By Dr. Peter S. Ruckman 

Bible Believers' Bulletin, Oct. 2011

kjv1611.org

If you want to know how to spot any modern apostate (say, like John R. Rice, Curtis Hutson, or Shelton Smith), look at how he avoids using the word Scripture when speaking of a King James Bible. Recently, Shelton Smith—after finally seeing on which side his bread was buttered after we had kicked his slats out for about twenty years—finally made some statements where he almost said it, but not quite.

People like Shelton Smith have a nice little way of getting around the truth. They say, “We believe that God has preserved His Word,” which is actually saying nothing. The word Word (capital W), when referring to the Bible, is a Neo-orthodox designation invented by Barth and Brunner meaning “the MESSAGE of the Bible,” not the individual WORDS.

When we talk about “the preserved word of God,” we are not talking about any “fundamentals,” “principles,” or some nebulous Neo-orthodox “message” found in the Bible. We are talking about the W-O-R-D-S of the Scriptures. The promise of the preservation of the Scriptures, as found in the Scriptures, is this:

“The WORDS of the LORD are pure WORDS [not just ‘the word’ or even ‘the Word’] . . . Thou shalt keep THEM [“the WORDS”], O LORD, thou shalt preserve THEM [“the WORDS,” not “the words”] from this generation for ever” (Psa. 12:6–7).

So when we talk about “the preservation of the word of God,” we are not talking about the same thing at all. We are talking about the individual words as recorded in a Book, the Holy Bible. It is called the Holy Bible because in the Scriptures it is called “the holy scriptures” (see Rom. 1:2; 2 Tim. 3:15).

The way to spot these hypocrites is simple. Get them to say that they have a copy of the Holy Scriptures and it’s a King James Bible, or that the Holy Bible is the King James Bible because it’s the Holy Scriptures. They won’t say it “for love nor money.” They will say anything but that. They will say, “The Bible is the holy Word of God,” or “the Bible is God’s Word,” or “the Bible is the greatest book in the world,” or “the Bible is the preserved Word of God,” but they won’t say the King James Version is the Holy Scriptures because if they did, they know you’d catch them in a BALD-FACED LIE!

You see, every one of these apostate hypocrites teach that when Paul wrote “all SCRIPTURE is given by inspiration of God” in 2 Timothy 3:16, that that’s a reference only to the original autographs. But look at the verse right before it (after all, a text without a context is a pretext):

“And that from a child thou hast known the holy SCRIPTURES, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15).

That is where the whole crew of apostates go right to the bottom of Davey Jones’ locker. The word Scripture shows up in both verses 15 and 16, showing clearly—unquestionably, without one reasonable dissenting opinion from anyone, anywhere, living or dead—that the Scriptures which were “given by inspiration” were the Scriptures on which Timothy was raised.

Now, the only way any apostate Fundamentalist could disconnect verse 16 from verse 15 would be by running to the original Greek to point out that the word for Scripture in verse 15 is grammata, while the one in verse 16 is graphe. But this would prove nothing, since either word in Greek, in the context of 2 Timothy 3:15–16, refers to the words of God written down, that someone in the First Century was reading: They had it in their laps looking at it.

If these rascals who dedicated themselves to seducing the saints and deceiving them (see a list of 320 of them in The Christian Liar’s Library) were to apply themselves, they might come up with a brand new doctrine. All they would have to do is claim that although all graphe was “given by inspiration of God,” what Timothy had was not because it was grammata and not graphe. That would give you two sets of Scripture: inspired Scriptures and uninspired Scriptures. That’s exactly what you find in the RV of 1885, the ASV of 1901, and the “New” ASV of 1963. In all three of those grossly corrupt translations, 2 Timothy 3:16 reads: “Every scripture inspired of God is profitable,” implying that there are some Scriptures that are NOT “inspired of God.” Two sets; count ‘em: a one; a two.

That was not an accident or a coincidence. It was done intentionally to divorce verse 15 from verse 16 so that the Scriptures Timothy had were not “given by inspiration.” After all, he didn’t have the original autographs of Genesis, Psalms, 1 & 2 Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, or anything else. Whatever manuscripts Timothy was reading and studying were ones that had the breath of God on them (the word for “inspiration of God” in Greek, theopneustos, means “God-breathed”). The apostates who translated the RV, ASV, and NASV try to make it look like Timothy didn’t have the “real thing” when it came to the Scriptures, since neither Timothy nor Paul ever saw an “original” of any Old Testament book a day in his life.

You wouldn’t believe the stinking hoax perpetrated by the Fundamentalists at this point. John R. Rice (Our God-Breathed Bible), Louis Gaussen (Theopneustia), Lorraine Boettner (Inspiration of the Scriptures), Basil Manly (Doctrine of Inspiration Explained), et al., all went to the bottom like a lead sinker. You see, they all taught that no one in Paul or Timothy’s day ever had any God-breathed Scripture to read, because by that day, all Paul or Timothy had of the Old Testament were copies of copies or translations; and as any graduate of Bob Jones University, Tennessee Temple University, Liberty University, Baptist Bible College, etc., knows: “no translation can be inspired.”

