King James Onlyism with Fred Butler

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Rapp Report episode 148 This week Andrew and Bud are joined by Fred Butler of Grace to You to talk about his new book Royal Deceptions: Exposing the KING JAMES ONLY Conspiracies Against God's Word. They discuss the history and motivation of the King James Bible completed in 1611. Fred explains his background in seminary when he got into KJV onlyism and promoted it strongly. They discuss some of the arguments made for the King James Bible as the only Bible to use and provide responses. Fred explains the arguments he used to use and how to respond against them. Those arguments are: 1) The Exclusivity Argument, 2) The Promise Argument, 3) The Textual Argument, 4) Have Heretics Corrupted Our Bibles, 5) The Purity Argument: The Line of Good Bibles, 6) The Scholarship Argument, and 7) The Historical Argument.

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occasion of conspiratorial ineptitude. It is classic Fred.
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I know. I tried to. Where do you come up with this? You know what it's so uh
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Mike Riccardi, I saw him he comes and works out at Grace to You because we have this little mini gym with a treadmill and a little weight set thing in there and so because all the gyms are closed down he came and uh was working he works like he's been working out there for the last eight months you know every day he'll come in run on the treadmill and I saw him the other day and he said uh hey how come you self -published it and I said because number one
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I don't want to have to deal with the bureaucrats at the publishing house who are going to drag their feet to get it published and I want to get it in the hands of the people and number two um
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I kind of get a decent I you know I it's just a few hundred bucks but I you know they give you royalties for it and I'm like that'll pay for some
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Christmas gifts I mean I'm grateful to have that that wouldn't come for a long time until if I did it big publish but then
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I said they'll go in there and edit out all of my personality they'll they would take stuff like that out yeah
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I know I'm reading I'm like yeah this is Fred well that's what happened they would take my voice away
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I hate that I did on on Mormonism that was published you know I argued with them there's a line
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I've said for years the reason I do open air evangelism is to preach the gospel but then the quote is the other reason is to get one professing atheist to tell another professing atheist to shut up and they didn't like that so they were like to get one unbeliever to ask another unbeliever to be quiet and I'm like that's that's not what
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I say like that's so I I I totally am with you but it's actually your boss that convinced me to self -publish with my oh yeah well he well you know that's he's funny you mean talking about Phil yeah because Phil back when
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I was still a young budding seminary student he taught a class in seminary on just Christian writing and it was an it was an elective and I needed some electives and he told me he was going to do this class and so I took it with him and we had a whole a whole session just about publication and publishing your work and at the time he didn't have
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Amazon didn't exist and he would just tear into self -publishing he said it was what it was the most it was most because most of the people who self -publish were you know vanity authors vanity publishing yeah yeah that's what self -publishing is in some degree but now it's been honed and it's been remarkably improved like I'm gonna spend the weekend next week just kind of regoing retooling my manuscript and uh and I'll upload it again
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I mean you know here in a week or so get rid of some all those little typos there's like a stylistic issue with one of my two of my chapters are named the same thing and I gotta go in there and do a page break or something that was
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Jim Osmond's mistake though because he helped me set up all the headers and footers like I'm recording but yeah
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I know but no here's the thing though that Phil had told me he said um you know when we're doing it feels like look if you go through a publisher they only have like a six month shelf life and they move on the only thing they care about I and I discovered this with sharing the good news with Mormons the what they were wanted to know is how big is your
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Facebook following how big is your Twitter feed how big how big is your email list yeah you know and Fred had told me that you need to have a platform first and if you have a big enough platform then they'll they will take that and if not they you know they'll promote it or market it for six months he said after that it's all on you but now you don't get the royalties and you don't get the you know you get the same royalty and if you the other interesting thing with publishing he that he told me is like you pay for the editing and and all that stuff on the first printing that's which is what
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I did except for the editing part here's the thing when you self publish you pay for it once yep you go through a publisher they figure out that price and that's built into your second printing you're getting that same royalty even though you're not paying for the editing and all that again so yeah so they're gonna charge they're gonna pay they're gonna charge you for all of that stuff again well what it is they they work out the price that you're gonna get your you know your royalty what your royalty is gonna be but they they work out in that first printing to make sure they cover all their costs right so they don't have those same costs in the second printing but you've already paid for it and and so the second printing you're you're getting the same amount where when you do it like you did pay the like which
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I do pay the copy editor separate once that's done it's done and then you're just doing little tweaks yeah see
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I gotta go back and do all my little tweaks and I'll upload that stuff again it'll be maybe dead for maybe a day or so and they'll review it and upload it it'll be ready to go again so you guys have like the collector's edition the very first one like it's like the king james the very first edition of king james had all these texted typos and they had to go back and correct within a year you know well you
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I mean it'll actually update the version the kindle version at least yep yep but they'll do both of them you can do both of them just upload the manuscript again yeah but that's the second printing yeah so maybe
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I should I should order a print copy it's not no it's print on demand see that's another thing about amazon it's great so they only print whenever people order it yeah so they're not going to print like what's that that's why
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I'm moving over to it they have actually Jim who helped you to do yours he was the one that convinced me because basically what
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I would buy in orders of a thousand for each of my books to get the price you know be low enough to where we should actually make some money on it yeah yeah but the thing is is kindle was back then
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I you know back when we first looked at kindle I think we would have made uh I think it was like the ministry would make 35 or 70 cents per book right you know
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I'm like no you know I'm not I'm not going to go through that but now it's they got it down to the same price as what it costs me to print a thousand and right now
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I just have to print like one right the shipping is if you only have one that's where the shipping hits you but right well see with you well this is what
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I would be it would be a dream to have like a christian ministry that would do something like what amazon does where it is a publish on demand print on demand kind of ministry so you could have people like us who are these nobodies with no platform but have good material that we'd like to share with the world can submit a book like you have that the amazon publishers because they're gonna if you were to if I was to write on homosexuality
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I've got a bunch of material on homosexuality well they'll probably flag that for being um ungodly or whatever it is not not even ungodly how to say too too uh mean -spirited whatever you'd be hates me
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I would be canceled intolerant yeah and so they wouldn't publish it but if you have a christian ministry that would do that you know they could submit it you could you know you're the one who takes care of all your stuff and then we will print it you'll get your royalty and everything as price as the pages you know get updated and so forth and I don't know how that would work would have no idea that would be one of my if I was like a billionaire and if I was a
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George Soros type that's what I would do is I would fund I would fund
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Bigfoot expeditions and then I would fund self -publishing stuff so there you have it folks
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I gotta write that down in that in that order he would he would do Bigfoot expeditions and then publishing oh my but I wouldn't be wasting my time trying to overthrow governments and stuff but yeah do you know just a thought if Soros really cared about the poor that he says he cares about right he could have just given all the poor like thousands like probably tens of thousands of dollars for the money he spent to try to overturn
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American democracy and hope just stops stop giving the wealthy more money and just give it to the poor if you really cared about him but right he doesn't really care about him so with that let's uh in mind as I get my son's chair is gross
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I don't see how I can sit in it oh my that's okay should
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I run down and get my 1611 King James yes you got it all right
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I'll be right back I was looking for mine and I don't know where it must be downstairs too because it it's like a replica no it's not an it's a replica that well that's what
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I mean I don't okay the appendix one is yeah that one was created it's it's a it's a photocopy digital scan yeah of the original
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I don't know I know that they published a 1611 version a few uh about a decade or more ago because I remember you could get it and I don't remember if it had the apocrypha stuck to it no
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I don't know what I found uh look at this bit of heresy
