On Eagles' Wings Pt 109 — Don Courville

Well, I'm glad to be back with you again today on Eagle's Wings. I don't know how your week's been, but I tell you, every day's exciting, walking with Jesus. Someone said, and they put it on a bumper sticker many years ago, I saw it down in Louisiana, that life is hard and then you die.

Life Is Hard Without Jesus Christ

Well, you know, that's true. Life is hard. And the Bible does say it's appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment. But the truth of the matter is, life is hard without Jesus Christ. The Bible says, he that has the Son has life.

He that has not the Son of God does not have life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God that you might know that you have life. That's eternal life. Do you have life?

Do you have Jesus? Well, this program, we trust, will be an encouragement to you. This program was born out of revival. Now I know that many in our day do not understand revival. I did not know what I was praying for when I prayed for revival back in 1985.

If I had known what revival was, I might have been a lot more careful in the way I prayed. But I tell you, I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't exchange anything. Revival is Jesus again. It's Jesus again, and this is what we need in America, Jesus again.

We don't sense any need for God. This is why we're buying the ways of Satan. We're going down the tubes fast, my friend. Things are being set up, and I don't have time to share everything that I know, and if I did share everything that I know, it might scare you.

Maybe someday we might get into some of the things in the area of the new age and the new world order that's coming, but they're lining it up. My prayer, my vision is for revival in America. We are going down in every way conceivable.

Walking With the Holy Spirit

A couple of weeks ago, God gave me another one of those kicks, one of those kicks that just sent me sprawling flat on my face. You know, I've been wanting to teach you about the Holy Spirit and some things about walking with the Spirit of God.

Let me tell you about the Holy Spirit. He is a person. He's loving, gentle, and kind, but He does know how to give a big boot to us. And you know, we need it sometimes. I need it. This is why I'm working with four other preachers up here, because we need each other.

We had a prayer meeting yesterday, and if you were in on our prayer meetings, a lot of the preachers in America wouldn't believe that you can have prayer meetings like that where we share our heart, where we exhort one another.

We rebuke, we correct. We love one another. We love enough to get on to one another. Can you imagine one of the elders, one of your elders, Pastor, coming up to you and saying, Pastor, you're proud. You're proud.

And then the pastor would sit back, think about that, check with the Holy Spirit on it, and come back and say, you're right, and confess it as sin. Or some other area, come in and be confronted on it.

It's rough, but you know, I believe that one of the reasons we don't have any power in our lives is because we're not willing to let God come in and clean house. Well, a few weeks ago I had a phone call from a friend in Joplin, a good friend, a friend that I would encourage you to vote for since he's running for lieutenant governor, Mr. Don Stubblefield, and he called me up and he asked me about the Bible.

The Corruption of Modern Bible Versions

He asked me about a certain version. He asked me about the New American Standard version. And to be honest with you, what I did was I lied to my friend because I said, well, I guess it's okay. And then he went on to ask me some more questions and to share with me some things that were bothering him that he was learning.

And then I opened up and then I shared a little bit more about how I really felt about it. And as the conversation went on through several minutes, I was asked a personal question. And God used that question to reveal something to me.

And what I shared with them, I won't get into all the detail with you today about, but what I shared with them was that God had revealed to me several years ago about the versions, about how they're being perverted.

And, you know, if you look around at all these versions that are around today, there's one of the main characteristics of Satan present in our churches because of these versions, and that's confusion.

And I was thinking about things that have divided the church down through the years. You know, we've had the ecumenical movement, which has divided the church. And actually, you know, when divisions come, they usually reveal a line that's drawn and people are on one side or the other.

Now the things I'm going to share with you today are important, so you stay with me. But God showed me several years ago about the versions. And the Holy Spirit came this week, or not this week, but a couple of weeks ago when I received this phone call, and He gave me a boot and put me flat on my face.

And what the Holy Spirit actually said to me was, I showed you several years ago about the versions, and you've not acted on it. Now what are you going to do? And since the revival of 85, God has continually brought me to crisis.

Day after day after day, week after week, year after year, it's been a dying to self. And I've had to come to a point on this that I was willing to die again to self. And I said, Lord, you showed me that they're corrupt.

And He said, what are you going to do about it? And I said, Lord, I'll speak. And He said, don't worry about the cost. Don't worry about what it cost you. My friend, I've been spending time in prayer and going back over again what God revealed to me and going into it even in more detail.

