Would The Bible in Any Language Smell as Sweet?

Among the debates that arise over the issue of the preservation of the Bible, especially concerning whether that preservation is to be found within the pages of the King James Version, has to do with other languages. The argument would sound something like this, "Doesn't the person whose first language is Portuguese[1] have the right to have the Bible in his native language?"

The argument is not about rights, it is about:

• Purity
• Accuracy and
• Authority

I do not deny any man of any nation the right to have a Bible in his own tongue. I would simply suggest that no Bible, outside of the King James Bible, can demonstrate the same strengths in the areas of purity, accuracy and authority. 

In which other language has the Bible gone through such a process of refinement as has the King James? Remember that, previous to the King James Version, there had been a number of translations of the Bible into the English language. Each of those works was studied and compared and considered, along with translations in other languages in the work of the King James Bible.  Though there are Bibles in other languages, none of them have gone through the series of refinements that the King James did. (That refinement ended with the King James as all English translations following it rely on a different - and I contend, corrupt - manuscript.)

I would challenge the Bible students of the world to find a set of scholars reaching the credentials of those translators of the King James Version, whose working conditions would fairly represent those of the King James Translators. If we believe the Bible at all we must recognize that our world is not improving but becoming worse with each passing year. The influences tending to corrupt modern scholarship are such that it is difficult to conceive of any group of men with sufficient skills, who are not in some way corrupted by modernism and liberal ideas toward the Bible. Scholarship and humility these days do not go hand in hand. 

Regarding authority of the Scripture; in what other language is there even a claim toward having a perfectly preserved Bible? Every case I am aware of those who use their native Bible realize it to be flawed. Correcting their Bibles as they preach is as common as a modern American preacher using a "Good News for Modern Man." He does not pretend to believe his Bible is without error. 

Let's not beat around the bush on this thing. Either our King James Bible is the without error or it is not. If it is without error, if it is the perfectly preserved Scripture as I believe it to be, then any person from any land speaking any language would be spiritually bettered to learn to read and understand the King James Version of the Bible. 

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

---

[1] Plug in any nationality and language you like

Are Discouragement and Depression Sins?

I do not believe they are for the following reasons:

1. The Bible nowhere calls it a sin

2. Many of the great characters of the Bible experienced both discouragement and depression

3. Neither David, Paul, Jeremiah nor others were rebuked for being discouraged

4. Discouragement and depression could be the weakness in which God is made strong in us

5. Charles Spurgeon, himself a well known sufferer if depression, once said, "Discouragement is the lot of the preacher. God will not share his glory."[1]

Though discouragement might lead a person to behave in a sinful way it is not necessarily so and it is not the discouragement that is the actual cause of the sin. As with any testing, a person has the ability to use that test to draw them closer to God or push them further away from God. Depression may be the tool used if the Lord to greatly use a man.[2]

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

---

[1] I believe this quote may be found in Spurgeon's "Lectures to My Students." I would urge any preacher to read his "Lectures" in its entirety.

[2] Many of David's Psalms are written under the cloud of depression. How much poorer would we be without those great passages of pathos and tears!

We Must Not Persuade the Will

I have recently been taking an introduction to philosophy class offered online by MIT[1]. The first unit of the class looks at the arguments for and against the existence of God, and addresses what is known as Pascal's Wager. Pascal reasoned that it was in the best interest of men to believe in God because if you believe and God is real, you go to eternal heaven, but if you don't believe and God is real you go to hell. If God is real you have everything to gain and nothing to lose in believing and nothing to gain and everything to lose by not believing. If God is not real, you have lost nothing for believing. 

Now, I see many flaws in Pascal's wager. But the argument the course eventually presents is that a man cannot will to believe. The instructor says that we cannot turn believing on and off like a light switch. I find this remark intriguing on several levels:

It answers to the Bible truth that no man comes to God except that he is drawn by the Holy Spirit.

Faith is not a life choice. It is a calling of God. It is not revealed by flesh and blood but by the Heavenly Father

It also speaks to the work of the soul winner.

The word faith carries with it the idea of persuasion. A person believes in Christ because he is persuaded by another who already believes in Christ. Paul "so spake" that a great number came to believe or to be persuaded. But that persuasion must be something different than the transmission of facts and evidences; what the philosophers call epistemology. It is from the heart to the heart. Rather, the Bible teaches, it is from faith to faith. That is why the Bible is not a book of mere facts and proof. A man who looked at epistemological evidence and became persuaded would only be persuaded academically. God's target is not the head. It is the seat of faith for which He shoots, what the Bible refers to as our bowels. 

The soul winner must never allow himself to be trapped into a discussion targeted at the head. Even if he wins the persuasion he will have accomplished nothing. It's why philosophers love to analyze the argument of Pascal's wager but never really consider whether God is it not. The soul winner must learn to target his whole conversation on his faith and transfer that to the faith of another. 

