F4F | The Dangers of the Passion Translation

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. So have you seen them yet?

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All the videos being put out by Bethel designed to basically refute their critics and show how orthodox they are and how what they're doing is totally in line with like normal Christianity and biblical

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Christianity. It's a mess, but I will say this, I mean they've given us so much content it's gonna take me months to work my way through a lot of it.

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So what we're gonna do today is since, how's the saying go, error circles the globe three times before the truth gets its boots on.

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Since the folks at Bethel have been spinning out all this weird nonsense,

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I thought what we would do is start to dip our toe in the water by doing something

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I haven't really done on the video episodes of Fighting for the Faith, but what we did in the past on the podcast and that is is that we're gonna feature somebody else's teaching that explains something of importance or a particular topic.

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Today we're gonna be talking about the Passion Translation. The folks at Bethel have absolutely justified their use of the

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Passion Translation and has shooed and pooh -poohed the idea that it's heretical, and believe me, the

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Passion Translation is a mess. So what we're gonna do today, we're gonna go back in time, we're going to head to the 2019

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Pirate Christian Radio Conference which was held in Swansea in the United Kingdom, and we're gonna pass everything over to a regular on the

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Fighting for the Faith podcast, and that's Pastor Gervais Nicholas Edward Charmley. We've featured him for years, more than a decade, on the podcast of Fighting for the

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Faith, using his sermons as an example of what a good sermon should sound like, and when we went to the

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United Kingdom, we invited Pastor Charmley to come to our conference to speak on the topic of the

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Passion Translation, and let's just put it this way, Pastor Charmley knocked it out of the park.

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It was a grand slam home run. So with that, I'm gonna turn everything over to him, and the entirety of this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith is gonna be dedicated to the topic of the Passion Translation, and then in a future episode,

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I'll make reference back to this episode as we start to work our way through, in the weeks and months ahead, the nonsense that is being put out by Bethel Church in order to make them look like they're totally innocuous.

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They're just misunderstood. Their critics have misrepresented them, and they're totally Orthodox. No, they're not.

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So without any further ado, here's Pastor Gervais Nicholas Edward Charmley. It's really my pleasure to be introducing to you today

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Pastor Gervais Nicholas Edward Charmley of Bethel Evangelical Free Church, Henley Stoke -on -Trent,

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I think I've got that all right, and I've invited him today to give us a walk through the

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Passion Translation, and so be prepared to take copious notes, this should be strange.

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Well, thank you very much, Chris, thanks for your introduction. I'm a pastor, so I'll start by reading from the actual

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Bible, from the 2nd Peter, chapter 1, reading from verse 16, 2nd

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Peter 1 from verse 16, the Apostle Peter writes,

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We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honour and glory from God the

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Father, the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son in whom

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I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, we were with him on the holy mountain, and we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

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Knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. May God bless the reading of his holy word.

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Let's have a word of prayer. That who are corruptors and twisters of holy

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Scripture, heavenly Father, help us indeed to weigh all things by Scripture and ever to love and to respect your holy word.

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And so as we come to consider these solemn things, we ask that you would open our minds to receive your word through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. Amen. Now, the passion translation.

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There are, of course, by anyone's estimation, far too many

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English Bible translations on the market today. We cannot possibly need so many.

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And it does mean you go into a church, you can tell something about what kind of church it is from what you find in the pew.

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If you find, for example, the NRSV, you can probably be pretty safe in saying this is a pretty liberal church.

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If you find the Good News Bible, you'll know, basically, that you'll be talked down to through the whole thing because the

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GNB is a children's Bible. If you find the

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TNIV, poor saps, they bought it when it came out and now it's not in print anymore.

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If you find the ESV, evangelical, serious.

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The NIV, probably evangelical. It was certainly when

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I was a student, and we are talking 20 years ago now, so it's been a bit of a while. But this was the nearly inerrant version, as it was nicknamed.

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This was the big evangelical Bible. If you find the

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New King James, probably a bit reactionary. I preach for the

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New King James, I like it, but probably a bit reactionary then. King James, very traditional.

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The Voice, what? Emergent. Well, what do you think when you come into a church and you find the

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Passion Translation? I would say run like the wind. Something is very, very wrong.

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This is, well, when it started coming out, which is when I first noticed it, there was a big display.

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There were two Christian bookshops in Stoke -on -Trent. One of them is Bethel Books, which you can trust absolutely, it's our church bookshop.

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So, the other is the Methodist Book Centre, where you pay your money and you take your choice.

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And there was a whole stack of these things. A little paperback, some volumes, the

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Passion Translation. I took one to begin with and thought, I don't need another English Bible translation, just ignore the wretched thing.

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And then, I started hearing about what was behind this. So I thought, get one,

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Letters from Heaven by the Apostle Paul. Well, it's not really by the Apostle Paul, he did most of it, but Brian Simmons thinks he can improve on Paul.

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Well, this doesn't look like a Bible. This does. You would think this is a

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Bible. You open it, big study notes. Serious study

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Bible. No, it's not. This is a trap. There's a lot said today about the spectrum of Bible translations.

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From the very word to word, like the New American Standard Bible. When I finished seminary, our

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Greek tutor said, go on with your Greek, get a New American Standard.

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And when you do your translation, compare it to the New American Standard. If it sounds like the New American Standard, it's probably accurate.

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Because the NASB even preserves a lot of the Greek word order.

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This is not always a good thing, of course, because word order is much more important in English than it is in Greek. In Greek, word order is about emphasis.

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In English, well, if you want to say, Jesus loves

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John, you've just got to say, Jesus loves John in English, or you sound quite distorted.

