War against the Bible

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THE WESTCOTT AND HORT ONLY CONTROVERSY

By: Dr. Phil Stringer

This message was given at the 33rd. Annual Meeting and Conference of the GraceWay Bible Society meeting, Saturday, October 27th., 2001, held at Brampton Ontario, Canada.

TABLE OF CONTENTS


I. The King James Only Controversy. 
II. The Primacy of the King James Bible
III. The Westcott and Hort Theory.
IV. Westcott and Hort Only!
V. What You Have to Believe to Accept the Westcott and Hort Theory
VI. Were Westcott and Hort Infallible?
VII. Who Were Westcott and Hort?
VIII. The Doctrine of Westcott and Hort.
IX. Were Westcott and Hort Saved Men?
X. The Work of the English Revision Committee.
XI. Were Westcott and Hort Secret Practioners of the Occult?
XII. The Fundamentalist Defenders of Westcott and Hort!
XIII. In Conclusion.

I. The King James Only Controversy.


You don’t have to read very much in contemporary, fundamentalist, Baptist literature to come across warnings about the "King James only controversy."
       Dr. Jerry Falwell announces that he is hiring Dr. Harold Rawlings to "refute the ‘King James Only’ cultic movement that is     damaging so many good churches today."
       Dr. Robert Sumner warns about the "veritable fountain of misinformation and deceptive double talk on the subject of ‘King James Onlyism’."
       Dr. J. B. Williams refers to those who advocate the King James Only as "misinformers" and as "a cancerous sore."
       Dr. Robert Joyner calls King James Bible loyalists, "heretics".
       Dr. James R. White warns about King James Bible proponents "undercutting the very foundations of the faith itself".
Such references to the King James Only Controversy are very common. Some refer to loyal supporters of the King James Bible as the "King James Only Cult". Another common term is the sneering reference to the "King Jimmy Boys."
However the use of the "King James Bible only" wasn’t always so controversial.
 

II. The Primacy of the King James Bible

God was doing a great work in England in the early 1600's. The preaching of the gospel of Christ out of the Matthew’s Bible and the Geneva Bible was leading to multitudes of conversions. Evangelicals and Puritans were becoming a stronger and stronger force in the Church of England and in English culture.

Yet many were concerned that the final translation work into the English language had not been done. King James was persuaded to authorize a new translation. The King James Bible was printed in 1611.
At first there were questions and concerns about this new Bible translation. This was as it should be. No one should accept a Bible translation lightly. By 1640 however, the King James Bible was clearly the Bible of the English people. The Geneva and Matthew’s Bible, once greatly used of God, went out of print. There was simply no demand for them anymore.
The Church of England, with its official evangelical doctrinal statement, used the King James Bible exclusively. It was the Bible of the Puritans, both inside and outside the Church of England. In fact the Puritans began to use the distinctive Biblical English of the King James Bible in the day to day speech.

The King James Bible was the Bible of the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, and the Quakers. It was clearly the Bible of the Baptists. By 1640 it was the Bible of the Pilgrims (some had used the Geneva Bible earlier).
The King James Bible was the Bible of evangelicals in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It became the Bible of the English colonies across the Atlantic Ocean. The only religious group of any size or importance in England that didn’t use the King James Bible was Roman Catholicism. All non-Catholics could have been referred to as "King James only people." When the Methodist Revival stirred England in the 1700's, it did so with the preaching of the King James Bible. John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodists, made his own translation of the New Testament. However, it found little acceptance, even among Methodists. Only the King James Bible was in common use.

When English colonies flourished in Australia and New Zealand, the King James Bible was the common Bible of the settlers. When President George Washington took the first presidential oath of office in the new United States of America, he did so with his hand on a King James Bible. Every American president since, with the exception of Franklin Pierce, has done the same.

Over one hundred fifty English translations were produced between 1611 and 1880. However, they found no audience except in a few cults. Most went out of print quickly. The English speaking, Christian world was truly "King James only".
Baptist preachers produced a Baptist translation of the Bible. They replaced the word baptism with the word immersion. They replaced the word church with the word assembly. However, they found no audience, not even among Baptists. Their translation was soon out of print. The Baptists were truly "King James only".

As hard as it may be for the liberals and secularists to admit, the American public schools were built around the King James Bible. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, (not exactly a religious right publication), describes the early public schools this way, "Public schools had a distinctly Protestant flavor, with teachers leading prayers and scripture reading from the King James Bible in their lessons". The Roman Catholic minority objected to the King James Bible and so they developed their own school system. With the exception of the Catholics, the United States was clearly King James only.

Russell Kirk (a Roman Catholic historian) describes the influence of the King James Bible on the United States, "The book that was to exert a stronger influence than any other in Americas was not published until 1611, a few years after the first Virginian settlement: the ‘King James’ translation of the Bible, the Authorized Version, was prepared by English scholars for King James I. Read from American pulpits and in the great majority of American households during colonial times, the Authorized Version shaped the style, informed the intellect, affected the laws, and decreed the morals of the North American Colonies." Truly the early United States was King James only.

According to Winston Churchill, ninety million copies of the King James Bible had been printed by the mid-twentieth century.
The King James Bible was the Bible of the great modern missions movement of the 1700's and 1800's. The missionaries from England and the United States were saved, called to the mission field, and trained under the preaching of the King James Bible. They traveled around the world, introducing the gospel of grace to millions. Many of these missionaries knew little or no Greek and Hebrew. They translated the Bible into 760 languages from the King James Bible. Truly the modern missions movement was a King James only movement.
 
III. The Westcott and Hort Theory.

In the 1870's, a challenge arose in the English world to the primacy of the King James Bible. There had always been a challenge 
from Roman Catholicism, but this challenge came from men who were officially Protestants: Church of England Bishop Brooke Foss 
Westcott and Cambridge University Professor Fenton John Anthony Hort.

The heart of the Wescott and Hort theory was that the New Testament was preserved in almost perfect condition in two Greek texts, the Vaticanus and the Sinaticus. Sinaticus was discovered in a wastebasket in St. Catherine’s Momentary (near Mt. Sinai) in 1844 by Constantin von Tischendorf. The Vaticanus was found in the Vatican library in 1475 and was rediscovered in 1845.
The King James New Testament was translated from a different family of Greek texts. To Westcott and Hort, the King James Bible was clearly an inferior translation. It must be replaced by a new translation from texts that they considered to be older and better. They believed that the true work of God in English had been held back by an inferior Bible. They determined to replace the King James Bible and the Greek Textus Receptus. In short, their theory suggests that for fifteen hundred years the preserved Word of God was lost until it was recovered in the nineteenth century in a trash can and in the Vatican Library. [Editor RAB: that's where they belong.]

