The Bible

Thought for Today
Jun. 12

"THE CHURCH?"

In the year 1604, King James assented to the suggestion of a Puritan named John Reynolds and ordered the production of a new translation of the Bible, a translation that would become known as the King James Version of the Bible. Shortly afterward, to the scholars who would make that translation, King James issued sixteen specific commandments concerning the work they would be doing, some of which commandments limited the scholars' liberty in translation. These commandments were titled "The Rules to be Observed in Translation", and they are preserved to this day in the University Library in Cambridge.

The king's First Rule demanded that the Translators use as a basis for their translation the "Bishop's Bible", the Bible ordinarily used at that time by the Bishops of the Church of England (who were much opposed to the faith of "Puritans"). He added that the Bishop's Bible should be "as little altered as the truth will permit." In other words, the truth of the original Hebrew or Greek texts was to take precedence over even the Bishop's Bible. This was a very good guideline for the king to give to the translators.

The king's Second Rule was that the Translators were forbidden in their new translation to change the names of the prophets and holy men and women, as found in earlier English translations. This, I suppose, was to help facilitate a smooth transition from the older versions of the Bible to this new one. This, too, can be seen as a good commandment to give.

The Third Rule seems at first blush to be similar to the second one, but its purpose was as evil as anything ever need be in order to wreak havoc on the people of God by legitimizing the power of evil men over them.

The people who were mockingly called "Puritans", and others who were persecuted by churchmen of both the Catholic Church and the Church of England, had by this time in history grown to include believers who were also brilliant scholars. Some of these devout men dared to attempt something that had been forbidden; to wit, to translate the Bible into languages that ordinary men and women could read. The Pope had forbidden this, and a few of the men who dared to disobey him and translate the Bible into languages that people could understand had paid the ultimate penalty for their noble efforts. The most famous of these martyrs was a man named William Tyndall, who, having been betrayed by a man he befriended, was captured, condemned by a church court, very cruelly tortured to death, and cast into the flames. All this, principally because he dared to produce a Bible that English people could read in their own language.

THE HATED WORD

Such men as Tyndall found a certain word in the Bibles of the Catholic Church and the Church of England to be so repugnant to the Spirit, so contrary to the true faith, and stemming from unjust claims of spiritual authority, and so reminiscent of cruel horrors perpetrated upon thousands of innocent, godly souls, that they refused to use it in their translations in reference to the people of God. The repugnant, unscriptural word? The word, "church".

The Greek word for "church" (kuriakon), is never used by the original authors of the Bible. It's meaning was simply a building used for religious purposes, and it was borrowed from the heathen world and introduced to believers by the early "church fathers" of Christianity. Any religious building, including an Islamic mosque, is a "church". Knowing this, Martin Luther used the word "church" in his translation of the Bible as it was supposed to be used: in reference to heathen temples, or in one place, to the temple of the Jews in Jerusalem.

Kuriakon, the Greek word for "church", was never used by the apostles who originally wrote the New Testament Scriptures because that word signified a religious building, and they had no such buildings; they met in houses. The reason men like Tyndall rejected the word "church" as a reference to God's people is that by the 17th century, the word "church" was so associated with the Catholic faith that those who wanted to serve God rightly wanted to distance themselves from that abomination. They wanted nothing to do with "the Church". They despised it. They wanted Christ.

THE KING'S POWER BASE

Some of the Translators of the King James Version had "Puritan" leanings, and their sincere distaste for the word "church" presented a problem to King James. His power base was the Church of England, a church that differed only in details with the Catholic Church. King Henry the Eighth had invented that church and separated from Catholicism only decades earlier (in 1534), not out of any doctrinal or ceremonial disagreement with the Pope but simply because the Pope refused to give him a divorce from Catharine of Aragon. The Church of England, then, was from its inception a thoroughly earthly institution, as the Catholic Church is. Its Bishops threatened, plundered, cruelly tortured and executed both good and evil people, without seeing the difference, just as the Pope's servants had been doing for a thousand years or more, and for many of the same reasons. The religion known as the "church" was feared as the very embodiment of Satanic wickedness by those who suffered at its hands. The Puritans, and others, wanted no part of the "church" because they knew that Jesus had no part in it. It was not of God; the "church" was not a holy institution.

When King Henry the Eighth invented his new church, the Church of England, he made himself (and all future kings) head of that church. (It still is that way in England). For King James, then, the church was an indispensable pillar of his government, and the Bishops of the church could make life unbearable for him, and possibly even bring an end to his reign if he provoked them beyond a certain limit. These Bishops had been content with their "Bishop's Bible"; they were not the ones to push for a new translation. That idea, as mentioned previously, had been the suggestion of the Puritan-minded scholar whose comrades had no use for the Catholic-invented, non-Biblical word, "church".

