Response to Southwest Radio Church on King James Controversy, Part 2 (Dr. Waite)

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The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, you can call now by dialing 602 -274 -1360, that's 602 -274 -1360.

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Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360, that's 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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And now, with today's topic, here's James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line, my name is

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James White and it's good to have you with us today. We are continuing with our response to the recently aired

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Southwest Radio Church programs in which the folks decided they needed again to respond to the

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King James only controversy. Now please realize, Southwest Radio Church has not only had now

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Ted Liedtus and D .A. Waite on, they've also had Gail Ripplinger on, which I find absolutely fascinating, especially in light of the fact that Theodore Liedtus has identified

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Gail Ripplinger as a wacko. Well, I guess it doesn't really matter what someone has said in the past, as long as you defend

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King James only -ism, let's all get together, and the lack of consistency is absolutely amazing.

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Last week, on the program, we started responding to the assertions made by D .A.

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Waite and Dr. Sparge Minow in the two programs that they did, and we continue with that response.

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This week, obviously, we're archiving these responses. We hope that they will be very useful to people in the future.

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Our programs are listened to over and over again. We're very thankful for the internet audience, as well as our live audience, and we hope that these sayings will be very, very useful to people.

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Just to bring you back up to speed, we were looking at the assertions made by D .A.

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Waite, and right at the end of the actual response portion of the program, we were looking at the assertion made by King James only advocates, that there are doctrinal changes in the modern translations, that, for example, the common assertion that Dr.

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Waite makes is that the modern translations water down the deity of Christ, or in otherwise, lessen orthodoxy.

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I pointed out the danger. The danger of this being that their understanding of theology becomes the filter through which the very text of scripture is to be determined.

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Their understanding of a particular text, their understanding of a particular doctrine becomes the standard, and scripture then has to be made to fit that.

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When the manuscript evidence itself demonstrates that they're going with a later reading that was not the original reading, those earlier manuscripts just have to be corrected in light of what their own theology says.

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Now, one of the assertions that is made is that the deity of Christ is not as strongly presented in the modern translations, and I wrote an entire chapter in my book,

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The King James Only Controversy. It's chapter eight that deals with the issue of the deity of Christ, because this is very important to me.

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I've written books on the doctrine of the Trinity. I've dealt with Jehovah's Witnesses and many others, and all of chapter eight, beginning on page 193 and continuing on from there, deals with this issue, and that goes all the way to chapter nine, page 222, so about 25 some odd pages or more on this specific issue.

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I have yet to get any kind of meaningful response from the King James Only camp to that chapter.

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They simply cannot deal with it. The sad thing is, I've encountered King James Only advocates who are willing to weaken the

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Bible's testimony to the deity of Christ for the sake of defending the King James rendering.

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We saw that when Dr. Holland was on the program, and he defended the weak understanding of Romans 9 -5 because the

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King James doesn't have as clear a testimony to the deity of Christ there as you have in, for example, the

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New King James or the New International Version. So, it's an amazing thing to observe, and one of the passages that Dr.

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Wade is about to bring up in the comments we're going to play for you, 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16, and I spent quite some time in the book discussing this in two different places.

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I provided an entire discussion of it, beginning on page 207 of the book, laid out the reasons for the variant, pointed out that your modern translations have a footnote telling you that manuscripts read,

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God was manifest in the flesh, discussed the background of it. You won't hear any of what

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I said in the book discussed by Dr. Wade. Instead, you will have a very, very surface -level assertion made that, well, it preaches good, but it really doesn't communicate any truth.

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Listen to what he says. They take the position, well, you know, it might be found somewhere else.

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Maybe it's not. For instance, in 1 Timothy 3 .16, great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.

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They ask God. The new versions don't have that. They just say he or he who appeared in the body, but not

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God. Now, that kind of response doesn't tell the audience anything about the reasons for the textual variant at 1

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Timothy 3 .16. It simply relies upon the hope that people go, well, that must mean that the new translations don't want the word

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God to be there, instead of explaining to people that the texts upon which the modern translations are based have a different word there, and there is a very logical reason as to why there is a textual variation at that point.

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Now, that's what you do when you want to educate people and give them the tools to make the decisions for themselves, rather than simply trying to promote a traditional position.

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Folks, that's what you need to understand. King James -onlyism, even though it's held by many fine people, is a tradition.

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It's a tradition of men. It's a modern tradition of men, a very modern tradition of men, and it is, therefore, to be judged as a modern tradition.

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Now, Dr. Waite continues by saying, well, I don't buy this idea that, well, the doctrine of the deity of Christ is found elsewhere, therefore, it doesn't matter about 1

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Timothy 3 .16. Well, I would never argue that 1 Timothy 3 .16 isn't important. We need to look at the reasons why there's a textual variant there.

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However, again, we need to turn this argument around and say, Dr. Waite, how about John 1 .18,

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where you don't have a reference to the deity of Christ? How about Romans 9, verse 5, where the

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King James is not as clear as the new King James, the NIV? How about Titus 2 .13 and 2 Peter 1 .1,

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where the King James rendering is not as clear? How about these passages, Dr. Waite? He needs to deal with those issues.

