NIV Gave Me Spiritual Indigestion!
It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Matt 4:4
This is a true story that really happened to me. I don't know of anyone else who has had this happen to them. If anything even similar to this has happened to you, please email me.
This past summer (2003) I was working at the Vacation Bible School at my church. One day, I forgot my King James, so I reached for one of the NIV's that they were using. I opened it randomly (I think it landed somewhere in 1 or 2 Corinthians), and began to read to myself. As I read, I felt my stomach go bad. I began to feel a little sick. I wasn't queasy, it was more like the feeling you get when you eat something that's a little spoiled but not enough to cause serious problems. I did not feel this way before I read from that NIV, I got it while reading. The Bible is supposed to be our spiritual food; we are not to live by bread alone (physical food) but also the Word of God (spiritual food). We are not just to live on the Word of God, we are supposed to live on EVERY WORD of God. Now if your Bible takes out some of the Word because the "oldest and best" manuscripts leave it out, and then mix mans words in by changing the sentence structure as done for "dynamic equivalence" and "paraphrased" bibles, you don't have the pure spiritual food, but a processed, additive filled counterfeit. Remember a dynamic equivalence "Bible" strives (NIV, NJKV) to put not God's words, but what God was thinking when He inspired those words. These scholars think they can know God's thoughts but the Lord says "my thoughts are not your thoughts" (Isa 55:8).
As I read, I got the impression from what I was reading that it was like that peanut butter you get at the store that has all that fat and junk mixed into it, as compared to the all-natural no additives kind that I'm used to eating. The Bible is our spiritual food, know do you want the all-natural kind or the watered down, processed, whipped up kind? If you use one of the modern versions (NIV, NASB, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, Living Bible, NLT, the Message, TEV, CEV, ect) try our King James Challenge today.