That’s right. You bet your booties, baby. Every one of them teaches that no translation can be inspired. They’re crazy; they’re nuts; they’re cuckoo. There are more than 150 verses in the New Testament that are Greek translations of the Hebrew Old Testament. If those birds actually followed what they teach, they would say that over 150 verses of the New Testament “originals” were not “given by inspiration of God.”

Now, Paul says Timothy was raised on “the holy scriptures.” Timothy’s mother (like Jack Hyles’ mother) brainwashed him into believing that the copies of copies of copies that he had of the lost originals were “holy” and God-breathed according to 2 Timothy 3:16. What a wicked woman Timothy had for a mother! What a cultist! What a “King James Onlyism” fanatic! Why didn’t someone who was “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7) deliver the woman to “Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Tim. 1:20 cf. 1 Cor. 5:5) for teaching such an injurious doctrine as having inspired Scriptures that weren’t the original autographs?!

Timothy believed that what he was reading was “scripture . . . given by inspiration of God,” and the Holy Spirit, the Author of the Scriptures, told Paul to record what he wrote in 2 Timothy 3:15, knowing that all Timothy had were copies of the Holy Scriptures. Look at what the Bible says about the word Scripture. This is what John R. Rice, Curtis Hutson, and Shelton Smith couldn’t deal with.

“Did ye never read in the scriptures” (Matt. 21:42).

What a useless question for Jesus Christ to ask if the word Scriptures referred only to the original autographs. Of course those Jews “never read in the scriptures” because they didn’t have the originals.

Mark 12:24, “ye know not the scriptures.”

Why say that? They couldn’t know them anyway if they were the original autographs. What would be the point of saying you didn’t know them when it would be obvious to anyone that no one could know them because they didn’t have them.

Luke 4:21, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”

Nonsense again, if the “scripture” is the original autograph. No synagogue in the Gospel of Luke had the original autograph of Isaiah, and if it did, then it was stolen by the Ethiopian eunuch because he had it in Acts 8:32; that is, if “the scripture” is the original autographs.

Acts 17:11, “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”

They did nothing of the kind. Nobody in Berea had any originals to search. Nobody in Acts 17 ever saw an original autograph of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, or any other Old Testament book.

Romans 15:4, “that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”

Are you crazy? The Scriptures couldn’t comfort anybody according to every apostate Fundamentalist in America. Why not? Because nobody has the original autographs. It is impossible to receive comfort from some lost scraps of paper and vellum that no one has ever seen. Are you mad?

They are just as mad as a hatter, boy! They are more screwed up than a crippled tornado.

Now has the reader gotten the message yet? All right, here it is—52 on the table face up, over the plate waist high, straight shot right out of the barrel and dead center in the bull’s eye: neither the Holy Spirit nor the Holy Bible ever use the term Scripture as a modern Greek or Hebrew scholar uses it—never. The cultic “private interpretation” (see 2 Pet. 1:20) of what they think the word means is completely ignored by the Holy Spirit in both Testaments. There is not one word in either Testament of any Bible—any edition of any version that has been printed since A.D. 90.

No one in either Testament even suggests that the Scriptures were unavailable manuscripts that contained “original autographs.” No matter how “godly” and “dedicated” the Fundamentalist is who uses such cultic terminology, it is anti-scriptural, anti-biblical, and anti-Christian. It is found in the mouth of no Christian in the New Testament and no saint in the Old Testament. It is the non-biblical, non-Christian language of an egotistical, paranoid, Nicolaitan nut who thinks he is smart enough to change what God said in the Scriptures. It’s the language of idiots who have been educated beyond their intelligence.

According to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Scriptures are words you can read. Timothy read them, Paul read them, Christ read them, the Ethiopian read them, the Bereans read them, and the Rabbis were commanded to read them. If you can’t read them, then the God who inspired them was not able to preserve them, and He wouldn’t have commanded you to read them. No number of theories, alibis, reasons, proofs, facts, or opinions contribute anything to the problem that every verse in either Testament believes the teaching that only the “verbally inspired original autographs” are the subject of 2 Timothy 3:15–16.

That teaching is the teaching of a non-biblical cult. We call it the “Alexandrian Cult” because that is where the teaching came from: Alexandria, Egypt. The teaching is a crutch used by this bunch of apostate, Nicolaitan Alexandrians; it is a pile of manure. If you take it at face value, it means that there were no Bible believers on the RV committee, the ASV committee, the RSV committee, the NASV committee, the NKJV committee, the ESV committee, or any committee like them.