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

---

[1] https://www.edx.org/course/mit/24-00x/introduction-philosophy-god/888

Successful People Cannot Be Accessible People

That was the lesson of a event blog from Michael Hyatt, the successful Ex-CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing[1][2]  and now successful author, blogger and Consultant to the masses of Christian writing on the internet. The plain fact is that the more successful a person becomes the fewer people that person can make himself available to. 

And it makes sense. Suppose a man's position gives him ten persons who look directly up to him. He is able to communicate to ten very personally very often. He can know them closely, know their families, know where they live. They can know the same about him. But as numbers grow he can only retain so much information. Sooner or later it is impossible for him to remember every persons address and he eventually cannot have close conversations with every person. 

One pastor I know visited every family in his church after every time he went out door knocking. It was his way to make them a part of his efforts, to hold himself accountable and to encourage the members to do door knocking evangelism themselves. He now has a congregation of many hundreds. He couldn't possibly report to each of them each time he is finished with door knocking. 

Another pastor tells how when his church was under one hundred, he knew every person by name and knew where every one of them lived. When the church reached five hundred he still knew them all by name but not where they all lived. When the church reached one thousand he knew recognized their faces and could remember many of their names. When the congregation reached five thousand he would see someone look at him in the store and wonder if he was a member of his church. 

When I worked as the Executive Vice President of Heartland Baptist Bible College a friend of mine called Pastor Sam Davison's office. He told Pastor Davison's secretary that he was a friend of mine. According to my friend, the secretary responded, "If you were Brother McKenzie, you could speak to Pastor Davison right now. But since you aren't you can't." She wasn't being rude. The fact is that if every person who ever wanted to speak to Pastor Davison[3] got to do so whenever they wanted he could never have gotten time to study and quietly walk with the Lord. 

But here is the problem. Whoever decided that a pastor should ever be so successful he can't be accessible? Certain men have developed ministries that are so large they could not possibly pastor the whole so they hire under shepherds to work for them. These under shepherds essentially pastor these sub-flocks within the larger church but they are not answerable to the Lord; they answer to the senior pastor. The larger ministry is a micro denomination even if the church claims to be independent. The members of the church who are not directly under the senior pastor are placed in the distinct disadvantage of not having a shepherd who answers to Jesus. 

A pastor ought to be accessible. The only way for that to happen is for us to stop trying to build empires and focus on planting local churches whose target is to please The Lord and minister to His children. 

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

---

[1] http://michaelhyatt.com/about

[2] http://michaelhyatt.com/leadership-success-accessibility.html

[3] To be fair I would go on record as observing that Pastor Davison worked very hard at being accessible.

Thoughts on Paul Chappell's message Eight Calls to America's Pastors

Paul Chappell emailed me the link for this message, preached at his annual Spiritual Leadership Conference in June of 2013. It came along with the subject heading "I missed you at the conference" and an invitation to download his e-book "America Tomorrow." I downloaded the book (but have not yet looked at it) and listened to about 3/4 of the message which was delivered in what he called a "session."

The message begins early on with a sound bite from the most recent Democratic National Convention where it was voted (but was more like railroaded down the throats of the participants) that there would be no mention of God at the Convention. Chappell uses that as an appeal to his patriotic Baptist delegates that America is in trouble spiritually and suggests that this message is intended to give us direction as to how to help America in her time of trouble.

Some observations I have concerning the message:

It was certainly not expositional. 

Men like Brother Chappell insist that expositional preaching is the only kind of Scriptural preaching but they often break away from it when they want to say what they want to say. 

He pushed the concept of prayer and revival

This was first and foremost and gave the rest of his message a sense of legitimacy because he did the spiritual thing first. However I have come to question whether it is Baptist to believe in revivals (in the sense that most of us think of them) at all. The revivals all cited in the past were clearly without Baptist involvement and were promoted, reported and participated in by all but Baptists. Even quasi-Baptist Charles Spurgeon did not participate in the revival work of D.L. Moody and clearly had the opportunity to so. 

Chappell mentions a group of Baptists in the later part of the 1800s as the catalyst of the revival that happened afterwards. I would mention that by then Baptists, both North and South, were so influenced by Protestantism as to hardly count as a Baptist movement. 

Chappell's comments in this point are nothing short of Protestantism and Universalism. His appeals for men to stop criticizing and to start getting along and sets himself up so that those points he will bring following can hardly be challenged without the challenger being guilty of quenching revival. 

Chappell proceeds from there to give a number of points I commend:

• We must preach clearly biblical messages
• We must become men of integrity and report crimes rather than cover them up

He then makes the claim that, though the size of a church does not matter, the only thing that will save America is soul winning. 

A number of things come to mind from this segment of the message

First when did saving America (or any country) become the priority of the preacher? 