Hort clearly had a bias against the Textus Receptus, calling it "villainous" and "vile". Hort aggressively taught that the School at Antioch (associated with Lucian) had loosely translated the true text of Scripture in the second century A. D. This supposedly created an unreliable text of Scripture which became the Textus Receptus. This was called the Lucian Recension Theory.
Hort did not have a single historical reference to support the idea that such a recension took place. He simply theorized that it must have taken place. In spite of the fact that there is not a single historical reference to the Lucian Recension, many Bible colleges teach it as a historical fact. [Editor RAB: sad but true. One of my professors was one of the contributing editors to the NIV, he did one of the minor prophets. I was not even a year old in Christ when I went off to seminary. I was not brought up in church, and never owned a Bible until my girlfriend gave me one as a gift before I went to seminary. The night I was saved I borrowed a Bible from a Muslim, (THAT IS ANOTHER STORY}. What was so disturbing to me was my professor. I felt he was trying to undermine my faith in the Bible and I told him so. By the way, my girlfriend gave me a King James Bible and told me it was the Word Of God. I married her while I was in seminary. Praise the Lord for a godly wife with godly convictions concerning the Bible. AMEN.]

IV. Westcott and Hort Only!

It is clear that the modern movement to revise the English Bible is based completely on the works of Westcott and Hort.
K.W. Clark writes, "...the Westcott-Hort text has become today our Textus-Receptus. We have been freed from the one only to become captivated by the other...The psychological chains so recently broken from our fathers have again been forged upon us, even more strongly."

E.C. Colwell writes, "The dead hand of Fenton John Anthony Hort lies heavy upon us. In the early years of this century Kirsopp Lake described Hort’s work as a failure, ...But Hort did not fail to reach his major goal. He dethroned the Textus Receptus. ...This was a sensational achievement, an impressive success. Hort’s success in this task and the cogency of his tightly reasoned theory shaped - and still shapes - the thinking of those who approach the textual criticism of the New Testament through the English language."

Zane Hodges, a long time professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, writes, "Modern textual criticism is psychologically addicted to Westcott and Hort. Westcott and Hort in turn, were rationalists in their approach to the textual problem in the New Testament and employed techniques within which rationalism and every other kind of bias are free to operate."

Alfred Martin, former Vice-President at Moody Bible Institute, wrote in 1951, "The present generation of Bible students having been reared on Westcott and Hort have for the most part accepted this theory without independent or critical examination. ...if believing Bible students had the evidence of both sides put before them instead of one side only, there would not be so much blind following of Westcott and Hort."The two most popular Greek manuscripts today, Nestles-Aland and UBS (United Bible Society), differ very little from the Westcott and Hort text.
 
V. WHAT YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE TO ACCEPT THE WESTCOTT AND HORT THEORY.

You have to believe that people who believed in the Deity of Christ often corrupt Bible manuscripts. 
You have to believe that people who deny the Deity of Christ never corrupt Bible manuscripts. 
You have to believe that people who died to get the gospel to the world couldn’t be trusted with the Bible.
You have to believe that their killers could be trusted.
You have to believe that the Celtic Christians, Waldenses, Albigenses, Henricians, Petrobrussians, Paulicians, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Protestant churches, the Anabaptists and the Baptists all did not have the pure word of God.
You have to believe that the Roman Catholics and the nineteenth century rationalists did have the pure word of God.
 
VI. ARE WESTCOTT AND HORT INFALLIBLE?

Even though many evangelicals treat the Westcott and Hort Theory as proven fact, there have always been serious textual scholars that challenged it.

The brilliant textual scholar, Dean John Burgon, referred to Westcott and Hort’s "violent recoil from the Traditional Text" and "their absolute contempt for the Traditional Text". He refers to their theory as "superstitious veneration for a few ancient documents."
Another famed textual scholar and contemporary of Westcott and Hort, F.H.P. Scrivener wrote, "Dr. Hort’s system therefore is entirely destitute of historical foundation. He does not so much as make a show of pretending to it; but then he would persuade us, as he persuaded himself...".

It is a phony claim to scholarship to simply parrot the ideas of Westcott and Hort and pretend that you are superior to those who don’t accept their ideas. Those who wish to change the King James Bible, so long greatly used of God and cherished by the English speaking people, need to give clear reasons why!

How do you know that the "older" Vaticanus and Sinaticus manuscripts aren’t corrupt manuscripts? How do you know that the Lucian Recension ever took place? Why do you believe that the evangelicals throughout the centuries were using a corrupt text? Why would you trust Westcott and Hort only?
 
VII. WHO WERE WESTCOTT AND HORT?

B.F. Westcott was born in 1825. F.J.A. Hort was born in 1828. They were members of the Broad Church (or High Church) Party of the Church of England. They became friends during their student days at Cambridge University. They worked for over thirty years together on the subject of the Greek text of the New Testament.

Westcott went on to become the Bishop of Durham (England) and served for a while as chaplain to Queen Victoria. Hort is best remembered as a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University.

Both men wrote several books. They are best remembered for their edition of the Greek New Testament entitled, "The New Testament in the Original Greek". They are also remembered for being the two most influential members of the English Revised Version committee which produced a new English translation. Scrivener thought that they exercised too much influence on this committee.

Westcott died in 1901. Hort passed away in 1892. Both men had sons who collected their personal correspondence and who wrote biographies about them.
 
VIII. THE DOCTRINE OF WESTCOTT AND HORT.

The Scripture
It is clear that neither Westcott nor Hort held anything even faintly resembling a conservative view of Scripture. According to Hort’s son, Dr. Hort’s own mother (a devout Bible believer) could not be sympathetic to his views about the Bible. Westcott wrote to Hort that he overwhelmingly rejected the "idea of the infallibility of the Bible". Hort says the same thing, the same week, in a letter to Bishop Lightfoot.

When Westcott became the Bishop of Durham, the Durham University Journal welcomed him with the praise that he was "free from all verbal or mechanical ideas of inspiration".

Salvation

Hort called the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement "immoral". In doing so he sided with the normal doctrine of the High Church Party of the Church of England. The Low Church Party was generally evangelical, teaching salvation through personal faith in Jesus Christ. The High Church Party taught salvation by good works, including baptism and church membership.
Westcott and Hort wrote many commentaries that include references to classic passages about salvation. Repeatedly their commentary is vague and unclear.and unclear. Westcott taught that the idea of "propitiating God" was "foreign to the..New Testament". He taught that salvation came from changing the character of the one who offended God. This is consistent with his statement that, "A Christian never is but is always becoming a Christian."

Again and again, Westcott’s vague comments about salvation are easy to interpret as teaching universal salvation.
The Doctrine of Christ

It was common in the days of Westcott and Hort for those in the Church of England who denied the Deity of Christ to speak in vague terms! To clearly deny the Deity of Christ was to jeopardize your position in the Church of England. Many High Church modernists learned to speak of the Deity of Christ in unclear terms as a way to avoid trouble.
Many statements by both Westcott and Hort fall into that category of "fuzzy" doctrinal statements about Christ. Westcott and Hort were brilliant scholars. Surely they were capable of expressing themselves clearly on the doctrine of Christ if they wanted to. At best they are unclear; at worst, they were modernists hiding behind the fundamental doctrinal statement of the Church of England.
Other Teachings of Westcott and Hort 

There are many other areas that cause fundamental Bible believers to have serious questions about Westcott and Hort. Westcott denied that Genesis 1 through 3 were historically true. Hort praised Darwin and his theory of evolution. Both Westcott and Hort praised the "Christian socialist" movement of their day. Westcott belonged to several organizations designed to promote "Christian socialism" and served as President of one of them (the Christian Social Union).

