Let them be accursed

I recently picked up a book at a thrift store that, in my opinion, I would have to say is the most heretical thing I’ve ever read, not that I read much of it. You see this book wasn’t any ordinary book but a perversion of Scripture that was masquerading as the Bible. And bad as anything else out there might be…it would seem to me that a straight out perversion of the Scriptures has to top the list. If there is anything worse, I haven’t seen it.

The morning after I got that book I sat down to look a bit more at a website I had come across the night before while researching that book. This particular website may belong to a reformed man and I wanted to read more of what he had to say, to see if I could better figure out what his beliefs were. As I read the titles on his blog I came across one that was about 2 Timothy 2:15.

This particular verse reminded me of a conversation I had with someone I briefly knew several years ago. The person I was talking to at that time believed that this verse, which says ‘rightly divide’ (KJV) the Scriptures, was the culprit behind something of a Bible study with the person I knew at that time and it was the culprit behind this man writing this particular blog post. And I guess you could say that, in a way, it is the culprit behind me writing this.

If I remember correctly, and I may not, the person I knew several years ago based a whole lot of their understanding of Scripture off 2 Timothy 2:15 as it is written in the King James Version. And what this person believed was that to ‘rightly divide’ the word of God we must separate Scripture. We must understand it based off the old covenant and the new covenant. This person had studied this to the point that they had pinpointed the exact moment the new covenant went into effect. At least they had pinpointed the exact moment they believed that happened and to them that was THE moment it happened.

I have no intention of going into just what moment they believed that happened or whether or not I think they were right or wrong. Instead I want to take the idea of ‘rightly dividing’ the truth and focus on it.

First of all most versions of the Scriptures do not even use that term. The NASB for example says ‘accurately handling’ the word. I don’t know about you but I see a big difference in ‘rightly dividing’ and ‘accurately handling’.

What are we supposed to do with Scripture if we are dividing it? Why would we be dividing it? For what purpose? And where would we make the division?

If that isn’t enough to make us wonder about dividing the word of God, 2 Timothy 2 goes on to tell us that ALL of Scripture is ‘inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training’. Why then would we need to ‘divide’ the word of God? How would we divide it? And again…

Why?

Would it be divided based on covenants like the person I knew believed? Would we divide it based on what gender we are? Would we divide it based on…what?

But if we look to the greek the word translated into ‘rightly divide’ doesn’t mean rightly divide. It translates as ‘to cut straight’, ‘to make straight and smooth’, or ‘to handle aright.’

And there, I believe is where we get a much better understanding of 2 Timothy 2:15, one that fits with the rest of 2 Timothy.

2 Timothy is written by Paul. I am currently in the process of mentally walking with Paul. I am following his journeys through Acts, reading his letters as he wrote them, mentally trying to place myself there with him, to see what he saw, to hear what he heard, to understand what he experienced. I can’t. I know I can’t. But I can imagine. And I am learning much in the imagining and in the researching. Not because I am making anything up but because I read what Paul was doing and then I research what that place was like in that time. I look it up. I find it on a map. And I remember who Paul was at that time, who he had been, what he had just been doing, what he is doing at that point.

And as I look at the meanings of the greek for the word that was translated into ‘rightly divide’ and I think of ‘to handle aright’. I remember also that Paul was a tentmaker. He cut and sewed material.

I have been sewing longer than I can remember. My grandmother held me on her knee when I was a toddler and we sewed. I can’t remember that but I’ve seen the pictures, heard the stories. As I got older I did more and more sewing with my grandmother. So much so that she and I eventually traded places. When I was a toddler I couldn’t do the sewing, I simply ‘helped’ my grandmother while she held my hand or looked on with a smile, encouraging me. In my grandmothers later years, when arthritis numbed her fingers and age dulled her sight, I became the one doing the sewing, looking on while my grandmother ‘helped’, smiling and encouraging her, thanking her for her contributions.

Paul made tents. He would have had to cut material, requiring straight lines and precision, or close to it. He would have sewn seams together, requiring straight seams and an understanding of which part of the material must be sewn to exactly which other part.

Those pieces of material, most likely very large, would have had to be handled a certain way. They would have had to be handled ‘aright’. But Paul would have known something else…his work as a tent maker would have taught him what it meant to ‘cut straight’ why a straight cut was vital. He would have learned that he had to ‘make straight and smooth’ the material before cutting or sewing it.

