Now I want to be perfectly clear. I do not begrudge this retailer for the selection they carried. As a retailer, all they were doing was stocking merchandise that would sell. The fact that Christian retailers don't stock many KJV Bibles, many devotions and study guides that use the KJV, and the subject of the books are man-centered and not God centered is an indication that the Christian community in America is not interested in those things. For if the Christian community were interested in the KJV and God-centered/Christ-centered resources, they would buy them and the stores would be full of them.
The lack of commitment to the word of God and the study of the Gospel in the Christian community is leading us toward a spiritual drought. Amos 8:11 says, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD."
While at this Christian retailer, my wife found a study that she would like to go through. The subject of the study was something that had been on her heart and she really felt that she would be blessed by doing the study. The study was compiled by a noted speaker who was the child of a very prominent author, speaker and senior pastor of a DFW metro-area church. When I took a look at the study, this author had not only elected to build this study off of modern translations, but she had used paraphrase translations like the NLT and the Message. Not only are the NLT and The Message paraphrase translations, meaning they take God's word and reword it to what they think it says, but it's not even taken from the Received Text, which, for hundreds of years was widely regarded as the true word of God.
How can we, as Christians, say that we are truly being Christ-centered, God-centered people if we are not even willing to take our thoughts and ideas directly from God's word? It gets worse.
Browsing the aisles of this retailer, I found more and more studies which used NIV and NLT versions of the Bible to support their research. I began to wonder if the KJV even still has a place at the table. Does it? Why the animosity toward the KJV? Why the exclusion of the KJV? The only study I found using the KJV was The Mind of Christ, and I find it interesting how it was also the only Christ-centered study I found.
Here's the conclusion I came to while visiting this establishment. As long as we continue down this road of abandoning the true word of God (The KJV and all other static equivalent translations of the Received Text), and gravitating toward paraphrase translations and translations from faulty manuscripts, all the while focusing the message on ourselves and not God, they we will continue toward an expended period of spiritual drought. During this time, we may very well deceive ourselves into thinking that we are experiencing revival due to our ability to manufacture miracles and gather people together for flesh-appealing events, but at the end of the day, we'll still be spiritually dry because we will have sought after fulfillment and emotional validation rather than the Lord.
If we continue down that path, we are setting ourselves up for deception as the end times draw near. The Bible is all about the Gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins according to the scriptures. Which scriptures? The true scriptures. If you want spiritual revival, open up God's word (any literal translation of the Received Text), and learn about God. Don't seek your own agenda. You'll remain dry. May God bless you as you read His word.