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Listen to what he says. And so, they say, well, it may not be taught there, but maybe somewhere else. I don't buy that.

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I believe that the Lord wants us to have his doctrine taught in every place where it should be found, and that's why we stand for our

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Texas Receptors, where the doctrines are sound and straight. Where our doctrines are sound and straight.

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Hmm. In whose opinion? What is the standard here? The point, again, is

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I want to know what John wrote. I want to know what Paul wrote, not what a

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Baptist in the year 2000 thinks they should have written. Again, if we're going to believe in sola scriptura, we need to have the scriptura, and that's what the problem with Dr.

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Waite's position here is. The debate that Dr. Waite and I did, which, as I said, is on our internet site, kept coming up.

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And what we're going to do right now is I want to play a section of what Dr. Waite said about our debate. And then what

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I've done is I've gone back to the debate, and I have a long section, because not only does it illustrate how different the debate was from Dr.

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Waite's recollection of it, but it also gives a number of examples where, remember earlier last week,

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Dr. Waite said, well, James White was amoeba -like. He was amoeba -like.

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You couldn't nail him down. Listen carefully to the debate section. See who couldn't nail who down.

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One of the things in the debate that I had with Mr. Waite there in 1994, the two hours on the radio talk show, one of the things he really rejected was that heretics had in any way doctored the text.

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That's what Westcott and Hort says. He says no dogmatic thing is made for dogmatic purposes, none of these changes, and he's parroting this.

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And I quoted Dean John William Bergan's various heretics that authored and changed the text in his book,

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Causes of Corruption. Dean Bergan mentions in his book, Evianites, the various Gnostics, you know, that changed and made a mutilated gospel of St.

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Matthew's Gospel, and Martian, of course, the heretic that flourished in 150 AD. He was known for heretical production, his whole gospel,

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Cation and his Diocesaron, Bacillides, Valentinus, Corinthus, Heraclius, Theodotus, and the various Manichean heretics, and all these things.

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And James Waite just represents, oh, you can't prove that, you can't prove, well, what are we to conclude when you have things that are just doctrinally not correct that are in the scriptures?

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Is that what happened in the debate? Listen carefully to this. We were discussing the last section of the

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Book of Revelation, how Erasmus had translated from the Latin Vulgate, created all sorts of these interesting

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Greek words. Listen to the debate and how it really went. But you will admit that there are words like Orphanos at Revelation 22 -16 that basically he made up as he translated into the

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Greek, and they're still a part of TR. You wouldn't defend them as being God's words, would you?

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Well, that's right, I go by faith in what God has preserved for us through the years.

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And it was accepted by the Church. We have over 37 historical links in our book, as you notice, down through the centuries.

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And also, that which is accumulated and proved by the evidence that is before us, over 99 percent of the texts that we have, 5 ,210, go along with that text basically that underlies the

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King James Bible. And I believe that's what God has preserved for us. I would agree, if you're talking about the majority text, that that certainly has a deep historical root.

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But the specific readings of the textus receptus, such as the one I just gave you, Revelation 22 -16, or 22 -18, or 22 -19, or Revelation 17 -4,

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Revelation 14 -1, especially the Book of Revelation, there are a number of problems where there is no Greek manuscript support.

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And none of those readings existed prior to 15 -16. The Church had never seen

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Orthronoth in Revelation 22 -16 prior to 15 -16. So I don't understand how it could be said that the

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Church accepted these things when the Church had never seen these readings in the first 1 ,500 years of its existence.

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Well, I don't think that our discussion should center around one or two

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Greek words. I believe that the thrust of the text that underlies the King James Bible is the text that the early

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Church copied and recopied. And the text that underlies these false versions, these versions that are not based upon proper text, is a text of the 4th century, they claim, 350 -375

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A .D. And that text, basically the Egyptian text doctored by heretics,

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Egyptian texts, really B. and Aleph, those two particularly that they almost worship, those texts were never copied and recopied by the

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Church. There are a measly 45 Greek documents, and that's as far as it goes, B.

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and Aleph and 43 others, and they have kept themselves buried until Westcott and Horton and some of the others unburied them and said, aha, these are the texts that the

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Bible, the New Testament should be based on. And we believe that that is serious because the early Church realized that there were forgeries and falsities and errors abounding in those two

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Egyptian texts, and they never copied and recopied them. Well, Dr. Waits, certainly you're aware of miniscules that exist long after the time of the

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Egyptian texts that still maintain the Alexandrian readings like 1739, 1881, and others, but I don't agree that these texts were quote -unquote doctored by heretics or things like that.

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I certainly see no evidence of that when I examine the texts themselves. I noticed that in your book, you do feel that there are a lot of theological issues that are impacted by the textual readings that we choose.

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You, for example, noted when the modern text will say Jesus and the

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King James says Lord Jesus, that you feel that this is in fact an attack or a denigration of his deity.