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You can say it multiple ways in Greek, and that's ignoring the different words for love. On the other hand, you get the highly paraphrastic, like the

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New Living Bible, on the other hand. But beyond this, there are other things.

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There is the expansive paraphrase. Now, there have always been paraphrases. One of the older Bible manuscripts we have is something called

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Codex Bezae Canterburchiensis. And it belongs to the University of Cambridge.

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It was a gift from Theodore Beza, who was Calvin's successor at Geneva. And it is wild and wacky.

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And the, basically this chap doing it, has taken it upon himself in places to elaborate upon the original.

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They've always existed. It was never intended to be read in church. The best known of these today, of course, is

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The Message. Let me tell you that the TPT, this makes

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The Message look like the New American Standard. It is that bad, that dodgy.

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Now, The Message, Genesis 1, verse 1, just to give a flavour of how this works.

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First this, God created the heavens and the earth, all you see, all you don't see.

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Earth was like a soup of nothingness, a bottle that's empty as an inky blackness. God's spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.

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That's how expansive paraphrases work. Now, Eugene Peterson, the late Eugene Peterson, was very clear.

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He said, The Message is not a study Bible. It is not intended to be read in church.

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It's intended to be something for personal use only.

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But this, this is pretending to be a real Bible. There are churches that are using this.

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Now, Simmons hasn't done the whole Bible yet. He's doing it. This is the, I mean, it looks about as thick as a real

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Bible, because all the extra stuff he's added in. But this is just the New Testament, the

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Psalms, the Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon. Now, I've already written about TPT, spoken at some length of the topic a few years back, both with Chris in an interview that was dogged with technical difficulties, because my internet and wet weather do not work well together.

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We're still trying to work out what the problem is there. So why say anything more?

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Well, because there is more here now, and because churches are using it now.

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Spoken with several people here yesterday who have experienced it being used in church as though it were a real

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Bible. It is a perversion of Scripture. It is an abomination, not a translation.

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And it is on the level of the New World Translation of the

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Jehovah's Witnesses. This is the NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation New World Translation, except it's worse than the

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NWT. Not in the sense that it teaches, but in the scale of changes made to Holy Scriptures.

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On the TPT website, we read this statement.

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If you go to the website of the Passion Translation, it says, The Passion Translation is a new heart -level translation using

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Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic manuscripts that expresses God's fiery heart of love for this generation, merging the emotion and life -changing truth of God's Word.

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I cannot take that fiery heart of loving theory. It's ridiculous. Come on.

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Again, it says, many wonderful versions of the Bible now grace our bookshelves, bookstores, software programs, even apps on our phones.

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Why add one more? To which my response is, don't. God loves to have his

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Word expressed in every language in a way that unlocks the passion of his heart.

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The goal of TPT is to trigger inside every reader an overwhelming response to the truth of the

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Bible, revealing the deep mystery of the Scripture in the loud language of God, the language of the heart.

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It's got to make fun of it. If you're hungry for God and want to know him on a deeper level,

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TPT will help you encounter God's heart and discover what he has for your life. Lofty claims indeed, but false.

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TPT actually sets up a barrier between the reader and God's Word, and that barrier is

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Brian Simmons, the author. The author of TPT, the mastermind of this abomination, is

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Brian Simmons, a former missionary linguist. The TPT website describes him,

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Dr. Simmons, as a former missionary, linguist, minister, and Bible teacher. As a missionary, he and his wife

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Candice pioneered church plants in Central America. As a linguist, Brian co -authored the

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Payakuna New Testament for the Payakuna people of Panama. He and his wife have birthered numerous ministries, sounds painful, including a dynamic church in Connecticut.

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He is also a gifted teacher of the Bible, that is open to debate, who has authored several books and serves churches worldwide through his teaching ministry.

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Brian began his biblical studies with New Tries Bible Institute and continued on to earn his doctorate with Wagner Leadership Institute, with a specialization on prayer.

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You would think that as a former missionary linguist, he would be qualified to translate the Bible. There is one massive problem here, though, which is that he has to put, not to find a point on it, a crank.

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Brian Simmons has apostolic pretensions. He is part of the

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NAR. He is an NAR apostle. Now, they don't like the phrase,

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New Apostolic Reformation, but that is actually a very good description of how they see themselves.

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Because they do believe that God is now restoring the office of apostle, that's with a large

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A, to the church, and that this is a revolution on the scale of the reformation of the 16th century.

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So, New Apostolic Reformation is actually a really good description of how they see themselves.

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And Simmons doesn't think of himself as an apostle in the way that one author wrote of John Wesley as an apostolic man, but as an apostle in the same way that Paul was.

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He believes that he is moved by the Holy Spirit in translation, in much the same way that the original authors of Scripture were moved by the

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Holy Spirit. Now, there is a strand of cultic King James -only -ism that believes that the

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King James translators were inspired by God. The translators themselves would disclaim every such idea.

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They were university professors. All the relevant professors from Oxford and Cambridge were involved.

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One of the men, and this is very important to mention, was a former pirate.

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He had been a privateer under Queen Elizabeth, and he had a wonderful idea of this pirate with the church fathers in his cabin.

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But these men, they saw themselves as servants of God, who were required to study the original language, to study the

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Scriptures, and prayerfully ask, what did God mean by this?

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Humility is needed, not pretensions to inspiration. But the only way you can talk about Brian Simmons is to talk about pretensions to inspiration.

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Well, first there is this crank idea that he is an apostle and inspired. This alone would result in a paraphrase with no real value.

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Because the thing is, if a man believes that he is guided by the Holy Spirit, he's not going to sit down and say, am

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I right? He's not going to go and look at other translations, he's not going to consult commentaries and say, is my understanding of this text correct?

