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YouNeed
MORE
Than Faith In
Jesus!
M
ILLIONS
of people
a lready claim to be–
lieve in Jesus.
Hundreds of thou–
sands more in all parts of the
world will " receive Christ" this
year-or rather, they will
think
that they have received Christ.
They will, as they say, "give
their hearts to thc Lord," and
believe that they are at last saved.
And they will be wrong!
It may come as a shock, but the
gospel that is commonly preached
today is not the same message that
Jesus brought nearly 2,000 years
ago. He was not
thcn- and he is
not
now-trying to convcrt the
world. Neither is he trying to get
people to "accept him," "believe in
him" or "receive him" befare it is
too late.
Th is is a deceived world.
Deceived people are sincere. They
don 't know they are deceived. If
they did know, they would not be
deceived!
It
is bccause many are
deceived that we read or those who
have a "zea l of God, but not
according to knowledge" (Rom.
10:2).
" Not According to Knowledge"
That statement is as true today as it
was when thc apost le Paul wrote it
18
by
John Halford
more than 1,900 years ago. You'll
see ample evidence of it just by
looking at the religious book
department of nearly any book–
shop. Never befare have so many
Bible trañslations, Bible helps,
Bible dictionaries, Bible atlases,
concordances and commentaries
been available. But the world is as
confused as ever.
In the past severa! years ncw
translations of the Scriptures havc
been published. They have been
painstakingly executed by scholars
with a thorough knowledge of the
ancient languages.
T he faithful Authorized King
James Yersion, with its "thecs" and
"thous" and "ver ilys," had become
a stumbling block for many who
wanted to understand what the
Bible said. These modern versions
are rendered in modern English,
with contemporary grammar and
punctuation. They have corrected,
in general, the few translation
errors that crept into the older ver–
sions, and overall, they are useful
tools for Bible study.
But although they have solved
certain translation problems, they
have unfortunately created sorne
new ones. You need to know about
one of them in particular.
It
is not a case of the translators
misunderstanding th e original
word, as sometimes happened in
the Authorized Yersion. Rather,
they seem to have misunderstood
what was
meant
by what was writ–
ten.
The Problem of Translation
You see, translation- any transla–
tion- is to sorne extent an interpre–
tation. Language is not just
words- it is also thoughts. Transla–
tion is not just a case of swapping
words- the translator's job is to
convey the
thoughts
expressed by
one language into another.
Bible translation is particularly
complex. T he str ucture of the
ancient Hebrew and Greek lan–
guages is different from modern
West European languages.
It
can
therefore be difficult to render the
exact
thought and nuance of
expression of the ancient Scriptures
into modern languages. Generally,
translators have done a conscien–
tious job, and most modern ver–
sions are better than 99 percent
accurate. But there are sorne places
where modern theologians and
scholars have not fully understood
what the original writers were
teaching.
They have therefore made a sig–
nificant error in their rendering
into modern English sorne verses in
the epistles of Paul.
The
PLAIN TRUTH