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Am I correctly representing what you said in your book on that? Yes, I believe, Mr. White.

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I think that when these Doctritists or these Aryans or these

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Egyptians, all of whom were unorthodox in the area of Egypt, even according to some scholars on the other side, when they came to these places, they often removed the

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Lordship, especially Lord Jesus Christ. That was foreign to the Gnostics, and so as far as the doctoring of the verses there,

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Dean Burgon, in his book called The Cause of the Corruption of the Early Manuscripts, lists on Chapter 13 quite a few of these heretics.

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Gnostics, the Ebionites, Martians, Thacians, Thessalonians, Valentinists, Sorrentians, Heraclians, Theodotus, Manichaeans, Manus, all of these.

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In fact, they said the greatest heretics and the greatest corrections in corruption occurred within the first hundred years after the scripture was made.

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But sir, can you actually historically demonstrate that any of these heretics had anything whatsoever to do with what you would identify as the

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Alexandrian Manuscripts? Well, I don't know by name. All I know is these men that were writing their own

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Gospels, certainly that's a change of the Word of God. Martian, for instance,

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A .D. 150, wrote his own Gospel and mutilated shamefully the Thacians and his

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Diatessaron, tried to weave the four Gospels into one and thus polluted it. Thessalides, he was a heresiarch, a lead heretic, wrote the

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Gospel of Thessalides, A .D. 134, and Valentinus, A .D. 140, wrote his own

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Gospel. These, I can't pin down that this man or that man, for instance, took away the word

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Thos, God, in 1 Thessalonians 1 Timothy 3 .16, but that certainly is a heretical reading and it's certainly not a reading that ought to be accepted by the texts that we have.

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God manifest in the flesh, not simply He appeared in the body. Well, sir, I would happen to agree with you that the best reading of 1

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Timothy 3 .16 is Thos personally, but I don't see that there is any theological reason to assert that someone, some scribe who saw

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Thos there, which is the other reading, was somehow a heretic. But I don't think I really got an answer to what

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I was saying earlier, and that is, while we all agree that there were heretics in the early Church, I ask where you can demonstrate that these heretics had anything to do with the writing of the manuscripts that are vilified by King James Only advocates, and in fact, the first one you mentioned,

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Martione, you also mentioned Valentinus, they both flourished in Rome, not Alexandria, Egypt, and hence could not one, if we're just citing names, assert that maybe that's why the

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Byzantine text does not contain a reference to the deity of Christ of John 1 .18? I mean, could we not utilize that type of an argumentation?

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I mean, I wouldn't, but it would seem that if you're going to use that type of argumentation, it has to go both directions, doesn't it?

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Well, as far as 1 John 1 .18, I believe it is inimical to the deity of Christ, the reading that the only begotten

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God, to have God only begotten, I believe, is a travesty and a heresy and a theological perversion.

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I believe the only begotten Son is the proper reading, I believe it's a proper doctrine, and I think that what you said about those heretics in Rome, whether they're in Rome or where they are, they had an influence in the early church in some of these versions.

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For instance, if you take 1 John 4 and verse 3, 1

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John 4 and verse 3, every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, this is the spirit of Antichrist, the words,

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Christ has come in the flesh, is left out of Aleph, or rather be, there's no

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Aleph here in this portion, and I believe this is a great heresy, they did not want to believe that Jesus Christ, perfect God, perfect man, has come in the flesh, incarnate, and I believe that's the essence of 1

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Timothy 3 .16 as well. And you just mentioned 1 John 4 .3, if I just might turn our reader's attention to that, you just indicated that that phrase is not found in modern translations, and you're right, and you consider that heretical.

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Isn't it significant, though, you indicated these manuscripts did not want to believe this, why then do they all include it in verse 2, the verse immediately before the one that you read, which in all the modern translations speaks of the one confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God?

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Isn't it much more logical to understand that the reason that the

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Byzantine manuscripts have this same phrase twice was due to scribal error and not the other way around, and isn't it clear, no matter which direction you go on that, that since all the manuscripts of 1

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John 4 .2 contain that phrase, there obviously was not some sort of conspiracy to attempt to deny the wonderful truth that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

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Well, in 1 John 4 .2, by this know ye the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess is not of God.

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I believe that wherever there is a wrong doctrine, wherever there is heresy, I believe it should be included, whether it's twice, whether it's once.

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I don't believe that we say that we can take out any portion of that which is solid and straight.

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I didn't name the versions that did remove that Christ has come in the flesh, but the New American Standard Version is one, and certainly

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New King James and the footnotes. I believe that we should take, for instance, another example of heresy and theological error, for instance in John 7 .8,

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where the Lord Jesus is made out to be a liar by Olive and by the New American Standard Version. I believe this is serious heresy against our

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Savior, the Lord Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us. Well, sir, again, if you're asserting that there is some heresy on the part of these manuscripts, when you have the phrase,

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Jesus has come in the flesh, right there in verse 2, obviously if someone wanted to take that doctrine out of the

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Bible, then they would take it out of the Bible, but they didn't. In John 7, what you're talking about here, again, it is not calling

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Jesus a liar to take out the word yet, going up to the feet. That can be understood very plainly in other ways other than calling

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Jesus Christ a liar. There would be no reason for anyone to attempt to do such a thing, but there would be a very good reason why later scribes would want to put that word yet in, so they wouldn't have to explain why

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Jesus wrote the way that he did. Again, one can understand the situation here without resorting to some sort of theory that certain manuscripts are somehow attempting to insert heresy.

