Featured King James Onlyism and Missions

Having been a missionary on deputation (3 1/2 years) and in Japan (1981-2014), I contend that (1) King James Onlyism is not consistent with a strong position on missions, and (2) KJVO missionaries invariably change when they minister on any field where English is not the lingua franca.

In support of my first contention:

(1) See the DBS website where messages from many of their meetings is posted: Annual Meetings of the Dean Burgon Society. Only two of those messages are about missions, and rather than encouraging fulfillment of the Great Commission, they criticize mission efforts that do not agree with them.
(2) Here is another DBS page about missions (they are few and far between): The KJB, Mission Boards & DBS Members. Again, it is not about encouraging missions and reaching the world, but simply criticizing those who do not agree with them.
(3) The DBS does have missionaries in its ranks, such as Jack Moorman to England. However, I've read two of his books, and they are not about missions at all. When he should be encouraging the fulfillment of the Great Commission as a missionary, he prefers to pontificate on the KJV. And note that he is in an English speaking country, and doesn't have to deal with any translation issues in his country's language.
(4) The KLVO movement has consistently failed to encourage missionary translation (even of the KJV). There have been isolated efforts by individual missionaries, but the issue eludes most KJV advocates. Several men from the DBS tried to start a Bible Society, the William Carey Bible Society, but fell flat on their collective faces, and it no longer exists. After it collapsed, Japanese yakuza gangsters used the website for a while to teach proper security for their nefarious practices. You can't make this stuff up! There is a better effort going on including some of those men, and I hope it succeeds: Bearing Precious Seed Global
(5) The most successful KJVO advocates or supporters of Bible translation avoid the KJVO issues, do not put out books on it, but just print Bibles, and I highly respect that.

 

In support of my second contention, I offer personal experience:

(1) One friend of mine, an senior missionary from another board, was KJVO when on furlough, but Shinkaiyaku Only (Japanese version done like the NASB) when on the field. He told me, "John, never tell your people that this Bible has mistakes in it. It will destroy their confidence in the Word of God."
(2) The only Ruckman grad missionary I ever knew called me about our new NT to see what we were doing, but never asked if I were translating from the KJV.
(3) One KJVO rookie missionary learned that there was no "Japanese KJV" (a misnomer), and called his pastor to find out what to do. The pastor said, "When you preach from the Japanese Bible, put your hand on the KJV and it will be all right."
(4) A KJVO effort was made to translate the Bible into Japanese from the KJV. His "rules" for the effort were so silly that no one joined him, not even KJV advocates. One "rule" was that "wine" in the KJV must be translated with the Japanese transliteration, ワイン (pro. wain). However, that word can only mean highly intoxicating modern wine in Japanese! 35 years later, the effort is still stalled, though the missionary (now retired) appears to be still toiling away.
5. Every time I bring up the subject with KJVO advocates (here on the BB or elsewhere) of how to properly translate into Japanese (to parallel the KJV), the answer is, "Well, you handle that, Brother John." (If the KJV is perfect, how can I produce a perfect Japanese translation?" So KJV Onlyists do not like to engage about missionary translations. I will say, though, that Phil Stringer has put together a remarkable document showing what Bible translations were parallel to the KJV, "The Word of God for All Nations." (I can no longer find it on the Internet.) Unfortunately, he gets my name and details about our team wrong.

 

I should also state that when an effort is made to produce a "KJV equivalent" Bible on a mission field, it often leads to strife. Just witness the huge controversy among Spanish speaking missionaries and national pastors about which Spanish Bible is the true "Spanish KJV."

 

Now, why do folk feel it necessary to defend the KJV? There is no need for that, and the Bible never tells us to defend it. Defend it against liberal attacks on its contents? Of course. That's apologetics. But in Christian service there is no need to defend the Bible.

The Bible is a sword (Ephesians 6:17, Hebrews 4:12). You don't defend a sword. I tell my students, "Go out and stab someone with it!" Did a Biblical soldier (David and Jonathan, for example) put his sword on a stand and then say, "Don't touch my sword or I'll clobber you!"? In Japan, I had a set of two samurai swords on a stand on display, but they were only display models, and the metal on purpose would not hold an edge. A true samurai sword takes a license just to own it in Japan, but the fakes you can put on a stand--and you don't grab for one when someone invades your home! It would break!

In the US, I have three swords in our condo: a Chinese two-edged sword, a Japanese ninja sword (very sharp), and a scimitar just for display (no edge). Which do you think I would grab to repel a home intruder? The ninja sword, of course! Just the same, use the KJV Bible to lead poor lost sinners to Christ, to teach about the Christian life, to preach God's Word. Don't feel you have to defend it.

On the mission fields of the world, any movement to advocate one particular version is unnecessary. Most places they are happy to just have a Bible translation!

 

Glad to be a help. This is one area very few people in the KJV discussion stop to think about, but we should.

In my mind there are two kinds of KJV Onlyists when it comes to missions. The kind that puts defending the KJV first, so they rarely think of missions. They put tremendous effort into their views on the KJV: books, conferences, websites, Internet forums, etc. This kind will be very disappointed when they reach Heaven and figure out that God never said in His Word (KJV, if you will) that they should defend their Bible version.