But we are being lied to and deceived by Satan. I wish I could share everything that I've been going over with in the last couple weeks with you in detail. I'll share a little bit with you today about the versions.

And I'm going to answer the question of my friend. I'm going to read a page out of a book by E .L. Bynum on the versions. And I'm going to read about the New American Standard version, something that comes from the man that's responsible for us having it and what he said and what he did after God showed him about that version.

But God showed me several years ago that the versions have been polluted. The Word of God has been messed with. And as far as I know, if you have another version beside the King James version, you probably have a version that's been tampered with, with the possible exception of the New King James.

I haven't had time to go back and check out all the sources for sure on that, because I think that it came through the King James. But if you have another version, the possibility is that you have a version that is corrupt.

My friend, I've gone back through it again. We have the Word of God in the King James version. Don't let somebody get up and chop it up and change it and try to tell you that this isn't the Word of God.

It's without error. Now, it doesn't mean that there might have been some things that could have been improved on, but there's no error in the Word of God. Sure the language might be a little bit old, but that doesn't really bother us because it's accurate.

Fear of Man and Spiritual Honesty

Now, what God did to me personally through that was He showed me something about my heart. I have a message that I shared with some folks several years ago in the Fear of Man, and maybe I've even shared it on this broadcast.

I can't remember. But I got to checking and I said, Lord, why did I lie to my friend and say, well, I think it's okay? And he says, it's because of the Fear of Man. You know, sometimes we can spend years in the bondage of fear.

And I can't be any use to you if I won't be honest to you, and if I won't be open and share what God is teaching me. And I'm like you. I make mistakes. I confess it and get up and go on. Bothers me to be around somebody that's perfect, that never confesses to making mistakes.

We're all like that. It's pride if we won't admit that we fail and we make mistakes. It's pride. And a proud person can't help you out very much. Matter of fact, they'll contaminate you. But God showed me something about my own heart.

Let me share something with you about my own heart, and then I'll share with you about this version and answer the question publicly about the New American Standard Version. If some of you want to write in and ask about other versions, fine.

I have several little booklets here, and there's others. Dr. Otis Fuller, I guess, is a real good man to get his book. Which Bible? I think's the name of it. I don't personally have it. Somebody's mailing it to me right now.

Dr. David Otis Fuller. But there's a lot of books been written on the versions. And I remember when I went through my training to study the Bible, I didn't know much about where the Bible came from. And I took it in, soaked it in, said, well, this is the way it is.

And then several years later, God the Holy Spirit came along and said, you were lied to. You were drawn into the Alexandrian cult. You were deceived. And my friend, we are in an age of deception. And unless we learn how we're being deceived, we're going to go down the tubes.

Your church is going to go down the tube. Father, your family may go down the tube. Your children may go down the tubes. We're playing for keeps. The warfare that we're going on right now where I'm at, I know for many of you, if you were in on what we're in, it would just scare you to death.

We're being shaken. We're being rattled. God the Holy Spirit is showing us things and doing things that are just almost overwhelming. We know who we serve. We know who's in control and we know what's going on.

We may not know exactly what's going to happen tomorrow because we walk today by faith. We can't look ahead tomorrow. But our spirit, the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're the children of God and the Spirit of God is bearing witness that there's something lining up in the future someday soon.

And we better be ready or you're going to be deceived. Now the bottom line about the translations is that we're being sucked back in to join in with Rome. And after God got through with me, I could see so much more.

I could see why so many of the men, some great men that I've known and were taught under, men that have Bibles named after them, and my teachers were taught by them, are going by the wayside. I can see why so many of our schools are polluted, why there's no power, why they're not turning out our youth to be willing to pay the price and go off to the mission field and win souls and why they won't do it, where they're at and why when they come out they're proud and full of knowledge and all they want is a big fat salary and a big fancy car and they don't care about souls.

And why when they get up and preach there's no power? It's because we're being corrupted. The very Word of God itself is being corrupted and there's no power in our lives. Now let me finish up with you what God taught me about my own heart.

He said, what about years ago when I told you in 2 Timothy 1 .7 about fear? You know what 2 Timothy 1 .7, it says, For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me as prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. He said, Are you willing to pay the price to walk with me?

Compromise, Division, and the Need for Biblical Conviction

We're in an age of compromise. I have a sermon I started working on. I said, Lord, do you want me to give this sermon? And he says, No. I got about halfway through with it and stopped, but it's on conviction, compromise, and division.

We've been divided in our churches. We've been divided. The issue of divorce has divided our ranks. And I got to asking God, what about divorce and tongues and the music, three of the major things that have divided the body of Christ?