Both Westcott and Hort showed sympathy for the movement to return the Church of England to Rome. Both honored rationalist philosophers of their time like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dr. Frederick Maurice, and Dr. Thomas Arnold. Both were serious students of the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle.

There is much about the teaching of Westcott and Hort to deeply trouble any objective Bible believer.
 
IX. WERE WESTCOTT AND HORT SAVED MEN?

The evangelical defenders of Westcott and Hort are quick to assert that they were saved men even if some of their ideas seem a little strange in our day. They remind people that both were ordained preachers in the evangelical Church of England.

However, there is no doubt that there were many Church of England preachers that were not true evangelicals. The High Church party was well known to teach salvation by works. Within the Church of England there was a vigorous debate between true evangelicals and those who taught baptismal regeneration or some other system of works for salvation. In their lengthy writings, neither Westcott nor Hort ever give an account of their own conversion. They never identified with the evangelicals in the Church of England. They were never accepted by the evangelicals in the Church of England. They were associated with various occult figures, but never with evangelicals.

While Westcott and Hort praised evolutionists, socialists, and modernists, they were bitterly critical of evangelical soulwinners. Westcott criticized the work of William Booth and the Salvation Army. Hort criticized the crusades of D.L. Moody. Hort criticized the soulwinning Methodists.

Both criticized evangelicals. Neither gave anyone any reason to believe that he had ever trusted Christ as his personal Saviour.
 
X. THE WORK OF THE ENGLISH REVISION COMMITTEE

In 1870, the English Parliament authorized a revision of the King James Bible. Two teams of translators were hired. Most translators were from the Church of England but there were also seven Presbyterians, four Congregationalists, two Baptists, two Methodists and one Unitarian. The translators were instructed to make as few alterations to the King James Bible as possible.

A similar committee was developed in the United States at the same time. The two committee’s exchanged copies of their work. Several thousand Church of England preachers signed a petition protesting the inclusion of a Unitarian, Dr. Vance Smith, on the Revision Committee. They felt that only saved men should be involved in translating the Bible. Proper translation required the illumination of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Both Westcott and Hort defended Smith and lobbied for his presence on the committee. Westcott threatened to quit if Smith was not included. Westcott and Hort supplied everyone working on the committee with a private copy of their new Greek text. Hort lobbied (some would say intimidated) committee members to follow the Westcott and Hort text. Westcott, Hort, and Bishop Lightfoot pressured the committee to go beyond their mandate for doing a revision of the King James Bible. Dr. Frederick Scrivener opposed many of the changes to be made on the basis of the new Westcott and Hort Greek Text. Committee meetings were referred to as "... a kind of critical duel between Dr. Hort and Dr. Scrivener".

Arthur Hort described his father’s method for describing the right reading of the text as "to settle the question by the light of his own inner consciousness". Dean Burgon spoke of Hort’s method as deciding by "the ring of genuiness". Hort was far more concerned about his feelings than he was about the textual debate over any passage. Westcott referred to the debate over textual readings as "hard fighting" and "a battle royal".

The original chairman, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, resigned after referring to the project as "this most miserable business".
Westcott and Hort eventually won most of the debates. After the new English Revision was published, both Scrivener and Burgon published lengthy refutations of the Revision. Burgon attacked the Revision strongly, calling it "excursions into cloud land" and "blowing smoke". The people of England largely rejected the new translation. Attempts to make it the new Authorized Version of the Church of England met with such protest that Queen Victoria abandoned the idea.

Neither the English nor the American Revision sold very well. They were both soon replaced by other versions. However, the multitude of new English versions were all based upon the same Westcott and Hort Greek text and upon the theories of Westcott and Hort. Their English translation failed but their principles won the day. Even though vangelicals rejected the English Revision and the Westcott and Hort text, it did find supporters. Modernists and rationalists, both within and without the Church of England, praised their work. Theosophy founder, Helen Blavatsky, wrote at great length in praise of the new Greek text.

The defenders of Westcott and Hort claimed that the evangelicals were too simple-minded and unlearned to understand the work of Westcott and Hort and other English "scholars". Evangelicalism was presented as unscholarly. After a generation, many evangelicals began to feel uncomfortable at always being labeled as unscholarly and uneducated. Some evangelical leaders began to look for ways to reconcile the historic Christian faith with the theories of Westcott and Hort.
These theories and the Greek text of Westcott and Hort began to find their way into evangelical seminaries and Bible colleges on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Two generations after the failure of the English Revision, the theories of Westcott and Hort had become majority opinion in evangelical Bible colleges and seminaries in both the United States and England. Their theories were universally accepted in modernist seminaries. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and other cults bragged about having Bible translations based upon the Westcott and Hort theory.

Compromising evangelicals were suddenly proud of having "scholarship" accepted by the world. They used the same Greek text as the Roman Catholic Church, the modernists and the cults.

A relative handful of Bible believers refused to accept the Greek text and theory of Westcott and Hort. Such holdouts became an irritation to the "scholarly" evangelicals. As study of the issue increased, opposition to the Westcott and Hort theory grew. "Westcott and Hort only" no longer seemed an adequate reason for abandoning the King James Bible. The "scholarly evangelicals" began to react harshly to their "King James only" critics.
 
XI. WERE WESTCOTT AND HORT SECRET PRACTITIONERS OF THE OCCULT?

In 1993, Gail Riplinger published New Age Bible Versions. In this book, she alleges that Westcott and Hort were practitioners of the occult. It is indicated that they provide a bridge between apostate Christianity and the occult and the New Age Movement.
This charge created a sensation and generated a tremendous amount of criticism for Mrs. Riplinger. It is, of course, a very important charge. An objective look at the evidence for such a charge is important.

Along with Bishop Edward White Benson, Westcott and Hort founded the Ghostly Guild. This club was designed to investigate ghosts and supernatural appearances. The club was based upon the idea that such spirits actually exist and appear to men. According to The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, the members of the Ghostly Club would "relate personal experiences concerned with ghosts.

This club would eventually become the Society for Psychical Research. According to James Webb in The Occult Underground and W.H. Solter, The S.P.R. - An Outline of It’s History, this club became a major factor in the rise of spiritualism among the elite of English society in the late 1800's. Many leading occult figures belonged to the Society.

Along the way, Westcott and Hort dropped out of the Ghostly Guild. However, they had plenty of opportunity to be exposed to the occult and demonism before they withdrew.