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But you did just say something that intrigued me. You said that whatever is, I think you should go with.

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Let me ask you possibly about another passage and see what your opinion on it is.

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In Acts 4 .25, in the King James Version, Acts 4 .25,

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we read the following, Who by the mouth of thy servant David hath said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things?

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Now the New American Standard Bible at Acts 4 .25 says,

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Who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David thy servant did say,

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Why did the Gentiles rage, and the people devise futile things? The modern translations teach very clearly here the role of the

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Holy Spirit in the inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures. Could not a person, if they're using the same methodology and argument that I'm finding in your book, say that at this point the modern texts are superior to, in both text and translation, to the

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King James at Acts 4 .25? Well, Mr. White, you said a number of things in this last question.

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Regardless of Acts 4 .25, I believe it the way the text of Receptus has it and the King James has it,

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I'll let the listeners decide as far as John 7, 8, whether Christ is made a liar or not.

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Here it says, Go ye up into this feast. The Lord Jesus in John 7, verse 8, was talking to his half -brothers.

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The feast was at Jerusalem. He said, I go not up yet into this feast, for my time is not yet come, full come.

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But Olive, Sinai manuscript, there's no be here in this area, but they removed the one word, yet.

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And so does the New American Standard Version, so does the New King James in the footnotes, suggesting that we ought to take that away.

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I'll leave it to the listeners' discretion to see whether or not the Lord Jesus says,

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I go not up into this feast, and yet he went up afterward, and if he says,

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I go not up, that would make him a liar, wouldn't it? And regardless of what you say the scribes added this or added that,

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I'm pointing out there are theological errors in these versions, and there's superiority in theology in our

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King James Bible. Well, sir, the going up in the feast, if you're familiar with that situation, as I've talked to the

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Gospel of John over the past couple of years, I explained that, and I think it's a very logical explanation, that when

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Jesus says, I'm not, my time has not yet fully come, he's talking about the public displaying of himself to the people of Israel.

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He went up, as the Book of John says, secretly and not openly, and hence there is a perfectly logical, exegetical reason for the reading that is found in the manuscripts upon which the

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New Translations are based, and there's no evidence of their attempting to cause Jesus to be called a liar.

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But you said you feel in Acts 4 .25 that you should just stay with the text as you've said it.

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Again, why is that the case? Do you feel that you should stick with the text as you've said it, even when it goes against, for example, the majority of Greek manuscripts, and if so, why?

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Well, the Texas Receptus that underlies our King James Bible is the basic text of Pisa, 5th edition, 1598, and it's been, for two reasons.

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It's been accepted by the Church down through the centuries, and it's been attested by the evidence. And I believe the early

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Church in the apostolic times, we list over 37 historical links with the

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Texas Receptus in the early churches right down from the beginning, and I believe that that's the first reason.

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The second reason is it's been attested by the evidence over 99 % of the manuscripts that we presently have are underlying the

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King James Bible. The papyrus fragments, 85 % of those go along with the

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King James. The uncials, the big ones, over 97%. The cursives, over 99%.

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The lectionaries, 100%. That's over 99 % of the whole manuscripts that we have.

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And I believe, by faith, that we have in this Texas Receptus the word of God that the

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Church has accepted. If you reject the received Greek text that underlies the King James Bible, what you're saying is the

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Church had no real Bible in the 4th century until 1 ,900, 1 ,500 years of the false

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Bible. I don't believe God works that way. He promised to preserve his words, I believe he did, in the

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Hebrew Masoretic and the Greek Texas Receptus. But sir, you're making an error there in that I ask you, when the

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TR varies from the majority text, when you talk about the text going back to the early church, you're talking about the majority text, not the

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TR, not the specific TR where it differs due to Erasmus' mistakes or whatever, from the actual majority text.

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You're, at one point you defend the TR, and at the next point you're defending what's actually the majority text, and they're not always identical to one another.

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I have an entire list of readings where the TR is very different from the majority text.

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And so, I again have to ask, when, let me give you an example, maybe it'll help if I have an example for us to look at.

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In 2 Timothy 2, verse 19, we have a passage where we have a quotation from, two quotations from the

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Old Testament. The King James says, Now, maybe you know otherwise, sir, but to my knowledge,

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I have not been able to find a single Greek manuscript that says Christ in this passage. The majority text reads

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Lord, all of the Nephilim, UDS, reads Lord, all the unseals, all the miniscules, all the lectionaries, they all read

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Lord at this place, and not Christ. And so maybe this will help us to get the question more clearly.

