We are here in 2 Peter chapter 1. In the United States most Baptist churches do not use the King James Bible and are not King James only, so it is a topic where you really have to study it out to know how to defend what you believe. I expected and planned to preach on the King James topic a lot when I moved here, but then I realised pretty much every Baptist church in the Philippines uses the King James Bible, so there is not that much of a necessity. But at the same time, when it comes to the core things we believe — we are a salvation by grace through faith, soul-winning, fundamental, King James only Baptist church — that is one of the things we attach to the type of church we are. We do want to know how to defend the things that we believe.

Point 1: The Originals Were Perfect

2 Peter 1:16: "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty." What Peter is describing is the fact that he did not just hear some fairy tale and believe it. He experienced things. He saw the mount of transfiguration. He was an eyewitness. The people that were writing the Bible were eyewitnesses. They experienced a lot of things. But he is going to compare what he experienced to the word of God itself.

Verse 17–18: "For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount." Verse 19: "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place." Sometimes people come to you and tell you about an experience they had, and if it goes against what the Bible says I just do not believe what they say. I have a more sure word of prophecy. If someone says they were visited by Jesus or went to heaven for 20 minutes and wrote everything down, I am going to say no you did not — because when Paul went to heaven he said he could not even repeat the things he experienced, and then you supposedly went to heaven and you are writing everything about it and making millions of dollars. Something funny is going on. Now it is possible they got visited by some sort of devil, but not what they actually say took place. I do not go off people's personal testimonies when they go against the Bible.

Verse 20: "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." When those people were writing things down it was not one apostle giving his thoughts and another giving different thoughts and them not adding up. When they were writing it, it was not a private interpretation of themselves — they were moved by the Holy Ghost on what to write. There are even people in the Bible who wrote about things they did not fully understand, like Daniel. How could he write about things he did not fully understand? Because he was moved by the Holy Ghost to write those things. Verse 21: "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

Now of course we also have the Apocrypha — books the Catholic Church adds to the Bible. I have read the Apocrypha and I can tell you not only are there a lot of mistakes, you can just tell it is not the word of God. When it talks about sorcery being a good thing, that kind of goes against the books of Leviticus and Exodus. But these 66 books are the word of God and those people who wrote them were inspired by God, moved by the Holy Ghost to write what they actually wrote.

Go to Acts 2. The Bible also says all scripture is given by inspiration of God. The second definition of inspire is to breathe in air, and so we say the Bible is God-breathed. It is inspired by God — these words were coming down from heaven, because in the beginning was the Word, and forever O Lord thy word is settled in heaven. These were God-breathed and then brought down into the language they were put in — Hebrew, Aramaic in part, and Greek in the originals. Now of course in our day we do not have the originals, but we have copies of the originals. People can be very misleading about that. Yes, what Moses wrote is gone. But what you have are copies of the originals.

Point 2: The Bible Was Not Meant to Be in Only One Language

The Bible was meant to be in every language. Forever O Lord thy word is settled in heaven — God's word is outside of languages. In the beginning was the Word. Forever O Lord thy word is settled in heaven. What God did is bring the word down to certain languages — mostly Hebrew in the Old Testament, a little Aramaic, then Greek. But it is not like God's word is Hebrew and so what do we do with everybody else.

If you go on Google and type in what version of the Quran should I read in English, every Muslim says you have to read it in Arabic. You cannot put it in English. The word of God is Arabic, as if the only language God speaks is Arabic, as if everybody in heaven is going to speak Arabic. Or with the Hindu scriptures they say you have to read it in ancient Sanskrit — you cannot really read it in English. But that is pretty convenient when you want to cover up all the mistakes and garbage that you write. The Hadith says after five minutes of reading that there are more women in hell than men because they are disobedient to their husbands, and when you call them out on it they say: well, you have to read it in the original. What does it say in the original? I do not have to make excuses for what is found in this book. It is perfect.

The word of God was not Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek. It was brought into Hebrew, it was brought into Aramaic, it was brought into Greek. Forever O Lord thy word is settled in heaven, and it can be brought into any language in the world because God is not bound by a language.

Acts 2:1–4: "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." The day of Pentecost was a religious event where a lot of people from all over the world speaking different languages had travelled to Jerusalem. You have got soul-winners here who speak one language or maybe a few, and then all of a sudden there is somebody from another country. If somebody only spoke Mandarin Chinese, none of us could get that person saved — we do not speak Mandarin. But this was a miraculous event God allowed because it was right after the resurrection, it was a big event, and God wanted to spread Christianity. He gave a group of soul-winners the ability to speak languages they had never learned — they had never studied them or knew very little about them — and then people from other countries were hearing it and saying, how do you know Arabic, how do you know that language?