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I don't know if you can tell no this is a why are you holding up oh that's a uh that's a kjv for the masons for the masons and it's got all their little secret stuff in the front really and I was looking to see did they have the epoch stonecutters but they don't it's it's
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Holman that published it this is from it's a stonecutters edition yeah nobody here watches this is from 1924 oh oh bud that that's funny when you're wearing your fedora it completely that's all we see is the top of your hat when you're looking down reading it well it's because I couldn't and that's what it's all about right it's a problem
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I just can't believe Fred doesn't have his I know it's a disappointment and Sandy said she still owes you a
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Florida fedora which I would love to have my wife
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Sandy when she I'll pick it up when I'm down there bud yeah so we got to find a Panama Jack fedora straw hat for Fred we got
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I would love to have uh well you know something Costco does those every once they'll sell those every year but they didn't sell them this year because of coronavirus
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I was gonna pick one up and there's a guy hidden at Grace Church that uh he makes some he has like a business down in on uh
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Alvera Street downtown LA but that place is so overran by drug heads and homeless people
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I just didn't want to go down there with afraid I'd get knifed or something okay but and uh but I need to know because you know you you got a big head what what size hat do you wear no
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I'd have to I don't I'd have to look and see about this big I can't remember my wife got my the one that I have in that picture she got from Father's Day and it's a made in China hat and I don't remember having a size on it
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I'd have to look and see um don't you aren't you supposed to get like a thing and like go around your head yeah you gotta well an actual
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Panama Jack that you find down here uh yeah it's sized you know six and seven eights or eight and five
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I mean okay so see a good Panama Jack is gonna be you know it's gonna be custom fit and everything with my big head
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I have I think I haven't found my jack upstairs you want me to switch to that one no you're good you got your um look more tropical and you look more tropical but you're right now you look like a detective so yeah you sort of got that pink panther dude yeah what's his name oh
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I was Peter Taylor Clouseau yeah is this your does your dog bite no it doesn't just not my dog that's not my dog yeah
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I don't remember anything from pink panther oh my goodness I just used to like the uh the opening how can you breach the culture if you don't indulge in that I know you don't have any he doesn't know anything about Star Wars he doesn't know anything about hey hey
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I picked up a couple things here and there I I know why it's a trap okay you had to explain it but in honor of bud we got music playing in the background
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I can't hear it I can't hear any music I'm deafer than a stomp
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I can hear your sweet voices and that's about it you don't hear that oh there you go what is that it keeps cutting in and out it's whatever bud gave me for musical background it's it's the march of the toreadors from Carmen oh is that what it is yeah it's not the uh what was it the banquet of the troll king or in the no uh so there you go
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I play that on a loop all the time riding around in my pickup truck in Jacksonville Florida with that blaring out the windows
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I'm gonna be there to do that with you soon I know in one week
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Fred oh wow really yeah what are you gonna do down in Florida oh no I'm coming to see bud no it must be nice to be able to jet set around like that well you know he's a
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CEO of a significant parachurch ministry he gets to do that why don't we why don't we uh have a word of prayer and then we'll get started sure otherwise we're gonna sit here for hours just so sad and I gotta
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I gotta get up here in a little bit yeah all right well let's pray lord we're grateful that we could get together with the technology to be able to record from around this country north south west we ask lord that um we would just be able to help those who are still believing that you supernaturally inspired an
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English translation that we would be able to help those who are stuck in this king james only conspiracy theories and king james onlyism that you would use for its testimony and knowledge to be able to educate people both to come out of kjv only but also to equip your saints so they would be able to have an answer to those they come across that would be believing in kjv only we ask this in christ's name amen and all right so let's get our music queued up oh wait sorry not that music sorry there uh bud that's your music oh all right um now
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I should have my other recording going as a backup hold on one second let me get open audacity I should play bud's music while I open audacity we could play the screaming goat yeah why don't you play that for uh
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I'm familiar with screaming goat yeah screaming goat I'm not all right here here we go welcome to the rap report with your host
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Andrew Rapoport where we provide biblical interpretation and application this is a ministry of striving for eternity and the christian podcast community for more content or to request a speaker for your church go to strivingforeternity .org
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all right well welcome back this is another edition of the rap report
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I'm your host Andrew Rapoport with my trusty colleague bud greetings bud do you want to explain grace to you yeah grace to you is that's appropriate for today very good do you want to explain why for those that might be watching on patreon we are wearing fedoras uh it's a special day because of a special guest that we have who is occasionally known well for a number of things but as fedora fred of grace to you fred butler all right salutations to you how are you we're glad to have you this is not unusual for you and I to be recording we actually just recorded you and I annually record with echo zoe yes that's right and we do his final december show every year it's become a three -year tradition of ours and so folks may know your voice we'll get to to giving you a more formal introduction in a moment um but you know what bud
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I I haven't done this in a while so we we got some reviews that we should go over I actually got a new tool that gives me all the different reviews from different you know wherever people are you know whether it's itune we can't call it itune apple podcast or google podcast or whichever and we actually did create a we do have a way that people can give a review we at least have a they have a new thing it's it's a love the podcast .com
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slash rap report that's wrapped with two p's so uh we got some reviews though uh jada 30 says great information tons of great content on a variety variety of christian topics um tnn 15 just says good word good biblical short encouragements this is uh
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I think that that was probably meant for my daily one but they put it on the weekly because this one's not so short but uh those both five stars we got a a five star from growing in truth they say excellent understandable exegetical one of the many things
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I appreciate about this podcast is it's exegetical and easy to understand approach to whatever is being spoken of Andrew is very humble in his speaking and always brings the gospel to the glory of god
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I was glad bud that he put humble in his speaking not just humble you know because that would be a lie right fred yes no do you ever get hate mail you should have one that has hate mail this is the worst podcast ever it was a waste of an hour of my time my wife sends those comments and that's what yeah and that's why
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I didn't want to read it oh thanks thanks bro no actually I get the I get the actual hate mail
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I not just the uh you know I don't fred I don't you you probably get this uh with with the ministry you're involved with but I I get strange things
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I have I got a binder it was a two inch binder that was a guy claiming that this was his revelations from god and it was just condemning everybody everyone was on the list of I forget which episode we we
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I just read different clippings from it and he was you know he was passing judgments on everyone
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Hillary Clinton Trump and just yeah I haven't seen those in a while I used to go
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I used to get the mail a long time ago and I would pick it up for for grace to you and do the inner office stuff from the church or the college to the ministry and there was one guy every month he would send a big package to pastor
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John McCarty and so pastor John McCarty needed to look at this stuff because Charles of England he was he was never probably going to be king because his mother never dies but he was the antichrist of the world he had all these elaborate schemes and I haven't seen anything from him in like a long time so I don't know if he's died or whatever happened but I always remember that my first pastor when he was at master seminary he used to have the job of of cleaning pastor
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John's office and he would tell me every day he would see a new stack of hate mail that was like one foot tall and a fan mail that was like one or two inches tall he told me that pastor
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John would read every one of those like every hate mail he would read every one of them all right every day it was like I don't know if he still does that this time yeah
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I don't have time for now he may not have time anymore I mean this was back in the 80s so well let's let's get to introducing
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Fred here and um Fred is Fred Butler is works at Grace to You he's written a new book that we're gonna we're gonna discuss today
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Royal Deceptions Exposing the King James Controversies Against God's Word. Conspiracies.
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Conspiracies. What did I say? Controversies. Oh wait no controversies.
