Of the 217 Modern English Bible translations and counting, does once stand out as ‘the’ word of God? Most modern scholars do not believe we have God’s word in our possession today. They desperately seek original autographs in caves and caverns of the desert, much like Indiana Jones. Yet God promised to ‘show His word to Jacob’ (Ps 147:19). Few realize James is the English equivalent of the Hebrew, ‘Jacob’ and this moniker offers a clue, as to which Bible is the embodiment of God’s Word. In this broadcast, Carl shares biblical numerology which confirms the King James Bible as final authority, by its proliferation of the number 7 and its synchronistic occurrence throughout scripture. Join Carl now…
Here is a complete transcript of the broadcast (below)…
Friend, can a God who inspired His Word preserve it also? The answer is yes, of course. His Word has been preserved throughout the generations, including ours. The preservation of God’s Word is a very promise in His Word. Psalm 12:6-7 says, “the words of the Lord are pure words, As silver tried in a furnace of earth, Purified seven times. You shall keep them, O Lord, You shall preserve them from this generation forever. What does preservation mean? Its definition is the act or process of preserving or keeping safe, the state of being preserved or kept from destruction or decay. That, my friend, is a promise from His Word, that He would preserve it for all generations.
Now, I don’t have time to get into the full route of God’s Word starting on top of Mount Sinai, all the way into the preservation that is the King James Bible. This, friend, will have to be dealt in another podcast. Indeed, there are other podcasts out there that I’ve already created on the history of the King James Bible. Check them out at your leisure. But God uses the number seven, friend. There is a fantastic book I recommend by Brandon Peterson. It’s called ‘Sealed by the King.’ And in this book, he has shown how God has preserved His Word in the King James Bible, and the number seven is the numerical marker that shows His perfection through time. Friend, there are seven main languages the Bible has gone through: Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Old Latin, German, and English. And in Psalm 12, it describes of a purification process that would occur seven times. And this was manifested in the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, the Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops Bible, and finally the King James Bible, the paragon of all translations.
Because it was compiled by translators who had acumen far above modern scholars, some of these men could speak up to 10, possibly 15 languages. And they were spread throughout Oxford, the Cambridge School, and Westminster in three different sections. It took them, drum roll, seven years to compile this Bible. Seven purifications through the process of collation in the seventh translation and final translation of God’s Word. In 1604, at the Hampton Court Conference, John Reynolds, who was the president of Corpus Christi College, recommended a new translation of the Bible. In fact, without John Reynolds, it is unlikely that the King James Bible would exist. John was the seventh president of Corpus Christi College. After John Clayman, Robert Morwent, William Chedsey, William Butcher, Thomas Greenway, William Cole, and finally John Reynolds, God was using the number seven to prove that this Bible was his choice. For example, in Christ is mentioned 77 times in the King James Bible. Jesus is the 76th generation from Adam, the son of God, so he is the 77th in the lineage. God uses the number seven as a marker of perfection and it is a number of completeness in his sight. Another interesting take is the blood is mentioned 447 times in the KJV, while the word sin is found 447 times in the KJV also. Friend, there is a measure of blood for every sin. It is precise. However, in the modern versions, you will see an imbalance of more sin and less blood.
And these are some of the takeaways I am mentioning from this book, Sealed by the King by Brandon Peterson. So, God has inspired his word. 2nd Timothy 3 verses 16 through 17 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine, for a proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” God esteems his word. In Psalm 138 verse two, it says “He has magnified his word above his name.” And we know the word of God is not subject to any private interpretation. 2nd Peter 1:20-21 validates that the scripture must interpret the scripture. When I’m studying the word of God, I have a book called, ‘The Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge,’ in that it is an exhaustive concordance that cross references every verse in scripture, whereby you can use the Bible itself to interpret itself. Through many cross references, God is going to explain every verse of the Bible. Commentaries have value. Lexicons have value. Leprechauns have no value.
