Featured Gail Riplinger

So, I finally figured out to do a search on Riplinger's document of "missionary," and in 550 pages found 11 mentions of various kinds. The most significant one was her plan for missionary Bible translations, which in her plan must be done from the KJV, because the Greek and Hebrew Bibles bring "damnation," she says.

So, she looked through history and found some old time translations made directly from the KJV, such as that by pioneer Presbyterian missionary to China Robert Morrison. She says on p. 521, "The ideal situation would be to simply re-print a pure out-of-print Bible. For example, the Morrison Chinese Bible of 1821 has just been digitized in a collaborative and labor intensive many-year project of Chinese-speaking Christians and an American Missionary."

So what is the problem with that? It was done in the High Wenli dialect, especially for scholars. Wait a minute. I thought she opposed scholars. Here are some notes about that version from a lecture I give on the Chinese Bible. (The footnotes are at the end.) Note that Riplinger is pushing a Bible for scholars, done mostly by foreigners, led by a Presbyterian so that baptism is "washing," based for a good part on Catholic efforts.

A. Morrison worked together with William Milne to translate the Bible. Milne translated most of the Old Testament. What were the characteristics of his translation?
1. Translating from the KJV, they completed their New Testament in 1813 and the Old Testament in 1819. The Bible was published in 1823. It was in the “High Wenli” dialect, the language of scholars.
2. For God they used the Chinese character Shen (神), a common word in various idolatrous religions.[1] One objection to the use of this term is that it portrays the God of the Bible in a weak way.
3. For the word baptize (Greek βαπτίζω) they used the Chinese word xi (洗), meaning “wash.”[2] This practice has been followed to the present day in the Chinese Union Version (洗) and the Japanese Shinkyoudo Version (洗礼), as well as in other versions.
4. It was said to be “wooden and unclear” since Chinese partners were not sufficiently used.[3] Another source said that it used English word order rather than Chinese (they are similar).
5. It depended heavily on previous Catholic efforts, though a complete Catholic Bible did not exist until the 20th century. “His translation of the Gospels was founded on a Roman Catholic Harmony of the Gospels. The Acts of the Apostles and all the Pauline epistles except Hebrews were translated by a Roman Catholic.”[4]
[1] Toshikazu Foley, Biblical Translation in Chinese and Greek (Boston: Brill, 2009), 21
[2] “Morrison Chinese Bible,” accessed on 4/28/15 at: http://www.streetpreaching.com/morrison/morrison _chinese_bible_1823.htm.
[3] Mans Ramstad, “The Chinese Bible: How We Got It and How We Need It.” Accessed on 3/17/21 at The Chinese Bible: How We Got It and How We Need It | Global Missiology English.
[4] G. Winfred Hervey, The Story of Baptist Missions 2nd ed. (St. Louis: Chancey R Barns, 1886), 500.

 

Now, Riplinger could have gone for a Baptist version which was finished before the above one. However, it was done from the Hebrew and Greek by Joshua Marshman. Here are my notes on that:

A. What were the characteristics of Marshman’s translation of the Chinese Bible?
1. Translating from the original languages, they published in 1822, thus producing the first complete Bible in Chinese. (Various Nestorian and Catholic translators had produced one or another portion of the Bible.)
2. For the word baptize (Greek βαπτίζω) they used the Chinese words zhan (蘸) and cui (淬), both meaning “to dip,” as well as both these characters in a compound, zhancui (蘸淬).[1]
3. For the word for God, Marshman used the term Shen (神) as did Morrison.
4. Marshman’s translation, “according to his own son, ‘was necessarily imperfect,’ to be valued ‘chiefly as a memorial to his missionary zeal and literary perseverance.”[2]


[1] Foley, 25. (See previous quote from him for his excellent book on Chinese Christianity.)
[2] Ruth A. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 2nd ed., 2004 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983, 2004), 181.

 

I have no idea what you are talking about. I started the thread. And personally, I stay away from the Cal/Arm arguments.