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Confusing it with James White's book yeah all right now okay read it again read it again take two
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I'll edit that out oh don't edit out that makes for good that makes for a good podcast listen yes that's banter yeah good banter you want that they're gonna have to go to the patreons and hear the banter so Fred Butler's new book uh
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Royal Deceptions Exposing the King James Only Conspiracies did
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I just do it again no you're right oh I said it right oh okay yeah no no keep on keep this in there don't edit this out
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Royal Deceptions Exposing the King James Only Conspiracies Against God's Word that's correct you did that and it sounded humbly presented too very all right well
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Fred I for the for the record for folks that don't know uh and and you'll confirm this is true
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I'm sure but I don't know if you know this bud but Fred Butler actually has the largest office in all of Grace to You even larger than John MacArthur he does
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I do yes I do he's let me in there once lots of lots of tables yeah and if you get to come that take you on a tour of Grace to You when you came
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I can't remember but we yes you were okay okay when you were did you go on the you went on the tour
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I think even with us when we did the uh Truth Matters yeah yeah we did and then we snuck away and got some private access yeah maybe
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I cannot confirm or deny even though there is video on Facebook somewhere of a
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Fred giving us a private tour through there when I think I I think there was like I think
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Jay was the only one we saw in the whole building maybe I thought we were completely alone if I remember yeah
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I think we were like in the middle of the night or something yeah it was there was no one there uh but but Fred does have he's he's when he has a meeting there's so many people there they need multiple tables that's why he needs that very very large office yes so but Fred let's let's deal with this topic the
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King James Bible um you have written on this and actually this is on this isn't the first time you're writing on this this is really this book you have is is from blog articles you wrote years ago that's correct you're you're this was
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I believe it was on what hip and thigh right that's correct was those on originally on my blog when
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I started writing my blog I you know you need to have blog material to write about in order to have a blog uh but at the time
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I was teaching my volunteers you know the people who fill up my office on uh that grace to you um on just various topics and that was one of them and uh
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I would obviously write out my scrawl notes you know to teach them and I just started turning those into articles and a lot of it also kind of came from my interactions with on various discussion forums and email subscription groups with King James onlyists who were just insistent that you know
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I was heretical from my views and all that sort of thing so I would interact with them and sort of cut my teeth on their arguments and kind of get the feel of how they were arguing at that time that was probably in the mid 2000s so it's like almost 20 years ago
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I then um so I would write these articles out and I just did a series on okay these are the
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I remember how I used to argue and I just sort of wrote each article kind of as a as a chapter or maybe two or three articles would be sort of on one subject like an on textual criticism of the old testament or new testament or whatever and eventually um what happened really with this book why you know the what triggered me to put this in a print was
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I had a my boss not Phil but a direct manager had a had a lady who is a supporter of grace to you and she had written to him
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I think he knows her he interacts with her or something on uh through the ministry uh website or whatever and she had gotten a hold of I think it was
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David Daniels or I can't remember who it is a guy that is sort of now overseeing uh
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Jack Chick's ministries after Jack Chick died and that guy had put together a King James uh defense book you know just talking about the bible and she had written it and did not you know and didn't really have an answer for it and so my manager asked me hey do you have any material or do we know of any material we can get in her hands and the only thing
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I could think of in book form really was the stuff by uh James White which is if you're not really clued in to textual criticism and I think his book is more of a primer on just general textual criticism of the bible rather than just bible versions per se
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I mean it's a fantastic book but it is a little daunting for someone who's not really familiar with the terminology and uh as I just I didn't have anything to really give and I felt kind of bad about that and I wanted to just put together maybe a pdf that I could print out or email to somebody or something and uh
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I think through just my contact with Gabe Hughes and some other folks that I knew they were like why don't you you know you can put this stuff into a book format and have you know um
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I think Nate Pickowitz was another one just so you can have Amazon will you know print as you go sort of thing and it's free
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I mean it's a little you know they even give you a little bit of a royalty whenever they sell a book and and so I started compiling those messages and those uh articles into chapters in this book it became sort of this book and I added some appendices and so forth and uh so that's really the stated goal of my book is just to have a quick short concise sort of reference to put in the hand of that Cindy school teacher or that youth director or that associate pastor who has some disruptive belligerent um
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King James only person who is you know making a nuisance of themselves in their church or giving material to people and just to have a way to answer them and to put confidence in our in the word of God that's the point of that you even say in there that it's not just for that but it's also for someone like where you were that you had come out of this so let's let's start with what the what is the
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King James only kind of view because there's there's people who I think a lot of people probably aren't familiar now some that are in more of the independent fundamentals baptist churches are going to know this this topic this debate but not everyone knows the debate and uh just for you know here
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I have my 1611 I'm glad that you you and I have both matured okay because I would like to think that huh we have it's here
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I have my star wars shirt on you know that may be but you know I don't remember it's Andrew's fedora
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I remember uh having a guy that came to a church Sunday morning he was promoting
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King James only he said 1611 is the only version we should use it's the inspired version and uh he came
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I said but why don't you use it I said you know he says came back for he's going to come back Sunday evening so Sunday evening
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I brought my trusty 1611 and uh I asked I said to him
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I said that's I said let me see your bible I said that's not a 1611 that's not your inspired bible that's an authorized bible from the 1700s
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I took his bible and I handed him this and I made him sit through service with an actual 1611 and he could not get his bible back fast enough because he couldn't read
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English in this because the English has changed over the 100 years of 1611 to the 17 they have a response to that claim of yours so there is a there is a um
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I think it's you know look at the very start and I mentioned this in the preface of my book
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I am a huge fan of the King James Bible I think it is one of the if not the greatest literary work in English that we have in our possession and in my opinion more
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Americans more youth need to be familiar with the language of the
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King James Bible um and the reason why I say that is because the Bible that translation is a good portion of it at least 80 percent of it is the work of William Tyndale especially in the
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New Testament and William Tyndale was the guy who is the cornerstone of the reformation no one else
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Calvin all of these men who followed or what we sort of look at as heroes would not have really good ministries if it weren't for the work that Tyndale gave his life for in getting the bible into English and to presiding just sort of a way to a a a model hey you you can translate this he was the inspiration for Luther translating his bible into German getting it into hands of the
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German people and the man gave us wonderful theological terms like mercy seat and Passover I mean we still use those terms today all of these all of this terminology is in the
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King James and I mean in this and it he gave his life you know so that we could have a bible in our hands that would communicate
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God's revelation to us and but at the same time you know just like any other man -made production it doesn't have you know it's not going to be absolutely perfect and the thing with the
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King James only is is they're going to take that fact about it being this sort of cornerstone work of the reformation and they're going to say look this is the only bible that you can that you should read because it's the only bible that really has the accurate word of God in it and so if you have a modern version or if you have any other translation other than the
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King James even a new King James well then you have a an adulterated bible you have some sort of modern perversion it's not a version it's a perversion and again this is sort of something that does swirl in the circles of you know the independent fundamental baptists but there are reform guys that'll argue this way you know
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I come across them all the time puritan these puritan lynch mob types who are against Christmas and any images of Jesus you know
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I'm talking about and they're and they're going to be saying that this is
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God's word we need to be reading the King James or some derivative there are some that would say well maybe we can do a little bit of a modernist modernization of the language but you need to keep the base text of the received text in the
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New Testament the Bomberg manuscript from the
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Old Testament and so forth and that's the bible and if you depart from that well then you're sliding into heresy and so the you know
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I mean one of the things that you brought up I mean most people don't even know when you you talked earlier about the
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King James there was actually not a standard English right until the
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King James and and it's it's like 75 percent of what they did in the King James translation came from Tyndale but you had lots of different spellings for words and things like that the
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King James actually became that standardized English for it and that's because King James made it that way yeah it wasn't because you know everybody got all of a sudden inspired and the holy spirit was moving or anything like that it was because the political forces made that the way it was and of course you had
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William Shakespeare at the same time his plays helped standardize a lot of that language as well so let's get into what you just said there because a lot of people don't understand that about the bible the in the historical setting there was lots of debate between the catholic church the protestant church fighting back and forth and the bible version the state bible the bible that this that the
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England would use was being a battle back and forth I mean this is you're talking
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Queen Mary Elizabeth King James there was battling back and forth why was the
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King James bible initially written why did that why did King James authorize that or commission that okay so within England remember
