It's amazing what you can learn, when you put events and people
on a timeline.
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
If you believe in Creation by God, as stated in the Bible,
you already know the answer.
The chicken was created first, with the capacity to mate
and make eggs.
Which came first: the Original Autographs Only
doctrine, or the "King James Only" doctrine,
or its formal name, "Providential Preservation"?
The answer is in the timeline!
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
The Westminster Confession of Faith
was written 371 years ago in 1646.
It has been the standard statement of doctrine
of the Church of England and became the basis
of other statements of faith,
including the London Baptist Confession of 1689.
It wasn't a new doctrine even then.
It was a very ancient and Bible-believing doctrine.
They just wrote it down for all to see in 1646.
Take a look at it for yourself online.
It's just filled with scriptures to back up each point.
Chapter One is called "Of the Holy Scripture."
Let me summarize and cut it down -- a lot.
Part 1 says that nature shows God's goodness,
wisdom and power.
But it's not sufficient to know God and His will regarding salvation.
So first God spoke to the church.
Then He inspired them:
"to commit the same wholly unto writing:
which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary..."
That is why we need and have the Bible,
to preserve God's words to get us saved and
protected from the Devil's deceit.
Part 2 lists only the 66 books of our present Bible
as the scriptures.
Part 3 is about the Apocrypha.
It's so short, you've got to hear it:
"The books commonly called Apocrypha,
not being of divine inspiration, are no part
of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority
in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved,
or made use of, than other human writings."
That is very well-said.
In 1646!
Now let me jump to Part 8.
Again, I'll radically shorten it.
"The Old Testament in Hebrew ... and the New Testament in Greek ...
being immediately [as they were writing it]
inspired by God, and, by his singular care and providence,
kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical;
so as, ... the church is finally to appeal unto them."
This means God provided ("providence")
for the Church by keeping His words pure
("preservation").
That's not natural.
God supernaturally preserved His words.
Here, look.
Gleason Archer, A Survey of
Old Testament Introduction, Revised and Expanded, page 25:
"it would take nothing short of a miracle
to insure the inerrancy of a copy of an original manuscript."
Exactly!
We have a supernatural, miraculous, Bible!
Anything short of that is just a book.
It goes on,
"But, because these original tongues
are not known to all the people of God ...
therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar [common] language
of every nation unto which they come,
that ... they ... through patience and comfort of the Scriptures,
may have hope."
Note that those translations are called scriptures.
And as you can see for yourself, it's all backed up by scripture verses.
This was written when?
In 1646, 371 years ago, summarizing what scriptures
and Bible believers had believed for centuries.
But in the 1800s, everything changed.
In 1810 a Catholic priest, Johann Leonhard Hug,
put out a little 28 page book in Latin only,
declaring that Codex Vaticanus was actually from the 300s AD.
It's called, "De antiquitate Codicis Vaticani commentatio"
"Study Concerning the Antiquity of Codex Vaticanus."
Scholars bought it, hook, line and thinker.
Suddenly paleographers and text critics
wanted to see the Vaticanus.
But the Vatican kept it under lock and key,
under the protection of the Jesuit Cardinal Angelo Mai.
Vaticanus, a document that
magically showed up in the Vatican Library in 1475,
was now sought after by Protestants, to replace their preserved Bible!
But it was only one book.
Text scholars knew there was nothing to compare it to.
They needed another text before they could justify
changing the Bible.
Then poof!
In 1843 Constantin Tischendorf,
after speaking with pope Gregory XVI and Jesuit Cardinal Mai,
started raising funds.
Then when he had raised enough money, in 1844
Tischendorf made a beeline for Cairo to get permission,
then 275 miles across desert to St. Catherine's monastery,
where he "just happened to find" -- exactly what all the scholars
were looking for at that time --
a second supposedly ancient Greek Bible!
Imagine that!
(At this time it was still white, by the way.)
He stole 43 sheets and returned to Saxony.
