Renewed Testament

Since the Bible was given to us, we who believe in Jesus
Christ recognise that it is literally the Word of God to us, to feed us and
carry us through until the day we go to be with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Satan hates the Word of God and therefore, using subtle
means, he seeks to destroy it and has been doing this for many years. A reading
of a book entitled Shrek, King of Terror, written by John D. Christian,
in particular pages 115 and 116, tells us the following, and I quote: "By the
time these Protestant scribal devils had finished with their New
International Version, according to Christian writer, Terry Watkins, they
had removed 64,576 original words from the text of the King James Bible.

This would be equivalent of ripping out 30 of the smaller
books in the total of 66 books in the King James Bible. To top off their brazen
apostasy, they even had the unconscionable audacity to print Manhattan
skyscrapers and towers on the cover..."

The strange thing is that there are many, millions of
Christians around the world who are still reading the NIV in spite of the fact
that they understand somebody has fiddled with it from the original text. It has
become a popular game to laugh at people who read the King James Bible, as they
use the old joke, "If it's good enough for the apostle, Paul, it's good
enough for us".

Now we find that there is another attempt to destroy the Word
of God, in a Renewed Testament. The King James version of the New Testament has
been updated. There are no references to God the Father and accusations that
Jews killed Christ have been dropped. A Professor at Sydney University's
School of Religious Studies, Professor Garry Trompf and Dr Keith Suter,
president of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University, got
together and wrote on these changes. We quote in part:

"The radical readjustments in the latest translation were
apparently forced upon the editors by the pressure of a gender debate, an
ongoing religious dialogue....

Clearly, the translators of this recent work are concerned
about the faith right now....

In some cases it is obvious that gender language should be
altered; the Greek anthropos includes both male and female in its meaning and
need not be rendered as 'man'. But perhaps it is not necessary to have the
Lord's Prayer begun 'Father-Mother'....

Palestinian Christians tend not to read from the Old
Testament about the possession of the land by the Jews. It is too close to the
bone.

This problem is ongoing, but it is sharpest in connection
with the Jewish involvement in the death of Jesus....

Oxford University Press has produced a Bible which is so
politically correct, it could have been published by an anti-discrimination
board.

The new version has rewritten references that are monarchist
(God is no longer 'Lord'), sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, and embarrassing to
people with physical disabilities (such as blindness) and even left-handed
people (references to God's 'right-hand').

This is the sort of Bible that a conservative comedian would
produce to make fun of attempts to rewrite the Bible in a language more
appealing to our enlightened times.

All Bible translators have the difficulty of taking a text
written 2000 years ago and making it readable for the current era.

The problem is that the Bible was written at a time when
there was a class structure, women were second-class citizens, and many early
Christians were hostile to the Jews for not accepting Jesus as the messiah.

Jesus himself was very radical. For example, he gave equality
to women, which was then contrary to many Roman and Jewish rules.

Jesus would probably be appalled at some of the practices of
Christians in the past 2000 years, such as the discrimination against women.

But I fear that Oxford University Press has tried to do too
much too quickly. It is running well ahead of the mainstream opinion in the
church pews....

People have to be taken through changes slowly -– not have a
bundle of changes thrust upon them...."

Now much as we appreciate various world views being
expressed, we do point this out, that the Scripture is very clear -– that
people should be very careful not to add or take away from what God has spoken.
We quote from Revelation 22:19: "And if many shall take away from the words of
the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,
and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this
book."

Over my many years of teaching the Word of God, I have been
terrified, lest I fall into that particular sin of adding to, or subtracting
from what God has said.

I well remember a man criticising a preacher called Billy
Sunday many years ago in a university situation, and tried to tell Billy Sunday
what God was really trying to say.

Billy Sunday replied with the following put-down: "Maybe
God should have waited for you to have been born and then called you in for
advice." God doesn't need our advice. He tells us clearly what He means
to say, and says exactly what He wants us to know.

Without wishing to present a legal argument, we at this
office would warn against many of the modern translations which should be
checked out for their veracity and find out which text they have been translated
from, the devil's one or God's one.