WELS members and pastors can defeat the New NIV translation sales pitch two ways.
Method One
This requires homework, which may be too taxing for those who follow the Packers while eating their Johnsonville bratwurst.
- Fight the adoption at every level, giving no quarter to anyone. Fight it in the congregation, the circuit, the conference, and the district. Write letters to key people and send them certified with a signed receipt requested. That makes it impossible for them to say, "I did not receive your letter."
- Learn as much as possible about the NNIV and the King James Version heritage. 400th year! Boolah, Boolah! They represent the extremes, from anything goes mytho-porno invention (NNIV) to painstaking accuracy based on Luther's work (KJV). The KJV is the English version of Luther's epic work. Remember Luther?
- Even more work and shocking - learn about the words and verses dropped out of all modern translations, how it all goes back to Wescott and Hort (fascinated by the occult) and Tischendorf, who miraculously found the two new codices (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) that became the new gold standard. Yes, the Bible did fall from heaven, in their eyes, because no one really knows where those manuscripts came from.
- Accumulate links and books related to these issues, especially about the newly invented method used in the NIV and NNIV - dynamic (sic) translation. Share them with others.
- Anticipate being kicked out of WELS. They did it before when they adopted the NIV. Afraid of the WELS? Then you are in an abusive cult and you do not tremble at God's Word.
- Learn to compare versions at Bible Gateway. The default NIV there is the NNIV.
This is easier and may end up being the choice of the majority.
- Simply do nothing. Avoid all meetings about the translation. Sign and say, "They will adopt the NNIV anyway." Refuse to attend any circuit, conference, or district meeting while stating that assumption. It is a ruse, just like the votes on getting rid of Northwestern College.
- Stop buying all NPH books immediately. Get books from other sources. If anyone asks why, give the NNIV as the reason.
- Many good books are out in the used market, and hordes of them simply sit on shelves in church closets. Share in book exchanges. I used to give away boxes of old Lutheran books. They are easy to obtain and share.
- Create your own materials and share them. With Lulu, anything can be uploaded and made available as a free PDF download or as a printed version at a modest cost. They can also be turned into e-books.
- Watch NPH go the way of Augsburg-Fortress, which announces a new plan to save the dying ELCA publishing house. The plans never include printing orthodox Lutheran books again.
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| WELS Seminary President Paul Wendland loves the NNIV. |
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California wrote:
Kudos for the suggestions in Method #1. Method #1 will take a lot of independent study and undoing of what was standard curricula in seminary for half a century. What Method #1 involves is what the seminary should have been doing.
One consequence for pastors who do dare to embark on using Method #1 there will be disillusionment about the seminary itself and their training there, or lack thereof. Even laypeople have been able to discover on their own the sources of information and issues related to manuscript evidence, methods of translation, etc.,etc., all of which is history which does not require knowledge of "Greek". "Do you know Greek?" is the old shibboleth tossed out by peers to anyone who would question a pastor or synod leader re: whatever contempory translation of the day approved by synod. That's not good enough any more to divert consideration of historical events by influences in the late19th Century who had an agenda resulting in the catastophic long term consequences of both pastors and laymen not to be able to declare with certaintly: "Thus saith the Lord."
That battle was fought within a commission formed to simply up date Elizabethan words in 1880's, but not to tamper with the underlying foundations of the KJV. Sadly, a faction with other plans used the commission to hijack the effort and succeeded in influencing enough commission members to approve a revision which replaced manuscript evidence used by Luther, Wycliffe and Tyndale. The maneuvering and tactics used by the perpetartors described by a commission member, Dean John Burgon, the defender of the evidence on which the KJV was based, sounds all too familiar to the voices in the wilderness today.
I think the book which solidified my confidence in KJV was THE REVISION REVISED by Dean John Burgon. Someone with whom I had worked closely researching and battling public school issues in the 70's was encountering the very same issues re: Bible Translations and efforts to get rid of the KJV. She was not a Lutheran. Someone she knew had found a dusty copy of Burgon's book on the shelves of a retired missionary's library.
It had long been out of print. But my friend photocopied the entire book for me to read, and it was an account about Burgon's experience, who had been appointed in England to be part of the committee to do the revisions of the KJV to update the Elizabethan terms which were no longer being used even then in 1883. He describes his recognizing that Wescott and Hort (also committee members) were there with an agenda to use the substitute manuscript evidence hijacking the original purpose of the committee. His struggles to stop them from within the committee were so much what anyone who has tried to work to keep usurpers from winning the day, has experienced. It was that book which helped me to grasp the issue which fell on deaf ears who kept referring to the translation issue as if differences between KJV and contemporary translations was simply different ways of translating the same source material.