Westcott’s son refers to his father’s life long faith in spiritualism (Archbishop Benson’s son referred to Benson in the same way). Communion with spirits became quite fashionable in the late 1800's in British society. Even Queen Victoria, who normally led a responsible Christian life, dabbled in spiritualism. However, it was considered unseemly for Church of England clergymen, and Wescott had to keep his ideas quiet. According to Wescott’s son, Arthur, Dr. Wescott practiced the Communion of the Saints. This was a belief that you can fellowship with the spirits of those who died recently.

Bible translator J. B. Phillips also believed in the Communion of Saints. He believed that the spirit of C.S. Lewis visited him after his death. According to Arthur Wescott, Bishop Wescott also had such experiences with spirits. His son writes, "The Communion of Saints seems particularly associated with Peterborough. He had an extraordinary power of realizing this Communion. It was his delight to be alone at night in the great Cathedral, for there he could meditate and pray in full sympathy with all that was good and great in the past. . . There he always had abundant company." Wescott’s daughter met him returning from one of his customary meditations in the solitary darkness of the chapel at Auckland castle. She said to him, " I expect you do not feel alone?" "Oh, no," he said, "It is full."

Either Dr. Wescott’s children lied about him or Dr. Wescott was used to meeting with spirits. Bible believers recognize these spirits as demons. Wescott and Hort both joined a secret society called, The Apostles. It was limited to 12 members. One of the other members Henry Sidgwick. He was also stated to have led several professors at Trinity College into secretly practicing the occult. Wescott, his close friend, was also a professor at Trinity College. Strange company for a Christian teacher and Bible translator.
In 1872 Wescott formed a secret society, the Eranus Club. Members included Hort, Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour (future prime minister of England), Archbishop Trench and Dean Alford. Both Trench and Alford would be involved in Bible revision work. Balfour became famous for his seances and practice of spiritualism. The Eranus Club would eventually become known as an occult secret society.

Wescott’s defenders point out that Wescott also eventually dropped out of Eranus. Still he was certainly allied with practioners of the occult in a secret society for a period of time.


Balfour and Sedgwick were involved in several occult organizations, socialism and Theosophy. How many Christians have so many friends prominent in the practice of the occult?

Balfour would also be involved in the founding of the League of Nations and in forming a secret society with Cecil Rhodes (the Round Table and the Council on Foreign Relations).

The evidence for Mrs. Riplinger’s assertions is strong. Would Westcott and Hort’s defenders accept anyone today who had such connections? They were clearly in contact with people who were "familiar" with spirits. There is every reason to suspect that they might also have been in contact with spirits. Based upon their associations, there is no clear reason to reject the suggestion that they were involved in the occult. The balance of evidence creates, at the very least, a strong suspicion of occult influence on both Wescott and Hort (especially Dr. Wescott).
 
XII. THE FUNDAMENTALIST DEFENDERS OF WESTCOTT AND HORT

There are fundamentalists who refuse to accept the characterization of Westcott and Hort as liberals (much less occultists)! J. B Williams writes, "I have three of Wescott’s commentaries in my library, and I challenge anyone to find one sentence that would be a departure from Fundamentalist doctrine."

Keith Gephart writes, "In reality, Wescott had made clear statements affirming orthodox doctrines such as the deity of Christ, in no way was he guilty of heresy and apostasy." In responding to a critic of Westcott and Hort, Gephart wrote this, "I cannot help but suspect that . . . some blinding presupposition . . .drives you to prove him a heretic at any cost."

Dr. Stewart Custer writes, "Especially when these men have written in their mature years book after book defending the conservative interpretation of scripture, it is unjust to characterize their whole ministries by a few misinterpretations that they may have been guilty of."

Evangelist Robert Sumner admits that Westcott and Hort were liberal in theology but he still believes that they were trustworthy to "restore the original text."

It would be easy to ask at this point if everyone is reading from the same books. How can there be such a difference of opinion about what these men believed and wrote?

It is true that these men (especially Westcott) wrote commentaries in which they used the great doctrinal terms of the Christian faith in a positive way. They used terms that were part of the official doctrinal position of the Church of England (in which they both held prominent positions).


Almost all denominational liberals use the terms expected of them. This is important in maintaining their income, position and influence. The important thing is how they explain those doctrinal terms (or fail to explain them).

Unless you are determined not to see it, it is clear from their commentaries that they put a liberal interpretation on many Christian doctrines. Both of their sons admit that they were accused of heresy because of their books. This understanding of these statements in their commentaries are supported by several external facts.

Westcott and Hort identified with the High Church Party (Broad Party) within the Church of England. In contrast with the more evangelical and conservative Low Church, modernism found it’s home in the High Church Party.

Westcott and Hort constantly praised theological liberals, socialists and other radicals like Coleridge and Darwin.
No similar praise is found for evangelicals or fundamentalists, either in or out of the Church of England. They are normally ignored! When they are mentioned at all, like D. L. Moody, it is with disdain!

Their private correspondence reveals their liberal drift much more clearly then their commentaries. Of course, it was safer for them to admit what they really believed in this forum. Their correspondence also shows that they had concerns that they could not afford to have all of their beliefs known by the general public.

The biographies of Westcott and Hort written by their sons clearly reveal that they were not in harmony with the official positions of the Church of England. Their sons had no reason to lie about them. Certainly their sons had no King James only bias.

It is interesting that some men can’t face the real record about Wescott and Hort. In fact, some who are quick to attack even minor differences with living preachers, take a blind eye to Westcott and Hort.

However, this is easy to understand. Their campaign to replace the King James Bible has been based upon the work of Wescott and Hort only. To admit these men were not trustworthy would be to admit that they have been wrong in a major premise of their entire ministry.

Perhaps we must be forced to suspect that some blinding presupposition drives them to prove that Westcott and Hort were not heretics at any cost. It appears that "scholarship" requires only a shallow reading of Westcott and Hort and ignorance of their personal letters and correspondence. Their defenders do not spend anytime quoting their personal correspondence or the biographies written by their sons.

Their defenders never recount the testimonies of their conversion because no such testimonies exist.
 
XIII. IN CONCLUSION.

Dean John Burgon was a contemporary and acquaintance of both Westcott and Hort. He was a firm opponent of the Westcott and Hort theory, their new Greek text and the revision of the English Bible that they so heavily influenced. In an article entitled "The Secret Spanking of Westcott and Hort" Burgon wrote: "the text of Drs. Westcott and Hort is either the very best which has ever appeared or else it is the very worst; the nearest to the sacred autographs or the furthest from them. There is no room for both opinions, and there cannot exist any middle view." In other words things that are different are not the same.
Millions of professing evangelicals have never heard of Westcott and Hort. None the less, their approach to the Scripture is based upon the theory of Westcott and Hort — Westcott and Hort only. No matter how many books, professors, colleges and denominational leaders these theories are filtered through, they are still the work of Westcott and Hort only.
Those who challenge the primacy of the King James Bible in the English speaking world depend on the work of Westcott and Hort.
Westcott and Hort are not a sufficient basis to reject the Textus Receptus or the King James Bible. Their objectivity, scholarship and doctrine are all at best "suspect." There is no reason to believe that they were saved men. There is more reason to believe that they were influenced by the occult than there is to believe that they were influenced by the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the "King James Only Controversy" is misnamed. It is really a "Westcott and Hort Only" controversy.