Then there are the type that believes in the KJV, and may even believe it is a perfect translation. But they believe in obeying the Lord, and put much effort into Great Commission efforts. They may eventually figure out the disjunct between thinking the KJV is perfect, but other language translations are not. But they love the Lord and can do great things as missionaries, Bible translators, etc. They will have rewards in Heaven.

 

Now, someone who has not carefully read what I wrote might conclude that I am saying that KJVO people do a lousy job with missions. That is not what I am saying at all, at all. I am saying that:

1. KJVO missionaries to a non-English speaking culture are forced to change, and,
2. You can either be zealous in defending the KJV or you can be zealous for obeying the Great Commission. The two do not go together. We are commanded to reach the world for Christ. We are not commanded to defend the KJV or any other translation of God's Word.

 

Let me illustrate Point 2. Check out this website: Home. Note the following things.

1. Their mission statement is: "The King James Bible Research Council is dedicated to promoting the King James Bible and other traditional texts around the world. We believe the King James preserves, by accurate translation, the inerrancy of the Greek Received Text and the Hebrew/Aramaic Masoretic text for English speaking people." Not bad. But there is absolutely nothing in their mission statement about reaching the world for Christ--the Great Commission. The KJBRC is not about reaching the world for Christ. It is about reaching saved believers for the KJV.

2. But surely there is something elsewhere on the website, right? There is this in their doctrinal statement: "We believe it to be the responsibility of the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to make His Gospel known to all men." Yeah! But that's only only place, and it's kind of obligatory to have something about the Great Commission in your doctrinal statement.

3. What about their "Goals" on the "About" page? Here they are: "To do research on the King James Bible and other traditional texts. To provide publications and media to promote the King James Bible. To provide a Speakers Bureau for churches, colleges, schools. To provide the person in the pew understandable, positive, clear information about the superiority of the King James Bible." None of their goals are to fulfill the Great Commission, the last command of Christ.

4. There are no articles about reaching the world for Christ in the "Articles" section. There are no audio messages about reaching the world for Christ.

6. The "Classroom" of lectures does have one lecture out of 12 by a missionary, "The Bible in Other Languages."

5. Several of the video messages do have to do with the Great Commission, one on Bible translation (actually a comparatively good message) by a missionary, and another, "Should We Sacrifice the Purity of the Bible on the Altar of Soulwinning," (I've not listened to that one, but at least it's about soul-winning), and a others on Bible translation.

So again, my point. Why are they so strong on the KJV, but fairly weak on the Great Commission? We have no Bible Defense Commission!!

 

Now notice this KJVO missions website: Bearing Precious Seed Global. The head of this KJVO Bible society is Steve Zeinner, who gave the KJBRC message mentioned above on Bible translation.

Now I disagree with some things on this website. On a previous thread, I reviewed a couple of the books advertised here. But at least these guys are in there doing their best to get the Word of God translated into languages that don't have it, and that is my passion as a missionary and a seminary prof heading up an MA in Bible Translation.

 

I grew up in a soul-winning family as the grandson of famous evangelist John R. Rice. In our family, soul-winning was just what you do. You weren't considered to be a good Christian unless you were out there doing your best to reach the world for Christ. Therefore, it was a very small step for me to go from soul-winner in America to becoming a soul-winner in Japan for 33 years.

In my new biography of John R. Rice I have a whole chapter on him and missions (John R. Rice: The Last Revivalist of the Twentieth Century | On to Victory Press). His famous tract, "What Must I Do to Be Saved?" has been translated into over 40 languages and distributed in many millions of copies in those languages. He preached in Japan twice, India, Korea, etc. He personally supported soul-winning missionaries, was on the board of a mission board reaching Latin America, etc.

Now, the emphasis on worldwide soul-winning of John R. Rice, meaning his emphasis on the last command of Jesus, means that KJVO people have a hard time dealing with him. He was not KJVO. If they attack him personally like Peter Ruckman did over and over, they look bad. On the other hand, I call the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) movement "the house that John R. Rice built." In other words, the typical IFB KJVO advocate would not even have a heritage if it were not for John R. Rice! So they often say, "John R. Rice would have become KJVO if he lived." But that's a lie. He never was, and never would be. His magnum opus, Our God-Breathed Book, the Bible (1968), makes this perfectly clear.

 

I praise the Lord for this. And our church supports 140 missionaries. I don't have the monetary figures for that, but the support amounts are not trivial, but well above the average--several hundred a month if they are out of our church.

Our small Bible college now provides the majority of new missionaries for one board. As the missions teacher, I can say that perhaps 20% of our current male students are aimed at being a missionary in the future. We have several grads on deputation, one of them to go to N. Africa to lead a Bible translation effort already in place. (He's one of my students in the MA in Bible Translation.") That is significant because most Bible colleges nowadays are becoming vocational schools instead of preacher factories.

However, this is all not really connected to the OP, which is about how you can't be gung ho for defending the KJV at the same time you are gung ho for the Great Commission. I am not saying that KJVO folk do not do missions.

 

Pastors who don't answer the hard questions--or promise to study them out--are failing.

Yes. Um no. Uh, what was the question again?

 

Correct, and the only way to logically get around that is the "Seven Times Purified Theory." But people don't even agree what that means!

 

In a search just now I found the following trenchant observation:

"If you take a stand for everything then you spend your whole life fighting for nothing."--attributed to someone named Kevin Miller (2008).

I'm not giving the URL for personal reasons, but if you really have to have it let me know.