The true Bible text is what God says it is: not what academics think it should be.

Does God’s word mean what Jesus says it means, or is it what scholarly grammarians insist it should say. Consider these verses.

Mal. 3:1: Behold I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before Me, and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight; Behold he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.

Mal. 4:5: Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

Imagine a Bible scholar and translator trying to tell us what the two verses above mean. Mal. 3:1 is easy. John the Baptist did indeed prepare the way of the Lord; he announced Jesus as Messiah at his baptism.

But what about Mal. 4:5? Does it mean the Prophet Elijah will only come in the far off future before the dark and dreadful Day of the Lord? Not according to Jesus who plainly told his disciples: “Elijah has come already” (Matt. 17:12), in the person of John the Baptist. Thus in Matt. 11:14 He says “And if you will receive it this (i.e. John the Baptist) is Elias (Elijah) who was to come”.

Let’s face it there is no way in the wide world a Bible translator could by textual criticism of Mal. 4:5 deduce that John the Baptist was Elijah “come again”. Without the inspiration and discernment of the Lord Himself, the God-given meaning would be lost to them. You see, while every word of God is true and every prophecy will be fulfilled, nevertheless often the real meaning of scripture lies beyond human understanding.

As the Apostle Paul says, “...but the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

Please show me a bible not based on the Received Text (not the in which the text is “spiritually discerned” as Jesus spiritually discerned the true meaning of Mal. 4:5? There isn’t one. In fact of all modern bibles only the New King James Version, the little known Modern English Version and Green’s Interlinear New Testament are based on the Received Text

Yet history shows that only the words that God Himself preserved, recovered, caused to be published along with the spiritual meaning of them that only He discerns have brought about revival. Thus, the question remains: Did the Holy Spirit inspire the King James Bible translation but not others?

One thing’s for sure, the Bible itself knows nothing of scholars “picking and choosing” – the predominant method of Bible translation today – to arbitrarily determine what the text should or should not say.

Rather, the Bible stress is on preserving the Word of God in its purest form. Consider the story of Jehoiakim, King of Israel, who when the written prophecy of Jeremiah was read to him, cut off each portion of the scroll and threw it in the fire (Jer. 36:22-23). The prophecy warned that unless Israel repented the nation would be invaded by the King of Babylon. Though the prophecy scroll was burnt God had Jeremiah dictate afresh its words to Baruch the scribe who wrote them down to preserve them. And that is the only reason you can read them in your Bible today.

Yes, God preserves his word even when his people ignore it. Evidently the “book of the law” – the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament – was not popular reading in the time of King Josiah until the high priest Hilkiah found it in the temple (2 Kings 22:8-9). The king humbled himself and caused the book to be read unto all the people.

Space does not allow me to tell of the struggle that went on for thousands of years to translate the Received Text, based on over 5,000 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, from Latin into the “vulgar” or common tongue, such as English. The Roman Catholic Church fought against it with fire and sword until God gave the victory through the “form” of the King James Bible.

Speaking of “form” it’s well to remember that the Apostle Paul urged Timothy: “Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13). So, it’s not enough to have a loose, or “dynamic equivalent” translation as found in several modern translations. God’s word must be preserved in the very form it was given, that is in “sound words”.

For more than a century enemies of the inspired preserved Word of God have waged relentless war on the Received Text. They include Westcott and Hort who contrived a vastly changed “Critical Text” of the New Testament largely based on the heretical and error strewn Sinaiticus and Vaticanus codexes because they were the oldest. Their text varies greatly from the Bible quotations of the post-apostolic church fathers.

Actually, the Critical Text differs from the Received Text 5,300 times, omitting 2,800 words from the gospels and leaving out whole verses.  Yet it underlies the Nestle-Aland which became the United Bible Societies New Testament text of choice for nearly all modern bibles.

Enter a German father and son, Rudolf and Gerhard Kittel, who in the 1930s-40s produced two important and game-changing theological works. Papa Rudolf produced the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, a retranslation of the Old Testament Hebrew parting from the traditional Masoretic Text painstakingly preserved by Jewish scribes over centuries and published in the King James Bible. Despite that the authority of the Masoretic text, today the Biblia Hebraica underlies every modern Bible translation.

Gerhard Kittel wrote a 10 volume Biblical Greek Lexicon, Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the NT, the first seven while he was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and the last three while in jail for his war crimes.  Both Kittels were ardent Nazis, backed Hitler to the hilt, and helped devise his “final solution” to exterminate Jews. At Hitler’s request Gerhard Kittel produced a “Nazi Bible”. Yet, as I was repeatedly told, Gerhard’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament is the standard resource used by translators of the modern bibles and much to be preferred above other Bible lexicons and dictionaries.

The nub of the issue is preservation. Either God has kept his promise to faithfully preserve his words (Psalm 12:6) and make them available, or we must trust academics who falsely believe God-preserved written scripture has been corrupted and that only they can put it back together again. Does it matter, you ask? Jesus thought so. He said his words would never pass away and that every “jot and tittle” of the written law would be preserved till all be fulfilled.

John Dudley Aldworth Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com  Visit the website Day of Christ Ministries for more truth about the Bible