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England had broken away from the catholic church because Henry VIII wanted to get a divorce and they would not grant he really wanted to get married he wanted to get well he wanted to get a male heir and he couldn't get this first wife no couldn't get it from her so he wanted to divorce her and get a new wife who didn't give it to him either
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I don't think but his he because of that you had as as protestantism developed in England you had within the
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Anglican church because Anglican church kind of came out of Henry VIII's departure from Rome you had within the
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Anglican church the Puritan movement so we're all familiar with the Puritans Puritans were a movement within Anglicanism to try to get
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Anglicanism away from Roman Catholicism because they thought Anglicans were too still too
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Catholic they wanted to change the book of common prayer they wanted to get rid of the vestments all of that stuff that they would part of the
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Anglican culture because Anglicanism was just sort of Roman Catholicism but your priests could marry
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I mean that was what it was and so they wanted to see some reform you know as it as the reformation continued to sweep across Europe and across and at that time was starting to go to the colonies and so forth they wanted to they wanted there to be reform and but there was a big battle like you're saying politically between the high churchmen and the church of England Anglicans and the
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Puritan pastors who were in England so when King James ascended the throne after Elizabeth's death the
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Puritans thought okay well this will be an opportunity to try to get some reforms that we're wanting to push for because he was seen as sort of friendly towards the
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Puritans because of his upbringing and kind of where he came from in Scotland and so forth but that was not the case he wanted to be the head of the church he did not like the
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Geneva Bible that everybody sort of used anyway because it was against the divine right of kings in his opinion at least the study notes were the notes yeah so when he first became
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I think within a year after he ascended the throne there was a get -together of all of the various heads of the various institutions there including the church of England and some
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Puritan representatives and neither one of them he really was placating you know he but he liked one of the suggestions that John Reynolds who was a
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Puritan who was there in attendance at this meeting in Hampton Court he liked his idea of hey let's get a new translation of the
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Bible a new English translation they had about five or six before that and they were all sort of stuck on the
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Geneva Bible and King James hated it but he loved the idea okay we can do that because that way he could control what the
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Bible would say and how it would be presented to the people and how it would be used in churches because he was the considered the head of the church like the pope was the head of the
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Catholic church he was the king of England the head of the you know defender of the faith of the English people and so that's what they did it's how it kind of emerged from that and they pulled together a group of scholars and took them
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I think it started in 1604 if I remember right 1603 1604 around in that time and got done in 1611 that's when they first went to print with the
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Bible so you're looking at why what is that about eight or nine years or so of work that they did on the
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Old Testament getting a new translation the Apocrypha most people don't realize that the original
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King James had the Apocrypha in it yeah that's something that I bring up all the time with them because when they say like that's the thing when
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I ask someone that if they think that the KJV 1611 was inspired right then they have a right because then you're saying that the
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Catholic church is right because you're saying the Apocrypha is inspired it's amazing how many of them don't know and don't know that it was put in there because King James was trying to satisfy this rift yes he put it in there to appease
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Catholics he wrote it in English to appease Protestants yeah so the argument the argument about it being inspired
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I mean clearly history shows this is not a holy spirit revival motivation to do this right this was a political compromise to bring two differing parties together under James who as you said is the head of the church that's exactly this is political maneuvering it is not revivalistic at all yeah it's not religious it's not a religious reason for doing it yeah exactly and so the problem with the
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King James only is they're going to say they try to revise that's part of the part of my subtitle there with conspiracies is then they create sort of this historical revisionist approach saying well in that God was using this and God was moving well he might have been but that was not the point of the
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Bible did God use the King James Bible well of course I'm not no one's debating that that that's
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God using his revelation not God using a particular favored translation that reads a certain way and it just they'll create a whole alternative history of how we got our
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Bible because you know they have problems like that you know they have the
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English we were talking earlier about the standardized language well the standardized English didn't come around into another hundred years or so after the
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King James was published so they started changing the letter shapes and the spelling of words and that was beginning to become standardized spelling and all that sort of stuff and they saw the you know when they they started doing that well the
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King James only us will say well here you know you see God working through and you know purifying the purifying the language so that we could have this it doesn't change the meaning of the text or anything like that so they'll find up they'll find excuses in order to explain away some of these problems that we're talking about here and create an entirely different you know a history of our
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Bible it's just not factual that's the problem well let me see if let me see if we could
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I want to play a video clip you mentioned Gabe Hughes and this is you know basically setting the scene for us in really a minute and 30 seconds so let me just play this and this was you know
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Bud sent this to me to play so and he's got one other that will play later and I'm sorry
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I just apologize now for it or what will play later but here's here's Gabe Hughes on King James only ism
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King James only ism is the belief that the 1611
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King James version of the Bible is the only divinely authorized English translation while modern translations corrupt the
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Bible it's not just a deception it's a satanic conspiracy against the Word of God the most glaring flaw with this doctrine is not one verse in the
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Bible supports and that's pretty much it it's a false doctrine now if someone wants to use the
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King James Bible that's fine if you can understand it but to say it's the only translation God approved is a lie
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King James only us argue the KJV is translated from the majority text while modern versions are from corrupt
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Alexandrian texts but the Byzantine texts used by King James translators were no older than the 11th century we now have access to older and more reliable texts closer to the
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King James only a say modern translations removed references to Christ's Lordship and deleted entire
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Bible verses but the Byzantine texts added these verses to the original text and the extra references to Christ's Lordship it's just extra pious language from some overly ambitious scribes
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King James only a say the 1611 authorized version is the only true Bible unless you have a
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King James Bible you don't have a Bible you need a King James 1611 authorized actually no one uses the 1611 which also included the
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Apocrypha today's King James Bible is the 1769 revision God has preserved his word which we have in some very good translations of the
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Bible Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away but my word will never pass away when we understand the text okay so that is was provided with Gabe Hughes it
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I mean his what videos are great I mean it just yeah that's right hammers it home pretty quickly but that sets the stage for us right
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I mean that tells us what what these issues are right because we're you know this is this is for some may think
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Fred that this is not a big deal they because they're not they haven't been dealing with this controversy so you have dealt with it you talk about your confession just briefly could you give your background before we get into the arguments and and for folks who want to get a copy of your book royal deceptions
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I have a link in the show notes so just look there but for folks that want to understand you and why you're speaking to it can you give a little bit of your background okay so yeah when
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I was first brand new believer I was a part of a solid church and they had a high view of the
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Bible of course and I in fact it was a southern Baptist church and at the time it's going through this its own turmoil much more not as much as it is today but at the time there was a whole inerrancy debate so it's like okay you know is the scriptures inerrant is are they trustworthy that sort of thing well
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I was obviously on the inerrant trustworthy side and so I had a that would get us all together on the weekends or whenever it was convenient and being a single young college kid
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I you know didn't have always looking for something to do on a weekend and I got saved and I was excited about my faith and all that I would go over to his house we'd have bible studies we'd pray we'd do some street evangelism we probably were terrible at it but you know we had a lot of zealous desire and like all of our choice started yes exactly thou shalt repent thou yes that's why
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I know and it was so we would when we met together my friend would oftentimes have books that he would hand out well really he would sell them to us so it had paid five bucks for a book but he had a book this one time from this guy he was a pastor in Oklahoma so the guy's name
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Gary Flint was the pastor I don't even know if he's still alive today but he had written a book probably self -published like myself on defending the
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King James and when I read it I thought it was brilliant I mean what
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I just like Harry he was showing me comparisons with other bibles and I'm like yeah I could definitely see how the enemy would want to distort
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God's word and all that sort of thing he had if I'm not mistaken yeah they had a couple chapters written by talking about problem passages and the one guy he used was a guy as a physician in New Zealand and he was giving solutions to problem passages which
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I think are legit in some cases but it was using the King James instead of using the
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King James text instead of going and appealing to the whole idea of copyist errors and all that sort of thing well these number discrepancies in these two similar passages is you know caused by you know copious errors or something is what my wry study bible would say and this guy would give solutions to these numbers that I thought were brilliant I was like wow that's great
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I never thought about it that way so I was so moved by this fella that I went to I called him up and I found his number and everything and talked with him and he gave me some more resources so then
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I went to the various catalogs trying to find phone numbers at that time you didn't have an internet you know to search this stuff and so I found like David Cloud's ministry contact information or I would find from the various libraries that I could find this stuff from Peter Ruckman's stuff and I would subscribe to their magazines or I would get their books or whatever studying on this whole topic of King James only ism so I had individuals like Ruckman and D .A.