However, the word of God must interpret itself. This is public interpretation as opposed to private interpretation. But in Psalm 12 verse six through seven, the words of the Lord are pure. They have been preserved. They have been purified. And through the process of collation, which is looking through the 6,006 manuscripts of the Byzantine text, of the majority text, also known as the Textus Receptus, the extant manuscripts, the ones that we have in our possession, that came from the Antiochian school, as opposed to the Alexandrian Catechetical school, this is the true lineage of preservation. And here’s the irony, friend. Today, Bible scholars in the majority of seminaries and Bible schools in this nation and around the world will say, one day we will find the word of God, because we currently don’t have it in our possession. Unless we have the original autographs, then we don’t have the word. Friend, this is complete and utter nonsense. God has preserved his word through thousands of manuscripts. A copy is scripture, and I will prove that in the word of God shortly.
We don’t need the original autographs. Jesus never saw an original autograph. Paul, Peter, Jesus, Timothy, Apollos, whoever, they read from copies of copies under the jurisdiction of the Levitical priest who took much care and attention to ensure that every word was accurately copied. Copies are scripture. Luke 4:17, “And there was delivered unto him, Jesus, the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it is written.” And in verse 21, it says, “And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears, reading from the scroll in front of him.” Jesus never had access to the original autographs because of the faithful preservation of the word through the Levitical priests and the sanctioning of the word through the high priest and copies shared with the king at the time, the word of God was preserved in proliferation. Now think about it.
The average manuscript made of papyrus, which actually comes from Egypt originally, the papyri, which is a plant that they would dry and then make into parchment. This lifespan would be about 200 years if it was very much looked after 300 years tops. So, Jesus is not going to have access to the mosaic scrolls that were handed down. They would only last 200 or 300 years. So no one is going to be in possession of these autographs, period. And in 2024, these would have disintegrated for sure.
Now, here’s where it gets dicey. In Deuteronomy 4:2, Proverbs 30:5-6, and the book of Revelation chapter 22, there is a stern warning that we are not to add or take away from God’s word. There is one God and there is one word. There cannot be 217 versions and climbing of God’s word. Many of these versions have removed vast quantities of words from the original Bible. And this impacts doctrine. Doctrine is greatly impacted by these modern versions that, friend, I have read from many times. I’m not saying I’m an exclusionist from the get-go. This is information that has been revealed to me through serious study, that the King James Bible is the word of God. And this is not King James-only-ism cultism. If you have done your own research and taken the time, you will realize that the modern versions only stem from two sources. Vaticanus, which was found in the Vatican in 1481, and the controversial Sinaiticus, which was found by Tischendorf in a waste paper basket. So, all true texts, the Byzantine texts, the Textus Receptus, etc., come from the majority of manuscripts, now totaling 6,006 manuscripts. All modern versions since 1881 stem from, drumroll, two manuscripts. Think about that.
Modern scholars will not acknowledge the majority text and they go into a pursuit, like Indiana Jones, trying to find fragments of original autographs that will justify, one day, we will attain God’s word. But they are ignoring the promise of preservation. God has preserved his word and we have access to it through every generation, including ours. Why does the New King James Version have the triquetra symbol on it? This is a witch’s symbol. There are books out there that have this symbol on it and they are literally applications of witchcraft. You can look them up online. Just put a cross on there. Why put an occultist symbol on a Bible? And not to mention the perversions of the modern versions removing key verses, 16 from the New Testament alone, in most Bibles.
Then we have in the NIV a removal of 60,000 words in comparison to the standard, which would be the KJV. And there were warnings at the time, of course, in 1881, when Westcott and Hort, who were papists, they were Romish, they loved the Catholic Church, they believed in the deity of Mary, they would dress up in women’s clothing, they corresponded to each other in letters, which you can read, and clearly these men were not saved at all. Albeit, these men were perverting the pure words of God. And ever since, these two minority manuscripts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, have been used as the source for all modern versions. And you can see that, because, friend, there’s a removal of English words, thousands upon thousands, there’s a removal of key verses, which have power in the New Testament. We are in the mess we’re in in Christianity, because we have read from texts that are not the true text. In Deuteronomy 31, verses 24 through 36, the Levites were commissioned to handle God’s Word.
