Poor Apostle Malm is having a snit fit again about UCG using the New International Version of the Bible. According to James this Bible is demonic in it's origins and is a tool of Madam Blavatsky and Satan.
I am receiving reports from several UCG congregations that their elders have now switched to using the NIV mistranslation of the Bible. The NIV was created by the Evangelical movement and contains very many subtle changes designed to promote the Evangelical agenda. This book is copyrighted to make money for the group who “translated” it. It is strongly endorsed by all Evangelical organizations including the 33 degree Mason, Billy Graham.
Love. Armstrongism's four letter word. It's most despised concept. How dare one love a sinner. There are RULES! There are LAWS! Fools!Do some research on the NIV: take the trouble to look up the scriptures used in the sermons in your KJV and be very careful about the subtlety of the nuanced changes. This is not about any single obvious change, it is about a series of nuanced changes that add up to a overall total change of focus and attitude about Law, Grace and Tolerance for Sin in the name of Love!
Then the Apostle get's down to his business of warning the laodicians.The end-time is here! Wake up!
I tell you the truth: He delays NO LONGER!
Those who are close to God and are diligently following the lead of his spirit, have nothing to fear of the tribulation. They know that the Eternal is their refuge. The true and ultimate refuge is in our relationship with our Father in heaven. We confidently know that whether we live or die; he will raise us up on that day. No tribulation nor any other trial brings terrors to us; being filled with God’s spirit and the love of God which is the keeping of all of the Father’s commandments; we know that we love him and are pleasing to him. The perfect love of God casts out all our fears as we are filled with confident faith in HIM.
Those who are NOT zealously keeping God’s commandments and pleasing him, lack the love of God which is contained in his commandments. They lack a close relationship with the Father, having compromised with his Law and Word.
The tribulation is God’s merciful correction for those wicked persons who would compromise with his law; who would call the zealous foolish; who are lifted up with pride and will not receive instruction.
These people are beyond saving; for they WILL NOT be saved. They are beyond instruction; for they WILL NOT hear. They have left a loving Father with only one option: To bring their fears upon them; to crush their pride; to humble them; and make them once again teachable by forcing them to realize just how wrong they have been.
Almighty God is ANGRY; He is vexed at our self-righteous failure to exalt him above our corporations and human leaders.
I warn you with all gravity: We have lost our relationship with our Father by becoming corporate church centered, rather than using church’s as helps to become and stay GOD CENTERED.
20 comments:
Of course having merely copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of any original writings could not possibe be a problem in itself.
That crazy Satan has made sure no originals of anything survived intact and "I sent it once, that's the best I can do," God won't resend the originals.
M.T.Libarry
"Almighty God is ANGRY; He is vexed at our self-righteous failure to exalt him above our corporations and human leaders"
I've always, even since childhood, had a probem with this "vexed and angry God" thing who seems to need to be worshipped, adored, obeyed and never doublecrossed. What kind of Deity is this????
It even admits to being "a jealous God" so demands that "You shal not bring any other gods INTO MY PRESENSE." which is really what the text means and implies. There were indeed other gods around in this culture and in the mind of this OT Deity. He just did not want to deal with them or have them hanging around him and his people.
An angry and vexed god is a weak minded god who has issues evidently. A good Buddhist has more control than that and being vexed and angry is not in the agenda.
Can God not go by his own Sermon on the Mount and turn his other cheek or when cursed, bless as Paul said? We get vexed and angry and lose our jobs or pisseth off our friends who avoid us for a time until we get over it.
I simply have never understood or wanted any part of this kind of God. If God can't come up with an educationa tool any better than the Book of Revelation and some every burning hell, then perhaps he needs to have a talk with the Dali Lama and dig a litte deeper for compassion, love and the "tender mercies" he is said to really have. uh huh....
Why are humans expected to act in ways that the Deity evidently has no intention of acting????
M.T.Love
"Presence" sorry :)
"Shall" ditto
seems my "l" sticketh
"I tell you the truth: He delays NO LONGER!"
Actually he does. As difficult as it is to accept and consider the inplications of, every NT "soon", "at hand," "shortly," "it is the final hour," etc concerning the end time was only taken and meant for those of that generation Jesus and Paul were speaking of. They were not projecting 2000 years into the future and by the time "Peter" writes about a day with the Lord is as a thousand years and there will be scoffers etc, they were experiencing the great dilemma of no return and scoffers who were correct.
There is nothing written in the NT that originally meant Jesus will return shortly 2000 years plus from then.
Peter was wrong. Paul was wrong. James was wrong and John was mistaken in Revelation where the whole encouraging prophecy about the demise of the Romans in Jerusalem came to a crashing conclusion. Romans 1 Church 0
This dilemma is why the mainstream church had to switch to all Christians going to heaven at death. The utter confusion of it all lead to many contradictions over the past 2000 years between going to heaven and being resurrected. They could not delete the early dilemma of no Jesus return so they had to spiritualize it or rethink it.
