DISTRESSING TIMES ARE COMING
One of the most eloquent, accurate, and succinct descriptions of the days in which we are living are to be found in 2 Timothy.
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
The following is a modern version of the same passage that is reflective of how those who have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof, deal with such verses.
1 But understand this1 also,2 that in the final3 days there will be very hard times4 that will come.
2 For people5 will6 be lovers of their own selves and self-centered,7 lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate [greedy] desire for wealth,8 they will talk about themselves and be proud,9 they will brag and be proud,10 scoffing at God,11 disobedient to their parents,12 ungrateful to them,13 irreligious,14
3 Dog-eat-dog,15 they will tell lies about others,16 without self-control,17 they will be rough and cruel,18 without benignity,19
4 They will betray their friends,20 headstrong,21 swollen with pride,22 they will be men who put pleasure in the place of God;23
5 holding24 to the outward form of godliness,25 but behind the scenes they are animals:26 don’t be taken in by people like that.27
Footnotes for verses
1 RSV
2 KJV
3 The King James Version incorrectly has “last” when
it should be translated “final”.
4 CEV, NRSV has distressing.
5 NIV
6 WENT. The KJV incorrectly has “shall” here.
7 New Jerusalem
8 Amplified
9 NIRV
10 NHSB
11 ESV
12 TNIV
13 The Living Bible
14 Weymouth
15 The message
16 NLV
17 NASB
18 Living Bible
19 Wycliffe NT. The KJV reads “despisers of those that are good,” which is hard to understand.
20 NLT
21 ASV
22 TEV
23 NEB
24 ASV
25 NRSV
26 The Message
27 The Living Bible
This footnoted presentation of verses from 2 Timothy 3 is more than just a spoof on the cutting and pasting practices of modern church-goers when it comes to scripture (or doctrine for that matter), but is a written representation of what they actually do when they study the Bible, and it is a representation of what Bible so-called translators do when they churn out more and more new versions. Of course, this is a representation of great foolishness that even modern church-goers might claim is excessive, but the insanity of the modern church is no less absurd than what I have represented in the form of satire.
The modern “Christian” has no final authority other than his own mind. This is constantly demonstrated by the common tendency to pick and choose versions according to whim, personal preference, pride, prejudice, and at times, malice toward truth. The average “Christian” book on prophecy uses multiple versions of what they call scripture and most of those that do use only one use one that can easily be demonstrated to have been produced by textual critics, publishers, and pseudo-translators who are Luciferian, atheistic, and antagonistic to Christianity. These fools and misleaders of other fools claim to understand prophecy and profess to be opponent’s of the Antichrist when they do not even have the ant’s weight of spiritual discernment needed to see through such transparent scams as those perpetrated by the likes of Westcott, Hort, and the modern purveyors of the New Age religions that are all the rage in our modern churches. If these men and women are prophets, where is their final authority? They cannot recognize, or will not recognize, a scriptural authority other than their own minds, and they randomly jump from one version to another as if they were as God himself. This is chicanery, not prophecy.
The reader will probably never see a cut-and-paste example as extreme as my rendering of the 2 Timothy passage, or at least not one in printed form, but examples in the same spirit are not uncommon. I recently ran across the following translation while reading James Lloyd’s Beyond Babylon: The Last Week of the World. Like the above mentioned satirical creation of mine, this reading is a hodgepodge of versions slopped together in a creative, but unexplained, fashion.
“Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered unto him, we ask you brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy..saying that the Day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you..for that day will not come except the apostasy comes first–that is, unless the predicted great falling away of those who have professed to be Christians has come–and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition.”
[footnote reads: II Thessalonians 2:1,2 NIV; 2:3a AMP; 2:3b KJV]
Similar cut-and-paste confusions of Scripture can be found in the footnotes of this book for chapters 19, 31, and 36, which read “1 Daniel 2:34a KJV, 34b NIV,” “Revelation 6 AMP, NIV,” “Isaiah 14:13a KJV; 13b NIV; 14:14 KJV,” and “II Corinthians 11:13 KJV; 11:14 AMP.”
What criteria were used to cut and paste these particular versions in these specific fashions, other than the author’s own arrogance and fancy? Does the author have any qualifications to mutilate scripture and reassemble in any way that he sees fit? If he believed that he was qualified to dissect scripture, why did he not provide the reader with some insights into why he juxtaposed the mutilated parts in the fashion that he did? Is this example, or the one that I created above, any different than what the average church-goer does in this day of foolishness and absurdity?
I will state here that the creator of the 2 Thessalonians passage does claim to have repented of his use of perversions of scripture and now speaks against them; however, this book was purchased after his alleged conversion to the KJV-Only camp. If he did repent of perverting scripture, what, other than the desire for filthy lucre, would compel him to have continued to sell a book that perverts the word of God and plants seeds of confusion? How hard would it be for him to have rewritten it with the perverted verses replaced by the true word of God? With Bible computer programs, it is a simple task that could be done in a few hours at most. He could have at least included a disclaimer, if the loss of filthy lucre was of such importance to him that he was unwilling to take the loss of destroying the perversion-soiled books. This question was answered for me after I purchased two copies of pocket “King James Bibles” from him personally, and at a lecture where he proclaimed his allegiance to the KJV alone. I placed them in survival packs and did not discover that they were corrupted (modernized) King James versions until two years later when a church brother warned me about the “KJV’s” sold by Lloyd. KJV was written on the covers, only on the title page was the purchaser warned that it was an Easy Reading Edition, i.e. an altered and dumbed down version. A former colleague of Mr. Lloyd informed me that these corrupt texts were not purchased in error, but were purchased due to their very low price. Apparently, the love of money is the main factor. I hate to imagination how I would have felt to discover the scam on my own if I had been forced into a wilderness survival situation with only a corrupted Bible in my pack.
It also should be asked why someone who claims to be a prophet, and made such a claim before writing the offending book, would use a false Bible. It takes only a trifling amount of spiritual discernment to see through the Westcott-Hort perversions and the foolishness of using confusing and contradictory texts. How much more spiritual discernment would a prophet of God possess? It is absurd to suggest that a prophet would be so misled.
One need only peruse the copyright pages of the majority of modern “Christian” book store publications to see that many so-called prophecy experts, theologians, and “Christian” psychologists are mutilating and assembling texts in the same fashion described above. The practice of modern day “Christians” to jump from one version to another with no rhyme or reason is common place today, and shows an even deeper mental confusion than what is expressed in writings. As Mary Shelly’s Dr. Frankenstein took mutilated body parts and stuck them together to form a facsimile of a human being that was hideous to look at, and which lacked the soul of a man, these writers have created distorted and soulless facsimiles of the Bible. They do indeed fit 2 Timothy’s description of the perilous times in which we live.
John Hinton, Ph.D.
Bible Restoration Ministry
A ministry seeking the translating and reprinting of KJV equivalent
Bibles in all the languages of the world.