By looking to Paul, by understanding who and what he was, we gain valuable insight. We can’t know exactly what Paul meant when he wrote 2 Timothy 2. All we can do is read the whole of it, even the whole of 2 Timothy. Paul wrote it while imprisoned. Whether his imprisonment had any bearing on the words used here, I don’t know. What I do know was that by the time Paul wrote 2 Timothy he had spent many years making tents. And he had spent many years devoting his life to sharing the gospel. By his own admission Paul had chosen to ‘know nothing but Christ and him crucified.’

It seems to me that when a person knows only one thing…even if they are choosing to know only that thing while ignoring or disregarding everything else they know…then that one thing would permeate their entire lives. If Paul knew only Christ…then Christ was a part of his tent making. If Paul lived for Christ…then Christ was his focus even as he worked.

Paul was the man that told us what the fruits of the Spirit are and that those fruits will be in the believers. Wouldn’t those fruits have been in him?

And so we have an idea of the kind of man Paul was.

Now we have him telling us that we need to handle Scripture ‘aright’. I think of him telling us to ‘make it straight and smooth’, to ‘cut it straight’. And I think of Paul, as he was making a tent, turning the material this way and that, cutting the lines straight, smoothing the material until there are no wrinkles in it. Have you ever tried to cut a straight line in a piece of wrinkled material? It pretty much impossible.

In Galatians 1 Paul writes that if anyone ‘should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.’ Again, I can’t know exactly what Paul meant when he was writing 2 Timothy 2 but I can gain an understanding of what he was talking about and can make a guess at what he most likely meant. Is my guess right? I don’t know.

But what I gain from this is Paul is saying, to the effect of… ‘here is the gospel. Don’t change it, don’t make it what you want it to be, leave it as it is. Handle it the right way.’

Have you ever seen a sword? A real sword? Have you handled it up close? Run your finger over the blade? Felt the sharpness of the metal? I have not but I can…again…imagine. Swords were used in battle, they were used at a time when a man’s survival may well have depended on his sword. Chances are they were sharp and well cared for.

How much good would a dull, rusty, or broken sword have done someone?

Scripture tells us that Scripture is sharper than any sword (Hebrews 4:12). The sword of Scripture, we are told, pierces ‘to the division of soul and of spirit’ and that it can discern ‘the thoughts and intentions of the heart.’ The use of the word any…it is sharper than any two edged sword…tells us we aren’t talking about the old rusty, ill cared for swords only but that Scripture is sharper than the sharpest two edged, most well cared for, sharpest sword there is. Scripture is a sword that not only pierces flesh and bone but pierces the very soul and spirit and discerns our thoughts and intentions.

In a post I wrote some time ago I asked what you would do if you were handed a box that was very explosive, a box that if mishandled, jiggled the wrong way, dropped, allowed to reach the wrong temperature, would explode.

Look again at what Scripture is. About what it does. Here is the strongest of weapons. Men use weapons that can kill the body. They use swords, guns, and explosives in war…but they don’t use spiritual weapons. Scripture is a spiritual weapon that can pierce to the very soul, that can divide the spirit and the soul.

Scripture is what Paul is saying… ‘cut it straight’, ‘make it straight and smooth’, handle this ‘aright’. This was a spiritual weapon. This had the power to reach the soul and the spirit. This…is eternal in nature. This will turn the world upside down. This…I put into your hands.

Handle it ‘aright’.

Years ago I saw one of those street circus type performers juggling flaming torches. Have you ever tried to juggle? Whether you succeeded or not…you quickly learned that you must handle what you were juggling a certain way or you would drop it. Now imagine what you were juggling was a flaming torch. Not only will you drop it if you don’t handle it just so but you must catch each one in a certain spot or it will burn you or those around you. The juggler must handle those flaming torches ‘aright’. He must treat them a certain way.

This is what Paul was saying. Here is the Scripture. Treat it this way.

There is a ‘church’ building that I used to go to. We went there regularly for less than a year and in that time we made friends and I very much enjoyed our time there. Then the Lord took me away from that ‘church’ and the people in it. At first I was able to keep up a long distance correspondence with a few of the friends we had made there but in time even that faded away. Now I visit that ‘church’ maybe a few times a year and only do that to see the friends that…aren’t really friends anymore.

