Gail Riplinger vs. James White, 1993, KRDS Radio Part II

Acrostic Algebra and the Meaning of Bible Translation

Now, you've got five minutes under your belt, you've got as much as you could in. Gail, you're still there.

Sure, I am.

All right, now, let's get specific. You've made your case, James, where do you want to start with Gail?

Well, I think the first thing I would probably go to is I have some very serious problems with the type of argumentation, Gail, that you utilized in your book. For example, if you could explain to us, on page 149, you utilized something called acrostic algebra, and what you did in a passage that reminded me a little bit of the identification of Henry Kissinger as the Antichrist two decades ago, how they'd take his name apart and add it up, so on and so forth, you took the New American Standard Version and the New International Version, NASV and NIV, and then you somehow subtracted out AV, and using this acrostic algebra, somehow demonstrated that supposedly the NIV and the NASV together add up to SIN, as if this demonstrated something about the version.

So I'd like to ask you, first of all, where does acrostic algebra come from, and secondly, why it is that everywhere else in your book you refer to the NASB, New American Standard Bible, except for this one place where you changed it to NASV.

Why the change in the two things?

Okay, I'll address your first question, or just this last question of yours relating to that acrostic algebra. Your ministry is called Alpha and Omega, right?

Right.

Jesus Christ is the Word of God. Now, it's very, very likely that every single word and every single letter in the Bible has a specific meaning, and it's there for a reason, and that lots of words and things that we use today have very specific meanings.

You said not one jot or tittle would pass from the law to all people, so I don't think anything is accidental. Okay, and I think when we're in Heaven, the dark glass that we're seeing through now, everything will be quite clear.

And the fact that when you take the letters out of...when you take the material that's in the NIV and in the NASB out away from them, and you just have the A-V left, what's left are the letters S-I-N.

Now, I didn't expect that, that's something that just happened, and I think it's very purposeful because the new versions do allow for sin. I mean, you've got immorality instead of fornication. If you ask any college student that I'm sure you've worked with and asked them what immorality is, they'll give you a definition relating to pollution or something like that.

And if you look fornication up in the dictionary, it's very clear that that's premarital sex. And so, the new versions do in fact allow for sin. And so, where did I get that from? The Lord gave that to me one night, and I was pretty surprised when I saw it.

Well, then, you didn't answer the question of why throughout the book you use NASB, but you changed it to NASB here.

I suspect that the Lord called it the NASB. Actually, it is the NASB, and I called it The Lord called it the NASB?

Oh, I don't know.

I'm just suggesting that he gave me that formula there, and that's the only thing that I can say about that. I think the NAS has been called all three, the NAS, the NASB, and the NASB, and so calling it one or the other, just as the King James is also called the authorized version, I don't think that's significant.

Well, you know, I just don't believe at all that the quote-unquote new versions promote or allow for sin. You say that, well, if they don't use the term fornication, they're somehow promoting.

Sin.

Anyone who has an NIV or an NASB in their hands knows that in reading that Bible, a lot is talked about sin, and sexual sins, all kinds of sexual sins.

Okay, it says sexual sin, but it doesn't say fornication.

Okay?

Now, if you ask someone at Kent State University, where I used to talk, what sexual sin is, they will tell you having sex with animals or having sex in a group. They will not tell you sex before marriage, so if you say sexual immorality to a Kent State University student, they will not say fornication.

They will not say premarital sex. They will not say it's good for a man not to touch a woman the way the Bible says.

Ma 'am, if I ask a lot of people what fornication means, they're going to be utterly clueless. The point in Bible study is that if you're going to find out what the Bible says, you look into it, you allow it to define its own terms, and when you look at the meaning of these terms, what they mean is very, very plainly brought out.

You can't possibly say that the NIV and the NASB do not address the issue of sexual sin. Are you saying that they never address the issue of sexual sin?

The Translation of Sexual Sin and the Charge of Homosexuality

Well, let me tell you what they do to sodomy, for example. And the whole sin of sodomy is completely omitted in the New Versions, and that's because Dr. Virginia Molenkot has come out as a lesbian on the NIV committee.

She wrote two books, is The Homosexual My Neighbor and Sensuous Spirituality, and in those books she says that the Bible does not censor sincere homosexuals drawn to someone of the same sex. It only censors criminal offenses like prostitution and violent gang rape.

So what you have in 1 Corinthians 6 and 9 in the New Versions is that the term effeminate is taken out, and substituted in that place we have male prostitutes or homosexual offenders. So this woman's beliefs are present right there in the NIV and the NASB.

In the entire Old Testament, the term sodomy is removed. Now we know that sodomy is the means of transmission of the HIV virus. There are people dying of it all over the world, and unless they have a King James Bible, they're not going to know how they got that.