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Why should I believe that the correct reading here should be Christ, when to my knowledge, no

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Christian prior to 1516 had ever seen the reading Christ here. Everyone had thought it said

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Lord. You just said, you know, if you reject it, they receive text, and you're saying the Church didn't have a

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Bible until the 19th century. Why should I accept the TR's reading at this point against all the Greek manuscripts? What was the verse?

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2 Timothy 2, verse 19. Again, the King James says, and let everyone that nameth name of Christ depart from iniquity.

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If you will look at the Hodges -Farstad edition of the majority text, it will indicate that that reading is a

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TR reading over against pretty much everybody else. All the other manuscripts say

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Lord. My feeling is there's an error on Erasmus' part. He was in a hurry, just like Revelation 14 wants.

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But it seems to me that you're saying that because the TR was used for maybe, what, 200 years, from the time of Erasmus onward, 300 years, that somehow we should accept that reading, even when it doesn't have any

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Greek manuscripts before it. Well, let me just say a few words without getting into any verse.

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I think it's not necessary that we go into verse by verse. Let me just say a little, think of something about the so -called majority

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Greek text of Hodges -Farstad or Robinson and Pierpont. There's two majority texts, as you know, floating around, vying for power.

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I guess the Hodges -Farstad is not even in print. At least, I guess it maybe has gone back recently, but it had gone out of print.

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There are great defects in this so -called majority text. Well, if you're wondering, did

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Dr. Wade ever address those passages? No. He just said, well, we don't want to look at specific words, we don't want to look at specific passages.

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Does that sound like the same person we're hearing on the Southwest Radio Church? Doesn't sound like it to me at all.

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1 -888 -550 -1360, 602 -274 -1360 in the

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Phoenix dialing area. We will be taking calls at the end of the hour. First come, first serve. We'll be right back.

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And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We will be taking questions just as we did last week, the last quarter hour.

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And last week we had a few folks who called in. We weren't able to get to you. You make sure to call in.

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You'll be given priority so that we can get you on first. But anyone who has questions concerning this issue of Bible translation, textual variation, the

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King James Only controversy, and especially the response provided by Southwest Radio Church and Dr.

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D. A. Waite, please feel free to get online now at 602 -274 -1360 or 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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First come, first served, except for the two people who called in last week. So make sure you get online now, 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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Well, I think that segment from the debate, if you listened carefully to it, and I know you had to listen carefully, pretty much spoke for itself.

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Every time I would present a specific passage, a specific textual variation, Dr. Waite's response was, well, we don't want to get involved with just, you know, specific passages and things like that.

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We don't want to get bogged down with things like that. Let's talk in more general terms. And we believe that the

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King James Version is preserved. And I think it's very, very clear that in that particular clip that we just played, that the person who would refuse to be pinned down and answer specific questions wasn't me.

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It was Dr. D .A. Waite. And I assure you, nothing changed in the rest of the debate either.

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I again would invite you to go to our website, www .aomin .org, and listen for yourself and see if that was not characteristic of the entirety of the debate.

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Now, going back to the main issue in the review of my book that was nationally broadcast,

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Dr. Waite makes the assertion that the texts that underlie the modern translations, for example,

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Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, the papyri manuscripts like P66, P75, that these were purposefully altered by Gnostic heretics.

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Now, I challenged him, Dr. Waite, who? Who connect a heretic with a papyri manuscript?

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Tell us how you've discovered this, and he could not do so. Well, he attempted to somewhat redeem himself in his review of my book.

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Listen to what he had to say. We assume that the Gnostics of Egypt, which were prevalent in those days, made these changes for doctrinal purposes.

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If it were accidental, you would think, wouldn't you, Dr. Peter, that the verse or the sentence would not make sense.

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If there's an accidental omission or something, but when you make changes and everything else is perfect, wouldn't you assume that that's a purposeful omission by purpose?

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Now, it is absolutely amazing to listen to Dr. Waite's explanation here. Again, he cannot demonstrate any connection between alleged

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Gnostic heretics and the texts. When I challenged him in this debate, we specifically looked at John 1 .18,

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and it was pointed out to me, interestingly enough, by a person who supports the Byzantine text type, that the allegation that the phrase,

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Only Begotten God, at John 1 .18, that that particular phraseology is never found in Gnostic writings.

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They do use the phrase, Only Begotten Son, but they do not use the phrase, Only Begotten God.

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So, let's use Dr. Waite's reasoning here for a moment. We have the earliest papyri manuscripts of the

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Gospel of John, and they all say, monogenes theos, using the term theos,

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God of Jesus. But, Gnostics didn't like that phraseology. They never used it, but they did refer to the

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Only Begotten Son. And so, what do we have in the Textus Receptus? We have the

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Only Begotten Son. Thereby, logically, what must that mean? Well, it must mean, using

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Dr. Waite's argumentation, that it is the Gnostics who changed the manuscripts into what the

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King James reads today. Now, is that how we do textual criticism? No, it is not.

