Just to throw a monkey wrench in all of this, my guys in Africa use the NIV. Hahha
It’s because the NIV has a 7th grade reading level and that’s what the people can handle education wise
Not my fav, but it’s ok
And now, you know the rest of the story.
I have been losing respect for Baptists for a while because
the ways of God are not to turn over his testimony to any translation committee that decides they want to add another translation to the list. We serve a God who killed a man under his Mosaic law for gathering sticks on the Sabbath day when he said plainly it was forbidden and killed another man because he touched the Ark of The Covenant to steady it when he did not have the tribal credentials to do it. IOW God is serious about what he says. If God were doing that to the careless and disobedient in today's economy I would guess, we certainly would not have paraphrases of his word and there would be dead bodies everywhere. Thank God for grace, eh? Don't think he has changed his attitude about rebels and sin and the death penalty, he has not. He has just put the death penalty on someone else and has instead extended mercy and grace to the rest of us through Jesus Christ the righteous.
Two things I have learned. One, the God whose testimony (the scriptures) that I have been reading is nothing like the God many of you folks present here on a regular basis.
Secondly, It is recognized that he has made adjustments and changes in his dispensations and transitions (his ways) in his dealings with men in his unfolding drama of redemption for all 6000 years now but his character has not changed.
1 Cor 1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.
My conclusion: We must fear God more than he is being feared by modern Christianity. It really does take a great deal of humility for learned men to bow the knee to foolishness like a Bible written with the stamp of God in the King's English.