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Waite and David Cloud and Edward Hills all of these various people give me information about how to defend the
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King James and that's what I grew up on that's what I that's what really got me thinking about the word of God it was this
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King James only stuff I had no real you know anyone really pouring their life into my into me in any meaningful fashion
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I had sweet pastors that were at my church but I just don't think they really had the sophistication as I mentioned in my book to deal with my arguments in fact it was one time we had
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I was I became such a belligerent pest at my church you know in my in my college department over this issue because I was like look guys we need to be reading the word of God not these trashy bibles that have corrupted scripture and all this other stuff you know and they they allowed us to have a debate so it was me and another guy he was a
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King James only is that one of my one of my disciples I guess and a couple of other guys who knew that I was wrong but they couldn't really argue against me they were not prepared and I came when you're wrong you're an excellent debater and I know
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I know I know isn't that great and that could work against you big time and I we should lack those guys
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I mean and it caused even more confusion in my youth group in my college department because now you have people coming to me going
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I never saw this before so I had everybody running to their King James to use their King James bibles and throwing away their
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NIVs and all this other stuff so I'm basically causing this disruptive rift in my
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Sunday school class and you know and my pastors because they're these squishy southern
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Baptist guys want to be nice all the time they wouldn't call me out on it they should I mean if it was going on right now in my church if I was a pastor
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I'd shut it down it's like we're not good we don't this is not what we believe about scripture you need to stop yeah they didn't do that and I think that's what you just said there is important for us because you put this in the in your book is you wished that they would have and this is why we we should correct error instead of being squishy about things because people end up going astray yeah so you know there is a reason for that now before we get into you you have six arguments that I want to get you to go through but before we do and I'm just going to let you know this is
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Bud's fault okay oh I'm just I'm just saying I'm sorry after after this about two and a half minutes you can't get these two and a half minutes back but this is this two and a half minutes is is for you uh
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Fred but but really what it is this sets the stage of what it is you're actually arguing against and this is someone that is going to sing the
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King James Bible song right he looks like he's a reformed guy yeah with the beard you'd think that this is going to be um you know like in in church we sing songs to God uh well okay in in modern churches we sing songs to self uh or or to God about ourselves but this is a song about a
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Bible and and this really it is two and a half minutes but it does lay out the view that these people have in a view you used to hold so give a little hope
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I can do it justice I went down to the bookstore just the other day
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I went to buy a Bible for I had just been saved when
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I asked to see a Bible I could not understand they had a shelf full 10 foot long each one a different brand they had the
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ASV the RSV good news for modern man and every other version that's made to just please man they had the living
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Bible and the brand new in ivy and I soon found out the devil is the one who started these
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I took an ASV to church the preacher preached from psalms when he started reading
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I knew something was wrong I knew my preacher could read I knew he was not blind but I soon found out that the
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Bible he had was a different kind I went back to the bookstore to get my money back when
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I told him of my problem he just slapped me on the back he said son some of these
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Bibles are too hard to understand I suggest that you should try good news for modern man
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I took the second version home I said well I'll give it a try when
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I showed it to my pastor he said it was a lie they'd taken the blood of Jesus out they denied he was
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God on earth they even put some cuss words in and denied the virgin birth he told all about how these versions had come along he took his
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King James Bible and he showed me where they were wrong he said you're just a newborn babe in Christ you did not know my son that the
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King James version 1611 is the only one amen I went back a third time
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I was starting to get mad I asked him if perversions were the only thing he had he reached to blow the counter and what he showed me was a shame had to blow the dust away to read the name
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King James so if you buy a Bible please take my advice only buy a
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King James though others may sound nice don't buy a living Bible or a brand new
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NIV because you'll soon find out the devil is the one who started these amen how true how wow
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I got goosebumps it's a it was a toe tapper yeah it was
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I just too bad he didn't have a band well the thing the thing with it is
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I mean we might agree that you know some of those translations are not yes yeah I would agree with some of his sentiments is yeah most translations modern translations are published by various book publishers because they want to have their own translation on which to they don't have to pay the copyrights to the other translations or whatever you can produce your own
56:24
Bibles and I think that you know well your church is going to go under a change I know you're going to change to the new you know legacy standard by legacy standard
56:35
Bible I can't say the LSB is just going to sound like you know the
56:43
LSD Bible I just I see that coming I know but the the thing that I mean there are some valid points however one of the things
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I think interesting with it is when you listen to that and this is a common argument that people make well they've taken out the deity of Christ you heard that even the
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Gabe Houston and and really what it is they've added they added the deity of Christ well they they know they didn't add to the like this thing well yeah we clarify we can clarify that yeah they added clarification on passages but the thing is is that with all of the passages you take the
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NIV even or any of these other translations that he say are demonic perversions we could find the deity of Christ very clearly we could find all these doctrines that he says that these versions deny they're there they're just not there in the verses that the
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King James added it to right well we should say that the it kind of goes back to the history of translations and the transmission of the text but early scribes would copy manuscripts that they would get and they would begin to see wait a minute this passage in Mark sounds familiar to that passage in Matthew but it's the one in Matthew is different than the one in Mark and so they would try to harmonize the two by adding a word or so but usually the way that would be handled is that they would put it in the margin of the manuscript sometimes copyists would get it and then it would come into the actual body of the manuscript that they're copying and eventually these various harmonizations and so forth would come in and would become part of the text so you have the
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King James which is translated because all of these begin to branch out all of these various copies and manuscript families and stuff and you have the
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King James based upon what became known as the majority text which is really the received text of the
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New Testament based upon the majority text of the New Testament because you had and a lot of this is history it's it's it's
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I go into it in my book I got a big long chapter on this it's probably the longest chapter in the book but you basically had the the eastern church which is one of the last places that was able to withstand
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Islam because they were fortressed up in the in Constantinople at the time and Muslim hordes couldn't breach the walls of that place it didn't happen until much later in history but there are the scribes and the monks just kept copying the same majority text manuscripts over and over and over again what are called the
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Byzantium or Byzantine text or whatever is because that's where they originated from and eventually when the
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Muslim hordes took over that place well all of those scribes left and they took those manuscripts away and took them to the west as they fled from the
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Muslim advance and they became part of the you know Roman Catholic the western church
59:57
I guess you could say but they would take those manuscripts and they were trying to protect the word of God by you know making sure the integrity is is uh preserved
01:00:08
I mean that was their goal that's why they wanted to do what they were doing they weren't earlier manuscripts aren't taking away it's the later manuscripts are adding to in order to clarify like what you're saying to make it look like it's okay well here this is what
01:00:22
God is meaning to say I'm gonna I want to help God so I'm going to add this to we but and I talked about this uh in the episode about two weeks ago when we talked about textual criticism and can you trust your bible is that often what happens is there you have writers that would they would write something yep and and the people that were making the copies would would try to make it easier to understand sometimes that's right sometimes they would write something in the margin but they didn't always know if that thing in the margin was note to self or if it was that the guys forgot to put something in and was oh
01:00:58
I forgot that I skipped the line let me draw a line over here and write it in the margin they didn't know so let's let's deal with and you have six arguments in your book right the exclusivity argument the promise argument the textual argument uh the purity argument right well you you have the have heretics corrupted our bibles argument
01:01:22
I guess the purity yeah the scholarship argument historical argument so let's let's go through each of those briefly in in the 20 minutes that we have and again
01:01:33
I want to encourage you guys to get the book royal deceptions by fred butler it's available on amazon the link is in the show notes it's available both in print and in in the kindle version and I will say this to encourage feel to buy it right now those who are patreons that you got to watch the video with the little the 20 minutes of banter that we did before we started recording you'll know if you watch that that fred is coming out with a new version a second edition to fix things so if you want a collector's edition of this book you want to go get the print copy now so you have and just like the king original king james it has the first edition typos in it that I need to correct yeah and you know that collective edition that's something people don't even think about like I bring this up one of the reasons
01:02:23
