I spent part of my morning reading various Christian message boards and when I came across a certain thread, my heart sank. The threads subject was: “None of us is totally SAVED yet”
Ouch… Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord are without a shadow of doubt saved. There’s no doubt that it’s a complete and done deal. Here’s what the Bible says about it:
- Romans 8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
- 1 Corinthians 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
- 1 Corinthians 15:2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
- 2 Corinthians 2:15 For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish:
- Ephesians 2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved; )
- Revelation 21:24 And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.
But there are some that believe we won’t really know we’re saved until we enter the pearly gates, and I know where this idea came from. Lately, it came from the new versions of the bible, tainted with faulty, corrupted, and downright evil manuscripts, re-translated and edited by Adamantius Origen (184-254 AD). In effect, this man didn’t believe the Apostles were educated enough to tell us what God’s will is through their Gospels and letters, so he obtained copies of the New Testament from Antioch and re-wrote them to tell us what he believed God really meant. Notice I said “what he believed God really meant”! Would you like to know what this man Origen believed?
- He didn’t believe in the Old Testament miracles.
- He believed that human souls existed before birth.
- He believed that man was a god himself.
- He taught that Jesus didn’t become God until He was baptized. In effect, he didn’t believe Jesus Christ was God Almighty.
- He said that the physical resurrection of the saved wasn’t really going to happen.
- He said that once a man dies, his soul would pass on to another at birth (Transmigration).
- He believed and taught that the Holy Spirit was the first creature created by God and wasn’t eternal.
The man was a mystic and a heretic from the get go. There’s others that believe that he even rewrote the Old Testament into what’s called the Septuagint. And this mans corrupted translations are the basis for all the new English translations. Yes, even the New King James. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing otherwise.
So how did Origen’s weird ideology wind up affecting the new versions? Origen’s manuscripts were used by two men to create their own manuscript called the Nestle/UBS text. If you’re using one of the newer versions, look in the front and see if this name is there. If so, then why don’t we look at the character of those men who created it from an already corrupted manuscript.
The quotes below are from “These are The Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott” by Westcott’s son Arthur, and “The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort” by Hort’s son. Please read this carefully…
Do any of you believe that we can talk to the dead? Well, Westcott and Hort, were numbered as some of the founders of the Ghost Society in the 1850s. These guys were fascinated with the occult practice of divining spirits and talking to the dead. Wasn’t that the thing the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:7) practiced?
In his letters to Westcott, Hort cautioned him to not mention the things they were involved in because they knew it would cast doubt on their spiritual character as bible scholars. “This may sound cowardice. I have a craving that our text should be cast upon the world before we deal with matters likely to brand us with suspicion. I mean a text issued by men who are already known for what will undoubtedly be treated as dangerous heresy will have great difficulty in finding its way to regions which it might otherwise hope to reach…” These things concerning Westcott and Hort aren’t common knowledge folks, but need to be told.
These guys didn’t even believe that the scriptures were actually the inspired word of God. Much to the contrary, they treated the word of God as any other written history or book of philosophy. Hort’s notes contained the following: “For ourselves, we dare not introduce considerations which could not reasonably be applied to other ancient texts, supposing them to have documentary attestation of equal amount, variety and antiquity.”
Hort also states: “In the New Testament, as in almost all prose writings which have been much copied, corruptions by interpolation are many times more numerous than corruptions by omission.” Do you know what the word “prose” means? It means matter of fact, commonplace, or by dull expression. Prose can and does also mean of no more value than any other words. Interestingly, he believed that the New Testament was commonplace and of no greater value than any other piece of literature.
Yeah, that’s just plain wrong, but there is a whole bunch more. Did you know that Westcott believed heaven was here on earth? Westcott wrote: “We may reasonably hope, by patient, resolute, faithful, united endeavor to find heaven about us here, the glory of our earthly life.”