Are you willing to abandon the historic contributions of the Textus Receptus and the King James Bible for Westcott and Hort,  Westcott and Hort Only...   Copyright © GraceWay Bible Society, 2002

WAR ON GOD’S WORD IN THE END TIMES

“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (Psalms 2:1-6).

The war on God’s Word is as old as man. It began in the Garden of Eden, when the Devil said to Eve, “Yea, hath God said,” and, “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:1-4). The Bible prophesies that the age-old warfare between God and Satan will grow throughout the church age and will come to a head at the end of this age just preceding the return of Christ. Paul described the course of the church age in 2 Timothy 3:13, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” And in His parables, Christ said the leaven of error will increase until “the whole was leavened” (Matthew 13:33). 

The bud of rebellion will grow into full bloom, and we see this on every hand. Over the past two centuries rebellion to God’s Word has spread like ivy. It is said that ivy has three stages. It sleeps; it creeps; and it leaps. End-time rebellion slept in the eighteenth century, crept in the nineteenth, and leapt in the twentieth.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY THEOLOGICAL MODERNISM

Theological modernism permeated the churches of Germany and spread from there throughout the world. 

The testimony of James Good, 

“Rationalism was a terrible tide that “swept over Germany like a flood” (History of the Reformed Church of Germany 1620-1890). 

The testimony of L.W. Munhall: 

“The unspiritual condition of the churches … and the alarmingly prevalent skepticism, infidelity, and atheism among the masses of the people in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland is, without doubt, almost wholly attributable to the advocacy of these criticisms by a large majority of the prominent pastors and theological professors in those lands. The same condition of affairs is measurably true in England, Scotland, New England, and in every community where this criticism is believed by any very considerable number of people and openly advocated” (The Highest Critics vs. the Higher Critics, 1896).

The testimony of Matthew Arnold of conditions in nineteenth-century Britain: 

“Clergymen and ministers of religion are full of lamentations over what they call the spread of scepticism ... ‘... the speculations of the day are working their way down among the people...’” (Literature and Dogma, 1873, p. vi).

The testimony of historian S.M. Houghton: 

“The fact is that Germany, by the mid-19th century, was flooded by unbelief. Its schools and colleges, as well as its churches, contributed to this. Its Protestant hymn-book was revised in order to deprive it of much of its evangelical content. Philosophy replaced theology, and Scripture was dealt with savagely. Miracles ceased to be accounted miracles; they were explained away. Bible prophecies were discredited. Christ was robbed of his deity. His resurrection, it was said, never took place. Either he did not really die but suffered a fainting fit, or he retreated after his supposed death to some place known only to his disciples. D.F. Strauss startled the world by a Life of Jesus (published in 1835-36) which admitted a framework of fact, but claimed that much of the content of the Four Gospels was sheer mythology. Julius Wellhausen [1844-1910] achieved notoriety by attacking the orthodox teaching on the authorship, unity and inspiration of the Scriptures, and unhappily many followed in his steps. He was the chief pioneer of Higher Critical views, and under his influence many theologians throughout Western Europe and America questioned or abandoned the authority even of Christ himself” (Sketches from Church History, p. 239).

The testimony of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who spent the last years of his life fighting against the “downgrade” in theology that had undermined the Baptist Union. In 1887 Spurgeon wrote the following haunting words: 

“A CHASM IS OPENING BETWEEN THE MEN WHO BELIEVE THEIR BIBLES AND THE MEN WHO ARE PREPARED FOR AN ADVANCE UPON SCRIPTURE. ... Those who hold evangelical doctrine are in open alliance with those who call the fall a fable, who deny the personality of the Holy Ghost, who call justification by faith immoral, and hold that there is another probation after death. ... Attendance at places of worship is declining and reverence for holy things is vanishing. We solemnly believe this to be largely attributable to THE SCEPTICISM WHICH HAS FLASHED FROM THE PULPIT AND SPREAD AMONG THE PEOPLE” (Sword and Trowel, November 1887). 

Spurgeon thus describes for us the wretched spiritual condition that existed in Britain in his day in the late nineteenth century. End-time apostasy was coming into blossom. Spurgeon’s battles against modernism within the Baptist Union occurred at precisely the same time that the English Revised Version was being prepared, and the same battle was being fought (and lost) in other denominations, including Anglicanism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, and Methodism. (An excellent overview of this is found in The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust). 

The testimony of the Bible League, which was formed in Britain in 1892: 

“Spurgeon’s days saw apostasy as a trickle; by the time of the Bible League’s foundation [1892] it had become a stream; shortly it expanded to a river, and today it has become a veritable ocean of unbelief. For the most of men the ancient landmarks have disappeared from sight. Life upon earth has become a voyage on an uncharted ocean in a cockle-shell boat ‘tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.’ Never before in human history has the ‘sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive’ (Eph. 4:14) been so greatly in evidence. ‘Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived’ (2 Tim. 3:13)” (“The Bible League: Its Origin and Its Aims,” Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, Abingdon: The Bible League, 1984).

Throughout the twentieth century modernism continued to spread.

In 1918, Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the influential Riverside Church in New York City, published The Manhood of the Master, denying that Jesus Christ is God.

Karl Barth (1886-1968), Emil Brunner (1889-1965), and Reinhold Niebuhr (1893-1971) founded neo-orthodoxy, which hides its unbelief under orthodox theological terms that are given a heretical meaning through obscure language (e.g., speaking of the “bodily resurrection” of Christ or the “second coming” or “the inspiration of Scripture,” but not believing these doctrines in a traditional sense). According to neo-orthodoxy, the Bible is not itself the objective and infallible Word of God but merely becomes the word of God as it is experienced existentially.

In 1931, Henry Sloane Coffin, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America, wrote: “There is no cleansing blood which can wipe out the record of what has been. ... The Cross of Christ is not a means of procuring forgiveness” (The Meaning of the Cross, pp. 118-121).

In 1935, George A. Buttrick, Presbyterian pastor who would become president of the Federal Council in 1940, wrote: “Literal infallibility of Scripture is a fortress impossible to defend” (Christian Fact and Modern Doubt, p. 162).

In 1943, Pius XII, in his Divino Afflante Spiritu, became the first Pope to endorse the use of the “scientific criticism” of Scripture.

In 1944, G. Bromley Oxnam, Methodist bishop and one of the first presidents of the World Council of Churches, endorsed calling the God of the Old Testament a “Dirty Bully” in his book Preaching in a Revolutionary Age.

In 1951, Paul Tillich published the first part of his Systematic Theology, teaching that God, the “Ground of Being,” can be known only through myths. “

In 1955, Bishop James Pike of the Episcopal Church in America said, “I have abandoned ship on the doctrine of the Trinity. I have jettisoned the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ” (Christian Beacon, March 17, 1955).