When pressed for an exact doctrinal statement on what they actually believe, these backslidden, worldly apostates come up with a mythological definition about the original autographs found nowhere in the Bible. They read it out of some other book somewhere. That is what the Scriptures never mean one time in the Scriptures. That’s why the apostates chose the definition, because they hate the Scriptures and love themselves.

Notice how carefully these obfuscating hypocrites choose their words. They are careful never to say “Scripture” in reference to the Authorized Version. Let’s take two examples: Wallie Criswell and Truman Dollar.

Criswell: “The preacher who starts with the Word of God (not the Scriptures) in his hands, stands upon an invincible, impregnable rock. When you come to my church, it will be a message from the Book (not the Scriptures). The Bible (not the Scriptures) is the infallible Word of God (not the Scriptures). God wrote it down, and we can open this sacred Book (not the Scriptures) and read its holy words.”

Dollar: “We will not be a friend of the world as long as we are true to this Book (not Scripture). Preach this Book (not the Scriptures). I want to lace my sermons with the Word of God (not the Scriptures); I want to fill my sermons with the Book (not the Scriptures). Preach it. Don’t lose it and don’t change it.”

Did Dollar mean what he said? No, he got on the NKJV committee and changed it in 500 places. Ditto Criswell. Why? Because despite seemingly good professions, neither one of them had ever seen the Scriptures. Why not? Because both of them believed the Scripture referred to in 2 Timothy 3:16 was only the original autographs.

When John R. Rice wrote Our God-Breathed Bible, he wasn’t referring to any Bible at which any of his readers had ever looked; he was talking about the originals. He lied: he lied right in the title of his book. The Bible is a book (that’s what the word Bible means). The originals were never collected and put in any book on the face of this earth: they were never all in one book. John R. Rice was “deceiving, and being deceived” (cf. 2 Tim. 3:13).

All right, to finish it up. There are only two kinds of Christians in America: those who believe the Holy Bible is “the holy scriptures” and those who don’t. I did not create that schism. That was the work of the Holy Spirit more than 1,900 years before I was born (see 1 Thess. 2:13). We do not just refer to the AV as the “verbally inspired, inerrant word (or Word) of God”; we refer to it as the Holy Scriptures. We believe the AV is the Holy Bible because it is the Scriptures in English. It is inerrant, infallible, and preserved by the grace of God in our language, with the words God wants us to have. That is our position, and it has been our position, and it will continue to be our position “until hell freezes over,” as they say in “koine” American.

We don’t hesitate at all to say that the King James Version of the Holy Bible is the Holy Scriptures in the English language. Any honest man could say it just like that if he believed it. The fact that men like Shelton Smith can’t come out and say that just shows you that they are crooked as a dog’s hind leg and are so crooked that they have to screw their socks on in the morning.

We believe the AV was given to us by God in spite of its translators, revisers, Kingly advice, name, time in history, attending circumstances, or anything else; we never have to worry about what text it came from, who put it together, why they did it, what they believed, or any other Alexandrian gimmick called to our attention to cause us to doubt the words God gave us in English. We have the word of God in our language, and it is the words of God that He wants us to have. We call these words collected in the Holy Bible the “Holy Scriptures,” just as Paul did with the Scriptures Timothy read. I have a copy of the Holy Scriptures right here on my desk. It’s not in Greek or Hebrew; it’s in English.

If this bunch of apostate reprobates believe that only the original autographs are inspired, where is their proof? I have read about two dozen books on the subject of inspiration, and in every single one of them, the authors quote an uninspired King James Bible (“no translation is inspired,” remember?) or copies of copies of a Greek text that was miscopied by scribes as evidence that some pieces of paper nobody ever saw were “plenary inspired.”

The only verse these godless, depraved, lying reprobates have to prove that only the originals are inspired is 2 Peter 1:21. In that verse, Peter doesn’t mention anybody inspiring any written thing. It says, “holy men of God SPAKE as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Every reprobate who ever wrote on inspiration quoted that verse to prove that only the original autographs were inspired. It wasn’t a reference to anybody’s autographs; it was a reference to what “holy men of God” SPOKE. All these birds had to change the verse to say “wrote” in order to teach it. Birds of a feather flock together.

I don’t have to look very far to know who my people are. They read the Holy Scriptures; they quote the Holy Scriptures. When they say “Turn in the Scriptures to such-and-such a place,” they take a copy of the Scriptures and turn to the Scripture.

This other bunch isn’t my crowd. They make their living by lying. When they read, quote, memorize, and preach “the Scripture,” they don’t mean “the scripture” at all. They mean an uninspired “reliable translation” or Greek or Hebrew text, which they “prefer” because the “scripture” that is “given by inspiration of God” to them is only the “original autographs.” They propagated that lie knowing perfectly well that the word Scripture in any Bible is never a reference to any “verbal, plenarily inspired originals.”