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He's going to go, I'm inspired, I must be right, and we shall see certain examples of where he has gone horribly wrong because he has not consulted other people.

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Now, what is the relationship between Brian Simmons and General Chang in Star Trek 6?

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It is that in Star Trek 6, the Klingons say you have not appreciated

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Shakespeare until you've heard him in the original Klingons. Brian Simmons is a crank who believes that you have not appreciated the

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New Testament unless you read the original Aramaic. Well, just as Shakespeare did not write in Klingon, the

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New Testament writers did not write in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek.

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It beggars belief to imagine the Apostle Paul writing letters in Aramaic to the

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Galatians. Or to the

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Corinthians. Where is Corinth? It's in Greece. On the

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TPT website we read, while it is generally agreed upon that Greek was the language in which the

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New Testament was written, for several decades there have been debates surrounding the primacy of Greek versus Aramaic as original text of the

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New Testament. And if that makes any sense to you, please tell me, because it makes none to me. If it's generally agreed that Greek is the language in which it was written, then how can there be any debate about primacy?

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But the idea seems to be that since Jesus and his first disciples would have spoken

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Aramaic day to day, then the Aramaic adds an extra level of meaning. This is, to put not too fine a point on it, nonsense.

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Although there are extensive Semitisms in many of the

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New Testament writers, they are writing Greek. They are not

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Aramaic translations. You often find on the internet, you can find all kinds of rubbish on the internet, you'll often find on the internet, good stuff too, you'll often find on the internet cranks who insist on the primacy of Aramaic because it allows them to get rid of something they don't like in the

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Bible. Now I was brought up in a prayer book Anglican church.

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And in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, there is a version of the Psalms that is not that of the authorised version.

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And I noticed as a lad, we'd say the Psalms and sometimes it didn't match up with what was in the

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King James. So Psalm 2 verse 1, the prayer book it reads, Why do the heathen so furiously rage together and why do the people imagine a vain thing?

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And the authorised version, it simply reads, why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? Why the extra words?

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It's very simple. The prayer book Psalms were translated by Miles Coverdale. This was necessary because William Tyndale had been martyred.

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And so he couldn't finish the Bible translation. Now Coverdale sadly knew no

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Hebrew. So Coverdale translated the Psalms from Latin. The problem with the

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Latin version he translated though was that it had been translated itself by Jerome.

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Great man, Jerome. Really, really excellent man. Roughly contemporary to Augustine of Hippo and a friend of Augustine.

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But Jerome was involved in producing a brand new Latin translation.

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And initially he followed the old Latin which translated from the Greek. And the Psalms are the translation of the

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Latin, so the English translation of the Latin translation of the

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Greek translation from the Hebrew. You put something through enough different languages, you get some interesting stuff at the end because meaning gets added, meaning gets removed.

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And so using the Aramaic translation, the old Syriac translation, as though it were an original language results in a loss of meaning.

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And so you get a translation of a translation, distance is introduced. And translators have to interpret the text.

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Now, let me give an example. Galatians 6 .5. I have used the

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New King James for my Bible translation for two reasons. One is it's a more expansive version.

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It's a fuller text. But also the version I normally preach from. The NKJV of Galatians 6 .5

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is this. For each one shall bear his own load. Now, TPT. Every believer is ultimately responsible for his or her own conscience.

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That is not a translation. That is an interpretation. The translation is this proverbial phrase that everyone carry his own load.

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But instead of the proverb, we get an interpretation responsible for his or her own conscience.

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That word again, conscience, that we had in the first lecture. There's another reason why

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Simmons uses the Aramaic. And it's, again, because he's a crank. And it's this crank theory. But Hebrew and Aramaic are more emotional and poetic.

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I hope to show later on that Simmons is not poetic at all. Simmons wouldn't know poetry if it slapped him in the face with a wet kipper.

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That's another matter entirely. Now, how do you translate the Bible? Translation is an art.

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It's not just a science. When I was a young Christian, there was a couple who went to the church I was converted at.

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And they were involved in translating tracts for Eastern Europe. And you've got to know the idiom of the language you're translating into as well as knowing the original language you're translating from.

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But let's quote the TPT website. Let's be fair to them again. Two kinds of Bible translation include formal equivalence and functional equivalence.

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These terms describe either literal word -for -word versions, formal, or thought -for -thought versions, functional or dynamic.

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Some versions, like the New King James Version and the English Standard Version, seek to make a comparable one -to -one connection between the original form of words in biblical languages to their new form in English.

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It's why we call them word -for -word translations. These versions believe the literal meaning should have priority.

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That the Hebrew and Greek words should equal English words. That's a very naive way to describe it.

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You just can't do that. That's not how translation works. Other versions, like the

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New Century Version, New Living Translation, and Good News Bible, seek to make a corresponding connection between the function of the original biblical words in English.

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These are called thought -for -thought translations. They believe the original message should have priority. That what

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God was trying to communicate through the Hebrew and Greek should be communicated in English. The Passion Translations philosophy is that the meaning of God's original message to the world has priority over its exact form.

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Which is why our goal is to communicate the meaning of Scripture as clearly and naturally as possible in modern

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English. If that is the goal, he fails dismally. Dismally. And again, we shall see as we go on.

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But he goes on to say so much. Brian and other reviewers have sought to remain faithful to the original biblical languages by preserving their literal meaning, yet flexible enough to convey

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God's original message in a way modern English speakers can understand. It is a balanced translation that tries to hold both the words' literal meaning and original message in proper tension, resulting in an entirely new, fresh, fiery translation of God's word.

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You would think it is basically the NIV. No. All translation involves interpretation.

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Let's give an example. Galatians 5 .25. New King James. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.