That's when the charge of "do you know Greek?" would be used to dismiss any layman's attempts to get to fundamentals. The question needing to be asked was, "which Greek?" and the determination needing to be
settled is which family of manuscript evidence is really most reliable....That promoted by Wescott and Hort or that used by Lutherand and KJV translators.
Some years later the book was republished by someone in Australia, and then again by the Dean Burgon Society which is dedicated to preservation and promoting of the KJV. That is a source started and continued by Baptists, but they have a lot of books, articles and references available re: the issue and papers refuting some figures who have come on the scene who have distorted their position with positions which are not supportable.
You might find the website for the Dean Burgon Society a source for your research. Awhile ago they were offering the paper hard cover books at special price in preparation for offering on line. I don't know the status of their progress on that process. I have several of the the books from the society in addition to THE REVISION REVISED by Burgon.
Dean Burgon Society
---
Read here about the founder of the make-it-all-up dynamic equivalence fraud, the key to understanding the NNIV.
California wrote:
Kudos for the suggestions in Method #1. Method #1 will take a lot of independent study and undoing of what was standard curricula in seminary for half a century. What Method #1 involves is what the seminary should have been doing.
One consequence for pastors who do dare to embark on using Method #1 there will be disillusionment about the seminary itself and their training there, or lack thereof. Even laypeople have been able to discover on their own the sources of information and issues related to manuscript evidence, methods of translation, etc.,etc., all of which is history which does not require knowledge of "Greek". "Do you know Greek?" is the old shibboleth tossed out by peers to anyone who would question a pastor or synod leader re: whatever contempory translation of the day approved by synod. That's not good enough any more to divert consideration of historical events by influences in the late19th Century who had an agenda resulting in the catastophic long term consequences of both pastors and laymen not to be able to declare with certaintly: "Thus saith the Lord."
That battle was fought within a commission formed to simply up date Elizabethan words in 1880's, but not to tamper with the underlying foundations of the KJV. Sadly, a faction with other plans used the commission to hijack the effort and succeeded in influencing enough commission members to approve a revision which replaced manuscript evidence used by Luther, Wycliffe and Tyndale. The maneuvering and tactics used by the perpetartors described by a commission member, Dean John Burgon, the defender of the evidence on which the KJV was based, sounds all too familiar to the voices in the wilderness today.
I think the book which solidified my confidence in KJV was THE REVISION REVISED by Dean John Burgon. Someone with whom I had worked closely researching and battling public school issues in the 70's was encountering the very same issues re: Bible Translations and efforts to get rid of the KJV. She was not a Lutheran. Someone she knew had found a dusty copy of Burgon's book on the shelves of a retired missionary's library.
It had long been out of print. But my friend photocopied the entire book for me to read, and it was an account about Burgon's experience, who had been appointed in England to be part of the committee to do the revisions of the KJV to update the Elizabethan terms which were no longer being used even then in 1883. He describes his recognizing that Wescott and Hort (also committee members) were there with an agenda to use the substitute manuscript evidence hijacking the original purpose of the committee. His struggles to stop them from within the committee were so much what anyone who has tried to work to keep usurpers from winning the day, has experienced. It was that book which helped me to grasp the issue which fell on deaf ears who kept referring to the translation issue as if differences between KJV and contemporary translations was simply different ways of translating the same source material.
That's when the charge of "do you know Greek?" would be used to dismiss any layman's attempts to get to fundamentals. The question needing to be asked was, "which Greek?" and the determination needing to be
settled is which family of manuscript evidence is really most reliable....That promoted by Wescott and Hort or that used by Lutherand and KJV translators.
Some years later the book was republished by someone in Australia, and then again by the Dean Burgon Society which is dedicated to preservation and promoting of the KJV. That is a source started and continued by Baptists, but they have a lot of books, articles and references available re: the issue and papers refuting some figures who have come on the scene who have distorted their position with positions which are not supportable.
You might find the website for the Dean Burgon Society a source for your research. Awhile ago they were offering the paper hard cover books at special price in preparation for offering on line. I don't know the status of their progress on that process. I have several of the the books from the society in addition to THE REVISION REVISED by Burgon.
Dean Burgon Society
---
Read here about the founder of the make-it-all-up dynamic equivalence fraud, the key to understanding the NNIV.