If you think I don't believe in a Biblical doctrine of preservation, you don't know me in the slightest. What I am objecting to here is a very wrong, human invented doctrine of preservation, not a Biblical doctrion.

In my doctrine of preservation, I start with the general: God preserves His creation. This is clearly taught in the Bible, and the systematic theologies usually have sections on that.

The Bible is God's creation, so He preserves it. How? Absolutely not like Gail Riplinger, the twice-divorced woman teacher of men, believes He does.

 

There is so much to object to in Riplinger's books it is hard to know how to continue. So this is a little bit of a hodgepodge, but I'll continue.

On p. 60 she mentions verbal aspect without showing any real understanding of what it is, though she tries to a little later on. Most of my Greek 101 students know what it is, since I pound it into them. Very simply put (mixing in aktionsart), it tells what kind of action the verb is portraying.

So apparently to show how the world of Greek studies is in disarray, she talks about Stanley Porter's radical view of it, which very few Greek scholars agree completely with anyway. Then, without much of an explanation she lists 11 different Greek grammar books, which span 100 years or so, and are everything from beginning books to intermediate books to a book on parsing to Robertson's massive grammar. Then she says on the next page, "If professional Greek grammarians recognize problems in Greek grammar textbooks, why are professors presenting such material as if it was woven from the veil of the temple? These men may not know God, but they know Greek."

Well, "Duh!" With this she simply proves that she is not a linguist after all, or she would know that every single language in the world that has more than one written grammar has linguists disagreeing! I disagree with linguists like Everett Bleiler and Samuel Martin in their Japanese grammars of the term "participle" for the Greek "te form (ーて). Big hairy deal. That just shows that we are Japanese linguists.

I could write pages more about this section, such as when she says on 62, "An heretical form of progressive works salvation is taught in all Greek grammars. Their incorrectly translated marching orders, 'you are being saved,' instead of 'you are saved,' have mustered a works salvation army, enlisting religionists of every creed." Folks, this is just dumb. It's more about verbal aspect, of which she is less understanding than my Greek 101 students.

I don't have time to say more. Catch you on Monday, maybe.

 

Again from Greek and Hebrew Study Dangers, which 37818 kindly gave the link to, I just gave a brief note about what she said on p. 62 in my previous post, so I should say more. She wrote: "An heretical form of progressive works salvation is taught in all Greek grammars. Their incorrectly translated marching orders, 'you are being saved,' instead of 'you are saved,' have mustered a works salvation army, enlisting religionists of every creed."

Again, put very simply, verbal aspect is how the verb shows the action; it's nothing new at all. What she is talking about specifically there is called imperfective aspect, and refers to how an action can be continuous, with no indication of when it finishes. This is nothing new, though the labels are more recent. In the 1927 intermediate grammar of H. E. Dana and Julius Mantey, called it “continuous action,” (A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament New York: The MacMillan Company, 178). John R. Rice, who studied under Dana at Southwestern BTS, used this knowledge as the basis for his teaching that we must keep on asking in prayer, as seen in his 1942 best seller, Prayer: Asking and Receiving.

Specifically what Riplinger was talking about only occurs 3 times in the NKJV (which she hates).

1. In Acts 2:47, "And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." This is obviously referring to people being saved continuously, not simply one person. It is not heresy.

2. In 1 Corinthians 1:18, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." This is good theology. We are saved once from Hell (aoristic aspect), but salvation from sin in the sense of sanctification is a continual process. If Riplinger knew theology she would have avoided this mistake.

3. In 2 Corinthians 2:15, it says, "For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing." Again, this is the continual process of sanctification, and no error at all.

If one is going to pontificate about Bible doctrine, and call things heresy, he or she should know theology, and not make such basic errors.

P. S. In post #87 I said, "the Greek "te form (ーて)," but should have said, "the Japanese -te form (ーて)."

 

I believe Jack gave out some D.D.s to worthy people, but that one in 1996 was the worst choice ever. Hard to believe he did that, but by that time he was thoroughly radicalized about the KJV.

