The Bible is many things to many people, but to Christians alone it is God’s Word. To Christians the Bible contains many things: science, history, moral admonitions, examples to live by, knowledge, wisdom, doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction for righteousness. It also contains warnings.
The Bible warns us, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” (Galatians 5:9). God uses this word picture to make clear to us what he means. Leaven is used in bread making to accomplish three things: to sour the dough, to puff it up, and to fill the dough with holes. If you have ever made or seen homemade bread in the making, you’ll have first-hand knowledge of what I mean. Please note that leaven is right for bread making, but leaven has no place in truth: truth becomes soured, the presenter of soured truth is puffed up, and solid truth becomes filled with holes. Leaven applied to the Bible by changing words, adding to them and leaving others out is a damning leaven that must not be ignored. Changes made in God’s Word mix errors with truth thereby adding leaven to God’s Word and making an unsound representation of truths the Holy Bible means to present. New Age bibles are not holy, being soured with men’s thoughts being placed above God’s thoughts, puffed up by the translator’s pride, and full of holes made by changes of words, which by definition carry other meanings than the original.
Leaven has no place in the reading of God’s word. I discovered leaven in one church my wife and I attended in Napa, California. Each of our Sunday School classes included reading aloud certain Bible verses as we studied. Each day verses were read aloud from different Bible versions. There were about fourteen of us reading from at least ten different Bible versions. Some days my wife and I were totally confused at what we were hearing because the words were so different than our King James Version. The class at large found agreement in what was being read quite difficult because of the different words that were alleged to be in certain verses. Satan, being the author of confusion, was clearly at work in that church.
This confusion in our Sunday School class led me to begin my own research into what version is the correct version for Christians to be studying from. I read dozens of books by authors who spent years delving into primary documents, i.e. the original, or at least the earliest authors of Bible texts known to exist. Their research revealed the same thing. Vatican bibles and later bibles based on the same bibles used at the Vatican were found to be in error. Those readings led me to believe I could help people who did nto want to spend the time reading that I did. My goal was to produce a short booklet on choosing the correct Bible to use for daily reading and especially for in-depth Bible study.
A Layman’s Thoughts On Differing Bible Versions covers the how and why of my choosing one Bible version over any other. I also included a few paragraphs of how I became saved, so some personal information about me is in there just as an FYI.
The booklet is free. Just go back to my homepage, scroll down a bit until you see the offer of my free booklet. It’s a reasonably quick read that has just a few of the many thousands of details that I thought were most pertinent to people who may be on the fence in choosing their own Bible for easy reading or for in-depth Bible studies.