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Now, furthermore, Dr. Waite is completely wrong about the nature of unintentional textual variation.

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Most textual variations do not result in nonsense. Some do, certainly some do.

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But, for example, the King James version is missing an important phrase at 1

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John 3 .1, where we read in the modern translations that we are the children of God.

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The King James doesn't have that phrase there, not because the King James is trying to deny anything or because heretics were involved.

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But, in reality, it was simply a matter of an ancient scribe making a simple error of sight.

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He went from one ending of a word to another ending of the word. But, unfortunately, he skipped the intervening words between looking at what he was copying, looking then at what he was writing, and then going back.

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It would be like, and we do this all the time, I do this all the time when I'm typing at the keyboard. You're typing along and you see a word that ends with ING.

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And so you type ING and you look back at what you're copying, and two or three words later in the same line, or maybe on the line below, but frequently on the same line, another word ends with ING and your eye goes to the next

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ING and you skip the intervening phrase. That's exactly what happened at 1

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John 3 .1. We can tell that by simply looking at the type of variation it is, but still the sentence ends up making sense.

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The intervening words were not necessary to allow the sentence to make sense.

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And so, again, there is no defense being offered here whatsoever of the unfounded assertion that P75, P66, all of B, have been changed by heretics to try to deny the deity of Christ or anything along those lines.

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So let's keep that in mind. Now, at this point, Dr. Spargimino got back involved with the conversation and brought up John 1 .1

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in the New World Translation as an illustration of how even one small change of a letter can change a doctrine.

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And, of course, he's right about that, but that doesn't have anything to do with the issue of manuscript translation and transmission in regards to the

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King James Version of the Bible, because, as we've pointed out, they have no evidence that individuals in the early church were attempting to take out the deity of Christ or things like that.

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However, it is interesting to listen to this kind of rhetoric, and again, even though we pointed this out in the

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King James Only Controversy, listen to the use of the word change by utilizing the

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King James Version as the standard and then saying, well, there's been changes from that.

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They, in essence, are attempting to make the argument that the changes are doctrinal in nature and that there is a purpose behind the

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Great Unspoken Conspiracy. Listen to what Dr. Spargimino says. Dr.

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Wayne, I'm sure you are aware of this, although maybe our listeners might not be aware of it, but if you have ever looked, or if our listeners have ever looked at the

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Jehovah's Witnesses Bible, I think they call it the New World Translation, it just adds the indefinite article.

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It says the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was a God. There's no reason, grammatically, syntactically, for adding the indefinite article.

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But just adding that little letter A, it actually destroys the deity of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. So, you know, when you start changing this verse and that verse, after a while you've got five or six verses that have mutilated the precious deity and glory of Jesus Christ.

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Well, you've got a major doctrinal problem. So when people say, well, it really doesn't matter, I say, my, you haven't looked at church history, you haven't looked at different translations, you really don't know what you're talking about.

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Now, if this was a real review of my book, and what I mean by that is, if in point of fact the book was going to be dealt with, then

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Dr. Spargimino here would have dealt with the examples that I provide, such as John 14, 14, where the

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Textus Receptus and the King James Version end up agreeing with the

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New World Translation, even though the New World Translation at this point ignores its own Westcott and Hort Greek text, in not having a reference to the deity of Christ.

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In John 14, 14, we have a reference to prayer to Christ, when Jesus says, if you ask me anything in my name.

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Now, the King James Version and the Textus Receptus don't have the word me. The Westcott and Hort text has it, but the

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New World Translation doesn't translate it. Modern translations, like the New American Standard and the

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NIV, contain the word me. Now, if there's this great conspiracy to, for example, weaken the deity of Christ, then why would the

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New American Standard and the NIV have a reference to the deity of Christ in John 14, 14 that the King James Version does not?

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And why does the King James Version agree with the New World Translation here? You see, again, if we were to use that kind of argumentation, but that's just it.

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We don't want to use that kind of argumentation. We want to be fair with facts, and that's what we would like to see happening if people would deal with the

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King James -only controversy in the same way. Now, after this particular point,

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Dr. Waite got into Westcott and Hort and how they were heretics, and, of course, they didn't get into my pointing out that Erasmus wrote in defense of transubstantiation and things like that, so if they were consistent, then they would see that, well, you know, if we believe

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Westcott and Hort were heretics, and I have found Dr. Waite to be a little bit inaccurate in his representations of those things, but even if we were to take that as a given and therefore reject anything they ever had to do with, for example, textual criticism, then on the exact same basis you'd have to reject the

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Textus Receptus because it, too, was originally compiled by a person that Dr.

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Waite would have to identify as a heretic. So it's interesting to, again, see the double standard.

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Then, in the second program, and these programs are only about 20 minutes in length as far as the actual interviews went, in the second program, the program began talking about Dr.

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DiVietro's book in response to my own, and I saw this when it was first written many, many years ago, and, again, if you wish to go to our website, what

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I did, because it was fairly lengthy, is I opened it up and said, let's look at a couple pages here.