Verse 5: "And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven." A lot of people were living in Jerusalem who had come from other places — in the Old Testament if you wanted to serve God to the fullest, you would want to move to Jerusalem, where the priests were and where the word of God was. But moving there did not mean you spoke the language perfectly. Some of those people would have understood only a small percentage of what was said. This is what was taking place in Acts 2 — people had moved there and did not fully understand the language perfectly.

Verse 6: "Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language." They are shocked because they are hearing the language which is their native first language. They were all amazed and marvelled, hearing the wonderful works of God in the tongues where they were born.

Does it not make sense that God would want to put the word of God into every language? Honestly, when I think of the greatest projects Christians could do today, one of the big things is getting the word of God into every language. There are a lot of countries and languages where the Bibles being used have a lot of problems. What we believe, as we will get to in point three, is that at least for English a perfect Bible has been brought to us.

Point 3: A Perfect Bible Was Brought to the English Language

Go to Psalm 12. We believe a perfect Bible was brought to the English language. We state we are King James only. What does that mean exactly? It means we are King James only in English — we believe it is perfect, preserved, and it is the Bible we use. That is not to state that in another language they do not have the word of God. In a lot of languages they might have a perfect word of God. In many languages they have decent Bibles. I am just stating that in English I do not speak about things I am not an expert at. What I know is that in the English language we do have a perfect Bible.

What is the logical reason for a perfect Bible in English? The New Testament was written in Greek. Why? Because Greek was the language of the world at that time. In America there is an expression — that is Greek to me — which came about because Greek was the language of the world. If more people speak a language than any other, does it not make sense to have a Bible in that language? Well, in our modern day what is the most common, biggest, and most influential language in the world? English. By far, without dispute. And sometimes you say this as a white American who speaks English as a first language and people say, well, that is just because you are an American. No — it is just a fact. If it were a different language I would say that language.

From babel.com: there is little doubt that English has become the very universal language for much of the world. There are roughly 360 million people whose first language is English — you think of the United States, England, Australia. But an estimated one and a half billion people speak it fluently around the world — twenty percent of the world's population. And honestly I think more than one and a half billion people actually speak it fluently. A lot of people are kind of shy to say they are fluent because it is not their native first language. Here in the Philippines I think most people speak English well enough — you can read, write, and understand it. Accents and phrases are different, but I could give the gospel in English and get plenty of people saved because most people speak it well. Forty-five countries it is estimated that over half the people speak it fluently. You could be dropped in any country in the world and find somebody to speak to in English — that is not necessarily true about any other language.

There are many reasons why English is so widespread. Before the United States was in power, England was the dominant power in the world, and this goes back hundreds of years. Even during that time, English became the dominant language over French and Spanish. I do not know exactly why, but it did. It is just getting bigger now because people watch American movies, listen to American music, learn in English in schools — textbooks in many countries around the world are in English.

Why was the Old Testament written in Hebrew? Because God's people spoke Hebrew. Does it not make sense that if God's people speak a language, you put the Bible in that language? There are 1.3 billion people whose native first language is Chinese. What is the religion of Chinese people in general? Communist, Buddhist, Taoist — not Christian, not Baptist. The second most common native language is Spanish. What is the religion of Spanish-speaking people? Catholic — Central America, South America, Catholic. By and large Catholics are not reading the Bible and they have a different Bible anyway. The fourth biggest language for a native speaker is Arabic at 362 million. What is the religion of Arabic-speaking people? Muslim. The fifth is Hindi at 344 million. What is their religion? Hindu, Jainism, Sikhism, sometimes Islam — but mainly Hindu.

What is the religion of English-speaking people? Protestant. Baptist. Non-denominational. It is a fact. I am not saying most English-speaking people are saved — obviously that is not true, narrow is the way which leadeth unto life. I am just saying in comparison to other languages, Spanish-speaking people are Catholic, and English-speaking people — because the Church of England broke off from the Catholic church — come under the Protestant section. And even if a Protestant is not saved, they still often have their daily devotional, they study the Bible a little bit more than someone who is Hindu or Muslim. It makes sense that God would say: if the most common language is English and the religion of English-speaking people is some sort of Christian — let us get a Bible in their language. That is just common sense. God is not an idiot. This makes logical sense. This is not just saying King James only because you are biased — it actually makes logical sense that if God was going to put the word of God into one language in a particularly complete way, he would put it into the English language.