It’s been several months since I last visited that ‘church’. On that last visit I didn’t even stay for the sermon. There were family reasons why I could not stay for the sermon that day but I was in the area so I stopped in before the service to say hello to the friends we had there. In less than an hour, and without hearing any part of any service, I quickly learned that this ‘church’ has begun to teach and encourage many people in the ‘Christian’ writing and movie industries that are quite well known to be heretics. One of these people comes up as an immediate heretic if you do an internet search on their name. And yet this ‘church’ teaches from this persons books.

I left there that day sad and unsure if I could ever sit through another service there. I wasn’t sad for myself, I have long known that I no longer share much of their beliefs, but sad for them and the fact that those ‘in charge’ of leading and making choices for so many are leading them astray.

And that is where I come back to the book I got at the thrift store. The book I got was a paraphrase of the Scriptures and it is a bad one that I saw referred to online as a perversion instead of a version. And that is exactly what it is. As I write this that not-bible is sitting on the back of my couch. I can see it from where I sit. I could reach out and touch it. It is here only because I wanted the chance to look at it. I knew when I bought it that I would destroy it after I had looked at it.

I needed less than 15 minutes with that not-bible to know I had seen enough.

This not-bible is being sold as a Bible. You could walk into a ‘Christian’ bookstore and buy it as a Bible. If you went in telling the clerk you were looking for an easy to understand, modern version of the Bible they might even take you straight to this not-bible.

In the little bit of reading I did about this not-bible I read that a ‘church’ run ‘Christian’ school had bought copies of this not-bible and given them out as gifts to all their graduating seniors.

If it wasn’t bad enough that the man that wrote this not-bible, and by the way…no true Bible was ever translated by a single person, mistranslated or outright decided to mistranslate so much of Scripture and then label it as Scripture or allow others to label it as Scripture but bad as that is it gets worse, way worse. People…preachers, leaders, teachers…are actually using this not-bible as if it were Scripture, treating it as if it were Scripture, encouraging others to use and treat it as if it were Scripture. And they are buying it and handing it out to young people, young people that will think this is a reliable translation because their teacher or preacher gave it to them.

People in ‘Christian’ bookstores, stores that many ‘believers’ go to believing that everything inside its doors is safe because it’s all ‘Christian’, sell it to people looking to buy a Bible.

Paul told us to handle Scripture ‘aright’. Scripture is sharper than a two edge sword, able to separate our very souls from our spirits. Does this perversion of the Scriptures handle Scripture ‘aright’? Do the teacher and preachers that use and encourage this not-bible handle Scripture ‘aright’? Scripture is a weapon whether it is in the hand, on the tongue, or in the heart…but the weapon being used in this not-bible has a twisted, dirty, rusted, dull and broken blade.

This is not the Scripture of the Bible. This is not the Scripture of the original manuscripts. This is a ‘scripture’ that will lead you straight to hell. And all the while you could be studying it diligently, applying it to your life, learning it, memorizing it, living it. But…it is not the Scripture of the Lord and it is not the word of God that can save. Nor is it good for teaching, correcting or anything other than kindling.

This not-bible does not teach the Christ of Scripture. It does not give us His words. The man walking the pages of this not-bible is not the Christ of salvation but the jesus that wants to bless you with every material blessing your evil heart desires. The jesus in this not-bible did not come to be the propitiation for the sins of the elect, chosen before the foundation of the earth, dragged to Christ, and granted salvation (Ephesians 1, John 6:44). This jesus has focused his ‘love’ on ‘us’ and took ‘pleasure in planning’ this. This jesus or god wants us to enter the celebration of his ‘lavish gift-giving’ (Ephesians 1 in the not-bible).

That isn’t Christ. That isn’t God. That isn’t the Lord of Scripture. That isn’t even Scripture. That is some perverted, let-me-make-the-Bible-what-I-want-it-to-be-so-that-I-can-live-as-the-world-lives,-so-that-I-can-enjoy-the-evils-of-this-world,-so-that-I-can-encourage-others-in-their-evil-persuits. This is evil on paper, sandwiched between the covers of a book and called the bible.

This is not the Scripture that Paul wrote. It is not the Scripture that he read. It is not the gospel that he taught. It is not the gospel that he lived and died for.

Paul, in 2 Timothy 2, said that if anyone teaches a different gospel than the one he gave…

Let them be accursed.












For anyone wanting to know...the name of this not-bible, this perversion of Scripture being sold as the holy Scriptures, is The Message Bible.