This is the first of many videos that'll be talking about the New King James.
This one is about my personal journey from faith to doubt.
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
Proverbs 27:7 says,
7 "The full soul loatheth an honeycomb;
but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet."
That is so true.
I failed my first semester of Bible college. I've told you guys before.
That summer I went to Mexico to study intensive Spanish
and didn't meet a single Christian!
During that time, prayer, Bible reading and learning intensive Spanish,
I started to come to a conclusion.
I needed to go back to the Bible college I was scared of,
take the classes I was afraid of,
and I needed to listen to my professors.
I took that a little far.
When my professors told me that the New American Standard wasn't good enough,
and you needed to go back to the 1901 American Standard, Westcott & Hort Bible,
I did. And I became like a Bible Answer Man. It's amazing.
I used the notes, and the text and everything.
And I already knew what my teachers, and the Sunday school teachers,
were going to say, before they even said it!
You have no idea how much this really has impacted the world.
And you know what? My faith was dry.
When I started to be confronted with the idea
"Does God like me?" Not, "Does God love me?" but "Does God like me?"
I couldn't find any answers.
Now I do want to remind you,
I had already given away my mule-chokin' King James Bible to somebody,
which I regretted for the next 30 years.
And I had no King James at the time.
So when somebody recommended this new translation called, "The New King James,"
I went after it!
And I started reading it, in the Gospel of Mark.
I didn't know that the Gospel of Mark is pretty similar to the King James.
All I knew is this is all I had.
I was parched.
And as I read it, there was enough in this text
That I got clear that Jesus liked me.
Don't ask me how, I mean I could talk about it,
but, I don't know.
But there was something that was there that hit me.
And I've never, ever lost that fact,
that deep-seated feeling in my heart, and belief, that God actually likes me!
That was something that the American Standard could not offer me.
So of course, I HAD to get the New King James whole Bible
and start going into that, but as you notice,
there's these footnotes that say "NU" and "M" and all that stuff.
NU meaning "Nestles-UBS." M meaning "Majority Text."
And they gave different readings from what was in the text.
I can go into more of that later.
But the point is, as I read these footnotes, and studied them,
it drew me further and further away
from believing I could rely on the words in the text.
And I ended up just going from place to place after that.
I started looking for this "M" text, where it was.
and then I just ended up going back to the Westcott-Hort text,
where I had started from.
You see, the New King James isn't REALLY a different Bible version.
It's the marijuana of Bible versions.
It gives you a little of what you want, you've got some enthusiasm at first,
but if you really pay attention, it will pull away that faith that you once had.
And it will make you desirous of... harder things,
whether going to the Majority Text against the King James,
or going to the Alexandrian Text against the King James,
it doesn't matter.
It's like marijuana. It's like a drug.
You get a little bit of it, and it never satisfies.
All these years later, brothers and sisters,
I've got a King James Bible and I can fully rely on it.
I used to have a little sign in my Bible college, on my desk that says
"You can't break God's promises by leaning on them."
Well, I can lean on every word of this Bible, and I know it's not gonna break.
That's where my faith is,
not my doubt, like in Westcott & Hort, or even in the New King James.
I'll have a lot more to say in the future.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.