Wait, wait, wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. 1 Corinthians 6 says, do you not know the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders.

That's right.

Nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanders. There's a whole discussion there.

I taught at Kent State University. A male prostitute and a homosexual offender is not an effeminate. I had plenty of effeminates in my classes, and they were not male prostitutes, nor would they say that they were, nor were they homosexual offenders.

Well, it could be easily argued. That's one of the major problems with your book, is that almost every argument you bring forward can be logically used against you. It could be very easily logically argued that, well, the NIV specifically talks about homosexuality, and therefore, one of the reasons that homosexuality is so rampant in the United States is because King James does not specifically call it homosexuality, and therefore, since they're using this other term that the King James doesn't use, it's all the King James's fault.

This is utterly illogical argumentation that I can't believe anyone would ever believe.

Homosexuality was defined, was given by the homosexual community. The Bible has always used the term effeminate and sodomy, okay? So homosexuality is a positive concept.

The Bible has not always done that, because we need to recognize the Bible was not written in Greek. I'm sorry, in English. It was written in Greek and Hebrew. The English language did not even exist at the time in which the Bible was originally written.

So to say the Bible has always used the King James terminology, should we go to the translations that existed prior to the King James version and say, well, no, the Geneva Bible didn't use this particular thing, so here the King James is changing things?

Again, that's not logical.

Look at the word porneia. Everyone knows what porneia is. I wouldn't even have to tell anyone out there what porneia means. Pornographic.

Okay?

Now, we get the word fornication from porneia, all right? Now, you change it to immorality, mores, in the Latin, just means what people do in the culture, okay? It has nothing to do with porneia.

Everyone knows the Greek term porneia refers to a whole range of sins, and again, what you're doing, I think, here is simply attacking the accuracy of the modern translations and attempting to point out, in fact, many of your charts in your book did the same thing, that what these translators are trying to do is explain to us that the Greek has a number of different words that refer to different aspects, and that they are attempting to translate them in such a way that we can recognize that they're not all referring to the exact same thing, that Paul is being rather exhaustive in his listing of sexual sins.

And I can't, it's hard for me to believe that what you're saying is because someone does not use a term fornication, but instead says sexual immorality, that's somehow relevant to encouraging people, and that the NIV translators want everybody to go out and commit sexual sin.

I mean, you know, I hope that you know that Edwin Palmer, who comes in for a lot of attacks in your book, are you saying that Edwin Palmer went out and told people to go commit sexual.

Sin?

No, no, no.

You're stretching things way, way, way beyond what I said. I said that there was two homosexuals on the NIV committee, and they have come out and presented this. I did not say Edwin Palmer was a homosexual, and I'm sure he would be very much against homosexuality.

I'm just saying there's enough liberalism, enough false doctrine presented on the members of the NIV and the NASD committee to give it a little bit of leaven throughout the whole.

Thing.

Edwin Palmer, the NIV Committee, and Charges of Liberalism

Well, you know, the interesting thing to me is, and I was going to mention this in my opening statement, but I didn't have time to. You know, I would join with you in critiquing New Revised Standard Version, Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible, but it's quite obvious from reading your book that those are not your targets.

There are two translations that are your targets, the NIV and the NASB. The other I just mentioned in passing in comparison to the attacks that are made upon Edwin Palmer and the translators of the NIV specifically, the NASB is sort of secondary in that.

And comparing the translation committees of the NIV to, let's say, the New Revised Standard Version is almost unbelievable, the difference between the two as far as conservatives versus.

Liberals.

Wouldn't you agree?

Well, if Edwin Palmer says that it's an error to believe that regeneration depends upon faith, then I don't know how conservative he is.

Well, ma 'am, maybe...

If he says the Holy Spirit did not forget the Son, then I don't know how conservative he is.

Well, first of all, those are both misrepresentations, gross misrepresentations.

He said them.

I'm sorry he said them, and I applaud your suggestion that people go out and get the books and read them for themselves, because I think they'll have a real eye-opening experience when they do.

I think they will, because both are gross miscitations, both of Dr. Palmer, and that's one of the things I had to wonder about, is because every time I looked up the references that you gave to Mr. Palmer, I discovered that you were taking him grossly out of context.

First of all, when you cite his book on the Holy Spirit in regards to regeneration, you are aware, I would imagine, what you're saying when you call this a scandalous belief, is that the doctrine that underlies the Presbyterian churches, Reformed Baptist churches, that was taught by the Westminster Confession of Faith, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and many people, J .I. Packer, so on and so forth, is actually an unorthodox belief that is shocking to most.

Christians.

I don't get the idea that you understand what he's saying.

I understand very well what the five points of Calvinism are.

Which you identify as a satanic pentagram in your book, which I found to be just absolutely fascinating as well.