Perhaps even the man Jesus found out he was mistaken when in utter despair he said..."my God, my God....why have you forsaken men?" I know the apologetic about God having to "turn his back on Jesus and spring this surprise rejection on him," but that is not what really happened. Jesus was stunned that he failed, in the story.
"It's hard to know what the words mean when we don't really know what the words were."
Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus
Shame be upon you: You made me look up Madam Blavatsky. Psychic was she? I hope she was better than the current crop of ACoG hirelings of a dead false prophet.
Sigh.
We may not agree with the manic conclusions of Mr. Malm, but often his observations are right on the mark and I believe that this is a significant blog entry, which, if you are not alert, may miss. We would not want anyone to miss out on some delicious implications of harbingers of failure and collapse.
Sure, make fun of Mr. Malm and the panic of hyperbole about the NIV, but he is absolutely correct: The UCG is changing directions, and the direction United is taking is similar to the Grace Communinion International.
For a long time, Dennis Luker has wanted to do something about the Armstrongist community to make it more "loving". He's taken a lot of abuse over the decades and he'd like it to stop. He said before he became president that he wanted to change things but "they wouldn't let him". Now he has been given the chance. To his credit, he did issue "the Luker challenge" to the WCG concerning alcoholism: "If you say you can do without it [alcohol], then prove it". And some people went cold turkey. It's not clear how many lives he's saved for those alcoholics who just stopped drinking.
His vision has nudged United toward calmer waters, especially now that the ultra ultra conservatives have hied off to start the Church of God Worldwide Ass. To the right of Genghis Khan are they.
Unfortunately, this is all done with subtlety over a period of time according to a new vision. One wonders what will happen to a church originally built on manic hyperbole with scientifically disprovable rubbish after all the dust settles? Smaller will it get, think I.
It's a no win situation, sort of like entropy: You can't win; you can't break even; you can't get out of the game.
NIV. UCG.
Barely legible footnotes of religious history in the long term.
Mr. Malm gets more goofy and God's man of faith and powerish by the week. Theo-ego is a fascinating thing to watch. "I read the Bible, Law and Prophets and dang if I don't see it talking about ME!"
M.T Church
Goofy? Yes.
But Goofy! You want Goofy?! Here's Goofy!!!
How's that for Goofy?
Grace haters hate the NIV. It makes the fact that the Old Covenant was abolished in Christ too clear.
Something that staunch Armstrongists don't like. Oh how love they the law, it is ever with them...
Let's see if the UCG really learns anything new.
Actually,
This is Goofy!
Accept no imitations!
Yes, Baywolfe, I knew it would come to that sooner or later, thanks.
I hope nobody who reads here is seriously concerned about Malm's pronouncements. It has been my experience that most people who make blanket comments regarding the various translations of the Bible have very little knowledge of the history behind them. Quite frankly, the huge gaping errors of Armstrongism have had a far worse spiritual impact on people than could a few nuances or subtleties of translation!
Even a few sparse facts regarding Erasmus will cast some profound doubts on the King James Version of the Bible, and the manuscripts which went into it. KJV has been considered to be the official "Anglican" Bible for centuries, in part due to the instructions which the committee received regarding their work and how it might effect doctrine, to say nothing about the sovereignty of the British monarchy!
It's not really wise to base one's relationship with God on any single source, whether it be a particular church, human teacher, or translation of the Bible. There is indeed such a thing as "denominational bias". Unfortunately for Mr. Malm, he is simply attempting to defend his own denominational bias against what he perceives as being bias on the part of more learned scholars than himself. I'm certain that he would feel quite the same about the New American Version, which, although sanctioned by the Catholic Church, was translated by scholars from a number of Christian denominations.
The Armstrongists don't consider the Bible to be the infallible word of God in the first place. Nearly the first thing one learns from them about the Bible is that there are various "mistranslations" even in the KJV, and unless you know about them, you can't know "God's Truth", which is their euphemism for Armstrongism.
The very act of translation from one language to another, in truth, creates a paraphrase. A Christian really has no alternative but to trust God for the inspiration involved in the original writing, accuracy of a particular translation, and one's own personal understanding of the documents available for us today. This time in history is a kind of a "golden" age, since we Christians have more resources available to us today than ever before in history. I'm thoroughly relishing these resources and my God-given freedom to examine them in a way which was never possible while I was an Armstrongite and only allowed to draw the "approved" conclusions!
BB
A few more thoughts.
Many people who hold up the KJV as being the only inspired version of the Bible do so based on the integrity of the Masoretic Text. I'd suggest to such people that they Google Masoretic Text so as to be better informed. Dr. Gene Scott, while I was never one of "his" people, at least used to compare passages from the KJV with their equivalents in the Ethiopic, Syriac, and Coptic scriptures in an attempt to obtain a clearer picture of the precise meanings of verses key to salvation.
