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Amazing Grace Baptist Church in North Carolina are planning an alternative to Halloween. Of course lots of churches have been doing that for years, but this one is a bit different. Here’s the announcement from the church’s website:
Halloween Book Burning Has NOT Been Cancelled!
Burning Perversions of God’s Word
October 31, 2009 – 7:00 PM – Til
This event is not open to the public. Only our members and those by special invitation from the pastor are welcome. All others are tresspassing, this includes the media.
Great Preaching and Singing
We are burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, ESV, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.
We will also be burning Satan’s music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contemporary Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.
We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson , Charles Swindoll , John Piper , Chuck Colson , Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart , Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White , T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers , Brian McLaren , James White, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus , Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, Will Graham , and many more.
We are not burning Bibles written in other languages that are based on the TR. We are not burning the Tyndale, Geneva or other translations that are based on the TR.
We will be serving fried chicken, and all the sides.
If you have any books or music to donate, please call us for pick-up. If you like you can drop them off at our church door anytime. Thanks. 828-648-0213
Shame no one else is invited, I’m sure the fried chicken will be great! However, I wouldn’t bank on finding much evidence of God’s amazing grace among those who gather for the bonfire. Let’s pray that some of them will read and understand their King James Versions at least, and realise that their bonfire is giving off much more heat than light to a world that is dying for lack of the knowledge of God. Sadly they are merely bringing ridicule to God’s name and fuelling the fires of unnecessary divisions among God’s people.
Eddie Arthur points us to a good post by Pastor Matthew that unfortunately these people will probably never read.
 Mark L Strauss In trying to explain to my nephew (on Facebook) why I have significant reservations about the English Standard Version, I came across this interesting survey by Mark Strauss of the kinds of problems produced by the ESV’s overly-literal translation philosophy.
Here’s part of Strauss’s conclusion:
There is an unfortunate tendency among biblical scholars—who live in the world of Hebrew and Greek—to think they are getting it “right” if they mimic the form of the original languages. The unfortunate result is a tendency to create “half-idioms” (half-English/half-Greek), transferring a few words of the original, but missing its meaning in standard English. This is what the ESV does when people speak “with a double heart” (Ps. 12:2), have “news in their mouths” (2Sam. 18:25), “go in and out among them” (Acts 1:21; 9:28), or “fill up the measure of their fathers” (Matt. 23:32). These are half-idioms—Biblish rather than English.
As noted earlier, idioms work as a whole rather than through their individual parts. In translating the English idiom, “He’s really in a pickle,” it would be a mistake to preserve cucumbers in the translation. It is not the component parts but the statement as a whole that communicates its meaning.
Some critics have claimed that the only way to protect the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture is to translate literally. This, of course, is linguistic nonsense. The translation that best preserves the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture is one that clearly and accurately communicates the meaning of the text as the original author intended it to be heard. The Greek idioms that Paul or John or Luke used did not sound awkward, obscure or stilted to their original readers. They sounded like normal idiomatic Greek. Verbal and plenary inspiration is most respected when we allow the original meaning of the text to come through.
Asking the simple question, “Would anyone speaking English actually say this?” is a good test for standard English. This simple question could transform our Bible versions and bring them in line with the finest translation practices used around the world. We must remember that the ultimate goal of Bible translation is not to give our students a “crib” on their weekly Greek and Hebrew assignments, but to clearly and accurately communicate the meaning of God’s inspired and authoritative Word.
 My father-in-law usually reads from the New King James Version and we have had a few discussions over the years about this. Largely I think it is because he grew up using the King James Version rather than a strong commitment to the Received Text. These days I usually avoid returning to the issue because he’s a a godly man, a great father-in-law and he often cuts my grass for me, but I think I’m going to have to pick up the discussion again this week.
Yesterday my father-in-law was leading our church service and gave a children’s talk in which he referred to the angel stirring the waters of the pool of Bethesda. He didn’t read it out but here’s the text from the NKJV:
3 In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. 4 For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. (John 5:3-4)
Realising I hadn’t heard this story since I was small and questioning whether I believed in angels healing people in that sort of way I tried to find the reference by searching the Bibles on my phone for verses with ‘angel’ and ‘water’ in them, but the search came up blank. Checking further in the excellent net.bible.org site, I see that most modern Bible versions omit the verse because it only appears in late manuscripts and often with an asterisk indicating the scribe’s doubts to its originality. The NKJV does have a footnote:
John 5:4 NU-Text omits waiting for the moving of the water at the end of verse 3, and all of verse 4.
But I’m afraid that just isn’t good enough. My guess is that my father-in-law didn’t notice this footnote, but would be very concerned to be teaching children something which has most likely been added to the scripture, so I’m going to stir the waters again. I hope he’ll still cut my grass sometimes!
Let me clarify that I am not suggesting that this throws into question the authority of Scripture. I will defend biblical inspiration of the Scriptures as originally given but am concerned that translations are not always in line with what God inspired. Textual variations are mostly small, but I recommend you compare a few reliable versions and if possible consider the original language text if you really want to study the Bible well.
My friend Eddie Arthur recently pointed out a helpful response to those who advocate the exclusive use of the original 1611 King James Version, which also deals with the question of the Received Text. I would also want to follow Eddie’s lead in pointing out that while many people spend hours arguing about the merits or problems of our many English versions 200 million people in our world don’t have a single word of Scripture in their language. That’s why Eddie is director of Wycliffe Bible Translators in the UK.
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