In 1963, Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson wrote in his popular book Honest to God that “the whole schema of a supernatural being coming down from heaven to ‘save’ mankind from sin ... is frankly incredible to man ‘come of age’” (p. 78).

In 1964 a religious survey extrapolated that perhaps 60,000 church members in three mainline denominations in America (United Church of Christ, United Methodist, and Episcopal) were atheists or agnostics (Christianity Today, Nov. 20, 1964). The same survey found that 43% of Protestants did NOT believe in the Virgin Birth. 

In 1968, Troy Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles, which became the mother church of the first predominantly homosexual Christian denomination. By 1988 it claimed 38,000 members in 200 congregations worldwide.

In 1973, Gustavo Gutierrez published A Theology of Liberation, becoming a prominent voice for Liberation Theology, which sees salvation in terms of the liberation of society from social and economic injustice. It is a Marxist approach to Christianity.

In 1976, Harold Lindsell testified: “It is not unfair to allege that among denominations like Episcopal, United Methodist, United Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. there is not a single theological seminary that takes a stand in favor of biblical infallibility. And there is not a single seminary where there are not faculty members who disavow one or more of the major teachings of the Christian faith” (The Battle for the Bible).

In 1977, Anne Holmes of the United Church of Christ became the first openly lesbian woman ordained by a mainline Protestant denomination.

In 1982, Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, when asked by a newspaper reporter about the meaning of the cross, replied, “As to that, I am an agnostic” (Sunday Times Weekly Review, April 11, 1982). 

That same year Robert Schuller published Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, redefining Christianity in terms of his self-esteem theology, stating, for example, that sin is the lack of self-esteem and “to be born again means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image” (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 68).

In 1984, David Jenkins, who was consecrated Bishop of Durham in the Church of England in July, described the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as a “conjuring trick with bones” (on BBC’s religious affairs radio program “Poles Apart”). Speaking before the Church of England’s General Synod on July 6, 1986, Jenkins received a standing ovation when he warned “against associating miracles with God and asserted that no church can settle decisively exactly what God is and what he wants” (Associated Press, St. Louis Post Dispatch, July 7, 1986).

In 1985, twenty Episcopalian churches in Memphis, Tennessee, ran an advertisement stating: “In an atmosphere of absolute right and wrong, here’s a little room to breathe. ... the Episcopal Church is totally committed to the preservation of open dialogue and undogmatic faith. We exist to tell the world about a God who loves us regardless of what we’ve done or what we believe. Even if we do not believe in Him, He believes in us. We do not suffocate with absolutes” (Christian News, Oct. 14, 1985).

In 1986, the opening service of the Sixth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver, British Columbia, featured North American pagan Indians who built an altar and a “sacred flame,” into which they tossed offerings of fish and tobacco to appease their nature gods, and around which they danced. There were readings from Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim scriptures.

In 1989, an extensive survey of pastors and laity by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) found that only 5% of pastors believed the Bible should be taken literally (National & International Religion Report, Mar. 13, 1989).

In her speech before the World Council of Churches’ Seventh Assembly in Canberra, Australia, in 1990, South Korean Presbyterian theologian Chung Hyun-Kyung summoned the spirits of the dead and “the spirit of Earth, Air, and Water” and said, “I no longer believe in an omnipotent, Macho, warrior God who rescues all good guys and punishes all bad guys.”

In 1991, Bishop John Spong of the Episcopal Church in America said, “Of course these [Bible] narratives are not literally true. Stars do not wander, angels do not sing, virgins do not give birth, magi do not travel to a distant land to present gifts to a baby, and shepherds do not go in search of a newborn savior” (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism).

In 1993, at a Re-imagining Conference in Minneapolis, participants from mainline Protestant denominations worshipped God as a female Sophia and Chung Hyung Kyung of Korea told the crowd, “My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart, my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain.”

In July 1994, the London Sunday Times, reporting on a conference for Christian atheists, said that at least 100 Church of England priests do not believe in a supernatural God.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY UNITARIANISM

Unitarianism denied doctrine of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ and the infallible inspiration of Scripture. As the nineteenth century progressed Unitarianism became increasingly skeptical and more closely aligned with theological modernism, philosophy, and religious syncretism. 

By 1831, only six years after its founding, the British & Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) was already infected with Unitarianism. In that year a group of men within the BFBS attempted to have the Society adopt a Trinitarian policy “to ensure that Unitarians denying the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ could not be admitted to membership or hold office in the Society” (TBS Quarterly Record, No. 475, April-June 1981, p. 3). After a “prolonged and heated debate in Exeter Hall in the Strand, London, at the Annual Meeting, the motion was rejected by a large majority.”

In England, the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped popularize Unitarian unbelief. He rejected the divine inspiration of Scripture, saying that David’s psalms were inspired in the same sense as his own poems. He spoke of the virgin birth as “an excrescence of faith” which should be discarded. He rejected the biblical doctrine of eternal suffering.

Large numbers of the English Presbyterian and General Baptist churches were infected with Unitarian heresy.

In 1805, Unitarians took control of Harvard College in America with the appointment of Henry Ware to the Chair of Divinity, and by 1810, “nearly every prominent Congregational pulpit in eastern Massachusetts was held by a preacher of Unitarian doctrine.” In 1819, influential Presbyterian pastor William Ellery Channing publicly espoused Unitarianism in a sermon titled “Unitarian Christianity,” urging his listeners to keep their minds free from external authorities and to inquire more of “the oracle within.”

As in England, the American Unitarians became increasingly skeptical and anti-supernatural as the 19th century progressed. They preferred terms such as transcendentalism and anti-supernaturalism. In about 1819 William Channing “became the spokesman and the new leader of the Unitarians. In his sermons and writings he enunciated three principles of the greatest importance: God is all-loving and all pervading; the presence of this God in all men makes them divine, and the true worship of God is good will to all men” (Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/unitarian.html).

Some of them, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), formed a religious philosophy that attempted to synthesize pagan religions such as Hinduism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism, with Christianity. He held to such heresies and pagan doctrines as the fatherhood of God, the divinity of man, the unity of religions, and man is one with God and has no need of an atonement. Emerson frequently quoted from Hindu writings such as the Upanishads and the Bhagavata Purana. In his message to the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard in 1837, entitled “The American Scholar,” Emerson exhorted scholars to free themselves of tradition (such as the Bible) and to maintain a “self-trust.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), author of On Walden Pond (Walden, or Life in the Woods), who said in his Journal, “I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot.” He denied the Fall and the New Birth and the Saviour and sought for “truth” instead through communion with nature, study of eclectic philosophies, and reflection. In Walden, Thoreau said, “No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.” On the other hand, the Bible warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). To follow one’s natural heart is to invite disaster and destruction. 

In 1917, Francis Pieper, a conservative German Lutheran theologian, wrote: “During one period of the Arian controversy it was said that the world had become Arian. Today it can be said that the so-called Protestant world has become Unitarian” (Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, I, p. 421).

