The Biblical Text and the Reconstructive Task
June 1997
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When I was a student, I heard a lecture on the Bible by an ostensibly orthodox Biblical scholar which was very disappointing.
Larry Stout has directed attention to the colonial Puritans' preference for the Authorized (King James) Version rather than the Geneva Bible.
The latest book from the preeminent scholarly defender of the Received Greek text of Holy Scripture is actually a primer about and introduction to the question of why English-speaking Protestants should retain the old King James Version.
Ellsworth McIntyre just couldn't leave well enough alone. First, he founded six wildly successful (both religiously and financially) Christian day care schools (Chalcedon Report, December, 1996). Next, he started a Christian Reconstructionist denomination (Chalcedon Report, May, 1997).
But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers.
When faced with the dichotomy between the “victorious” Christian life I was promised, and the defeatist theology so prevalent in the early seventies, it was only “natural” for me to look back to those core values to make the final decision.
A prime element of that unique set of circumstances which Urban Nations seeks to exploit is the capacious freedom we enjoy to disseminate the Word of God. In no other nation is this liberty as large as it is in America. In no other city are as many nations represented as are present in New York.
As Dean Burgon (1883) pointed out, the history of the New Testament text is the history of a conflict between God and Satan. Soon after the New Testament books were written Satan corrupted their texts by means of heretics and misguided critics whom he had raised up.
Without question, the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible reigns supreme as the most extensively used and influential English translation of the Word of God that there has ever been. It was essentially the only English version in use for over two centuries, and, in the providence of God, the Authorized Version (hereafter, AV) has served as the standard English version for over 350 years.
What first alarmed me about "The Message" was the author's use of what sounded like New Age terminology: Life-Light, God-Colors, God-Expression, true selves, child-of-God selves, and other similar terms.
To assume that God cannot speak in the manner that the Bible claims that he spoke is to assume that the God of the Bible does not exist (specific atheism). It is to substitute another god for the Biblical God.
For one thousand years Christianity predominated in Northern Sudan. From the sixth century to the fifteenth century Christianity was the official religion of the three Sudanese king-doms of Nubia, Makuria (later Dotawo) and Alwa. For nine hundred years the Christians of Sudan successfully resisted the southward expansion of Islam.
"In the free market, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer." How often we read or hear such a statement! What it asserts is familiar. But is it true? Does the free market really leave the poor behind?
One of the great fallacies of rationalism is its failure to take the fall of man seriously. Man's original sin is to try to be his own god, his own source of law, morality, and determination (Gen. 3:5).
One of the happy experiences of 1996 was seeing again some of my school and neighborhood friends of the early 1930s. One of them was a still beautiful and gracious woman, perhaps three years my junior.
In our last article on church government we learned that try as one might: jump and scream, twist and shout Acts 15 does not even suggest, let alone justify, the normativity of abiding wider assemblies or regularly stated meetings.