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And it was so easily refuted. It had so little substance to it. Again, go to the website, read for yourself, see for yourself if Dr.

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DiVietro's work has any meaningful substance to it as far as providing a response to the

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King James Only controversy. I think you'll discover that, in point of fact, it does not.

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And so that's how the second program started on the Southwest Radio Church in response to the

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King James Only controversy. Well, what do you think? We'd like to hear from you, your questions about the

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King James Only controversy, Bible translation, manuscripts, textual variations, maybe one of those little things down at the bottom of the page in your

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Bible you've never understood that said, some manuscripts read X, Y, or Z. The phone lines are open now, 602 -274 -1360, 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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On The Dividing Line, we'll be taking your phone calls right after this. And welcome back to Dividing Line.

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My name is James White. We are talking about the King James Only controversy today. And before we go to our phone calls, and we have plenty of lines open, only one caller online right now,

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I guess. No one wants to talk about this subject, but before we go to our one caller that we have at the moment, to bring you up to speed, shall we say,

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I had emailed Dr. Spargemino at Southwest Radio Church to let him know about this series of programs that we're doing so they can listen, and to invite him to be on the program, and in fact, invite him to debate me publicly on this subject, because you've already heard him saying some things, and you'll hear him saying some more things in regards to the need to defend the truth.

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There's no difficulty talking about these things openly. So on August 14th, he wrote back to me in a letter, and for some reason, instead of using email, he wants to do it by letter, and that's okay.

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And he wrote to me and says, I have received your email of August 9th, and I'm responding to it. He describes why they're doing the programs.

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He says, to deal with some of the issues raised in your book since, as I pointed out in the programs, it has become a standard reference work for those in your camp, and number two, to have scholars in the program who have respectable credentials.

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Unfortunately, many of the KJV defenders leave much to be desired in terms of academic preparation. We want to show that our position is academically defensible.

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Well, I leave it to the audience as to whether it has been academically defended thus far.

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Then I had mentioned Dr. Theodore Ledis and his viewpoints, and I asked

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Dr. Spargiamino about Dr. Ledis' viewpoints, because we are going to be responding to the first two programs here in a couple of weeks where Dr.

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Ledis was on, and I pointed out to him that Dr. Ledis rejects inerrancy, and I know Southwest Radio Church doesn't, and his response is, regarding Dr.

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Ledis' rejection of inerrancy, is it not interesting that your opponents accuse you of the same thing? Well, then my opponents would be wrong, but I'm not wrong to say that that's what

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Dr. Ledis says. In fact, I'll be reading you my response here real quickly that documents this.

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Then he talks about how they believe that certain proponents of KJV -onlyism have a cultic mentality.

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He specifically mentions Peter Ruckman, and I would agree with him on that. And then, the last two paragraphs are the most interesting, and they're very short.

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Regarding giving you equal time to air your position, that's a possibility, but not for the immediate future.

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We schedule programs several months in advance, and sometimes even alter the schedule depending on what is happening in the news.

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Bible translations are just one of the many issues with which we deal. And the final paragraph reads this.

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If you want to debate me, that's fine. Take a number and have a seat. We do interviews on a large number of highly controversial topics.

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Needless to say, there are many listeners who disagree with our position and want to debate the issues. They, too, can take a seat.

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Sincerely yours, Larry Spargemino, Ph .D. Well, I wrote back, and a couple of the things that I mentioned,

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I provided some quotations from Dr. Ledis from the file on our website, which, by the way,

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I strongly encourage you to look at, aomin .org slash tledis .html,

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and the T and the L in Ledis are capitalized, so it's capital T, capital L, E -T -I -S dot

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H -T -M -L. And one of those paragraphs that Dr. Ledis wrote reads as follows, quote,

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When you ask Andrew, surely he must believe in the inerrancy of the autographs. It is like asking someone if they have stopped beating their wife.

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Not only is it the wrong question, but it reveals how terminally damaging these highly charged code words can be.

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Before one can even raise the question as to its validity as a paradigm, everyone is conditioned to suspect anyone raising the issue of either its formal or historical validity.

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For now, we'll say, for the record, that it is a modern heresy, a belief in inerrancy.

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I'm just letting, make sure you understand what he's saying. Belief in inerrancy is a modern heresy, which will put the discussion where I believe it belongs by putting the advocates of this

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Warfieldianism in need of addressing the issue outside of the comfort of the modern evangelical institutional status quo.

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Now, there is a lot of complexity to Dr. Ledis's position, but it is certainly, certainly not the position of Southwest Radio Church, even though they were selling his book for having him on.

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Then I quoted Dr. Ledis in saying the following, Anyone who ascribes the inspired characteristics of the

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Hebrew Bible or the Greek New Testament to an English Bible and anathematizes everyone who does not agree with them is a cult.