In 1961, the Unitarians in America merged with the Universalists to become the Unitarian Universalism Association, uniting in one conglomerate of unbelief and atheism, rejecting the Bible and the God of the Bible while accepting practically any religious philosophy or deity apart from the Bible.

In 1985, William Schultz, national president of the Unitarian Universalism Association, said: “Unitarian Universalists are open to religious truths from all the great religious traditions, as well as from science and from human experience. God is too great to be limited by one dogma. We believe that the focus of religion ought to be on this life, rather than on preparation for or a perspective of life after death” (St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 16, 1985, Religious Section, pp. 6, 7).

By 2001, some Unitarian congregations in the United States were performing Wiccan rituals and referring to a goddess in their services. 

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY HUMAN PHILOSOPHY

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) developed his “critical philosophy,” which taught that human reason is preeminent and which attempted to reconcile Scripture with “the holiest teaching of reason.” Kant denied the supernatural and taught that the Bible is largely mythical.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) turned his back on orthodox Christianity and held to a type of pantheism. He denied that there is such a thing as absolute truth. He rejected the Bible’s view of man and his history and proposed that man is on an evolutionary journey toward perfection. 

Ethan Allen (1738-1789) published Reason the Only Oracle of Man, which rejected the authority of the Bible.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) bitterly assaulted the Bible and Christianity with his book The Age of Reason.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) popularized existentialism in contrast to biblical absolutes.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) claimed that God is dead, that he had been killed with “science,” referring to the theory of evolution. Nietzsche urged people to live life apart from any concern about God.

Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) attacked the Bible and mocked its miracles in lecture tours and in his 1879 book Some Mistakes of Moses. 

By the twentieth century, atheistic philosophy was predominant in higher education.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY EVOLUTION

Charles Darwin, in The Origin of the Species in 1859, proposed that man was a product of gradual evolution. In the 1871 sequel, The Descent of Man, Darwin was even more openly agnostic toward the God of the Bible. Thomas Huxley (1825-1893) joined his voice with Darwin in mocking biblical creation with Zoological Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863) and The Physical Basis of Life (1868). It was Huxley who coined the term “agnostic” to describe the state of not knowing whether there is a God.

In 1925, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, and Bible-believing Christians were made a laughing stock by the mainstream news media.

Since then, evolution has became the predominant faith of the scientific world; so much so, that to question it brings the wrath and ridicule of the scientific community down upon one’s head. 

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY COMMUNISM

Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels published the Communist Manifesto in London in January 1848. Socialist organizations began to proliferate across the world. Marx called religion “the opiate of the masses” and considered the concept of God a hindrance to human evolution. 

Marx was excited about Darwin’s theory of evolution, calling it “the basis in natural history for our view” (J.D. Bernal, Marx and Science, 1952, p. 17). In 1861, Marx said that Darwin had given the doctrine of God “the death blow” (Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, p. 398). Marx wanted to dedicate his 1867 book Das Kapital to Darwin.

A month after the publication of the Communist Manifesto the French revolution broke out in all of its socialistic fury. In 1848, over 50 violent attempts took place to topple established governments (James Webb, The Occult Underground, 1974, p. 7).

By 1917, communist revolutionaries had gained control of the Russian empire and were well on their way to dominating and brutalizing a large portion of the world.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY THE CULTS

The Bible’s infallibility and sufficiency has been attacked by the cults. Joseph Smith published The Book of Mormon in1830, claiming that God instructed him to add to the Bible. 

Ellen White, co-founder of Seventh-day Adventism, claimed to have received 2,000 visions and dreams between 1844 and 1915, which were supposedly given by divine inspiration. They say, “The divine inspiration [of the Bible and of the writings of White] is the same in both cases. ... The Holy Spirit that inspired Moses, Paul, and John, also inspired Sister White” (The Spirit of Prophecy Treasure Chest, p. 30). 

Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, denied the Deity and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of eternal Hell, and salvation by grace alone. 

Mary Baker Eddy published Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1883, claiming the Bible is full of mistakes and that it cannot be understood properly apart from her “Key.”

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY PSYCHOLOGY

In 1895, Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud published Studies on Hysteria. Freud named his system “psychoanalysis” and opened the door for the sexual revolution of the 20th century, teaching that when man acts upon his innate desires it is not sinful but natural. Freud once stated, “The only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all.” Psychology has almost destroyed the biblical concept of personal accountability, resulting in incalculable harm to Western society.

Influential psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) delved deeply into Eastern religions, Gnosticism, mythology, astrology, and occultism. Even though he attended séances and acquired a spirit guide named Philemon, he has had a vast influence on Christianity, philosophy, and the arts. Merill Berger says, “The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which [Jung] is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.” Jeffrey Satinover adds, “Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity--and thus on Western culture--has been incalculable. It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy--have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology” (Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 240.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY THE NEW AGE

“Madame” Helena Blavatsky, who has been called “the mother of the New Age,” founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She claimed that the Bible is a myth and that Lucifer is God. Theosophy brashly said that the Mosaic account of creation was “imposed” upon the West by “ignorant monks and theologians” and that it has been a drag on man’s evolution (William Judge, The Ocean of Theosophy, p. 18). Theosophy proclaimed that the idea that man is “bad, sinful, weak from their birth” is a lie, that actually man is “the most intelligent being in the universe” and an “immortal thinker.” Theosophy says that the idea that there is an Almighty God who judges men on the basis of their actions in this life is “a huge and cruel joke” that has plunged mankind into darkness (pp. 93, 101).

In 1935, Harvey Hardman, one of thousands of New Thought metaphysics teachers promoting the same vain dream, proclaimed:

“Modern man, released by science from his prison of fear; no longer harassed by the spectre of hell; freed from the hypnotic spell of the belief in Satan, is moved by the impulse of a searching curiosity about religions. He is examining the foundations of the ancient faiths in the light of a new conception of the universe” (Making Yourself the Master).

New Age’s vain dream put on a little more steam with the 1950s Beat Generation. Its guru, Alan Watts, observed that Zen Buddhism “appealed to the youth because it did not preach or scold as did Hebrew-Christian beliefs” (David Stuart, Alan Watts, p. 181). Watts’ biographer described the mood of the post-World War II generation:

“A new generation of Americans had weighed the old, found it wanting in a sense never before seen on the American shore, and in rejecting the old ways of the generation above thirty-five, had turned to a freedom that the older people called license. ... And high among the leaders of this new society, foremost among the gurus who would convert the youth to new ideas about religion and philosophy, was a slender, youth-oriented Englishman by the name of Alan Wilson Watts--one of the first ... to be an advocate of free love and free wine and free spirit, and NOW--which he called Zen Buddhism” (Stuart, pp. vii, viii).

The Watts’ way was “women and ideas, and liquor and LSD and pot and irreverent people who were all doing their own thing” (Stuart, p. 205). His Zen was “me, myself, and I,” and as such he was a fitting guru for the ME generation.

That was the 50s Beat Generation, which became the 60s Hippie Generation, which is still with us today.