I got a 1611 is so that I could get the prefix in the 1611 because in the prefix to the 1611 it actually states that there will be later additions and edits to it and it's like if it was inspired then why did this is why does it have that in there yeah
01:02:44
I mean that's something that I when I get someone that you know where I can you know obviously not if I'm online or something but if I have someone that's at church or asking about it and I bring my 1611 out and I just show them here's here is what it says in the prefix that there would be future updates to this like okay they knew it wasn't inspired why do you think it is if the guys that translated it don't believe it then we should have but let's go let's start with each one exclusivity argument what's the argument that is made for king james what's the response okay so the exclusivity argument as I kind of put here in my
01:03:23
I'm trying to remember all of my arguments here you guys are you're killing me here but basically are you saying that bud and I who prepped for this show are better prepared than you
01:03:33
I would write a book you'd think I would know all of my stuff in my heart you know basically what it's saying is that the king james alone is the word of god alone so the idea is that if you would just like in that little song if you're going to have a bible that's really the word of god well then you'll read the king james and that's kind of their starting premise so that means that's the only bible solo kjv yeah so look so look so that means that the word of god is the king james only alone that's the way they kind of argue and it's this way fred the way
01:04:08
I actually heard this from a pastor who told me that you know that god has to keep his word and therefore he did it in the english because english is the is the language the international language greek was back then english and i asked him so what about before there was english i mean was the latin inspired right because he has a problem because that would be there were latin vulgate onlys yeah and and there was some of that by the way but one of the things that is interesting is he actually said if you're going to go because i asked him what about in foreign fields if you go somewhere where they don't know english he actually argued that you teach them english so that they could read the king james bible and i know that's uh that's a sam gips argument he's sam gips a big king james only guy that's his argument exactly well and there's those that argue that the english king james bible and and folks i'm saying king james bible not king james version because people that hold to this will call it the king james bible they don't think of it as a version this is the bible um but those that hold to this will say that the king james bible should be used to interpret the greek and hebrew the original language yep some of them will do that as well that was peter ruckman's kind of position too so what's the argument against this then fred well honestly as i kind of go as i as i broke this all down um you can look at a few things number one the whole idea of the king james only the king james alone king james bible alone is the word of god alone well that's a circular argument because you have to sort of assume that to be to be the case so that means that if there's anything else that comes along that challenges that premise or if you find an error or something that cuts against what you think is the word of god well then you've got a problem because immediately it's going to wreck your premise correct so it's already falsified um it's it's a two two fallacies there begging the question where you're starting with your conclusion right and and then confirmation bias where you only accept information that supports you yes exactly and then i talked about how you don't really see this taught anywhere number one in scripture but practiced in the rest of church history no one thought like that that there's they believe that the bible is god's word but it was it compiled and only in one translation that came 1600 years after the founding of the church or when god's people were you know christianity started flourishing so that means that any translation before 1611 was not god's word and then any translation obviously that deviates or departs from king james translation is not god's word because it's corrupting it so there you have a dilemma so you're you're arguing and it's almost sort of the same way that mormons argue with regards to the restoration if they're going to say that there was no word of god before 1611 you know if the king james is the only bible there was no word of god it was 1611 was a restoration of god's word because it wasn't in existence or it was exist only in existence in piecemeal fashion or just bits and pieces of it um now king james only and i think that's why i go on i think in the line of good bibles or something like that later on my uh other yeah chapter they try to trace this you know series of bibles kind of connect them together like a little trail all the way back to i guess john the baptist or jesus or whatever um but again there's just no historical proof of that i mean you don't see christians thinking in those terms they saw that they had the word of god and there was a holy spirit was obviously working within his church and in order to help them identify or identifying the words of they know the scriptures and the books that they were going to preserve but they're not like you know formulating it in one translation saying this is never to be revised or this is never to be changed so this is this is very much like islam where they would say you have one trend you have one copy in arabic that manuscript is the only one they ignore all the textual criticism that's being done in islam to show that there's variances but they they will they're saying that this is the preserved one you you go on from there and and i will state this with this exclusive argument that you're making there is a difference between king james only and only king james in other words there are people who prefer the king james as fred you said earlier right king james is a more precise language these and thou people don't understand today with the use of thee and thou but there's a proper use of those it's you know now in the modern translations that will probably have you probably can't even say he and she because we don't know if they identify the he and she right but you end up having more precise language language has has deteriorated but king james is more precise in the language so some people prefer it for that reason we're not talking about people that prefer king james these are people that are saying that king james is the only bible used because it's it's the inspired one right right that's that's the key right there so what's the promise argument and then what is the way we well the promise argument is the idea that they will claim throughout the bible um and you'll notice that i quote from da wait in this that he will say that god has specifically promised to preserve his word in the old old and new testaments so when you look at scripture there is a promise from god that he's going to preserve his words and they'll even make a very um they'll go into this uh how would you say this uh argument that it's not just the word of god but it's the very words plural of god so meaning that as you read scripture every word that is in scripture is to be preserved so if you lose lose a word well you're losing the word of god and so they'll go to various passages to prove this but when you look at those passages in context god's not talking about the preservation of texts of scripture as much as he's talking about his promise to preserve his people or to to keep his covenant with his people or to do what he's told them that he was going to do he's not talking about physical manuscripts that record you know his revelation as he is my promises to look after you my character it's grounded in his character not a objective physical manuscript so the one that they always go to is in is it psalm 12 verses 7 and 8 where it talks about i will you know i my word i don't have this text and you have a scripture yeah it's uh actually it starts in verse 6 i think the words of the lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace yep on the earth refined seven times you oh lord will keep them you will preserve him from this generation forever the wicked strut about on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men so they're going to take that whole thing where it talks about the words of the lord are pure words tried in the furnace of fire like silver purified seven times and they'll say that that's talking about the manuscript of the old and new testament the translation of god's word but when you look at that text and particularly this comes clear as you get into the hebrew and granted probably what 95 of the people listening to this podcast and going to be reading my book are not going to be familiar with hebrew we're in an age when we can become familiar with it because of the resources that we've accumulated but the idea there is that he's talking about a specific group of people it starts back in verse 6 about 5 and 6 where it talks about these people you are being surrounded by the wicked well the opening the opening verse of the psalm sets the context yep for what david's talking about help lord for the godly man ceases to be for the faithful disappear from among the sons of men and it does he's talking about men who are committed to scripture the men and women of god who love god well they're being surrounded by the wicked this is like really a promise for our day and age when we see the wicked coming in to take our rights away and to you know mess with our freedoms in america all of these things i don't want to turn that into like a patriot you know pro -trump thing but there's some truth to that descriptive the men and women of this church are failing and falling and are giving into compromise to this insidious you know critical race theory and all the other things coming in well god says look my words are true words i have promised to preserve them he's going to preserve a remnant that's the point of the passage exactly i'm going to protect them and keep them from the wicked who strut about it has nothing to do with him preserving the text of scripture manuscripts yeah you know i was i was talking with mike riddle i don't know him from creation training institute i'm familiar with him yeah we're talking you know so many of these issues we have today are answered just with harmoneutics i mean this is the reason that driving attorney focuses so much on that with our bible interpretation made easy seminar and all the stuff on harmonics because that's all you have to do a lot of these times is read in context right let's let's move on to the argument okay that's my longest most convoluted yeah and and that's the one where you have this thing of have the heretics corrupted the bible and and with this i added that i added that as a as an excursus i guess as a additional chapter because this is an argument that so many make but and i i look at this and when i was reading this it's like this is the latter -day saint argument i mean it really is yes the the bible has been corrupted you have to interpret it and and the more the you know islam says the same thing the bible was corrupted and that's why we have the quran latter -day saints the bible was corrupted it's not translated probably that's why we have the book of mormon they always add to it and and say it's been corrupted but the thing is this is the bible has been corrupted so we have the kjv but you know we have the greek and they some not all kjv onlys will say even the greek and hebrew you can't trust right yeah i know um and there may be some truth to that if we look at some jewish groups who tried to change the septuagint or the they didn't like the septuagint so they tried to adjust the vowel pointings to try to take away the prophecies about christ but i mean honestly it doesn't there's not enough of that to diminish the fact that god preserved his word um you can see that you can discover those problems so the textual argument basically is saying the king james only is claim that only the manuscripts from which the translation of the king james came are the preserved word of god so in the old testament i can't remember the exact it's the bomberg second edition mesoretic text i believe it was that's the one that da wade in in particular um has identified as the true uh old and old testament that we need to translate from because that's the one that the king james used and it is the uh received text the um i can't that course the received text went through many editions but it's the one that um hold on let me turn off my phone you can edit this part out and for folks who are watching on patreon they recognize that you know that your dedication this is this is clearly fred is up early it is oh dark 30 where he's at and he is excited about his his new book coming out that he was like hey i will record with you guys at six in the morning my time yeah the sun is just now coming through the windows the roosters are crowing outside um but yeah the textual argument but he's arguing that the old testament and the new testament text the received text in the new testament that uh desiderius erasmus again i'm butchering his first name um erasmus uh basically put together for his work um is the the translator the text that preserved the word of god because that's the base text that the king james used the king james translators used to give us