And the Spirit of God said it's because of the perversion of the Word of God itself. That's why this, we've been infiltrated to accept the fact of divorce. Many good men will teach that you can divorce your wife and it's abomination because God said you can't.

You stay with her until she dies. Wife, you stay with your husband until he dies. And then we've been perverted in the area of accepting demonized languages. Now I believe in biblical tongues. We just don't see it too much.

And I'm not going to get into it with you today on it. But you better be careful what you're getting involved in. There's more demons running around than you think. And they've got a lot more control than you think.

And they're doing a lot more damage than you think. And they may be in your life. They may be in your church. And you may not know it, but if you've got strife in your church, there's demonic activity trying to divide your church.

You may have it in your home. In the area of music, I'm convinced that Satan is working through this area. We've accepted this rock music right into our churches. What 25 years ago, we wouldn't allow no way to come to our churches.

We have today because of our compromise and our conviction. Why are we doing it? It's because we've allowed the Word of God to be taken away from us. And we don't have a standard anymore. Get back to the book.

Get back to the book, the Word of God. You can trust the King James Version. And we've been given some lies about the King James Version. You better do your homework or you'll get deceived. We better be careful.

The devil's playing for keeps. He'll get you. When the Scripture says that he goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, God's not kidding. And there are casualties. I've come so close so many times to be in a castaway.

It's put the fear of God in my heart. To know that I could walk with God for 25 or 30 years, and all of a sudden, I could blow it all in one day. Do you know what? The Bible says the fear of man bringeth a snare.

But whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. God began to deal with me on this phone call and show me how I had the fear of man in my heart. You know what fear reveals? It reveals a lack of love to God.

And you know the Scripture says there's no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. God says, that's why you didn't answer your friend straightforward and tell him that that version is corrupt.

And I used it for seven years after going through my schooling. But I also was asked this question, what was my spiritual life like through those seven years? And I thought about that, and I said, I went cold in the area of winning souls to Jesus.

And also, I went cold in my Bible memory. Somehow or another, I just couldn't memorize the Scripture through the New American Standard like I could through the King James. And Satan uses as a tool, as a trap in our lives, fear.

Someone said more souls are lost to eternity through fear than any other thing. This is why if you've been in an evangelistic service or something in years past when they used to have invitations in the Bible-believing churches, the Spirit of God would be prompting you to walk the aisle and get saved, walk the aisle, make a decision.

And you'd say, no, what are others going to think? That's a fear of man. Someone said more opportunities are lost to witness through fear. Are you walking by faith? You know, the Bible says we're going to live by faith.

Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. And so we think, what will they think? Yeah, what will they think in hell when they remember that you could have talked to them about Jesus and you wouldn't do it? You wouldn't obey the Holy Spirit because of the fear of man or me?

What will they think in hell? Don't worry about what they think about now. Tell them the gospel. That's what Jesus taught us to do. You knew and you didn't tell them. You're not their friend. You're not my friend if you won't tell me the truth, and I'm not your friend if I won't tell you the truth.

I love you. That's why I'm willing to pay the price to go in the air and tell you this. And I'll preach, I'll tell you the truth. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the consequences are. We've got to speak the truth in love.

Fear produces many byproducts in our lives, and many times I don't think that we realize that whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Sin produces fear, or fear produces sin, whichever way you want to put it.

But unbelief is the byproduct that comes out of it. You remember Adam and Eve back in Genesis 3? What happened? In Genesis 3, verse 3, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

God put some godly fear, holy fear, into Adam and Eve right there in the garden. A fear of God, a proper fear. If they'd believed this, we'd have been okay today. But they didn't believe it. Men still won't believe it.

You come down to verse 8. They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

Why did they hide? Huh? Well, you know why they hid. It's because they were afraid. Afraid of God. That's what it says in verse 10. If we'd obeyed God and stayed right where He wants us, we wouldn't get into trouble.

And fear produces lying, and we go on into that. You remember the story about Adam. I'd better stop now and share with you what I told you I'd share with you that God revealed to me. And here's the answer to my friend's question.

The New American Standard Version and Its Critics

Here's from the man who wrote the preface to the New American Standard Version. And after he did, he got this version going. He repented that he had ever got the thing going. And the last it was heard, and I don't know how he's doing, he was going up and down the land repudiating the New American Standard Version and the other new versions, recommending only one version, the authorized version of 1611, the King James Version.