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That's a beautiful translation. Simple English words.

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TPT. We have now chosen to live in the surrendered freedom of yielding to the

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Holy Spirit. Yes, quite. What? And the idea of living in the spirit is just lost.

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Walking as well. That picture of walking is lost.

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What Paul said can be rendered so simply and easily into English. And what's he done?

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Messed it up. Lists, we should think. Lists should be rendered quite literally because they are well lists.

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Listen to Galatians 5 .22 -23. New King James.

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But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

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Against such there is no law. Beautiful. Simmons. But the fruit produced by the

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Holy Spirit within you is divine love in all its various expressions. This love is revealed through joy that overflows.

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Peace that subdues. Patience that endures. Kindness in action. A life full of virtue.

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Faith that prevails. Gentleness of heart and strength of spirit. Never set the law above these qualities for they are meant to be limitless.

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First of all, he has made the cardinal error of so many people approaching this text.

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He's noticed that fruit in the Greek is a singular. It is. But instead of then recognizing that that then means that the fruit is this mature

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Christian character spoken of by Paul. He thinks the fruit's got to be one of these things, the love.

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And everything else is just the expression of the fruit. If he had read one decent commentary, he wouldn't make that mistake.

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But he doesn't. And instead all this verbiage comes spewing out. Now what about the passion of the translation?

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When linguists speak of heart language, what they mean is the language that people habitually think in.

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Here we are in Wales. In South Wales. And you go into the valleys.

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And into the depths of Wales. And everyone in Wales can speak English. But you go into the valleys in North Wales.

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And what do they think in? They think in Welsh. What do they think in if you go into Penmachnow?

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Penmachnow is the nearest village to where the Welsh Bible translator

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William Morgan was born. And the language in the school there is

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Welsh. So what does a Welshman need? A Welsh Welshman who thinks in Welsh.

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He needs a Welsh Bible. That's what heart language is. It's the language people think in.

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What Simmons means by this, it seems to be, is something that is full of expressions of emotion.

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He means something emotional. Now that's not actually how the Hebrews think of the heart. It's not how the

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Bible thinks of the heart. The heart in Scripture isn't the emotions. If you want to talk about the emotions, you want to use that wonderful Greek word, the splankner.

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The splankner. The bowels. It's a word that comes out in some of our older hymn translations.

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I'm reminded of a story where they were revising the Methodist hymn book. And as they came across one of the younger editors groaned and said,

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Bowels again? We can at least change it to affections here. What? Said one of the old men.

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Are we not allowed to have bowels anymore? I have no objection to you having bowels, said the young man.

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My objection is to them protruding. And the thing about the

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Passion translation is he's just got bowels everywhere in that sense. He claims the

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Bible is a passionate book. I don't think he's actually confident in that.

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Because if he were, he'd just let the Bible be the Bible. Instead he adds the words passionate and fiery all over the place.

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The word fiery appears in the New King James New Testament six times.

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And not at all in the Psalms. In Psalm 94 18.

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In TPT rather. It appears twelve times in the New Testament and six times in the

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Psalms. It's multiplied. New King James Psalm 94 18.

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If I say my foot slips, your mercy, your Lord will hold me up.

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TPT. When I screamed out, Lord, I'm doomed. Your fiery love was stirred and you raced to my rescue.

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Luke 12 49. New King James. I came to send fire on the earth and have

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I wish it were already kindled. TPT. I've come to set the earth on fire and how

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I long for every heart to be already ablaze with this fiery passion for God.

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Like Brian Blessed wrote the thing. If you don't know who

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Brian Blessed is, ask somebody later. And the phrase fiery love is not equivalent to mercy.

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And so to take something that refers to the mercy of God. To his loving kindness.

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His covenant love. And replace it with a reference to fiery love.

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Passion. Emotion. Actually removes something from the text. Another one of these emotional terms.

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The word lover. In the New King James. In all decent

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Bible translations basically. It is used literally. In the

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New King James New Testament. It appears four times. In TPT 17 times in the

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New Testament. 59 times in Proverbs. 77 times in the Psalm. We'll leave the Psalm of Solomon out for obvious reasons.

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And how does this happen? Well it's because Simmons thinks he needs to add these emotion words.

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To make the Bible passionate. If the Bible is passionate. You don't need to add emotion words.

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Give an example. Luke 1 .50. From the son of Mary the Magnificat. My soul doth magnify the

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Lord. New King James. And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.

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TPT. Mercy kisses all his godly lovers from one generation to the next. Egregious. And the fear of God in scripture.

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The fear of God is the Hebrew term. The Hebrew idea for piety.

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The fear of God. To take it out. Is abominable.

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Again Revelation 19 .5. New King James. Then a voice came from the throne saying.

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Praise our God all you his servants. And those who fear him both small and great. TPT. Then a voice came from the throne saying.

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Praise our God all you his loving servants. And who reverence and honor him.

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Those who are lowly and those who are great. Loving of course has just been added.

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Because hey. How else would we know that they love him? Well maybe context. It is called the passion translation.

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And the word passion. And it's plural. And passionate are used frequently. Not in the historic

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Christian meaning of the sufferings of Christ. The passion of Christ.

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Passio. To suffer. But as emotional words. It appears 105 times in the

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TPT New Testament. 50 times in the Psalms. And 8 times in Proverbs. In the

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New King James it appears 6 times in the New Testament. All negative. Consider Psalm 51.

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New King James. Give ear to my words O Lord. Consider my meditation. Now here the

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New King James has done a little bit of interpretive work. The word shall be in meditation. Could be rendered as groaning.

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The TPT says listen Lord. Listen Yahweh to my passionate prayer.