In my upcoming biography of John R. Rice, I have a chapter on him and Jack Hyles. I document how Jack became thoroughly KJVO, contrary to his own position all the time JRR was alive. Hyles wrote in 1993, “This preacher [referring to himself] believes that those preserved words are in the Bible that I hold in my right hand at this very moment—the King James Bible. I have more respect for the person who says that one of the false Bibles contains the very words of God than for the person who says only the original contains the very words of God.” (Enemies of Soulwinning. Hammond: Hyles Publications, 1993, 44). This statement shows that by 1993 Hyles had no respect any more for his mentor and father figure, John R. Rice.

 

Yep, and herein lies a story. I tell it in more detail in my book, but here's the short version. For Hyles' 1978 "Pastor's School," he secretly had Rice's favorite horse, "Mac," (named after General MacArthur) brought up to Hammond. At the "right" time, he had the horse led onto the platform, and gave it a "Doctor of Horse Sense." As I put it in my book, "However, Mac objected to the whole proceeding, making a deposit right there on the platform in a manner typical of horses."

Rice was not happy at all. He was a Texan cowboy, and they used to hang horse thieves in the old West. The staff member who took the horse up got a severe reprimand.

 

Since I mentioned my book on soul winning from 1979, I thought I might as well attach it here for you to enjoy. As I said in a previous post, in Ch. 2 I tell of folks saved through my ministry as a young man. So that was years before I went to Japan as a missionary for 33 years. Another book could be written about that.

Gail Riplinger said she witnessed to many students. Okay, she should write her own book on souls saved, if she can. She could make every Christian in the world read the KJB exclusively, and still see no one come to Christ. We are commanded to reach the world for Christ in the five statements of the Great Commission, but again, we are nowhere told to defend the Bible. Just go out and stab someone with it (spiritually, of course)!

 

I'm not sure of all of the details, but until 2010 the Dean Burgon Society stood by Gail Riplinger and sold her books. However, then Dr. D. A. Waite (DBS founder) and his wife found out that they had allegedly been lied to by Gail Riplinger about her divorces. Suddenly, Riplinger was a heretic. Look here for what Waite wrote then about Riplinger: http://www.biblefortoday.org/PDF/heresy.pdf.

 

I happen to be able to read some Chinese, since Japanese uses thousands of Chinese characters. And I also happen to have Matthew and Mark PDFs of Morrison's 1813 Chinese NT,, and can access the modern Chinese Union Version (1919) through software. Remember, this is the High Wenli (for scholars) version, done by Presbyterian Morrison from the KJV, which Riplinger thinks would be suitable for a modern Chinese.

I did a quick look at a few verses in Mark 1. So, what would be the difficulties for a modern Chinese reader?
1. The syntax looks somewhat different. Sentence order is quite different in some sentences.
2. The name of the book of Mark uses a different character.
3. The transliterated name for Christ is different: 基督士督 in Morrison's, but 基督 in the CUV (an abbreviation).
4. I see some particles are different. For example, the Morrison possessive is 之 (literary, which carried over into classical Japanese), but 的 is the modern possessive.
5. Punctuation was done a little differently.
6. Chinese characters were sometimes different for the same meaning.
7. After WW2 the mainland Chinese government simplified many of the characters, though Taiwan and other places kept the traditional ones, which can be much more complicated.

So, a modern mainland Chinese reading Morrison's NT would have a much more difficult time than a modern American reading the KJV. Yet, Riplinger and some other KJVO's will insist that the one translated from the KJV must be used.

It's almost as if they believe that there is some kind of magical, spiritual power that resides in the KJV, that somehow makes any translation from it as more powerful, with other translations having no power at all. Remember my story about the KJVO missionary who was told to put his hand on the KJV while preaching from the Japanese non-KJV Bible? That man had an affair with a lady in the church, and had to leave Japan. Guess he wasn't sanctified.

What is powerful about the KJV is the truth it conveys, not who translated it (Church of England scholars). One may believe with all of one's heart in the KJV, but that does not save nor sanctify a person. It is Biblical truth applied by the Holy Spirit that sanctifies. "Sanctify them in Thy truth, Thy word is truth" (John 17:17).