I've been writing some more of my book and I read some of it to friends here
at Chick, and my family, and they kind of said,
"You need to make this part of your introduction for your book."
I'm not sure how long it is, if you'll bear with me.
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
I want to give you a bit of a "feel for my zeal."
I am indebted to a man I've never met.
If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have seen that mule-choking King James Bible
at the United Church of Religious Science on Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs,
back in 1979.
That was where I saw the beautiful white Bible, with the enticing words,
"Family Tree" on the box.
It was, as my Grandpa would say, "big enough to choke a mule."
The letters were plenty large, and there was a center column
with definitions of some words I might not understand
and some cross-references.
There also were a dictionary in the back, how to lead someone to Christ,
and some Bible maps.
And of course, there was room for writing my family tree, something
the Daniels family has always loved.
We had an 1800s family Bible from the South,
and it told a lot of history, but this was brand-new,
with lots of room.
(You just saw it.)
How could I resist this Bible?
When the Lord brought me back to Himself on August 24, 1980,
it was to that Bible I ran, to find out where I had heard
those words the Lord spoke into my heart.
And there it was: Matthew 7:21-23.
So convicting.
I prayed to receive the Lord on June 7, 1972.
But I formally met my Saviour and my heavenly Father that night,
through that Bible.
I will never forget it.
And I will never regret spending the $30.00 for that Bible.
It was the most I'd ever spent on a book.
And it was worth every penny.
And it was all thanks to a Lebanese man named Salim Ziady.
Thank you, Salim.
I hope you find out how much I am indebted to you.
That was the biggest book I had ever carried with me, and one of
the biggest Bibles I had ever seen.
But I was not embarrassed to carry it around.
I hadn't a care about what people thought of me.
I carried books all the time, everywhere, for years.
But this was the biggest of all.
And this was The Book.
It doesn't get better than this.
God blessed those first few days of seeking God and hearing
through His words in a special way.
I was all alone with my heavenly Father in the beautiful Southern California desert.
I loved living in the desert, both day and night.
While the days could get up above 105 degrees Fahrenheit
or even hotter, I never really felt it.
It was very dry and comfortable.
About 3:00 every day a pleasant wind would blow into Sky Valley from the west,
giving respite from the heat, if it had gotten to be too much,
although it almost never did.
Almost every night I could look up and see the milky way, clearly,
and other stars and planets.
When Mars was up, it actually shone with a strong reddish color.
Growing up in a suburb of Los Angeles, I had never seen color
in heavenly bodies before through the smog and electric lights.
But now it was an almost-nightly privilege.
I was directly south of one of my favorite camping spots,
Joshua Tree National Monument, and directly north of a hilly section
that is the actual main line of the San Andreas Fault.
And I was directly next door to --nobody!
The closest person, when one visited his property,
was acres away.
I could walk around the desert, even when the moon wasn't shining,
and see my way around by the stars, without a flashlight.
Actually, using a flashlight blinded me to
the rest of the desert, save the small area illuminated in front of me.
It was far safer to go by the stars and the moon, if it were out.
I loved the desert.
It was like camping every day.
When it was warm at night (which was quite often),
I loved to take my bed roll, consisting of a polyethylene
foam mattress, sheets, cover and pillow, up to the roof of the 12" x 16"
squatter's shack we called home.
I could sit or lay and watch the stars and planets move around me
--or rather, around Polaris, the North Star.
And though it was late August, I had no qualms about
reading scripture and seeking God, on the desert floor by day
or on my roof by night.
By day I just sat down by the cholla (CHOY-uh)
and barrel cactus plants and prayed as a friend had instructed me
when I was still into the occult.
I prayed something like this.
"Father, in the name of your Son, please let the Holy Spirit reveal to me
the scriptures."
And I began in Genesis and Matthew, Old and New Testaments.
That's it.
I had no fancy commentary series, knew no Christians to help me understand,
and certainly trusted none of my occultic friends to help.
I was on new ground, holy ground.
I was left to rely on my heavenly Father to help me understand as I read.
I asked Him the answer when I didn't understand
the meaning of words.
And I trusted Him that He knew, even though I didn't,
He knew the answer to every question.
