In Part 1 of this newsletter, Tamper Proof, Donte shared some of the more serious things that have happened to him in life. Then he began to open up about his spiritual views. You can check out Part 1 at the following link:
https://markcahill.org/tamper-proof-part-1/
Donte and I were talking about the Garden Trick, which led to him saying he believed the Bible has been tampered with over the years and that is why he is also looking at other religious texts, like the Quran, to find truth. Now, I have heard this many, many times before. You hear it a lot from Muslims. They have been taught that the Bible cannot be trusted because it has been tampered with.
Remember, at this point, to just ask a few questions:
- How do you know it’s true that the Bible has been tampered with?
- What evidence do you have that it has been tampered with?
- Which verses in the Bible have been tampered with?
- If you don’t know which parts have been tampered with, how can you know which parts you can trust and which parts you can’t?
You see what is going on here, don’t you? Satan is just causing this person to doubt the Word of God. If he can get people to doubt one word, one verse, one chapter, or one book, then he can put a wedge between them and the truth.
We call this the “Garden Trick.” This is how he operates.
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
This is nothing new. The enemy has been trying to get people to doubt the Word of God right from the beginning.
2 Corinthians 11:3
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
One thing I did with Donte, and do often when this issue comes up, is to use the following two verses:
John 18:38
Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.
Pilate was looking for one thing. It is the same thing that we are looking for today: Truth. The key question is this: Where do we find it?
That’s easy. I just back up one chapter and show them this verse:
John 17:17
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
I tell them that the Scriptures let us know that the Bible is God’s Word. Period. Then I hold the Bible up to them. I’m glad I had mine with me that day. I let Donte (and everyone else) know that the Bible—from Genesis to Revelation—is the one Book they can trust.
Pure Words
I also shared with Donte how God breathed this Book into existence, how He used men to write it down, how Jewish scribes made copies of the manuscripts, and things like that. I also explained the importance of a couple of other verses he needed to know.
Psalm 12:6,7
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
We do hold the pure words of God in our hands, but there is another promise here as well. God is saying that He will preserve those pure words for every generation! That is fascinating to think about. Many believe that God can bring a Bible into existence, but then, I have heard from many others that He couldn’t keep it in its pure form. That once man got a hold of it, it has had problems ever since. Well, if that is true, then Psalm 12 is not true.
Think about it: if the God who created this grand universe we live in breathed into existence the most influential Book in the history of the world, then it is not too difficult at all for Him to keep His pure words intact, so that human beings in 2024 will have something they can trust.
Hanging on Every Word
My conversation with Donte got me thinking. I know we have God’s pure words with us today, but has it been tampered with in some way?
Look at 1 John 5:7. It is the best verse in the Bible for the Trinity—hands down. I use it all the time.
1 John 5:7
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
Biblegateway.com is a good website for doing research in the Bible. When looking at this verse, you can see it is translated very differently between the various Bible translations.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20John%205:7
Many of them say that these three are in “agreement.” That is very, very different from stating that these three are “one.” For example, Mormons would wholeheartedly agree with “these three are in agreement” but would take issue with “these three are one.”
How about Acts 8:37?
Acts 8:37
And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Here it is in the NIV:
Acts 8:37
And here it is in the ESV:
Acts 8:37
That is correct. It is not included in either of these translations!
Changing Not Just Anyone’s Words
Let’s go back to Donte’s statement about the Bible and ask, “Has it been tampered with?”
We might think of the word “tamper” as something big, like someone tampering with a lock, and now something can’t be opened because of that tampering. But what if the tampering was more subtle? Like maybe changing a few words here and a few verses there, and the next thing you know, it adds up to a lot of changes. Remember that Satan is active, not passive. He doesn’t want you studying the Word of God, and he sure doesn’t want a properly translated Bible in front of your eyes.
John 8:44
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Liars lie. Some people get pretty good at it. And, of course, there is one who is the father of them all. And, yes, he is still lying today.
Matthew 5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
God cannot express enough how seriously He takes His own Word. Since He is concerned about jots and tittles, then He is concerned when whole verses are taken out of His Book and words are changed that alter the meanings of what He said.
And did you know that to copyright a Bible, it has to be a certain percent different from any other copyrighted Bible out there? They accomplish much of that through changing the words. Just try to have a Bible study with ten people holding ten different versions of the Bible. It’s nearly impossible to come to agreement about what God wanted to communicate to us.
Proverbs 30:5,6
Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.
Revelation 22:18,19
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
We are living in interesting days. We are in a fight for the lives of souls all across this planet. The enemy is active. He is working to destroy people’s faith in the Word of the One True God. Stand your ground. Don’t back up. Time is of the essence. Truth will prevail. Make sure you have stood firm in His truth and continue to stand strong until you meet the Author of the Bible face to face.
Until the nets are full,
P.S. One of my favorite writers is David Cloud of www.wayoflife.org. He is such a lover of God’s Word. He has a great newsletter that you should sign up for, and he has plenty of materials on his website that you can read and watch. He has done some stellar work on the Bible preservation issue. His book and video series, Why We Hold to the King James Bible, is top-notch. You can pick up this book or watch the video series he did about it below:
https://www.wayoflife.org/s3/why_we_hold_video.php
If you are looking for a light and fluffy speaker, he is not it. He shoots straight. He stands strong for the Word of God and is very, very unashamed of that.