Don’t believe your King James Bible, believe the “godly fundamentalist” instead.
Although distasteful, double-talk, evasive answers, and slimy half-truths are expected from politicians, car salesmen, criminal defendants, news reporters, sports coaches, financial “experts,” and CEO’s of public companies excusing a bad earnings report. The listener is gassed with a verbal fog of half-truths and empty gibberish so that the speaker won’t expose his own stupidity and guilt with a straightforward answer.
Professional religious tycoons have always been some of the most studied and deceptive double-talkers.
Take minister Clarence Sexton from Tennessee for example. His religious empire includes Temple Baptist Church, Crown College, Faith for the Family Radio, and Crown Christian Publications – all avowedly “fundamentalist” institutions through and through.
Wouldn’t they have an honest and straightforward answer when asked to identify their final authority?
Surely Clarence Sexton wouldn’t engage in round-about and confusing obscurities to hide what he believes, would he?!?
Let’s see what Temple Baptist Church has to say in its Belief Statement:
We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Bible, “as it is in truth, the Word of God…” (I Thessalonians 2:13). We believe in verbal, plenary inspiration in the original writings, and God’s preservation of His pure words to every generation (II Timothy 3:16, Psalms 12:6-8). We believe that the Scriptures are inerrant, infallible, and God-breathed.
The Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Received Text of the New Testament (Textus Receptus) are those texts of the original languages we accept and use; the King James Version of the Bible is the only English version we accept and use. The Bible is our sole and final authority for faith and practice.
That is quite a bit of verbiage, isn’t it? Why does Temple Baptist need so many words to say what they believe when Bible believers only need eight??
“The King James Bible is our final authority”
or
“The Authorized Version is Holy Scripture in English”
Is that too difficult?
Temple Baptist Church sure has to labour hard to explain itself, doesn’t it? Temple Baptist wouldn’t be loading-up its Statement with fundamentalist firecrackers like “inerrant, infallible, and God-breathed” just to hide its slight of hand, would it?
If it quacks like double-talk, and reads like double-talk, and is as round-about and confusing as double-talk, then guess what boys and girls, you can bet that it is double talk!
Being crafty, I caught you with guile.
If you look closely you will see that the statement is careful crafted to avoid equating the King James Bible with the Holy Scriptures. All their bluster about believing the “Scriptures” in their first paragraph is cleverly divorced from any direct connection to the King James Bible in the second paragraph.
They “use” and “accept” the King James ‘version’ – but they don’t equate it with scripture. They define “scripture” and “bible” as “original writings” only.
See how it is done?
And with that crafty bit of diabolical word-smithing, Clarence Sexton’s Temple Baptist Church and Crown College can avoid putting themselves under any authority higher than their own opinions about what the missing “original manuscripts” may or may not actually say in English. Their pretentious use of fundamentalist sounding bravado amounts to nothing. The statement is only an endorsement of their own opinions!
They won’t even say that they “believe” the King James Bible. They only “use” and “accept” it – something that Mormons and Freemasons also confess. They carefully avoid stating any belief that the Holy Ghost put his words into English in the King James Bible. They believe only that God “preserved” his words in the form of Masoretic and Textus Receptus texts – which both remain undefined in exact content and final authoritative meaning. Thus Clarence Sexton says that God remained a mute when it came to the English Language.
The job of putting Hebrew and Greek into English remains at the discretion of every so-called “scholar” (but not with the simple-minded plough-boys who can’t read foreign languages). The so-called “scholar” retains a veto over the words of the Authorized Version – and he can strike them out and replace them whenever and wherever they don’t line up with his own opinion.
Oh the almighty Greek and Hebrew scholars! How fantastic they are! For without them we have no idea what God really said! Let us sit at their feet and give them money! And yet, alas! they all disagree with each other!
All the house of Israel are impudent and hardhearted.
We live in a time of gross apostasy and darkness – even among the so-called fundamentalists, such as Clarence Sexton, men of heady pride and stricken with infidelity. What crafty subtlety and self-delusion these men are under: they call themselves “Bible believers” while defining terms in such a way that they reserve their own opinions as the final authority on what the Bible actually should say in English!
And yet they are keenly aware of their own hypocrisy, and so they shamefully employ jesuitical double-talk to trick genuine AV Bible believers into sending them money!
Yet there are no “fundamental creeds” without scripture to first define them. The scriptures must come first – read us the scriptures before you presume to tell us fundamentals!
Us Bible believers have the scriptures in English in our hands: it’s the King James Bible! Its words judge your fundamentals.
Christians like Clarence Sexton, who believe in “historic fundamentals” instead of scripture (Authorized Version), are still among the blind.
“… anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.” Rev. 3:18.
Posted on October 30, 2012