Even over the past 50 years, so much progress has been made by academia in understanding ancient and even dead languages, in the discovery of many more manuscripts and texts, and in the science of textual criticism, that it is most likely that modern translations are far more accurate than those coming on the heels of the Dark Ages.
I was quite amazed as I took a fresh look at the Bible after thirty years of agnosticism, at the level of additional intelligence provided in the footnotes of a modern study Bible, such as TNIV, or NAV. These provide information from archaeological discoveries, historians such as Josephus, links to other pertinent scriptures on given topics, and alternative renditions of obscure scriptures.
Why would people such as "Apostle" Malm want to deprive their followers of the benefits of more state of the art translations and information? You'd think these people would take a Berean approach to all of the new material, if their goal was to constantly increase their understanding. Instead, most allow their teachings and understanding to exist in stasis, based on HWA, who has become a false god or idol to them, enjoying equal status with prominent individuals in the Bible.
WCG, when I was a member, had a policy of restricting what we members were allowed to read, view, or listen to. It's another example (in addition to their draconian concept of church authority) of failing to trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of individual members.
BB
And maybe people like Malm should produce their own "inspired" version of the Bible, replete with Scriptures of "The United States of America" and "The British Commonwealth".
That way, Scripture could be made to be 100% in agreement with Armstrongist doctrines and all discussions about other translations could be silenced for good.
I just left this comment on Malm's blog after reading his additional NIV condemnations.
James. you are a hypocrite.
You wrote: “I don’t have the NIV, so I looked up Galatians 2:16 online at Bible Gateway:”
You confess you don’t even have an NIV but you somehow think you are an expert without thoroughly studying it and comparing with your other translations passage by passage…that is one of the most ridiculous statements I have read on any of the COG blogs…ever! What did you have a premonition?
Good comment to James Malm, Michael! I was thinking about this a bit more after having posted my responses here. What Malm, and others don't seem to realize is that the Evangelicals had initially reached their very compelling theology from studying the New Testament in the King James Version of the Bible! They certainly did not need to develop the TNIV in order to give credence to their belief system.
One wonders what Malm would do if he actually knew the methodology behind the science of textual criticism. It's the Biblical equivalent of geology, or archaeology! As such, it produces a much more accurate collection of manuscripts than the Masoretic Text, or Textus Receptus.
Also, increased knowledge of dead languages on the part of today's linguistic scholars places more effective tools into the hands of translators today than were available either to Erasmus, or to those who produced the Geneva Bible, Bishop's Bible, KJV, or the later translations which relied upon Textus Receptus rather than the Masoretic Text.
BB
BB:
There is no textual criticism in any of the COG's. Armstrong instilled in all his acolytes trained at his colleges that to question is to turn one's back against the word of God and the message revealed through the apostle. Armstrongites fear to critic, examine, research bible history, study Christan thought through the ages, or interpret their bleliefs in light of the 21st century. Armstrongites live in the past. I am not talking about the period of time after Christs death that so many of them claim they look back to. I am talking about 1936 -1986. They have never moved past the mid 80's. The world has changed dramatically around them, archeology, biblical criticism and discoveries have left them all in the past. The fumy thing about Apostle Malm's moronic rantings about the NIV is that it tells the exact same story of love and grace that is in the KJV. He is just to blind to see it. Malm like all the COG's have become ignorant fools banging on cymbals that no one is listening too.
Talking about Bible Translations;
I just purchased two interesting DVD's about Bible history and watched them this week.
In celebration of the King James Version Bible's 400th Anniversary I watched, The Book That Changed The World KJB, that told the amazing story of how two rival denominations, the Anglican Church and the Puritans were forced by King James to bring their best scholars together to produce the best Bible of their time completed in 1611. The goal was to produce one common Bible to replace the Bishop's Bible and the Geneva Bibles in use then. They produced a Bible that was universal for all English speaking people. It is amazing the initial strife that finally bonded the translators together and the extreme lengths they all went to getting every phrase as exact as possible so the reader could grasp it. A very enlightening movie that gives some insight that most would never understand.
The other; John Wycliffe, The Morining Star. Was the story of how this Oxford Scholar translated the Latin Vulgate into the first English language Bible named after him 1382-1395. For the very first time the English people could read scripture for themselves and it revealed the grace of God that was never before taught by the Church of Rome that dominated Brittan in that period.
The Catholic Church considered it heresy to translate the word of God into a vulgar language. Sounds like HWA and Malm today. The funny part was, the Latin Vulgate the Catholic Church tried so hard to protect, was originally translated into the Latin Vulgar tongue also, the common language. This is a movie I would also recommend to those who have not seen it.
Hold on here -- what if James Malm's premise is completely wrong?
I know of UCG congregations in the South where the Pastor still uses KJV every week - and he's defended it as superior to the others two weeks in a row.
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