Listen to this. As Franklin Lodgdon, he's a well-known writer and a Bible conference speaker, he pastored a number of churches, including the Moody Church of Chicago. He was a personal friend of Dewey Lockman of the Lockman Foundation and stayed in his home on many occasions.

He was on the editorial committee of the Amplified New Testament. In a letter to Dr. David Otis Fuller, dated September 5, 1973, he said,. As a member of the editorial committee in the production of the Amplified New Testament, we honestly and conscientiously felt it was a mark of intelligence to follow Westcott and Hort, and by the way, Westcott and Hort are of the Catholic Church camp, bent on destroying the Word of God.

I'll go on with my quote. Now, what you have in these books, speaking of the books on the versions by Fuller, strikes terror to my heart. Fuller exposed the truth about the perversion. I'll just give you a little note on this.

Fuller exposed the perversion in these doctrines. And the men that were following the other line didn't like Fuller. Still don't. He goes on quoting,. It proves alarmingly that being conscientiously wrong is a most dangerous state of being.

God help us to be more cautious lest we fall into the snares of the arch deceiver. When the Lockman Foundation was getting ready to take up the copyright of the ASV, the American Standard Version, and get translators to produce the New American Standard Version, he invited S. Franklin Logston to visit with him for a few days.

Lockman told him of his plans and asked his advice. Logston encouraged him to go ahead with the project. In a letter to Dr. Fuller dated October 15, 1973, he lamented about his part in the whole affair.

The thing that bothered him most was the knowledge that he could very likely have prevented the production of the New American Standard Version if he had known the facts as he knows them now. In a tape recording, Logston tells how that he wrote the preface to the New American Standard Version.

It was originally written as guidelines for the translators to follow. But when the New American Standard Version was published, it was printed as the preface. It is some four pages long. When he received his copy of the 50 deluxe copies that were printed, his was number 7.

Even then he did not examine it at the first, but when he began to hear criticism of it, he found that there was no truthful answer. In other words, he was wrong, and he knew it. He could not refute the arguments against the New American Standard Version.

And he came to the conclusion that the New American Standard Version was wrong, terribly wrong. And after about four months of soul-searching, he wrote to Dewey Lockman and said, I must, under God, renounce every attachment to the New American Standard Version.

Because of his involvement with the New American Standard Version, you know what he said? He said, I may be in trouble with the Lord. Now, Brother Logston is going up and down the land repudiating the New American Standard Version and the other new versions.

He now recommends only one version, the authorized version of 1611, the King James Version. It is our prayer that others will see the error of endorsing these corrupt versions and admit it publicly, as this brother has done.

Why are not these facts generally known today? It needs to be told, and we're telling it. And the end of this little statement says, A reel-to-reel tape recording made by Logston can be obtained from the Bible for today, 900 Park Avenue, Collingswood, New Jersey, 08108.

And this tape documents the above facts by E .L. Bynum. My friend, we're being taken for a ride. We have nothing more than another cult taking us over. You can't get a hold of a Jehovah Witness or a Mormon and get them converted with these other versions, because it will read the same.

And why is it that you can't find the translators of the New American Standard Version? Just like the Jehovah Witness, what is it, the New World Translation? They won't tell you who translated it. In other words, you can't check their lives out, and you can't check their doctrine out.

We're being taken for a ride. We're being deceived, and we better get out of this realm of being afraid of the fear of man. We better stand for the truth. The line's being drawn. Which side are you going to be on?

Walking in the Spirit and Bearing Its Fruit

Are you going to be for Jesus and live in the power and the boldness of the Holy Spirit? Or are you going to follow the devil? The sad thing about it is you can be a child of God and follow the devil.

If he loses your soul, that doesn't mean he gives up on you. He's out to destroy you and win your allegiance. Those that follow Jesus, that live in the power of the Spirit, have the fruit of the Spirit in their life.

Check your life. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such things there's no law. If God be for us, who can be against us?

Well, my time's about gone. I've got so many things I want to share with you. Sometimes it's frustrating. The only thing that keeps me on the ground is the Holy Spirit, guiding, feeling, directing, reproving, rebuking me, loving me, encouraging me, filling me.

It's a joy to walk in the Spirit. It's no fun to walk in the flesh. Well, until next time, let me encourage you to go with Jesus. And remember that the Lord Jesus Christ is all you need. Have you yet trusted Him as your Savior?

If you haven't, do it soon. He's all you need. But is He all you want? Until next time, may God richly bless you, my friend.