiah 23:29 "Is not my word like as a fire?
saith the LORD; and like a hammer
that breaketh the rock in pieces?"
God's word burns and breaks whatever
God wants burnt and broken.
That's powerful.
In short, God's words are holy.
They are an extension of God.
They are powerful, like God.
They do what God wants, when God wants,
how God wants.
And God's words are alive.
When I approach this book, I approach HIS Book.
They're not my words.
They're His.
That is what makes this holy book so wonderful.
I can always go to God, in His word, and I can find out
what my heavenly Father thinks, what He wants,
and what will make Him happy.
But here is what my professors at Fuller Seminary
said.
And remember, this was considered one
of the most conservative seminaries, and second biggest in the country
when I went there.
From 1984-87, I studied at Fuller Seminary.
Let me introduce you to some of my Fuller professors.
This is Dan Fuller, son of the founder, Charles Fuller.
He taught Unity of the Bible with huge syllabi we had to buy.
His system of Bible arcs said that after the Fall of man
in Genesis 3, God didn't talk in person
to His creation anymore.
But as I said then, God's right there talking with Cain
in the very next chapter, Genesis 4!
Dr. Fuller never changed his notes to match the Bible.
His mind was made up.
This is Paul Jewett.
He taught us that Adam didn't find a companion,
until he looked and saw one of the apes.
He said, and I quote, "That one over there.
I think it's something in the eyes."
So Dr. Jewett, this champion of women as pastors,
taught that the first woman was literally an ape.
This is Dr. Ralph P. Martin.
He changed the meaning of a couple of Greek words in Acts 1,
as I said in Why They Changed the Bible.
I pointed out that his changed meaning
would make it like Luke and Acts were written in the 2nd century,
contradicting the Bible, which says
Luke was an eyewitness.
His response before a couple hundred students:
"Well, THAT wouldn't hurt your faith, would it?"
This is Dr. Lewis B. Smedes.
He liked to tear down the faith of each individual class member
in the 10 Commandments like a confrontational talk-show host.
He'd make up tear-jerking scenarios, where breaking a commandment
seemed like the only thing you could do,
to solve the problem he made up.
And when someone finally broke down,
he would say, "So you don't really
believe in that commandment, do you?"
He took pleasure in tearing people's faith into shreds.
These are Doctors Hubbard, LaSor and Bush.
They wrote an Old Testament Introduction text
that said Ezekiel wanted to make a bigger temple.
But alas, his plans didn't work out.
(That's Ezekiel 40-48).
They said that those chapters were simply
Ezekiel's wish-fulfillment dream, not from God.
So they believed the Bible was written by man,
not inspired by God.
David Allan Hubbard was president of Fuller, and
my Hebrew Literature professor.
William Sanford LaSor was also my Hebrew readings professor.
Frederick Bush was another Old Testament professor.
Dr. Bob Schaper, who was also my homiletics
(not preaching) professor, came into Bush's class
and said two things: 1.
If we had a Polaroid camera, we would not have seen
God forming man of the dust of the ground
and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life.
2.
If we had a Polaroid camera, we would not have seen
Jesus ascend to heaven.
"Heaven isn't up," he said.
But Acts 1 says Jesus went up before their eyes,
while they watched.
But he never let the facts get in the way of his beliefs.
Dr. Donald Hagner, one of my
New Testament professors, who always read straight from
the United Bible Society's Greek text to us,
believed that many of Paul's letters were written by somebody else,
after Paul died, who faked his name.
That means these New Testament books
would be Pseudepigrapha, "false writings."
Oh, and one more thing.
All the professors here, as far as they have said
and I was told, were evolutionists.
They thought creationism was a fairy tale, and
Genesis 1-11 was just poetry.
This is who thousands of present pastors and professors
were trained by when they went to seminary,
as I did.
And they are only the tip of the iceberg.
But what about my question, that I asked in the beginning?
Do they trust anything as the living word of God?
You know what?
Not one single professor came to class
and snuggled the text of Codex Sinaiticus in his arms
and said, "At last!
THESE are the words of God!"
Not even Dr. Paul Jewett, who went to Vatican II,
and made sure we knew about it, not even he
held a copy of Codex Vaticanus in his arms
and said, "Now we have God's holy words!"
Not even one.
No.
It was quite different.
Listening to my professors talk, or reading the many books
about the manuscripts, was more like dissecting dead things.
It's like finding a dead animal in the desert.
When I lived out past Desert Hot Springs, in Sky Valley,
in high school, I rode my Suzuki 90 motorcycle
south toward the San Andreas Fault, south of my house.
And I couldn't believe my eyes!
I saw a big old wild boar.
And it was dead!
I'd never seen one in the desert before.
So I came nearer.
I wanted to see what it looked like up close.
I wish I hadn't.
Oh, man!
The smell was awful!
And there were birds picking stuff off it.
I couldn't get closer than 100 feet away.
It was the worst smell I've ever smelled.
I could never get used to that.
And yet these professors of mine were perfectly happy
to pick up the dead and rotting corpses
of supposedly ancient Bible texts, cut out whatever they wanted,
throw the rest away, and sort of Frankenstein together
a Bible out of the rotten remains of whatever they found.
One story about the Bodmer papyri, that people use
to change the Bible text, is that they were found in glass jars
in a Gnostic graveyard.
I'm not making this up.
So they pieced together from these dead documents
something approximating a gutted Bible.
Then they pass this off as "the Bible"
or "the oldest and best"?
What did they do?
Zap it with electricity?
Give it mouth to mouth resuscitation?
Man cannot give life to dead things.
Only God gives life to the dead.
But God's words never died.
They are living -- the Bible word is "quick" --
and they are powerful.
They change lives.
If you are a missionary looking at this,
you are a missionary because of this book,
the King James.
You see, God didn't take rotting corpses
to piece together His book.
He preserved it.
And even when a man made mistakes somewhere
in his own personal copy, God knew where
the right readings were.
And by the time of the invention of
multiple-copy printing, God started
bringing together His Bible so it could be printed in a final form,
without error.
It was no coincidence.
It was God carrying out His promise to preserve His words.
That's why the Devil fights it so much.
And God's words LIVE.
They change lives.
And like it or not, this Book created
the modern missionary movement.
This Book was and is the seed of revivals.
This Book was the original reason for creating
Bible translation groups.
That's because this isn't just a book.
Even though all the big seminary texts from the 1950s on
said the Bible was "just like any other book."
This is not just like any other book.
This is God's Book.
But they treat their own words as if they are more important
than God's words.
Look, they can try to give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
to their Frankenstein's monster of rotten and fake manuscripts.
Let them call the work of sinful man a Bible.
They don't trust any book, anyway.
But I'll hang on to the words of the living God
in English, the King James Bible.
Deborah and I taught these living words
to our kids from their childhood.
We pray before reading it, learn about God from it,
lifting it up, never doubting it,
and being willing to change however it says to, with God's help.
We don't have to trust some doubting professor.
Now we have godly children that no cemetery-- seminary
could take away from us.
You know why?
Because they believe the Bible and doubt their professors,
the way it should be.
And God takes that faith and leads them into truth.
And he'll do that for you and your kids, too.
Praise God, a lot of you out there
already know what I'm talking about.
Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child
in the way he should go: and when he is old,
he will not depart from it."
The living words of God, or the dead words of men.
Your choice.
But remember, it will make
all the difference in the world for your children.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.