the king james that's not entirely true they did use previous english editions in order to help with their their translation process as we were mentioning earlier about william tyndale it's the same thing um but i think the key really to all of this and i go into a lot of detail about how we got our bible some i highlight some resources that people can do some further study on if they want to get some more info on that but i think what's really important is what you just mentioned a little bit before that and we've talked some is the whole concept of that what we see with the other other texts from which modern versions sort of rely upon which is another family of manuscripts that are older in age and circulation as the manuscripts that gave us the old testament and new testament for the king james i hope people are following this um those they claim that have been corrupted by heretics and usually the argument goes along the lines of well those nobody used those texts until the 1800s and that's when they started translating this when all the liberals in germany started translating from them and creating our new versions and all that sort of thing and because if they had been really god's preserved word well those those um christians would have kept them in circulation and they would have used them and utilized them well that's not the case at all i mean most of those manuscripts were in north africa and what happened to north africa in 6 or 780 you had the muslims come in there and kill all the christians yeah yeah you know one of the things a lot of people don't even know there's a great book i think it's titled uh how the irish saved uh yeah i've heard i've heard about i've heard about that yes and it's like how all these these you know these early manuscripts from the early church fathers weren't were there in ireland and when the reformation came the catholic church so corrupted stuff that they went to ireland and saw the older manuscripts but right yeah and it didn't say what they didn't people who were currently handling those things were saying about them i mean if people don't have all the history i mean it could be a lot to go through understand all what you're going through is what would be a good argument how do we respond to the textual argument well if you're going to say that heretics corrupted your bible um you can just simply see number one are you telling me that god is going to allow his word to become so corrupted that it's going to be lost so that it has to be rediscovered i mean it's just it's like what you're saying it's the same argument that every major cult usually tries to argue and i and i point out in that chapter on the heretics is that when you have critics of scripture all of them without fail argue that this tech we don't we can't know what the bible says because it's been lost to time it's been uh corrupted that everyone says that that's what bar airman is saying these days is that you can't know what the bible says and but when you go and evaluate their arguments for that it's not true a lot of it comes back to what you were saying if you just read the bible in its context there's not a there's not corruption there there's probably just some other misunderstanding of the text or they just don't want to believe it there's no corruption with regards to the you know the creation week or you know jesus being born in bethlehem or whatever it is it's just the day they're claiming that because they want to strip it of its supernatural elements that god does do miracles that he does bring prophecy to come to pass and you know you just need to begin by just showing how in history that's never been the case just having a surface level understanding of how the early apologists dealt with all of these critics i mean these critics have been around since within before the second century of the church you had apologists arguing with jews and other critics of scripture saying well you've corrected the bible's been corrupted or the scriptures have been twisted or you have lost a new argument then you're saying this is not a new it's not it's not a new argument it's an old argument yeah king james onlyists only apply it to their bible and then they'll show you a big list of comparison passages we'll see right here this versus reads this in this bible and well that something different in this bible that it's into the purity argument yeah they'll claim that the let's look let's look at that argument that you have the purity argument the good the line of good bible so what they're going to say is that when it comes to the english well i should start by saying that king james onlyists uh different king james onlyists will have different bibles that come into their line of good bibles so what they'll claim is that you can trace back the development of the textual criticism through the old testament or through the bible translations that have existed prior or right after the church prior to the um you know the apostolic age or so forth so they'll talk about the pachetta and the vulgate and all of these bibles and they'll say that with each subsequent translation from the original languages god was purifying and preserving his word you can trace back sort of this hand of god guiding and and directing you know through these lines of bibles so that we eventually come to the capstone which is the uh king james bible but the problem with that again is that the lot what the list is not consistent um there's sometimes you have to sort of do some overreach with regards to um i guess you could say uh you know which translation is going to fit into which trans you know which which line or whatever so for instance somebody will get the latin vulgate but the latin vulgate was roman catholic you know catholics had that well why are you going to put the latin vulgate in your and then they'll say well it's the old latin vulgate okay well i mean the old latin vulgate and the latin vulgate are kind of similar so and then the catholics are the ones who handled that so how exactly does that are you saying it got we had to burn that catholic dross off with all the new english translations um i also asked them will it include any kind of revision so for example the the the um geneva translation went through multiple revisions in between its initial translation and eventually it's being displaced really by the use of the king james among the english people um do any of those revisions there's like 125 of them i believe from 1550s until the late 1600s do any of those count to your line because that's 125 instead of seven because they're putting that remember that passage in psalm 12 where it talks about being purified by silver seven times or whatever they'll claim that that's a promise that you can identify these seven steps to get to the king james well you make the point one of the other things that you've you to quote you on the purity argument these guys that will start with the the quote good line uh beginning with when william tindale's translations and you say if the good line begins with william tindale's translations there are roughly 31 various translations published in english before king james yeah that's correct which one of these are you talking i know and they'll take the ones that were the most popular and probably used in churches like the bishop's bible and the bible yeah you know all of these other little minor translations that kind of fell out of use or didn't get much circulation because of the authorities clamping down keeping them from being circulated um the german bible you know luther's bible i mean why are those not and that's exactly what you have in islam though right you had all these you had these different these different translations of the quran and they clamped down and burned all the other ones since yeah you the only one eufeminer or ufman or whatever his name was with mine yep and he's like look we're going to do these translations and when you're when you're in control when you run when the church runs the government or the government runs the church you can do those sort of things there's two more arguments that we have um you know the scholarship argument historical argument so let's start scholarship what is that argument how do we respond to the scholarship one well the scholarship argument is that the guys who translated the bible were the greatest translators that ever lived that's kind of how they yeah every king james only book will have some chapter which just heaps all of this gushing praise on the greatness of these translators which i'm not going to fault them they were great translators but they had their faults just like every other human being who's ever existed um they had their problems and there's and even though they might have a you know might be great scholars they're no more better than any other scholar who's come along and uh try to offer up a translation of scripture it's almost it's almost as if no one has ever done this work afterwards like no one did it before and no one's done it after i know the only time in history i i know and it's like the end well these guys were they had some kind they were endued with some kind of you know special anointing from god i mean they almost put them into an apostolic sort of uh framework where it's like these guys are inspired to do what they did but they were political animals just like king james was giving them the you know kind of shaping that for them the um i mentioned in my book how andrew uh bishop andrews i believe it were lancelot andrews is the one who was sort of behind having some heretics burned because you know king james only has to always go after calvinists because calvin has cervatus burned or you know that's kind of what they argue and but these guys were involved in similar kind of instances there was when one case was a baptist guy he was teaching heresy and i think the guy was legitimately teaching heresy but they were behind him getting burned at the stake i mean they had character flaws just like everybody else had character flaws and this is suggest i think one guy was um i can't remember which translator it was but he was constantly in debt because he would buy stuff that he couldn't you know couldn't afford and he eventually had to like sell off his entire library in order to pay off all of his debts and everything i mean they had all these problems just like everyone else it doesn't disqualify them from giving us a great translation but to see them as some sort of you know link to this is why we should read the king james because these are the greatest scholars ever and that's just fundamentally flawed and it's the same with the historical argument um we mentioned this a little bit too previously is that the king james was primarily a political work it was to it was designed and meant to give us a a um you know to placate these various groups in anglicanism to keep them from fighting and to give king james this you know the authority that he needs to sort of oversee his church that he claimed he had um this idea that the bible was carried to the americas and around the world with king james well that was true after the you know the great missionary thrust in the 1700s but early on when the pilgrims and the puritans started coming to america because king james was persecuting them they would come across the united states to the united states they brought with them the geneva bible they didn't like the king james i mean even if you go i mean you're up you're over there in pennsylvania have you ever been in one of those little colonial reenactment places they'll use the geneva bible as their base text because they're trying to play like their original colonists and i don't think the king james really came into use in the and until like the 1700s in the colonies like the time around when george whitfield and jonathan edwards were here and that's a good hundred years or so because all the puritans hated the king james because it's connected to king james the reason why they got ran out of their country i mean this is this is where history helps right i mean it it really is important for people to understand history and right it's it's it's always amazing to me that people don't quite recognize that you know everything has a historical setting and and these things play into it right you know and when you understand when you just you know i i i people i i just want to encourage folks you know stop being lazy honestly read some stuff do some research get away get some trusted people that you can listen to he's going to tell you something different than what you know these king james only apologists you've you know you've gathered around yourself because they've they're they're not telling you the honest stuff get folks who have you know actually kind of dug into this and you know look at what they have to say look at what how god has really preserved his word because i think ultimately as i mentioned in my conclusion if we're going to say that god's word is only contained in one translation then god's a very weak and limited god yeah and we just don't see that we see god providing i think the church a you know because he spread the manuscripts particularly of the new testament far and wide it preserves his word because you don't have that one uthman guy be able to gather up all the texts and to control what the bible says exactly and you know it's probably was good that king james didn't know about their earlier manuscripts because he probably would have squashed them or they would have something would have happened where they couldn't have access to them and the reason why we got access to them after you