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Can't you hear my groaning. The word passionate here is just flavoring. Sprinkled on.

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Luke 9 51. Now it came to pass when the time had come for him to be received up.

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That he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. TPT. Jesus passionately determined to leave for Jerusalem.

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And let nothing distract him from fulfilling his mission there. The time for him to be lifted up was drawing near.

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Again. Why put passionate in there unless you don't really trust. The Bible to convey these things.

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1 Corinthians 8 3. If anyone loves God this one is known by him. TPT. But if a person passionately loves

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God. You possess the knowledge of God. Now the insertion of the word passionately is ruinous for another reason.

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It suggests that you've got to have a special level of love for God.

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In order to gain knowledge of God. It sets people to introspection.

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Do I love God enough. And that is dangerous. And is not in the original at all.

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And Simmons gives the Aramaic as an authority for he will possess the knowledge of God.

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But of course it's Corinthians. Corinth in Greece.

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But there we are. 2 Timothy 3 12. Yes and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

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TPT. For all who choose to live passionately and faithfully as worshippers of Jesus.

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The anointed one will also experience persecution. This is dreadful. First of all the idea of being in Christ.

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Which is Paul's basic idea of the Christian life. It is being in Christ.

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A Christian is one who is in Christ. There is that union by faith with Christ.

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And it's gone. And instead it's simply the. Oddly enough insipid worshippers of Christ.

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The translation of Christ's anointed one of course can be passed over it's simply translation. Godly has become passionately and faithfully.

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Yet if Paul meant to say faithfully he would have done so. He didn't.

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He said. Godly. And that's important.

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This all leads to an inevitable conclusion. I'm not the first one to say this. That all these flavor words about passion.

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And this sort of business. Are a suggestion that Simmons doesn't actually believe the

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Bible has power on its own. That it needs help from him. God does not need help from us.

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His word is living and powerful. And sharper than any two -edged sword.

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There is power in the word of God. And I believe deeply and yes passionately in that.

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The word of God. A man who is truly passionate does not have to say I'm passionate all the time.

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It would be obvious. Simmons belongs to the N .A .R. And the doctrine of the

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N .A .R. is all over T .P .T. It's one of the greatest weaknesses of it.

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It's being produced within a tradition. And this language and thought of the tradition has deeply, deeply influenced the translation.

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Simmons would of course deny it. No doubt because he is N .A .R. And he doesn't think that he belongs to any tradition.

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Oh we are just getting back to the apostles. Nobody can do that. You cannot go back to the first century.

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Because you don't live in the first century. You live in the 21st century. We don't try to live in the past.

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But we believe that God has been working all the way through church history.

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The man who says he has no tradition is a man who is unconscious of his tradition.

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The man who is like the fish in water that doesn't know it's wet. Because it's a fish.

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In water it's never known anything else. The use of charismatic buzzwords in T .P

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.T. is extremely notable. Some of these occur with extraordinary frequency.

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Now Lindsay Davis has produced a very useful table of this. So I'll just give a few examples here.

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And this is stuff I did before I saw her table. Now I think her table is based on the whole

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T .P .T. I've just done the New Testament. Because it's trying to compare like with like here.

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So realm. Realm. Seven times the word realm appears in the

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New King James. T .P .T. 204 times. Something is going on when that happens.

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Spiritual. New King James. 34 times. T .P .T. 87 times.

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Prophetic. New King James. 3 times. T .P .T. 28 times.

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Impart. New King James. New Testament. 3 times. T .P .T. 35 times.

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Supernatural appears 37 times in T .P .T. Not at all in the New King James.

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Largely because the New King James is a more conservative translation. And so it doesn't tend to use these words that...

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Basically supernatural is a 19th century word. It's an Enlightenment word. Healing.

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13 times in the New King James. 49 times in T .P .T. What's going on?

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Miraculous. 17 times in the T .P .T. Not at all in the New King James.

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What is going on here? Miracle. 14 times in New King James.

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126 times in T .P .T. Authority. It's a big thing, isn't it? Authority.

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68 times but in New King James. 132 times in T .P

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.T. Power. 131 times in New King James.

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332 times in T .P .T. Now, what about buzz phrases?

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Glory cloud. Have you heard the phrase glory cloud? 4 times in T .P

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.T. Song of Solomon 3 .6. New King James. Who is this coming out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the merchant's fragrant powders?

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You can see where this is going, can't you? T .P .T. Who is this one ascending from the wilderness in the pillar of the glory cloud?

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Right. He is fragrant with the anointing oils of myrrh and frankincense, more fragrant than all the spies of the merchant.

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This is interpretation with a vengeance. Luke 9 .34. While Peter was still speaking, a radiant cloud of glory formed above them and overshadowed them.

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As the glory cloud enveloped them, they were struck with fear. New King James. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were fearful as they entered the cloud.

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I need a little bit there, hasn't he? This idea of the glory cloud that is generally created by pumping glitter through air conditioning systems has been inserted into Scripture.

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Revelation knowledge. Have you ever heard Benny Hinn get ready for some revelation knowledge?

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T .P .T. uses it 13 times in Proverbs and 7 times in the

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New Testament. It is, of course, not at all in any reputable English translation.

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Proverbs 4 .7. Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom. In all your getting, get understanding.

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New King James. T .P .T. Wisdom is the most valuable commodity. So buy it. Revelation knowledge is what you need.

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So invest in it. Brought in from outside. Proverbs 8 .9. New King James.

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They are all plain to who understands, right to those who find knowledge. T .P

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.T. All my words are clear and straightforward to everyone who possesses spiritual understanding. If you have an open mind, you will receive revelation knowledge.