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These tend to be, as I have shown in my work reference to earlier, highly separatistic and unlearned

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Baptists. Well, Dr. Waite is a separatistic Baptist, and it's interesting they'd have

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Ledis on and then Dr. Waite on when they come from such tremendously different perspectives. Dr. Ledis is a

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Lutheran. Now, here is my final two responses to Dr.

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Spargiamino, final two paragraphs. Finally, I do not understand your statement. Take a number and have a seat. I have invited you to publicly debate this issue.

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I am responding to your assertions and refuting them on our radio program and often lament that it would be so useful to have the opposing side of the program to answer for themselves.

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We could even record a few programs, each is an hour long, at your convenience, if you would like. Further, does this mean you are or are not interested in arranging a public debate on the subjects?

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You wrote, There are many listeners who disagree with our position and want to debate the issues. Of course, but you surely do not suggest a parallel, do you?

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How many of those listeners have you targeted and misrepresented on your radio program over the course of four consecutive days?

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How many of them do you name by name attack their work and offer books written to refute them? So I wish to reiterate my challenge to you.

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In four programs, you badly misrepresented me and my work. You are an error on the factual issues.

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I note just briefly in passing that in the insult fest with Dr. Ledis, you said I never bothered to tell my readers about grammatical issues in 1

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John 1, 5, 7, and he had to correct you, as it is painfully obvious that you did not read my book very closely.

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As a service to truth and to the body of Christ, I challenge you to defend your statements in public debate and on our radio program live if you wish.

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You noted my recent encounter with Mr. Staples. I do not know if you mean you saw the debate in Fullerton or if you heard the

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Bible Answer Man broadcast, but in either case, I assure you, such a debate between us would be very focused not upon you, but upon the facts of history and the truths of scripture.

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I believe Dr. Waite did very poorly in our radio debate from 1994. Have you ever listened to it yourself? And I do not believe that any

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King James Version only advocate can handle such interaction when the other side knows the issues.

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The John Ankerberg series showed this. But you specifically said that truth should be defended. So I challenge you to do so in his service,

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James White. And that letter was sent back on the 19th, and so we will let you know what

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Dr. Spargemino has to say. Let's get a phone call in here real quick and talk with Brother Tim in Newark, California.

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How you doing, Tim? Oh, good. How you doing, James? Doing all right. All right. It's great to hear you talking and elaborating on this situation.

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What I was going to ask you was maybe you could comment for the listening audience about Acts 19 .2,

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that the incorrect translation of the King James has started kind of that second blessing nonsense by not correctly translating the

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Greek there. And also I'd like to make a quick comment on Southwest Radio Church, as I've kind of monitored them, if you will, for the last several years.

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And I don't think they're very credible in a lot of their doom and gloom and sensationalistic books and so forth.

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So to me, coming from them, what they've, you know, attacked your book and stuff is not very credible anyways.

49:42

And of course, you've done an excellent job, as usual, refuting that. Well, it is fascinating to hear someone like Theodore Lydas, who is a

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Lutheran, on the come from a position so completely different than what they promote in their regular programming, that it is absolutely positively amazing to me that they, like Pensacola Christian College, are promoting

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Dr. Lydas's position when I don't think they even understand what Dr. Lydas's position is.

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And in a couple weeks, when we talk about Dr. Lydas's, I called it a few moments ago, insult fest, because if you want to summarize the first two programs that they had on with Dr.

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Lydas, Dr. Lydas's entire argument against my book is, Mr. White is stupid, I'm brilliant, therefore don't read his book.

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I mean, if you really want to boil it down, that's about as far as it went. And if anyone thinks that's harsh, please go to our website, read the debate that I had with him, and you'll discover

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I'm actually being very nice, because that's exactly how it came across. So it is amazing to me they would be doing that.

50:57

But just briefly, I did address Acts 19 .2 on pages 230 and 240 of the

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King James Only controversy, and you're correct, it is the translation, the questionable translation of the passage in the

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King James Version, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed, when the normative translation in the

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New American Standard would be, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? It is that very rendering that was utilized, especially in the 20th century, to substantiate the idea of a second blessing, a second coming of the

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Holy Spirit, a second baptism, etc., etc., etc. And again, that just shows the danger of A, utilizing only one translation,

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B, not checking your facts with the underlying text, because those that were careful to do so recognize the better translation is when, not since.

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But again, you can prey upon that kind of ignorance on people's parts if you simply preach loud enough.

51:56

So that's how it works. But Tim, thanks for calling in today, we appreciate it. We're out of time, and thanks for listening to Dividing Line.

52:03

All righty, well, we continue next week with our review. We're almost, next week we'll pretty much wrap up the response to D .A.

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Waite. There's one section where they try to turn Erasmus into an evangelical, which we'll extend into the next week, but that'll be fun to deal with.

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And then we respond to Theodore Liedis. We'll be putting all of this on the website, so that you can listen to all of this, if you've had friends who've heard these programs.

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So, we're going to continue next week. We thank you for listening. We'll be seeing you here on The Dividing Line next week.

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The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -0318, or write us at PO 11106,

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Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the World Wide Web at aomin .org.

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That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James Waite's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.