John Wycliffe started translating the Bible into Middle English over 500 years ago. Then William Tyndale came along and was killed in 1536 by the Catholic Church for translating the Bible into the common language — murdered for giving people the Bible. Then in 1604 King James commissioned the English Bible. Now there were English Bibles before the King James, and sometimes people get confused about that. What is interesting is that when you compare the King James to those Bibles that came before it, they are often word for word identical — very little difference. But that is not the case for the versions that came after the King James. Those are very different, which we will look at in the second sermon.

Psalm 12:6: "The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." If you get silver or gold it is not going to be 100% pure right away. There is a process to make it more pure — from 80 to 89, getting up to 96 — more and more until they try to get as close to perfect as possible. The Bible states it is the same way with the Bible. The purifying process takes some time. What you are going to see with the Bibles before the King James is that they were slowly getting a little bit better in general, and they are actually pretty decent. Many verses I could probably read from those versions and you would think it is the King James. But that is not the case for versions after the King James — those are very different.

The Bible says the word of God is a sword. What happens when a sword goes dull? You sharpen it. The King James has been around for a long time. Other versions come up and ten years later they are gone. When I first started studying this topic the big version that was becoming popular was the Message — apparently it is not that high on the list anymore. Something that is not the real thing comes up and it vanishes, just like false religions come and go. The King James came and it stayed. Why? Because it is the real thing. It is a sword. It lasts. It is proven through the test of time.

Now the exact details of the translation can sometimes be disputed, but my understanding is there were 54 translators who were the greatest linguists of their day. They spoke 15 languages — these were experts. At the end of the process there were 47 left because some died during it — it took a long time. From 1604 to 1610, six to seven years of translating, 54 of the smartest linguists in the world at that time brought the word of God from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into the English language. When people translate versions now they will have like a couple of people spend two years. And then you have got Baptist pastors saying in the original Greek it says this and they are making corrections to the King James. The people who translated the King James spoke 15 languages. They were experts at Greek, English, Hebrew, and all these languages. They were double-checking their work in teams — six teams of nine or nine teams of six, and then after each team was done another team would check their work. And you are saying you know more than 50 plus experts at language? How arrogant is that?

I remember a while back we started a mini project at our church trying to get the salvation verses into a perfectly worded Tagalog booklet. We stopped after a couple of weeks because we sat around for 30 minutes just trying to figure out how to translate only-begotten Son — literally. I was like, man this is a lot harder than I expected. These were 54 experts. I would never sit here and say they made a mistake. I would say, well, maybe I just do not understand something, because languages are complicated.

Now I do believe that in Spanish there is probably a similar story. In the Reina Valera Gomez, which is generally the standard that Spanish-speaking people who know their Bibles will say is the best — very similar to the 1602 version — there is a very similar history of the Catholic Church persecuting those translating the Bible, murdering them, throwing them in prison. I do not know if that purifying process ever fully completed in Spanish the way it did in English, but good people were doing great work. When the King James translators were doing their work they were translating from the original languages, but they were also taking what had already been translated into English and checking it. Often they would look at a previous version and say that is perfect, on to the next verse. But it took seven years because they took this very seriously. It was a full-time job. It is not easy to get every single word and the full meaning across and still make it sound poetic and majestic and powerful. We can see the finished product and know they were successful. You read verses and you can tell this came from God.

Point 4: The Process of Translation

Go to Genesis 1. I want to talk about the translation process from Hebrew to English. One of the things that is different between Hebrew and English is that in the Hebrew language they do not have the words am, is, are, a, or an. Those are some pretty important words in English — they probably represent something like 25% of the words used in English, and they just do not exist in Hebrew. That makes it complicated to go from one language to the other.

What you are going to see in your King James Bible are words in italics. In 95% of King James Bibles you will see words in italics. If you read your Bible on your phone or online you might not see them — they are words that are slanted in the text. Now some people assume these are for emphasis. That is what I first thought when I started reading the Bible. Then you realise why would they emphasise this particular word — it does not make any sense. It is not like words put in bold or all caps. The reason they are in italics is that those words were added by the translators. They were not in the originals. This practice did not start with the King James — it started with the Geneva Bible in 1560, and they kept the same pattern.

Why would you add words? Because if they do not have the word am, is, are, a, or an, you have got a problem when you are translating. If you were to translate literally word for word, I am walking would become I walking. Sometimes in America somebody comes from another country and says something like that — I go to store. I know what they mean, but it is not proper grammar. It is incorrect. Some examples from Genesis 1 just to show you what I mean.

Genesis 1:2: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The word was is in italics — it was added by the translators. If you translate literally word for word it would read and darkness upon the face of the deep. I understand what that is saying, but it does not fully get the meaning across as well. Darkness was upon the face of the deep is much cleaner.