This became the Codex Friderico-Augustanus.
I'll tell more about that in a video on Tischendorf.
This is an example of what's in the CFA.
I will go over this more in that video.
There's so much to tell you!
I'm so excited!
By 1859 with the help of the Russian government,
Tischendorf got the book, which he called "Codex Sinaiticus"
or "aleph" (to make it the first letter) out of St. Catherine's monastery,
to Cairo, to Russia.
By now the remaining pages are now darkened.
On the left is 1844.
On the right is 1859, the very next page in the quire.
Then he published typeset facsimiles,
starting in 1862.
After 2 unsuccessful visits to the Vatican,
finally the pope gave Tischendorf the privilege
of checking over the Codex Vaticanus,
which he published in 1867.
See all those things?
Those are the abbreviations of the great accolades
that Tischendorf got.
Now there were two codices (one, two)
for the paleographers to fight over.
And that was what Brooke Foss Westcott
and Fenton John Anthony Hort were waiting for!
From that time, Hort started working fervently
on a new theory, that wherever
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus agreed, either to add words
or to take away words, that would become their
"new" Greek text.
There were two Convocations, deciding bodies,
for the Church of England, the smaller Northern Convocation
in York and the larger Southern Convocation
in Canterbury.
They had to have permission to revise the English Bible.
The Northern Convocation said No.
But on February 10, 1870, the Southern Convocation said Yes.
Once the Committee was at their task,
the members were secretly given this changed text
of Westcott and Hort, largely based upon
the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
They made their Revised Version based on that radically changed text,
not on the traditional preserved texts of the Bible.
And that brings us to 1881.
By August of 1881, they had planned to unveil
their new "Revised Version" of the English Bible.
But what about all those changes? Remember,
their Confession of Faith said that God providentially preserved
the words of their English Bible.
But now they were going to take away words, phrases
and whole verses and change words.
And they based this on a newly-discovered text
from a desert monastery and another text
hidden under lock and key by the Vatican.
It was not based on the Bibles handed down by faithful,
persecuted believers.
For 235 years the Westminster Confession of Faith
had stood.
But before August of 1881, they needed a change of doctrine,
before the English Revised Version hit the bookstores.
Get this: just four months before that,
in April of 1881, two Princeton professors
went to work to change
the Westminster Confession regarding preservation.
These two:
Principal of Princeton Seminary, Archibald Alexander Hodge
and professor of Theology Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
(say that 3 times real fast).
They modified the doctrine of inspiration
and preservation!
Listen to this: "We do not assert
that the common text, but only that
the original autographic text WAS [past tense] inspired."
Instead of openly rejecting the statement of faith,
they changed the statement of faith!
So when, four months later, Westcott and Hort's
gutted New Testament hit the shelves,
they could feel theologically justified
in rejecting the King James Bible.
Now in churches all over the world, people think that OAO,
Original Autographs Only, is the original doctrine!
Once again: Providential Preservation,
371 years old.
Original Autographs Only, just 136 years old,
It's a doctrine no older
than the English Revised Version itself.
It's no coincidence.
It's perfect timing.
Original Autographs Only was a doctrine made up
to support Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf and Tregelles,
and the brand new Bible, based on
the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus.
That's where the modern doctrine came from.
That's where the modern Bibles came from.
We base our faith on a promise, by God
They base their faith on a doubt.
We trust God's ability to keep His promises.
They doubt God and trust text critic men
to tell them which texts they can believe --or not.
It's called the Christian faith -- not the Christian doubt.
We are willing to place 100% faith in God's book.
They are unwilling to place 100% faith in anything.
Chicken or the egg?
Providential Preservation or Original Autographs Only?
Which came first?
For Bible believers, the chicken came first.
And historically, Providential Preservation,
and King James Only, came first.
Original Autographs Only isn't a statement of faith at all.
It's a statement of doubt.
Take your pick!
Trust God and get His Book,
Or trust your professors and get -- basically nothing, but doubt.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.