Attacking the Church

I’m in an on-going debate with a friend on the virtues of conservative versus liberal ideas. So he brought to my attention the efforts to produce a “conservative” Bible.

Those advocating a “conservative” Bible probably do not realize the harm they are doing to the cause of Christ. People who scoff at the Bible being God’s Word would like to make fringe issues like this a big controversy and offer it as proof that the Bible depends on personal bias so it can not be trusted.

This issue is related to those advocating the King James Bible as the only legitimate translation in the English language. I’ve investigated this myself and found it to be much ado about nothing. Thinking people can compare the KJV with other translations like the NIV and see that the meanings of the different translations are effectively identical. The same thing can be said in many different ways.

I believe that those insisting on KJV-only are mostly sincere believers in Christ but are being used as tools by the devil to divide the church over a disputable matter as Paul warned us about in Romans 14:1. That is why we have so many Christian denominations; Christians generally agree on the fundamental issues regarding how people have eternal life, who Jesus is, His virgin birth and resurrection to name the most important.

Satan and his minions have attacked Christ’s followers getting us to divide over relatively minor issues to reduce our effectiveness in the world. While Satan’s activities will result in his taking many people to hell with him, we are encouraged to remember that he can not thwart God’s plan; Jesus said, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18, NKJ).