Verse 4: "And God saw the light, that it was good." The word it in italics — without it, you have and God saw the light that good. That sounds pretty bad. But they are not changing the meaning or adding some hidden new revelation. They are just bringing the word of God to the English language. The word it is not in the originals because it is implied by the sentence, but it needs to be there in English.

Verse 7: "And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament." The words were are in italics both times. Without them: and God made the firmament and divided the waters which under the firmament from the waters which above the firmament. Not great.

Verse 9: "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear." The word land is in italics. Without it: let the dry appear. You get what they are saying, but it is much clearer with the added word.

Verse 10: "And God called the dry land Earth." The word land is in italics here as well — and this one actually matters, because and God called the dry Earth is not even saying the same thing. Not everything that is dry is Earth. Without the added word that would actually be an error. We have the benefit of looking at the finished product and thinking obviously that makes sense, but obviously if you are the one translating, getting the full meaning and power across is not easy.

Go to Deuteronomy 8. Deuteronomy 8:3: "And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." The word word is in italics. If you translate literally: but by every that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord. By every what? I mean a lot of things can come out. You have to put the word word there to fully get what is being said. But in the Hebrew it is implied.

Go to Matthew 4. Matthew 4:4: "But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." This is when Jesus is being tempted by the devil and quotes from Deuteronomy 8:3. Notice that the word word is not in italics in Matthew 4:4. Why? Because in the Greek New Testament the word is actually there — it is not implied, it is literal. So as you translate from Greek to English you just put that word into English. But in Hebrew it was implied, so the translators had to add it in italics. And yet Jesus quotes that italicised word.

This tells us a couple of things. First, the italicised words are perfect — the New Testament writers will often quote from italicised words, confirming they are meant to be there. Second, it shows how different Hebrew and English are. An implied word in Hebrew was not implied in English, and so they had to add it. When you first become King James only, people will say I believe in an every word Bible — not a single word is missing. I also believe that. But I understand what that means — it means every single thing that is in the word of God was brought across when they translated it, and nothing was left out. However, to go from one language to the next you cannot just say the exact same thing and get the same meaning across. If you did not add words you would actually be removing meaning from the Bible. You must add words to get the entire meaning. So I have no problem saying I believe in an every word Bible, because there is nothing missing from our King James Bible. Every single word is perfect, just as in the original languages, but worded a bit differently because they are different languages.

Point 5: Satan Has a Desire to Attack the Word of God

Go to Jeremiah 36. Satan cannot get rid of the word of God. He simply cannot do it. Around the world countries have tried to get rid of the word of God — they fail. They try to ban it — they fail. Throughout the Bible people try to do this and they fail. Jeremiah 36:27–28: "Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, after that the king had burned the roll, and the words which Baruch wrote at the mouth of Jeremiah, saying, Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned." Jehoiakim gets the word of God, does not like what it says, and burns it. And God says — all right, let us just bring back every single word you burned. You are not getting rid of a single one. Verse 32: "Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words." Not a single word was missing from the original — everything was brought back, and then even more words were added as a judgment against that king.

The devil cannot get rid of the word of God. So what does he do? He makes fake Bibles and gets people to read the fake things so they do not have the authentic. That is his strategy. For hundreds of years it was King James only — nothing else stood against it. And then the devil just put out all these Bibles, largely for money, and now people are buying the NIV. And what are you seeing? Abortion rising. The LGBT movement rising. Gay marriage. America is a much different place than when I was a kid, changing rapidly. One of the reasons is that when countries get the word of God, the country starts to cleanse itself — because preaching becomes more powerful, people get convicted, and changes take place.

In the 1600s the Catholic Church tried to get rid of the Bible in many different ways. One example is the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. You may have heard the phrase from the movie V for Vendetta: remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. There is actually a holiday in England on November 5th because what took place was Guy Fawkes and a bunch of zealous Catholics tried to kill King James for putting the Bible into the English language. They were trying to get rid of the Bible. They got caught. Why? Because God had his hand on the King James Bible. I do not know much about King James and I have heard a lot of things about him, but what he was doing was a great work — getting the Bible into the English language. The Catholic Church tried to prevent it during the time of the Dark Ages, when they did not want people to be aware of it. And they failed. Just like they failed in Jeremiah 36. They are never going to be able to get rid of the King James Bible.

So what is the devil doing instead? Making fake Bibles. And people are reading the fakes instead of reading the King James. And people are not reading the Bible anymore. What is happening to our world? It is a mess.

We ought to be very thankful as people who speak and read English that we do have a perfect Bible. People died to give you a Bible you could read. We have it in the English language in the King James Bible. Do something with it — read it.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be here today and getting to see this topic of the King James Bible. Help us to realise how blessed we are to have a Bible that we can read and understand. Help us not just to have this Bible but actually use this Bible. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.