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Proverbs 11 .9. The hypocrite with his mouth destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous will be delivered.

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T .P .T. The teachings of hypocrites can destroy you, but revelation knowledge will rescue the righteous.

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You need to get that special revelation knowledge to be delivered. Where do you find it? The M .A

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.R. teachers. So this is a Bible version, allegedly, that is intended, like the

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N .W .T., to leave people completely dependent upon their teachers, their, if you will, magisterium, their teaching authority.

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I don't think that Simmons fully realizes this, but he is so immersed in these ideas.

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It becomes an in -house translation of the M .A .R., so if any church is using it, you know that they are deeply infiltrated.

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Now, because T .P .T. is an expansive paraphrase, Simmons regularly adds words to phrases to, as he thinks, explain the text.

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This is always a dangerous thing to do. One of the worst offenses is the regular use of the word spiritual to qualify words that, quite frankly, don't need it.

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Psalm 914, New King James, that I may tell of all your praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion, I will rejoice in your salvation.

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T .P .T., save me, bring me to the spiritual gates of Zion, so that I can bring you the shout of praise you deserve.

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What does the word spiritual accomplish here? Nothing. Psalm 32, for one of the worst examples, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my vitality was turned into the drought of summer.

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Now, this is a psalm, this is poetry. Poetry is all about things like metaphor.

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Without metaphor, you don't have real poetry. You've got prose pretending to be poetry.

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New King James is poetry. Simmons gives us the frankly ridiculous.

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The pain never let up, for your hand of conviction was heavy on my heart, my strength was sapped, my inner life dried up like a spiritual drought within myself.

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Do we need to be told that a drought within the soul is spiritual? No. The thing that you do is treating your readers like children, like infants who can't tell a metaphor when it appears.

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Psalm 2230, A new King James, a posterity shall serve him, it will be recounted to the

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Lord of the Lord to the next generation. TPT, his spiritual seed shall serve him, future generations will hear from us about the wonders of the sovereign

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Lord. Not only does he feel the need to insert the word spiritual, but it has the following footnote.

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Jesus, our crucified saviour, had no natural offspring. These are the sons and daughters who were birthed by the work of the cross.

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Thank you, Brian, we would not have known that if you hadn't told us. Psalm 8116,

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He would have fed them also with the finest of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you.

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TPT, but I will feed you with my spiritual bread. You will feast and be satisfied with me, feeding on my revelation truth, like honey dripping from the cliffs of the high place.

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If you have to change a metaphor to a simile, you have a problem. Metaphor is metaphor, and reducing it to a simile...

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When I studied at what's now called London Seminary, London Theological Seminary then, we had a wonderful Hebrew tutor called

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David Bond, and David Bond was also a music teacher. And he said the problem with much modern

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Christian songwriting is it's not poetry. They don't understand metaphor.

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He doesn't understand metaphor. Psalm 23 is probably the best known of the psalms, a beautiful psalm.

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We say it at funerals, we sing it at funerals. Earlier this year I visited a little place called

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Monkland in Herefordshire, where the author of The King of Love, My Shepherd Is, is buried.

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And his gravestone, he has Christ the Good Shepherd on the gravestone, carrying the sheep on his shoulders.

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Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, but he in mercy sought me.

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And on his shoulders gently laid, and home rejoicing brought me. That's poetry.

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Listen to this. Verses 1 and 2, New King James. The Lord is my shepherd,

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I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside the still waters.

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Simple, majestic, poetical. Contrast T .P .T. The Lord is my best friend and my shepherd.

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I always have more than enough. He offers a resting place for me in his luxurious lounge.

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His tracks take me to an oasis of peace, the quiet brook of bliss. Quiet brook of bliss.

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Even though it's, for instance, poetry, it is quite clearly prose, and bad prose at that. Now some of this is very doctrinal.

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We just heard about, this morning, about women preachers.

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Now all of the texts that were cited have been, shall we say, massaged in T .P .T.

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It is very common in the N .A .R. to have, of course, women pastors and preachers, even women apostles, which goes against several biblical texts.

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The most obvious, 1 Timothy 2 .12. I do not allow a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over a man.

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T .P .T. I don't advocate that the newly converted women be the teachers in the church, assuming authority over the man.

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Newly converted, of course, has been introduced out of thin air. But we have a little fig leaf to cover that.

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A footnote says, implied and understood by the cultural context.

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Yes. 1 Corinthians 11 .5.

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And if any woman, in a place of leadership within the church, prays or prophesies in public with her long hair disheveled, she shows disrespect to her head, which is her husband.

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Where does the phrase, in a place of leadership, come from? Brian Simmons' head, mostly.

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There is no footnote, no explanation. Just insert this phrase, because, why not?

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Several familiar texts in T .P .T. are treated in a very odd way. What is seen in Psalm 23?

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Take John 3 .16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten

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Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You take an old -fashioned evangelical, and they could quote that.

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Without thinking. But, in T .P .T., for this is how much

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God loved the world, he gave his one and only unique Son as a gift. As if a gave doesn't actually communicate what

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I do. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish, but experience everlasting life.

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Simmons adds ten completely unnecessary words, including, of course, as a gift, because, why not?

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Surely redundant. Romans 5 .1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

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A great declaration of the Reformation, justification by faith. Our faith in Jesus Christ transfers

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God's righteousness to us. He now declares us flawless in his eyes. This means we can now enjoy true and lasting peace with God, because of what our

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Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, has done for us. Sixteen words in the New King James.

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Forty -four in T .P .T. None of which are necessary. And here is another problem.

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One of the great problems with these paraphrases, they tend to flatten out everything.

