as the Textus Receptus was being formed, it was also being translated. The two processes were simultaneous. Hence the early Protestant versions, such as Luther's, Tyndale's, the Geneva, and the King James, were actually varieties of the Textus Receptus. And this was necessarily so according to the principles of God's preserving providence. For the Textus Receptus had to be translated in order that the universal priesthood of believers, the rank and file, might give it their God-guided approval."1 (author's emphasis)
Farther along, Dr. Hills continued:
"This faith, however, has from time to time been distorted by the intrusion of unbiblical ideas. For example, many Jews and early Christians believed that the inspiration of the Old Testament had been repeated three times. According to them, not only had the original Old Testament writers been inspired but also Ezra, who (supposedly) rewrote the whole Old testament after it had been lost. And the Septuagint likewise, they maintained, had been infallibly inspired. Also the Roman Catholics have distorted the common faith by their false doctrine that the authority of the Scriptures rests on the authority of the Church. It was this erroneous view that led the Roman Church to adopt the Latin Vulgate rather than the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as its authoritative Bible. And finally, many conservative Christians today distort the common faith by their adherence to the theories of naturalistic New Testament textual criticism. They smile at the legends concerning Ezra and the Septuagint, but they themselves have concocted a myth even more absurd, namely, that the true New Testament text was lost for more 1,500 years and then restored by Westcott and Hort."2 (author's parenthesis)
Yet despite the efforts on behalf of the Church by Burgon, Scrivener, Hoskier, and – in the twentieth century – Hills, recently we have been placed in the bizarre situation of noting that whereas our opponents blasphemously assert that the TR/KJB New Testament is wrong in at least 5,300 instances – many of our Christian friends now say, "No, it errs only about 1,500 times." Thus many good brothers in Christ Jesus have been seduced into siding with the liberals and/or apostates as both positions embrace "restoration" rather than "preservation". Truly, such is a deplorable state! Worthy of the most deliberate consideration is the proposition that anytime the entire world system agrees with the Christian about any matter which is spiritual or has spiritual overtones – not only are we wrong – the error is nearly always 180 degrees out of phase with God's truth.
Moreover, the single greatest move of the hand of God since the time of the Lord Jesus and the Apostles as recorded in the Book of Acts was that of the Reformation. This great move must be recognized as the direct result of the historical restoration by Erasmus of the true text that the Apostles lived and wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The reader must then confront himself with the question: "If the Reformation were the fruit of restoring to the people the text known today as the Textus Receptus, where is the great revival that should have accompanied the labor of the past 100 years of text-critically editing and correcting that document?" The "Great Awakening" of the 1700's as well as the revivals of the late 1800's and early part of the 1900's under men such as Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Spurgeon, Moody, R.A. Torrey, and Billy Sunday were all preached from the King James text.
To the contrary, we know of no revival that resulted from using the critical text. Thus we see that the fruit of the TR/KJB has been the harvest of millions of souls. In stark contrast, the fruit of the critical text and its offspring has been doubt, division, endless debate, wasted time and energy that could have been spent in worship or evangelical effort, and the destruction of the faith at most seminaries and many pastors along with the sheep who feed at their feet. If the critical text is the
1 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., pp. 113-114
2. Ibid., p. 194.
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