In about 1965 “Jesus” allegedly told Helen Schucman: 

“Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.’ ... This is not the gospel that I intended to offer to you.”

She wrote this message down in A Course in Miracles, which has since become a best seller. 

In 1992, God allegedly told Neale Walsch:

“I have never set down ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ a ‘do’ or a ‘don’t.’ To do would be to strip you completely of your greatest gift--the opportunity to do as you please, and experience the results of that” (Conversations with God, book 1, p. 39).

In 1994, Robert Aitken and David Steindl said:

“Unfortunately, over the course of the centuries [the idea developed that] there was this gap between us and God, somebody had to make up for it--all that business. WE CAN DROP THAT” (The Ground We Share, p. 45).

In 1997, Frank Tuoti said: 

“... the quotation ‘No one comes to the father except through me’ (John 14:8) is often used to declare that no one except the Christian can attain to God--or for that matter be ‘saved.’ THIS WE KNOW IS NONSENSE” (The Dawn of the Mystical Age, p. 86).

In 2005, the Group of 1000 proclaimed:

“We believe that divinity does not judge, and neither does it condemn or punish. We believe that we have been given the power by God to create our own reality, individually and collectively. ... We are committed to creating a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a violent, angry, and vindictive God” (http://www.thegroupof1000.com/Belief.htm).

In January 2008, Oprah Winfrey said:

“The old way is the ... Church authorities tell you how to worship and how to behave outside of church. The new spirituality is that you are your own best authority as you work to know and love yourself, you discover how to live a more spiritual life.” 

With each passing decade the New Age’s vain dream grows stronger and gains more adherents. 

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY HUMANISM

In 1933, the Humanist Manifesto was published in The Humanist Magazine. “It referred to humanism as a religion, but denied all supernaturalism and went so far as to affirm that: ‘Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created’” (“Humanism,” New World Encyclopedia).

The Humanist Manifesto II, which was published in 1973, proclaimed, “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.” It looked on the public school system as the chief means of proselytizing children into the Humanist faith. It said, “... the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being.”

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Humanism permeated the public school systems of western countries.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY NEW EVANGELICALISM

New Evangelicalism was born in the late 1940s as a rejection of biblical fundamentalism. Influential evangelical leader Harold Ockenga claimed to have coined the term “neo-evangelical” for a speech he gave in 1948. He said that New Evangelicalism is “different from fundamentalism in its repudiation of separatism.” He said that New Evangelicals determine to engage in theological debate with modernists and to work alongside of them in denominations rather than separate from them. He also said that New Evangelicals intend to reexamine “theological problems such as the antiquity of man, the universality of the flood, God’s method of creation, and others” (foreword to Harold Lindsell’s book The Battle for the Bible). This meant that New Evangelicals were open to the theory of evolution and to modernistic approaches to the Bible.

The New Evangelical philosophy has spread throughout evangelicalism, and the result has been apostasy, because to reject biblical separation is to reject the divine means of protection from the devil’s devices. Consider some of the testimonies to evangelicalism’s theological corruption.

By 1976, Carl Henry warned, “A growing vanguard of young graduates of evangelical colleges who hold doctorates from non-evangelical divinity centers now question or disown inerrancy” (“Conflict Over Biblical Inerrancy,” Christianity Today, May 7, 1976).

In 1978, Richard Quebedeaux wrote: “... it is a well-known fact that a large number, if not most, of the colleges and seminaries in question now have faculty who no longer believe in total inerrancy, even in situations where their employers still require them to sign the traditional declaration that the Bible is ‘verbally inspired,’ ‘inerrant,’ or ‘infallible in the whole and in the part,’ or to affirm in other clearly defined words the doctrine of inerrancy...” (The Worldly Evangelicals).

By 1982, only about 15 percent of the student body at Fuller Theological Seminary held to the conviction of the seminary’s founders that the Scripture is inerrant (George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism, p. 268).

In 1974, just before his death, well-known evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer published The Great Evangelical Disaster, warning, “Within evangelicalism there are a growing number who are modifying their views on the inerrancy of the Bible so that the full authority of Scripture is completely undercut.”

In 1985, Herman Hanko, professor at Protestant Reformed Seminary in Grandville, Michigan, observed: “It is almost impossible to find an evangelical professor in the theological schools of our land and abroad who still holds uncompromisingly to the doctrine of the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures. The insidious danger is that higher criticism is promoted by those who claim to believe in infallible inspiration” (Hanko, The Battle for the Bible, pp. 2, 3).

In 1995, referring to a theology conference sponsored jointly by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Wheaton College, Carl Henry warned that “not a single representative of historic evangelical orthodoxy committed to the unbroken authority of the Bible was featured” (Calvary Contender, July 1, 1995).

On April 20, 1996, some 80 well-known evangelical theologians and church leaders signed the Cambridge Declaration, warning: “... the word ‘evangelical’ has become so inclusive as to have lost its meaning. … As Biblical authority has been abandoned in practice, as its truths have faded from Christian consciousness, and its doctrines have lost their saliency, the church has been increasingly emptied of its integrity, moral authority and direction.”

 WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY THE MODERN VERSIONS

The modern Bible versions that have been published since the 19th century have been at war on God’s Word in many ways. 

For one, the theories of modern textual criticism, which created the Greek text underlying the modern versions, adopted naturalistic methods of criticism and denied the divine preservation of Scripture.-----

Another way that the modern Bible versions have been at war on God’s Word is the fact that the textual critics and the translators were overwhelmingly unbelieving in their doctrine. ---

Another way that the modern Bible versions have been at war on God’s Word is through the dynamic equivalency method of translation that takes frightful liberties with the Scripture, replacing God’s words with man’s thoughts. ---

In 1962, Kenneth Taylor published The Living Bible, which though it takes frightful liberties with God’s words became very popular throughout evangelicalism. The early editions had the prophet Elijah saying to the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:27, “Perhaps he is talking to someone or else is out sitting on the toilet.” The Living Bible was launched into popularity when it was promoted by Billy Graham.

In 1981, Robert Bratcher, translator of the very popular Today’s English Version, published by the American Bible Society, said, “Only willful ignorance or intellectual dishonesty can account for the claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. ... No truth-loving, God-respecting, Christ-honoring believer should be guilty of such heresy. To invest the Bible with the qualities of inerrancy and infallibility is to idolatrize it, to transform it into a false god” (The Baptist Courier, Greenville, SC, April 2, 1981). Bratcher was speaking at a national seminar sponsored by the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY ROCK & ROLL

The rock & roll era was born in 1954 when Sun Records in Memphis recorded Elvis Presley’s single “That’s All Right, Mama.” From its inception, rock music has promoted rebellion against the morality of the Bible. Fifties rock literally changed the character of Western society and laid the groundwork for the dramatic spiritual and moral revolution that has followed. It also paved the way for “rock & roll Christianity” at the end of the 20th century.

See How These Versions Are Corrupting The King James Bible

NEW BIBLE VERSIONS