know during the fall of the ottoman empire and europeans were able to get into north africa and start digging through some of these old monasteries and find these texts is because um you know they just had a totally different hey we want to find a way to answer these heretics that are coming up and are criticizing the bible i mean again it was that was their motivation you had higher critics saying that scriptures was corrupted and we need to reread it a certain way well they were like well that's not what the bible says we got to find earlier manuscripts and what we got and so when they were able to like scour the you know monasteries and the previously strongholds of the muslim empire they were finding these manuscripts that contradicted what was coming out of out of germany and out of these you know demonic bird houses of you know liberal higher criticism you know what i'm saying yeah well and and this is the thing i mean for folks who are who are struggling with this because there are some and you know we we're aware of that you you would have said how you struggled with this you know when you're in seminary this is something where what i find is there are a lot of people who are involved in this they are struggling with it and a lot of it i i'm i'm hesitating because i know if there's someone listening they they take it the wrong way but it is prideful and i i'm not trying to be mean with it it's just when and fred maybe you could talk to this as a wrap -up oh yeah when you are studying this and it i don't care if it's flat earth king james onlyism charismatic calvinism whatever your your ilk might be there is a pride that christians can have where they study something and they act as if well i know something more than the next guy there's something where i i'm more spiritual because i know this whatever this is in this case it would be the king james bible as being inspired but there's a pride that i see often with this with many people and yeah if you could speak well yeah well because you have this you get into this mindset that i know something that no one else knows and i am become the messenger i am the oracle that now must proclaim the truth to those people who do not have ears to hear and i need to be prepared to you know to go forth and to present to them the truth and i mean it's almost a gnostic sort of heresy in some ways i've got something that you don't know and i want to tell you you know and and you're right exactly what you're saying that's how i behaved is like i had some kind of higher knowledge and if you don't have the higher knowledge like me well then you're going to be you know somehow crippled or you know stunted in your growth if you didn't have god's will you don't have you don't really have god's word you have one of these modern perversions that's you know telling you something that's wrong about jesus not like my bible but that's not the case i mean that when you look at the facts your secret knowledge is really kind of bogus that's the problem but you're right it had you could be found in anything even though i believe calvinism is the truth there is a way it's presented right what's that say it again stage and that's yeah the same thing that's that pride and with calvin is i was the same way when i became a person when i saw the truth of limited atonement and that christ was dying for a people and rescuing them and all the extent of the atonement or whatever and i nailed that doctrine down in my head i mean i was i want to argue with everyone about it well that's just you don't want to argue with people about i mean scripture is very clear that you know these things you need to teach with patience and admonishing error but lovingly you know leading someone through the truth basically is what you do it's not a matter of trying to bludgeon them over the head with what you think is right until they submit okay okay i'll be a calvinist whatever it's like no you want them you want the holy spirit to work in their lives because he worked in your life so we're not trying to convert people to calvinism we're trying to convert people to christ yes that's exactly we want to say that yeah you've converted the christ you'll be a calvinist but that is that is the thing that you see with calvinism you see it with charismatics you see it in this case with king james only is you know the charismatic is called a second blessing you get saved and then when you get more spiritual you get the second blessing in calvinism we hear it called as this cage stage you get saved then you learn about the doctrines of grace and you got to tell everybody it's the same thing with kjv you get saved and then you find out the king james bible is like the only one you should have and people study that and get all into making an argument for the kjv instead of making an argument for christ no different than making an argument for calvinism rather than making the argument for christ same thing with tongues and i think it's a distraction i think it's it's it ends up feeding our pride and if you know one of the ways people can recognize it is you've laid out here in this podcast and in your book which i encourage everyone to get go get a copy of royal deceptions by fred butler but actually in fact get a couple because you're probably going to have some friends that need it and you want to get it right away to get the you know classic edition the one with the typos in it i gotta correct this next week and yeah so next week so you know actually it may be too late the patreons will have it but but the thing is get this book you're you do run into people that believe this but if if you're a person who you're listening to this and you're just gritting your teeth at everything that's been said you're upset with what you're hearing it could be that you're the one that needs to hear it the most because a lot of times pride is a blinding thing and we we can be blinded by it and one of the things that pride does is when we have an argument that's wrong it doesn't listen look if you believe your argument is good you should be able to listen to fred and hear him hear his arguments and counter them not man they're gonna do it out of hand because if you reject it out of hand it it could be your pride speaking not the truth speaking just a thought for you well there are some king james only so i know they're out there and they're gonna watch this i have answered him i've been on these discussion groups with him and i gave him tons of articles and he didn't want to listen to him and now i'm like okay whatever dude and so i know that they're there but you're right so fred any any last things you want to say other than encouraging everybody to go and get get a car i mean obviously that would be wonderful if you would and it would be encouraging to me i want it to be a tool that you can be it's useful uh in and uh in your hands and just to make you think rightly about god's revelation he has given us a revelation he's given it to us it has been preserved it's been preserved accurately and he has used the holy spirit to work in the hearts of his redeemed people throughout the the history of the old testament and the new testament to give us his word and it's canonized and it's you can hold it in our hands and he has allowed us to translate it into to disseminate it across the world so the bible you hold in your hands even if it is one of these paltry sort of bad translations that i don't necessarily recommend god is god's word is there it speaks and it convicts hearts and it is that's what we use to bring people to the saving knowledge of christ is god's word and he has seen fit that english people and spanish -speaking people everyone has a copy of his revelation and he have access to that information it's not hidden it's not any heretics trying to hide it from you in some clandestine way that you can't find it's not trying to sneak in error that you're going to be um you know confused by or you know unwittingly discover i mean that's never happened but god's word is it's there it's true you can trust it and you need to believe it that's that's really the battle really is not on so much the inerrancy of scripture today it is this is it sufficient and i believe it is and we can hold it in our hands and we can believe it and proclaim it yeah and you know for folks i mean i encourage you again get the book real deceptions by fred butler on amazon .com
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it's available on kindle and print version for folks who are watching on the patreon if you go to the very back of the book about the author you'll see fred in his fedora which is why we're wearing our fedoras yeah i would have got but my wife is still asleep yeah but fred it's always it's always a joy getting together with you in person or this way on podcasts uh for folks who don't know fred has a great sense of humor uh full of knowledge you know i was talking to someone this morning a mutual friend that we have fred and we because at our church the elders get together at 600 you know oh dark 30 where you're at well that was our time we we get up for prayer in the morning on saturday morning so we were praying and we're talking and i had mentioned that i was going to be you know interviewing you and your new book and it was funny because you know one of the guys was like you know just don't picture fred writing books you know it's like you know you're this you're this i can't imagine who that was may not be you may not be from the south but you know it's like i i said yeah fred's like this guy that just he seems like he's from the south just laid back kind of hillbilly kind of sounding guy and then very deceptive yeah yeah or you start reading his writing and it's like dude has some information i mean like there's just it's brilliance that comes out of you and when we people talk to you it's like you're like this laid back kind of guy like every easy going and yet you have your finger on like everything like if there's a problem if there's like someone that is going awry in christianity it's like fred knows after reading this how is fred not writing more books okay well that's the question my next project um and this is because here on the record my uh my next project is supposed to be on ezekiel's temple is it literal or is it spiritual the reason why i say that i did write some articles on that it's at my blog um i would like to go in some more detail about that but it's uh mike riccardi saw me at uh work and he was asking me about my book and he said well you know what you need to do is you need to do that stuff on the ezekiel's temple put that in print i'm like really he goes oh man every time someone asked me about that i send them to your blog articles because you're the only one who's really written on that i noticed some other people have written on that topic but i try to make the information accessible and try to work through the problem so that's my i'm this next year i'm going to be trying to go through that material and i've got to get some material on ezekiel some commentaries start revisiting that a little bit because i'd like to punch that stuff up and because i believe that they're i believe it's a real temple it's not some kind of his some kind of weird vision about the church or whatever um i would like to just sort of go into that so we'll see how that goes we can do another rapid report about that well that would be good okay so to wrap up though uh just let folks know if you are in jacksonville area i will be speaking in jacksonville uh i i guess see actually i think by the time this drops but i may be in at jacksonville so maybe you already mentioned that but but i'll be in jacksonville uh at christ reformed community church on december 13th uh december uh 19th and 20th i will be in orlando area and that is going to be doing the uh just social justice seminar at bethula baptist church and so you could check that out and it'll be if you're in that area please let us know again if you wouldn't mind writing a review there is a link in the show notes to write us a review let us know what you enjoy don't enjoy we want to hear from you we speak into a microphone bud and i each week and bud and i get to see each other but we don't get to see you we don't get to hear your story uh we will we do respond to feedback and i will say that we did a couple episodes on wearing masks or not wearing masks we got feedback it's not that i'm ignoring it we want to get andrew smith back on we want to respond with him to some questions that got asked about wearing masks so we may or may not do a whole another episode on that but there there's we're going to at least respond to that we may do a just a response episode where we respond to several questions that we get in we may get some questions in for fred so we may have to have him in to answer i'd be happy to do that that'd be great so if if you have yeah if you have questions for me you could always contact us at info at striving for eternity dot org info at striving for eternity dot org is the website so we're glad that you you listen hope this has been helpful to you if you have found value in this if these podcasts are helpful would you do us a couple of things we already asked would you write us a view but would you consider sharing it the best way to get others to know about it is when people share it reviews actually don't help in in 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slash donate and you know what bud what that's a wrap this podcast is part of the striving for eternity ministry for more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church go to eternity .org