Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Inspiration with application (part 1)

The problem I am having comes from the idea of inspiration. What perspective, or perhaps all three(that I listed being that I don't know of any more possibilities), does God inspire?

Lets think about this. The bible that we have today is it Sovereignly and Divinely inspired? Quite honestly I would rather the answer be yes. But I don't believe it is that easy. I certainly could assume "entire" inspiration I mean look at the book of Timothy, what did Paul say? "All" scripture is "God breathed". However anyone trying to support Sovereign and Divine inspiration who knows how to argue will not "assume" inspiration by the very content they are assuming inspired! That is circular reasoning!

Continuing on this thinking, how do we really know God has Sovereignly kept the "bible" intact? I am not saying He doesn't give us his truth or hasn't, but being that the 'word' (lower case 'w') or bible is what I have in question I can't "assume" inspiration. Did not God give "us" his word? In other words has it not been "our" responsibility to "keep" his word?

There are meany reasons to think about this. If you look at the amount of bible translations alone, one begins to see the 'possible' problem. There are approximately 200 recognized (authoritative) 'bible's' none of which are exactly the same. You know NIV, NASB, RSV, ESB, etc....I have done entire bible studies through one book and then through another to compare.....WOW what a difference. For example look up the word 'hell' in the King James Version then compare it to...basically ANY version and you'll see a rather stark contrast

Number of times "Hell" appears in the text in English Bible Translations
Bible Translations
Old Testament
New Testament
Total
"Authorized" King James Version * 31 23 54
New King James Version * 19 13 32
New International Version 0 14 14
American Standard Version 0 13 13
New American Standard Bible 0 13 13
Revised English Bible 0 13 13
New Living Translation 0 13 13
Amplified 0 13 13
Revised Standard Version 0 12 12
New Revised Standard Version 0 12 12
Darby 0 12 12
New Century Version 0 12 12
Young's Literal Translation (1891) 0 0 0
Rotherham's Emphasized Bible (reprinted, 1902) 0 0 0
Fenton's Holy Bible in Modern English (1903) 0 0 0
New American Bible (1970) 0 0 0
Restoration of Original Sacred Name Bible (1976) 0 0 0
Christian Bible (1991) 0 0 0
World English Bible (in progress) 0 0 0
Original Bible Project (Dr. James Tabor, still in translation) 0 0 0
Wesley's New Testament (1755) - 0 0
Scarlett's New Testament (1798) - 0 0
The New Testament in Greek and English (Kneeland, 1823) - 0 0
Twentieth Century New Testament (1900) - 0 0
Weymouth's New Testament in Modern Speech (1903) - 0 0
Panin's Numeric English New Testament (1914) - 0 0
The People's New Covenant (Overbury, 1925) - 0 0
Hanson's New Covenant (1884) - 0 0
Western New Testament (1926) - 0 0
New Testament of our Lord and Savior Anointed (Tomanek, 1958) - 0 0
Concordant Literal New Testament (1983) - 0 0
The New Testament, A Translation (Clementson, 1938) - 0 0
Emphatic Diaglott, Greek/English Interlinear (Wilson, 1942) - 0 0
The New Testament, A New Translation (Greber, 1980) - 0 0
Orthodox Jewish Brit Chadasha [New Testament only] - 0 0
Zondervan Parallel New Testament in Greek and English (1975)** - 0 0
Interlinear NASB-NIV Parallel New Testament in Greek and English (1993)** - 0 0
Interlinear Greek-English New Testament (Berry,1897)** - 0 0
Jewish Publication Society Bible Old Testament (1917) 0 - 0
Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures, Old Testament (1985) 0 - 0

So who has been 'emphasizing' hell 'king James'' translators or God? I think the translators? How bout you? So who's fault is it? God's Sovereignty or man's mistakes? As Paul might attest, who can find fault with God? So how Sovereign is God over his word? Someone might say, "but look we now have found the descrepency and its not like it was over an 'essential' of the faith!...REALLY? You don't think the very place....MILLIONS of people are afraid of going isn't worth have the correct translation over? And God just 'let' it slide for hundreds of years (King James was around for some time) without proper emphasis??? God's fault or mans fault?

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Honesty

I have been a "Christian" for about 10 years now ( I am 21) and yet in all this time I don't believe I "know" Christ or God the Father. I have accepted that Jesus died for me to save me so that I would 'live eternally', but that really does mean I now "know" him.

I feel especially distant from Christ. I would like to know him, you know talk to him, ask him about himself, but I don't know how. Why the distance? Mostly because I don't know how to relate to him. A perfect man, sinless, having no weakness....how can I relate to that?! The best conversations of my life (so far) have been in the admitting of my sin and weakness to my 'brothers' ( with the purpose of course to be humbled before God and to ask for forgiveness and to repent asking him for the understanding and ability to change my ways).

When I was 12 I realized that the only thing in life that matters is pleasing God. But I don't know how?! There are far too many things that seem to be the 'answer' for that question and yet I don't want 'man's' answer I want to hear and to know it from God himself.

People say "the answer is in his word!" others say "Jesus is the 'Word' so ask him" still others say "The Spirit is the only one who can 'please' God in 'us' so ask him to cause you to please God". So which is it? What does God, the living God of all eternity say, from his own mouth and heart. My guess is that when God wants us to know something He affirms it with His Spirit and our Spirit is 'bent' in love toward His will. In other words our whole Spirit affirms and rejoices in the 'truth' and there is NOTHING that can convince us otherwise not even our 'minds' , 'hearts', 'others' , or 'satan himself'.

This is part of the quest the Father has me on.