The Inspiration of the Bible is a cardinal doctrine of Holy Scripture. It is all important as it sets forth the Bible as the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
Now the NIV deletes the very word "inspiration" from the foundational proof text quoted in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) as revealing this doctrine.
II Timothy 3:16 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God," proof text, chapter one WCF. The NIV deletes the word inspiration from the text altogether and substitutes "God breathed". The other reference to inspiration in the Bible is in Job 32:8 "The inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding". Again the word inspiration is jettisoned altogether by the NIV and the word "breath" substituted. This again leads to a diluting, to an undermining, to a corroding of a great cardinality, removing the word inspiration from the Bible.
Take another text quoted in the Confession of Faith as proof of the certainty of the truth of God's Word -- the inerrancy of Holy Scripture. Proverbs 22:19-21 "Have I not written unto thee excellent things" verse 20. "That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth" verse 21. Proof texts for chapter one WCF. The NIV changes "excellent things" into thirty sayings and the "certainty of the words of truth" diluted into "true and reliable sayings". This overall tendency of watering down is manifested across the pages of the NIV.
Those who use the Authorized Version are looked down upon by the apologists for the NIV as ignoramuses... Those who use the Authorized Version are looked down upon by the apologists for the NIV as ignoramuses, who do not understand the Hebrew and the Greek and therefore are in no position to judge. Unable to answer the arguments of the defenders of the Authorized Version, they turn to pouring scorn on their scholarship or lack of scholarship.
In reality their argument is blatantly false for they are really affirming that all who use the NIV have the scholarship to make the right judgment.
Let us get the matter right. The Bible is not the production of man but the product of God. It is the Word of God. It was not delivered unto the scholars -- Greek, Hebrew or otherwise, but to the saints. "The faith which was once delivered to the saints" Jude 3.
God has delivered His Book to the custody, not of the scholars, the universities, colleges or seats of learning, but only to His saints.
Can any ordinary saint know what is a proper version of God's Word? Can any ordinary saint who has no knowledge whatever of the original languages know what is a proper version of God's Word or which is absolutely reliable? The answer is "yes" or else Jude verse 3 is error. Jude verse 3 is not error but divinely revealed truth.
The attempt to bamboozle the ordinary saints of God with irrelevant controversy must be demonstrated. The ploy to take from the saints their divinely appointed role of custody of the Book and place it in the hands of scholars must be exposed for what it is, a device of the devil himself.
Thank God for the simplicity which is in Christ which devastates the duplicity which is in Satan.
But how can the saint know?
The answer is as plain as the midday sun -- The saint knows the Author of the Book and has received what no amount of learning can impart -- the divinely imparted gift of spiritual discernment.
"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Corinthians 2:14).
In knowing God the saint knows two things --
It follows therefore that the Word of God cannot lie or contradict itself. One, that God does not lie and two, He cannot contradict Himself. It follows therefore that the Word of God cannot lie or contradict itself. It will be divinely consistent, for it is the Holy Word of the Thrice Holy God. Two, that the briefer statements of truth in the Bible can only be rightly explained by those fuller statements of the same Divine Author in the same Book speaking with the same Authority and thus setting His seal that He is true. "Let God be true and every man a liar" (Romans 3:4).
In other words, the Bible has the witness in itself. In this sense, the saint needs no man to teach him for he hath an unction from the Holy One and knoweth all things.
"But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. But the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him" (I John 2:20 and 27).
Someone has rightly said about the Word of God:
"The Bible, the Divine Book, having the witness in itself, is also the most human of all books, and comes forth in the midst of the earth, saying, 'Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men; come unto me, know me, try me, prove me. I speak as to wise men - judge ye what I say. The Words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life; judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment; to the Law and to the Testimony, adding nought thereto, and taking nought therefrom."
"Try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world" (I John 4:1). God calls His people to "Try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world" (I John 4:1). The great test is the acknowledgement that the Son of God and God the Son is come in the flesh, i.e. that God has incarnated Himself in the flesh. Let us then test the NIV by these incontestable principles, the principles of consistency, confirmation and confession.
I choose but one text for this purpose. Let us open the Bible at that book which commences with the words, "The beginning of the Gospel" (Mark 1:1) Where more appropriate to start than at the beginning?
AV1611 NIV 1983 Notes in NIV
Mark 1:1-3 Mark 1:1-3
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.a a. Some manuscripts do not have the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way."b b. Malachi 3:1
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. A voice of one calling in the desert, "Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight the paths for him".c c. Isaiah 40:3
Note carefully the Authorized Version is perfectly consistent with itself throughout these three verses. Its statements are direct, simple and straightforward. It has nothing in the margin demonstrating that the text could or should be corrected or has an alternative to be considered.
On the other hand the NIV is quite inconsistent with itself... On the other hand the NIV is quite inconsistent with itself, incorrect in its statements, self-contradictory and on its showing, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a mass of contradictions and at the best a cunningly devised fable.