It certainly was not the priority of Jesus. It was not the priority of any of the Apostles. It does not appear to be the priority of any Baptist prior to the American Revolution, which was manifestly Protestant. 

Second this is a complete reversal of his first claim that America needs revival. 

Chappell wisely begins by claiming dependence upon the Lord but eventually ends up where religion always does; with man being the ultimate savior. 

Thirdly Chappell becomes what he had insisted would prevent revival

He embarks on a number of snide, rude and obnoxious remarks against those whose ministries do not reach the number of souls his does. He has fat jokes, jokes about proselytizing and etc. While he does not announce the number of people in attendance at his church he is sure to tell us how many people from his church go door knocking and how many doors were knocked the previous year, using that to make his mocking of others seem legitimate. 

He also claims that, though they do not publish the attendance of his church, the vast majority of people who attend were saved through his church ministry. I would like to see hard statistics on that. 

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

Thoughts On the Work of Pastor James Altar

A couple of observations concerning Brother Altar's material here shared:

Brother Altar has done much to help the strengthen vision for Baptist history in our ranks. He is a passionate preacher, which is a blessing. I appreciate his zeal to tell Baptists not to quote from Protestant preachers but to do their study and research among Baptists. However,

He claims the book of Acts is transitional. 

While that view feels like it solves a few problems some have with Acts, i.e. provides a short answer to Pentecostalism, it also diminishes the authority of the book for New Testament Baptists today. There is no biblical authority for assigning it a transitional place in Scripture. It is rather a leap Altar asks his audience to accept without any real proof it is a Biblically credible. I instead see the Book of Acts as what it says it is; the Acts of the Apostles. I view it as a representation of what all of the Apostles were doing at the same time Paul was evangelizing in the Middle East and shores of Greece and Italy. 

Brother Altar claims that the Gospels are "Jewish" 

This also denigrates the authority of Scriptures for New Testament Baptists today. I would not deny that there are certain Gospel passages that find their primary application among the Jews. But I would deny that Matthew 16:18, Matthew 28:18-20 and all of the Gospel references to John the Baptist are Jewish. These passages clearly relate to the church that Jesus founded in the Gospels with members all baptized by a Baptist preacher. 

I certainly do not mean to be argumentative but I do believe we at least need to hear from differing views that we may learn from them. 

(This is in response to the following e-mail sent to the GIBF forum. I have not sent this response but wrote it as an exercise.)

On Jun 19, 2013, at 8:11 AM, David Warner <dwarner@ctcn.net> wrote:

"Brethren,

Some may have already gotten these studies on Baptist History but it seems not everyone did. The link below allows you to download the studies AND the PowerPoints on Baptist History as well as two that accompany the Word Doc studies.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qwemie1q33mclpv/lwHl0vfk3M

The two main studies are the work of James Altar, Sidney, OH who is also the author of Ancient Baptist History.  If you are not familiar with his website, you should be.  He has great material and does tremendous work on our Baptist Heritage.

http://www.ancientbaptist.org/Index.html)"

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

Baptism Before Membership

The practice of baptizing a person prior to membership into the local Baptist church is not a new thing. Jack Hyles practiced it in Hammond, Indiana. A considerable number of those who were followers of Hyles practiced the same. However it is now becoming an increasingly popular practice among those who are of a background different than those trained under and followers of Hyles. This has come about because of the failure to make the clear distinctions between those who leaned more heavily on the Protestant "fundamentals" than the Baptist distinctives. 

I do not question that many of these men are good and well intentioned men. But they are more Protestant in their doctrine and ministerial philosophy. On the West Coast we see their model of ministry being embraced almost without question and almost universally among Independent Baptists. Those Baptists are assuming more Protestant like doctrines and philosophies of ministry. 

Among those Protestant like doctrines would be the baptizing of individuals prior to membership and not as a door into membership. It is:

I. Blatantly Unscriptural

1 Corinthians 12:12-13 KJV

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.

For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

  

We read these verses and recognize immediately that baptism is the door into church membership. A person is baptized into the membership of that body.

Acts 2:41 KJV

Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

   

These three thousand souls were saved, baptized and added to the church the same day. Baptism came after salvation and was both the prerequisite to and means of entrance into that church.

II. Manifestly Protestant

The only argument which can be made against 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 teaching baptism as the door into church membership is to deny:

• That the baptism here spoken of is water baptism (and assign to it the Protestant idea of Spirit baptism)
• That the body here spoken of is a local church (and assign to it the Protestant idea of an invisible universal church)

III. Inherently "Cain - onic" 

Just as Cain was happy to serve God as long as he could do so in the way that was most practical for his circumstance and self elevating in its nature, so is placing baptism before membership.

It is pragmatic in that it is a position that allows for the most results with the least resistance.

It is self elevating in that it allows for faster growth and higher "yield" in the church - making a man appear to have accomplished more than others (who were more conscientious with the Word of God).

Marvin McKenzie

In the field