They were to ensure that every generation had access to it, but the king also had a copy. In Deuteronomy 17:18-20, the king friend has the power to implement a copy of God’s Word. Why? Because in Ecclesiastes 8.4, it says, “where the word of a king is, there is power, and who may say unto him, what do you do? The words of a king have power.” That is why God used King James to bring in the seventh and final purification of the English Bible. And is it a coincidence that there was an attempt on his life on November the 5th, years prior? If that had been carried through and parliament was destroyed in a gunpowder plot, which is certainly famous to the Brits, then God’s Word may not be in existence today. This was a Jesuit plot. We’re going to get into that in other broadcasts. What’s even more astonishing is in 2nd Corinthians 2:17, it says, “for we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God, but as of sincerity, but as of God in the sight of God, speak we in Christ.” People were corrupting the word of God, even in Paul’s day.
2nd Corinthians 4:2 says, “but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” There, friend, there is a warning that we can handle the word of God deceitfully and not rightly dividing it. This concept of studying to show yourself approved and rightly dividing the word of God comes from 2nd Timothy 2:15. But if I read that in the NIV, it says, “do your best to present yourself to God as one approved.”
Wait a minute, do your best? The NASB says, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed? This is an approval-based gospel. We’re talking about studying the word of God to rightly divide it, not to do our best, or to present ourselves to God as one approved in the ESV, for example. We are supposed to study God’s word, and as we study it through reading verses that are connected to each other by allowing scripture to interpret scripture, we will be on the right side of the division.
We will be rightly dividing God’s word. If you’re interested in this topic, there are several podcasts that you need to check out. One of them is, Are All Bibles the Same? Another one is, The History of the King James Bible. I also have an article entitled, Which Bible Should I Read? Check them out in your own time, friend. But if you’ve never heard this before and you have an NIV or an NASB and you’re thinking, this is God’s word, I want you to do your own research. Don’t take my word for it, okay? There’s a whole bunch of great books out there that will explain this in detail. We have to know that God has preserved his word. We have to believe that. We have to know so that we can say, thus saith the Lord, not thus saith we think, maybe this is the word of God.
And through the multitude of modern versions, eventually we’re going to get to another version of collation that’s going to bring the perfect word together. No, the perfect word was established in 1611. It was then modernized twice. Once was the Cambridge edition of 1762, edited by Thomas Paris. There was another modernization in 1769, which is known as the Oxford edition by Dr. Benjamin Blaney. But this was a modernization, grammar and spelling for the modern man. This is not a change in the underlying text. Jack McElroy* puts it this way, quote, “spelling standardization is responsible for almost all of the tens of thousands of changes in editions of the King James Bibles. Standardized spelling doesn’t revise the text any more than spellcheck revises a term paper. Just because a word is spelled differently in our modern King James Bibles in comparison to the 1611 edition, this does not represent a revision.”
The King James Bible you have in your possession, whether the Cambridge or Oxford edition, is representative of the 1611 and it is being updated for the modern reader. We don’t need a new King James, which consequently removes thousands of words again from the original text and then refuses to use the word Lord as often as the original authorized version and so on and so forth. These modern versions always take liberty and license to change key verses and remove words every time that they print a new version. The bottom line is this, friend. God is going to disseminate his word through offices that he has implemented, whether priest, prophet, or king.
In the case of King James, he was the king chosen to authorize the version that would be God’s seventh revision and perfection of his word. We have made modern day scholarship custodians of God’s word and that was never the case. We Christians are the custodians of God’s word, not the modern scholars. God does not esteem modern scholars as we do and he holds us accountable to himself in the King James Bible.
*Correction: I quote ‘James McElroy’ in the podcast. His correct name is Jack McElroy (not James).
Bibliography:
Brandon Peterson, Sealed by the King (Self Published, 2024)
Samuel Gipp, Gipp’s Understandable history of the King James Bible (DayStar Publishing; 2nd edition (January 1, 2000)
Floyd Jones, Which version is the Bible? (GEM PUBLISHING (September 23, 2004)
Jack McElroy, Which Bible would Jesus use? (McElroy Publishing; First Edition (April 2, 2020)
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