In the Authorized Version the remarkable and consistent statement of verse one is supported and confirmed by two proof texts of evidence, which appear at length, and are extracts from the Prophets.
"As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight" (Mark 1:2-3).
The heart of the first verse is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the highest and strictest sense. This is consistent with the fuller confirmatory scriptures elsewhere in the Word of God.
The gospel about Jesus Christ? In the NIV the verse is changed from "the gospel of Jesus Christ," to, "the gospel about Jesus Christ." This is a fundamental change and changes Mark's gospel from being Christ's gospel to just a gospel about Christ. The verse is then completely undermined by the note, "some manuscripts do not have the Son of God." This strikes at the heart of the statement "the Son of God" which is the heart of verse one. This note haemorrhages away the life-blood of this revealed truth. If the translators give no credence to this omission why then do they record it? By putting it in they show that they are following a cunningly devised fable.
The saint knows that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and with spiritual discernment, and not requiring any knowledge whatever of the Greek language, rejects the fable of the perversion and acclaims the fact of the true version.
"If any man do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (John 7:17).
The NIV goes on to show that the heart of verse one, now emasculated by the footnote supporting the complete omission of the words "the Son of God" is supported by one proof only. The proof of two distinct prophesies has been truncated into one violent compression and the majestic name of Isaiah hung as a sign over the falsehood.
The saint of God, without any understanding of either the Hebrew language or the Greek, knows that the Word of God has revealed in its immutable law that one witness is not sufficient but "at the mouth of two witnesses or at the mouth of thee witnesses shall the matter be established" (Deuteronomy 19:15). "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established" (II Corinthians 13:1).
Moreover, the NIV perpetuates the big lie that the quotations are from Isaiah the prophet even although in its additional notes it makes clear that one of them is from Malachi. Moreover, the NIV perpetuates the big lie that the quotations are from Isaiah the prophet even although in its additional notes it makes clear that one of them is from Malachi. So on its page it carries a direct falsehood.
The saint, with no knowledge of Hebrew or Greek, but knowing the Author of the Book, knows that "no lie is of the truth" (I John 2:21). He or she readily separates the precious from the vile, and not following cunningly devised fables, knows that the Authorized Version follows a Greek text most certainly pure when contrasted with that followed or appealed to by the NIV translators. The saint also knows that the texts followed by the NIV translators, however ancient they may be or claim to be, have been seriously and deliberately tampered with by the copyist and purposely changed so that the copyist must have been prompted by some motive in order to make such far-reaching changes in the text, and stands exposed for what he is when he jettisons "the Prophets" and blunders so conspicuously. Such a blatant lie inserted into God's Book of Truth is enough for any saint to recognise the counterfeit.
Knowing the attack wielded in the early centuries of Christianity against the essential deity and true, proper and impeccable humanity of our Lord, it can be rightfully concluded that, out of satanic hatred and hellish malice against the truth itself, the intention of the corrupter of God's Holy Word was striking at the central truth of the Word of Salvation and tacitly denying what he dared not openly exclude, that Jesus Christ was "come in the flesh". The saint of God rightly discerns here the "spirit of antichrist".
Surely it must seem strange that the translators of the NIV who profess so loudly their faith in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Word and who, we are informed, had reserves of learning and research, were not alerted against the corruptions of the truth brought into the early Church by the earliest heresies against which the apostles expressly warned.
These heresies, the New Testament expressly and frequently tells us, are the work of the enemy seeking to lead men away from the true faith of the Son of God "who loved us and gave Himself for us," the Righteous One for us the unrighteous ones, the Only One True Sacrifice for sins and who by that bloodshedding has brought us to God.
The fact that these NIV translators, out of loyalty to modern scholarship, followed the cunningly devised fables long made manifest in many of the Greek Texts falsely pronounced pure, in preference to the consistent text followed by the Authorized Version translators and not proved impure, demands that we in faithfulness condemn and denounce what they have done.
At the very entrance of their work they have been unable to avoid making our Lord Jesus Christ a stumblingblock and thereafter have turned aside in blindness to continue to follow cunningly devised fables and do to the Holy Word of God such things which grieve the Israel of God and make the uncircumcised Philistines rejoice.
This one plain example of contrasting the NIV with the Authorized Version is enough, and the inference follows that it is the duty of the saints of God to see to it that the Authorized Version must be preserved and maintained in preference to, and in rejection of, the NIV.
Be the first to react on this!
Ian Paisley (1926 - 2014)
Founder of the Free Presbyterian Movement with over 100 churches world-wide and bible colleges. This presbyterian renewal movement was started in light of compromise and apostasy in existing churches in Ireland, Scotland and England. These churches are clear biblical churches with a clear emphasis on preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His death for sinners.Ian Paisley also has been active in politics for many years and a leader of a political party. Leonard Ravenhill commented once that the Lord could have used paisley in a powerful way like Whitfield if he stayed away from politics. His preaching is expositional and biblical from a burdened heart to represent His Lord well.