How about the Genesis account? I hold the account of creation for what the Bible says it is. Do you? Westcott said: “No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example, give a literal history – I could never understand how anyone reading them with open eyes could think they did – yet they disclose to us a Gospel. So it is probably elsewhere. Are we not going through a trial in regard to the use of popular language on literary subjects like that through which we went, not without sad losses in regard to the use of popular language on physical subjects? If you feel now that it was, to speak humanly, necessary that the Lord should speak of the ‘sun rising,’ it was no less necessary that he would use the names ‘Moses’ and ‘David’ as His contemporaries used them. There was no critical question at issue. (Poetry is, I think, a thousand times more true than History; this is a private parenthesis for myself alone.)”
How about the Blood price paid for our sin. You know, without the shedding of Blood, there is no remission of sin sorta thing? That’s the price that paid our ransom. Well, Hort didn’t really believe that it was the price paid for our sin by it paying our ransom. Hort said: “I confess I have no repugnance to the primitive doctrine of a ransom paid to Satan, though neither am I prepared to give full assent to it. But I can see no other possible form in which the doctrine of a ransom is at all tenable; anything is better than the notion of a ransom paid to the Father.”
These are the guys that put together the manuscripts for the New Bibles with their own take on what Christianity was.
There is one other man, after he had his hand in the translation of one of the new versions, the NASB, regretted what he had been a part of. His name was Dr. Frank Logsdon (1907-1987) Co-founder New American Standard Bible. In a letter to his wife, he wrote the following:
“There are two copies of those Bibles in existence, A and B, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. And where are they? They are in the custodial care of Rome. Now almost all of our revisions, of recent years in particular, come through that stream. And that necessitates this comment: There is the false and the true streams of manuscripts. And either our manuscripts come through the false stream, or they come through the approved stream of manuscripts.”
“Nevertheless, getting back to this, the devil is too wise to try to destroy the Bible. He knows he can’t. He can’t destroy the Word of God. But he can do a lot of things to try to supplant it, or to corrupt it in the minds and hearts of God’s people.
Now he can only do it in one of two ways: either by adding to the Scriptures or by subtracting from the Scriptures. And you mark it down in your little red book: He’s too wise to add to because those who have been in the Word for a long time would say, “Wait a minute; this is not in the Bible.” So he subtracts from it. The deletions are absolutely frightening.
I think I mentioned the other night, since there is so much concern about these versions and paraphrases and so on, it is a marvelous opportunity for the devil to get in his strokes, you know. Through computerized procedures they have tried to determine the accuracy right down the line. You have lists of those in various books. The Authorized Version is right at the top. Friends, you can say the Authorized Version is absolutely correct. How correct? 100% correct! Because biblical correctness is predicated upon doctrinal accuracy, and not one enemy of this Book of God has ever proved a wrong doctrine in the Authorized Version. You’ve never heard of anyone’s intellect being thwarted because he believed this Authorized Version, have you? And you never will. You’ve never heard of anyone anytime going astray who embraced the precepts of the Authorized Version, and you never will.
So when they saw that there wasn’t much to revise, here they had their committee arranged. One was a Unitarian, a man by the name of Smith. That’s why you find on verses concerning the incarnation there’s something wrong. Such as 1 Timothy 3:16–“By common consent great is the mystery of godliness.” Don’t you believe that the mystery of godliness depends upon what man thinks, or his opinion. The verse continues in the 1881 version–“he who was manifest in the flesh.” You’ve been manifest in the flesh; I’ve been manifest; [that statement alone is meaningless]. It’s God who was manifest in the flesh. Do you see the Unitarian flavor there? He got in some blows somewhere, and that must be one of them.
But I finally got to the place where I said, “Ann, I’m in trouble; I can’t refute these arguments; it’s wrong; it’s terribly wrong; it’s frightfully wrong; and what am I going to do about it?” Well, I went through some real soul searching for about four months, and I sat down and wrote one of the most difficult letters of my life, I think. “
I’ll be continually working on this article as time goes by. Some of what I’ve placed here was also used in message board posts and in my own notes. I’ll continue as time permits.