Thursday 18 June 2009

The Bible is Perfect

According to Acts 15:20, these are the rules for the new believers. To keep holy, they are to refrain from taking these physical food and do not do these things. These rule applied on present Christian, in choosing the better and faithful Bible versions,

1. Refrain from reading any Bible offered to the idols, to have nothing to do with idols. worshiping, (1 Corinthians 8:10) This meant we have to choose a Bible version or translation, which is not promoting idols worshiping. Greed is a type of idolatry.

2. Refrain from reading any Bible versions which promoting blood eating, blood is symbol of life, (Leviticus 1:5). This also means we are to refrain from reading any Bible versions which is promoting violence and terrorism, racism, murdering, hatred...communism...

3. Refrain from reading any Bible which promoting people to eat strangled animals, the strangled animals have blood in the body, same with rule number 2.

4. Refrain from reading any Bible version which is promoting sexual immorality. (refer to Leviticus 18), we are abstain from homosexual, adultery, fornication's and premature sex.

After laid down these 4 simple rules in accepting KJV, CUV, NKJV, ESV, NIV, and etc...The question arising next to solve is, what is the word "Bible" means to us? Why we accept KJV and NKJV and CUV and ESV as a Bible?

What is the scope of the Bible?

(a) The Hebrew Bible. We called the Old Testament.

(b) The Greek New Testament.

The autographs, the Greek manuscripts written by the original authors, have not survived. Scholars surmise the original Greek text from the versions that do survive. The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist), the Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and the Western text-type (occasionally wild). Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts. (quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible)

(1) The Scope of the Bible Text is:

For the Old Testament is the Masoretic Text. For the New Testament is The Byzantine text, Alexandrian text and Western text, these are the ancient manuscripts which we must accept them, to found out where the Bible verses are.

(2) The translations of the Bible are.

There are many translations, some are closer to the original text, some are not, like the KJV and NIV, they are both consider closer to the original text. Refer to the list of English Bible in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_Bible_translations

When I was still in the primary school, I first read the 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, after few years, I read some Christian magazines, and then after few years I started to read Chinese Union Bible, and then my first English Bible is NIV, and then KJV, until now, I am reading the Word of God in many other translations.

(3) The Inspiration of the Bible:

I hold the Biblical infallibility perspective, that the Bible is free from error in spiritual and scientific matters. So I believe the Bible is inspired, infallible and inerrancy of the Bible is sure. I believe in 2 Tm 3:16: "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."

(4) The inerrancy of the original Bible:

Some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture.

(5) Some copies mistakes do not influence the faithfulness and the structure of the Bible.

(6) The original meanings are mostly found in the Holy Bible in our hands now, 99.99% of the original wordings are found, and we may have to be tolerant to each other in the rest of the 0.01% wording, they are the variants in the different Bible manuscripts. We still need some time to make sure of the true wordings, but this does not make our Bible void or less trustworthy.

KJV readers must be tolerant with the NIV and CUV readers.

I give you an example:

One student writes, I have 5 lemons. Another student writes, I have 5 yellow lemons, and another student writes, I have 5 lemon. Another write, I have lemons.

The original meaning and intention are there in these 3 sentences, there copy mistakes does not overrules, the original meaning that, they all have lemons! These kinds of mistake does not effect the the original meaning.

(7) The English Bible translations like KJV is not perfect. It is close to the original copy, some Bible translations are closer to the original.

(8) The Bible is preserved for us, why I said the Bible is preserved, because we have more than 5000 pieces of manuscripts that give us the Bible, in few thousands of years, the Bible verses are preserved miraculously for us through wars, bad weathers, fire, persecutions, times, places...God had preserved the Word generations after generations, time after time, the Bible is forever, eternal, sweeter than honey, better and priceless than gold, and the Bible speak until today, the Bible is the light onto our paths, and the Bible lead us to Christ, the Bible speaks about Christ, the centre is God, and the centre of man is Christ, and the head of mankind is Christ, and the Bible is sending the same message even after 2000 thousand years Christ born in Israel. The gospel message is preserved in the preserved Bible, and that is why it is like a jewel in the sand, and whoever found this preserved Word of God, found the gospel, whosoever found the gospel found the Christ, whosoever found Christ, found God, because God is in Christ!
And Christ's Name is Jesus from Nazareth. The Bible is preserved for us, that is why we trust the Bible is trustworthy, and that is why we read the CUV, KJV, NKJV, NIV.

(9) The complete Bible I believed is hidden in all the manuscripts and in all the Bible translations. And we are very sure that we have at least 99.99% of the Bible wording in KJV and NIV and others translations.

(10) The LORD is the Bread from heaven, the hidden manna, the living Word of God! These simple rules of the Bible is making us to believe the original Bible is perfect! This is only my personal view.

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