It was two years later, in Bible college one morning, a word was clearly defined
in class, exactly the way the Lord put in my heart when I had prayed to Him
in August of 1980.
I smiled and quietly said, "Wow, God!
You knew what You were talking about!"
(I think my wife Debbie remembers that day.)
By night I had "talks" with God, telling Him all about my life and
reasoning out loud about His holy words.
One evening "talk" went something like this:
"Father, I was told when I was young that a committee got together and
decided the text that they wanted in the Bible and put that in.
Then they decided the words they wanted out of the Bible
and left that out.
But I don't believe that.
Father, I believe You are big enough to superintend the text of the Bible,
so that what You wanted to be in is in, and what You wanted to be out is out."
As God said through Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
16 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."
Another "talk" went along these lines:
"Father, I know people say You 'didn't part the Red Sea,' or
You 'didn't create the earth in six days,' that 'Christ wasn't born of a virgin,'
or come back from the dead or go back up into heaven.
But, Father, I have seen so many things in the occult, and
I know You are so much more powerful than the Devil.
If the Devil can do the things that I have seen in the occult,
I know You can part the Red Sea, I know You can create
the universe in six days.
You have the power to do anything You said You did.
I believe You over any man."
I had read it just two nights before, in Psalm 118:8-9:
8 "It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.
9 It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes."
I trusted the Lord, and trusting His Bible
was just like trusting Him.
It was good enough for me.
I loved my new life.
For the first time my life was being built upon a sure foundation:
faith in God and His words in my King James Bible.
A few short months later I would retire to my bedroom
at my mom's house, get out my guitar and
my "mule-choker," open to the Psalms and just make up music as
I sang them back to my Lord.
I would sing, and cry, and the tears would make it
hard to read the words.
Then I would wipe away the tears, start playing again,
and the same thing happened, again and again and again.
I was so happy that I was saved --and I knew it.
One day I heard a friend of my brother's was moving away.
I asked him if he had a Bible, and he said No.
And so I made a choice.
I ran home and got my mule-choker and gave it to him.
I gave it to my brother's friend, never to see it again.
Shortly after he moved away, I regretted letting go of that Bible.
It took me almost 30 years to replace it.
But praise God, after years of searching
He let me get not just one, but two identical, first printings
of the exact same Bible.
I try to keep one of them within eyeshot at home.
It's sort of a reminder of how simple faith can conquer
even the most complex of arguments.
After all, it's faith that God wanted from us in the first place:
Hebrews 11:6 says, 6 "But without faith
it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God
must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek him."
Sometimes I think I was just plain smarter back then,
with my King James Bible and a few Chick tracts,
than I was in all the years of Bible college,
Bible translation training and seminary, and then all the years of researching,
all to end me up back where I had started 20 years before.
I was pulled away from the King James Bible
by a well-meaning Christian the first time.
But when I came back, it was to stay.
Don't be fooled into thinking that the Devil wouldn't use your
closest friends and associates, pastors, teachers or family,
to pry your hands off of that King James Bible.
The battle has gotten fierce.
And I think Satan has gotten the idea the time is almost ripe
for his End Game: one world religion.
Of course, it will only work if he can whittle down to one world Bible
for that one world religion.
And let's not kid ourselves: he's almost there.
There's just one last bastion that keeps holding him back and
ruining his plans and spoiling his day: faith in the words
God promised to preserve.
For English speakers, that force is faith
in the King James Bible, God's preserved words in English.
Try not to take it the wrong way, but those who don't believe in
God's preserved words, no matter what else they may believe and do,
are basically a pushover as far as the Devil is concerned.
This book will tell you how and why people are pulled from faith in
their Bibles.
But it won't stop there.
It's going to tell you when and where people and publishers already
fell for the lie.
I want to show you how certain people who had godly foundations
fell for whatever trick the Devil played, for whatever reason,
then abandoned the King James and suffered the consequences.
Satan has the world at his fingertips.
As it is written in 1 John 5:19:
"...the whole world lieth in wickedness."
It's time that God's people stood in faith against
the wiles of the Devil, and perhaps, with God's help,
held back the End for one more generation.
Please pray as I continue to write this book.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.