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To make every writer sound the same. Because there is just one writer. But the reality is that Paul is not

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John. John is not Luke. Mark is not

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John. And if you look at these, they've all got their own styles.

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And John has this wonderful style. I love when you start doing Greek, usually you start with John.

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Because John's Greek is sublimely simple. When I was studying at seminary, one of the students said, why don't we start with Mark?

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And the teacher said, because while Mark is relatively simple, straightforward if you know the language,

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Mark's Greek is not straightforward. Mark's Greek is much more complicated. John has this great way of saying the most sublime things in the simplest language.

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Paul has this tendency to start off on a thought, go off on a tangent, and then come back.

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And that's Paul. But they need to be able to be themselves. So, John 1 .1,

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was

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God. T .P .T. In the very beginning the living expression was already there, and the living expression was with God, yet fully

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God. This adds nothing to the reader's understanding, and takes away from it, by disrupting

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John's style. And of course he cannot avoid trying to clean up Paul. Romans 5.

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We've got our wonderful... Romans 5 .12, Paul begins a comparison between Adam and Christ, but never finishes it.

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Because he goes off on this long parenthetical statement, and then goes, hang on a minute, let's just start all over again.

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A good translator would let Paul be Paul, let Paul be Paul. Paul is a wonderful, wonderful writer.

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God made Paul as Paul. So let Paul be what God made him. And good translators let that happen, and bad translators, that's untidy and cleans it up.

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So Romans 5 .12, When Adam sinned, the entire world was affected. Sin entered human experience, and death was the result.

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And so death followed this sin, casting its shadow over all humanity, because all have sinned.

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New King James, Therefore just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.

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T .P .T. tidies it up, and gets rid of the just as, and instead of saying, because all sinned, it says, because all have sinned.

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The imputation of Adam's sin to his progeny is quietly removed.

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I don't think it's deliberate, I think it's just that he's trying to tidy up Paul. Excess verbiage, tame.

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There are numerous footnotes, numerous footnotes. Some suggest alternative translations, which you find in most

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Bible translations, even the King James, you have one with footnotes. One of the, however, one of the problems with this is that these are doctrinal footnotes.

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If you ever had a Roman Catholic Bible, you'll notice there's doctrinal footnotes in there. This is what the church says you must believe about this text.

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So an example from T .P .T. is this Proverbs 30, 17. The eye that mocks his father, and dishonors his elderly mother, deserves to be plucked out by the ravens, and of the valley, and fed to the young vultures.

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The footnote explains, this is a figure of speech. Thank you, we'd already worked this one out.

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This is a figure of speech for demonic powers that will remove their vision. What?

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But you see, this is, this is what you must believe in the N .A .R. In Proverbs, there are several that point to an

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N .A .R. view of the church, of what the true and the false are. Proverbs 2, 17, there is a deeper meaning within this text, the footnote.

01:00:05

Proverbs tells us of two women, the adulteress and the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31. Both women speak a parable of two systems in the church.

01:00:13

One is religious and alluring, tempting the faithful to come to her bed of compromise. The other is the holy bride, virtuous and pure, keeping her first love, wedding vows.

01:00:24

For Christ alone, her house is the glory of the Lord. One system brings shame and despair, the other brings favor, honor, and glory.

01:00:33

Theology of self -glory here. Proverbs 5, 3, for the believer, the promiscuous woman, can be a picture of the false anointings of the religious spirit that attempt to seduce us, weaken our message, and rob the anointing of God from our ministries.

01:00:50

Again, this is a theology. These are not explanatory notes in the normal sense.

01:00:57

This is a whole theology being pushed in there. Now, I have here first edition

01:01:04

T .P .T., second edition T .P .T., and I'm glad I do because there's been some changes in the second edition.

01:01:14

You think, um, divinely inspired? Well, surely they're just tweaks.

01:01:20

Now, the other week I was up in North Wales, a little mountain church. They've got a

01:01:26

Bible in a glass case. It's a vinegar Bible. You know what the vinegar Bible is? It's a

01:01:31

Bible where there was a misprint in one of the chapter headings. And so instead of the parable of the vineyard, it says the parable of the vinegar.

01:01:42

The most famous of these, of course, the famous Bible printing error is the

01:01:47

Wicked Bible, which accidentally left the word not out of the commandment concerning adultery. So, mistakes happen.

01:01:58

But these are not mistakes. These are addition. These are massive things.

01:02:07

One of the helpful things, there are a few, for the critic with the new

01:02:14

T .P .T., is it prints words that have been added in italics. This means that you can open it up and go, hang on a minute, why is half this verse in italics?

01:02:25

So, an example, the King James usually added just one or two of these at a time. And normally it's to do with the fact that information that's contained within the form of the

01:02:37

Greek verb or noun has to be supplied with a word in English.

01:02:45

But T .P .T. is rather different. He says, indeed, in the introduction, these are not in the original, but are implied by the context, which would be fine if it were true, but it's not.

01:02:58

So, Galatians chapter three. We have, Galatians 1 .3,

01:03:04

I pray over you a release of the blessings of God's undeserved kindness and total well -being, which is a bit odd for grace and peace to you.

01:03:14

It's not quite the same as I pray over you a release. Galatians 2 .20,

01:03:21

my old identity has been co -crucified with Messiah and no longer lives, for the nails of his cross crucified me with him.

01:03:29

That phrase has no antecedent in the Greek, as they say. He goes on, and now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the anointed one lives his life through me.

01:03:43

We live in union as one. Again, added. Why? Implied by context.

01:03:49

No, it's not. Why do you need a whole sentence? A whole clause? And again, we see how, we saw earlier how fruit is singular, and he assumes that one of these must be the fruit.