It was, in part, to placate these Bishops that King James commanded the Translators of the new Bible to mistranslate the word the apostles used for God's people, the Greek word ekklesia. The crafty King James needed the Bishops' co-operation in order to maintain control of English society, the same way Catholic Bishops had always been the instruments of the Pope in other nations. He could not afford to alienate them. If the word "church" was omitted from his new translation, as the Puritan faction wanted, the king's Bishops might feel threatened, and the stability of his kingdom would be weakened.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

To King James, it was relatively unimportant that his Bishops had cruelly and unjustly arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and slain many a righteous soul, as well as deserving criminals. (That was, after all, what the church had always done.) The security of his person and his administration was, to him, a far more important matter. Many hundreds, even thousands, of righteous Protestants had been driven from their homes in England by the heavy hand of the Bishops of the Church of England, and those suffering, innocent souls were forced to sojourn as strangers among other nations. Desperate and hated, some of them eventually founded colonies far from the world dominated by the church, in the distant wilderness of a New World just discovered across the Atlantic Ocean, taking their soon-to-be outlawed Geneva Bible with them. Nevertheless, to the king, the security of his kingdom was the most important thing. He had to have the support of the church and its Bishops.

So, the king gave his Translators these contradictory commandments: They were to translate faithfully the original languages for his new translation of the Bible, even if it differed a little from the Bishops' Bible, but they were forbidden to faithfully translate the word used by the apostles when it came to their word for God's "called out ones", the congregation of the Lord. In his new translation, the king felt that he must keep the "church" at all costs, even if it meant misleading the people who would be learning from the new, officially sanctioned Bible.

EVERYTHING

This understanding about the word "church" is personally grievous to me. It isn't like other things that I have learned about the way of Jesus. It sickens me to think that everything I have ever thought, and everything I have ever said and written using the word "church" has been wrong. In my frustration the last few days since I learned this, I said, "It is as if we can't even speak about our Lord Jesus without using the language that Satan invented for it!" God, deliver us! Is there anything about God's people that has not been tampered with by the cunning craftiness of Satan? Is that liar, that thief, anywhere absent? I think not, except under the shadow of the holy Spirit of our God.

What I have found is that, in large measure, my critics have been right all along; Christianity IS the true "church". And they have been right when they condemned me by saying that Satan has been inspiring much of my writings, my thoughts, my words, for I found that he really has polluted my earnest labor for the children of God. Through my heartfelt attachment to the word "church", his poisonous influence has been here in my heart, where I hoped it was not. But Jesus is still helping me, still showing me mercy. The saints who often meet in my house have come out of the abomination of Christianity, but Christianity, we now find, is still in a measure in us who abhor it and want to be rid of it forever.

This has made me feel, spiritually, like one of the "three stooges", those masters of slap-stick comedy, trying to free myself from a big sheet of sticky paper. When I free my hand, it sticks to my foot; when I free my foot, it sticks to my face; when I free my face, it's back on my hands. God, come and deliver us from everything that is not you! That is all we want. God, how long before we are truly free?

I'LL TAKE GOD

As I was writing this last line, drawing this TFT to a close, a scene from my father's early days came to mind. After being anointed with power, and after Jesus showed him the truth about the new birth, he did the right thing and went to his superiors in the church to tell them. He did it sincerely and with joy, and at times with tears, but was rejected at every turn by those who should have been his elders, and who until this time, he had always trusted to be just that: his elders.

With one of his Overseers, he was rebuffed only with a repeated phrase: "Brother Clark, please don't leave the church". Each time my father would show that man another bit of the light he was beginning to see, the response would be the same: "Brother Clark, please don't leave the church".

"What am I supposed to do?" My father pleaded. "God has shown this to me!"

The only response was the same. "We can't change all these people. Brother Clark, please don't leave the church".

Finally, in righteous exasperation, he gave a final answer to the stubborn elder, an answer which, I see now at last, contained far more wisdom than my father himself even dared to think.

The young minister rose from his seat and spoke with grieved firmness, "I'll tell you what, Brother ----, you take the church, and I'll take God, and we'll see who fares better in the Judgment." Then he walked out. Not long afterward, his license with the Church was revoked for "teaching doctrines contrary to the church."

What my father told that elder is all I want to do now. Just take God, and go on my way to the Judgment.