01:04:02

But then there's the things that were added that have been taken out. The very first verse of Galatians, Galatians 1 .1

01:04:11

in the original TPT, first edition. My name is Paul, and I've been commissioned as an apostle of the

01:04:17

Lord Jesus Christ. You need to know that my apostolic authority was not granted to me by any council of men, for I was appointed by Jesus the anointed one and God the

01:04:26

Father who raised him from the dead. Now it reads, my name is Paul, and I've been commissioned as an apostle of the

01:04:33

Lord Jesus the Messiah. Where did, and you need to know, go? My apostleship was not granted to me by any council of men, for I was appointed by Jesus the

01:04:43

Messiah and God the Father who raised him from the dead. Now the next change is, in the book of Galatians, is in Galatians 1 and verse 2.

01:04:57

What an edit job. In the first edition it read, and I am joined by all the

01:05:03

Christians who are here with me as I write. Now it says, and all the brothers and sisters, translating brethren in a somewhat more accurate way.

01:05:15

Grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ is still the unintelligible jargon. I pray over you a release of the blessings of God's undeserved kindness and total well -being that flows from God our

01:05:27

Father and the Lord Jesus. So verse 3 has not been changed, sadly. Verse 4 in the original was absolutely awful.

01:05:34

He's the anointed Messiah. You don't need to say anointed Messiah, just say anointed or Messiah, one or the other.

01:05:41

Who offered himself as a sacrifice for our sins. He has taken us out of this evil world system and set us free through our salvation just as God has desired.

01:05:53

And you think, but what is missing? And what he's done there, but originally it said, he has offered his soul a sacrifice for our sins.

01:06:03

That's omitted now. Verse 6, the original, I am shocked how quickly you've deserted the grace gospel and strayed away from the anointed one who called you to himself by his loving mercy.

01:06:14

I am frankly astounded you now embrace a distorted gospel of salvation by works. Now it reads only,

01:06:20

I am shocked over how quickly you've strayed away from the one who called you in the grace of Christ. I'm frankly astounded you now embrace a distorted gospel instead of a distorted gospel of salvation by works, which is not, of course, in the original.

01:06:37

Galatians 1 .15 has the wonderful phrase that triggered all my

01:06:42

British sarcasm. But then something happened. You don't say.

01:06:51

Thankfully, this of course has been omitted, no doubt because somebody read it and wrote to Simmons and said, you do realize how ridiculous this sounds.

01:07:01

Galatians 6 .1 My beloved friends, if you see a believer who's overtaken with a fault and has fallen from the place of victory, may the one who overflows with the spirit seek to restore him to fellowship with the anointed one.

01:07:13

Again, somebody has pointed out, fallen from the place of victory has absolutely no antecedent in the Greek. What are you smoking?

01:07:20

Or something along those lines. And he now says, my beloved friends, if you see a believer who's overtaken with a fault, may the one who overflows with the spirit seek to restore him.

01:07:30

You notice fellowship with the anointed one has gone as well, because again, it's not in the original. It's just he's restored him.

01:07:37

There are dozens of such changes in Galatians alone. And it demonstrates just how much he had added to the text that he can take now so much out.

01:07:48

The pruning is good as far as it goes, but it needs to go so much further. Why is it that something that omits most of the

01:07:56

Old Testament is the same size as an ordinary

01:08:01

Bible would be that was printed like this? Because there's so much excess verbiage, as we say.

01:08:11

There is, in conclusion, there are a few points in conclusion, TPT is not a

01:08:18

Bible translation. It is a paraphrase into which so much has been inserted that when you are reading it, you are not reading the

01:08:28

Bible. You are reading Brian Simmons preaching, Brian Simmons ideas.

01:08:35

An expansive paraphrase is not and cannot be a substitute for a

01:08:40

Bible translation. If the problem with the message is that you are never quite sure whether you are reading

01:08:49

Peterson or Paul, reading Paul's epistles, then in TPT you can be quite sure that you are reading

01:08:57

Simmons and not Paul. And it is multiplied. It adds words, even whole sentences, far more freely than Eugene Peterson ever did and yet is marketed as a study

01:09:11

Bible and is used in churches. This is an abomination.

01:09:17

Yes, I've made fun of it, because I think that you've got to, just as we made fun of Mr.

01:09:24

Hitler, not because Hitler wasn't a serious threat, but because he was.

01:09:31

If we can laugh at something, then we will never embrace it. And if we lose the ability to laugh at fascism or communism, we are in danger of embracing these ideologies.

01:09:44

If we lose the ability to laugh at spiritual hucksters, to laugh at TPT, serious as the issues are, then we are in danger of being suckered in.

01:09:57

But we must treat it seriously as well. The Word of God is what

01:10:03

God has given and we must keep it and read it and love it to the point that we tremble at the idea of it being changed.

01:10:18

It is a sign that the NAR is moving off in a cultic direction. And this is a matter of great concern when we see churches that were planted, founded on the

01:10:32

Gospel, foundering on the wreaths of the NAR, run from this.

01:10:42

By all means, look at it, see what the problems are, because the truth has nothing to fear from examination.

01:10:50

And if you hear a preacher quoting from it, ask him, why do you do that? Why are you using this?

01:10:58

Don't you know? And he may not know. If he does know, if he doesn't care, there's a problem.

01:11:06

So we can have nothing to do with this. And I will rejoice in the day, the day comes, when the day comes, when these are cast to the moles of the bats where they belong.

01:11:21

Well, thank you for bearing with me for this time and may the Lord have mercy upon us and bless us indeed.

01:11:29

Thank you. So hopefully you found this helpful.

01:11:37

If so, all the information on how you can share the video is down below in the description. And until next time, may

01:11:43

God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.