Biblical Corruption I didnt write the Biblical Corruption Article but I reprinted it (with permission) because it was done so well. I believe the non-trinity view of Allan Cronshaw is correct. I also believe Christ is/was YHWH and KRISHNA and Melchezidek - in other words the spirit that incarnated Jesus Christ has incarnated more than once. Christ lived an example life for us and the begettal was part of the example and was also necessary for him to become free of the cycle of birth and death forever just as it can be for us. The Bible records that Christ is the firstborn of many brethren --- Colossians 1:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: Christ was the pace setter, the trail blazer, the initiator of a new and improved way for us to achieve God Consiousness. Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. If after reading Allan Cronshaws article you wonder how could Christ be God in the flesh and yet become the begotten Son of God at his baptism - Please read Understanding God for it explains that God exists in both the Uncreated realm and the created Realm simultaneously. See also The Heavenly Prince Melchizedek for a text that wasnt corrupted that supports the view that Christs life 2000 years ago was not the first incarnation of God on this earth. Hebrews 5:5 So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, You are my Son; today I have become your Father. 6 And he says in another place, You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. HAS THE BIBLE BEEN FAITHFULLY PRESERVED? By Allan Cronshaw Modern day Christian doctrine rests upon the premise that God preserved the Bible in an absolute infallible and pure state, in order that all men should know the (historical) truth and believe in the Son of God. Their doctrinal position is that if God permitted the Bible to have been altered, then the present day church could not be genuine. Based upon this dogmatic presumption that the Christian Church must be maintained in order for man to be saved, they reason that God would not allow the written word of the scriptures to be corrupted. Thus, modern Christians cling to this doctrine -- ignoring overwhelming evidence to the contrary -- evidence that demonstrates conclusively that our Bible has been severely altered and edited -- because they fail to grasp the very foundational principles of the New Covenant itself -- principles that are not historical, but spiritual. It is not until we understand that the Bible is a road-map that leads us to the Gate of the Kingdom, and the Word that is written in our hearts -- rather than a final revelation from God to man -- that we are able to even begin to come to terms with the Spiritual Gospel of Christ that can never be corrupted. The very assertion of Christian Church Authority that either the Church or the scriptures must be preserved in order for man to obtain salvation not only demonstrates a total inability to perceive the essence of the Gospel message -- but perhaps more importantly, has already been historically disproven and demonstrated to be in error. Once the Church was adopted by Rome in the fourth century, it became unlawful for the scriptures to be given into the hands of the common believer -- thus, throughout most of Christian history the written text of the scriptures was not available to the people. Furthermore, the Church itself became so Pagan and corrupt, that it was often referred to throughout history as the synagogue of Satan (Rev 2:9;3:9). In a letter to Pope Leo X on September 6th, 1520, Martin Luther wrote of the Christianity of his day that the church, …once the holiest of all, has become the most licentious den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the kingdom of sin, death, and hell. It is so bad that even Antichrist himself, if he should come, could think of nothing to add to its wickedness (Quoted in: The Great Thoughts; compiled by George Seldes). When it is realized that Martin Luther was merely confirming the very biblical prediction made by none other than the Apostle Paul, when he wrote that in the near future the Prince of Darkness would be worshiped as God in the church which would call itself of Christ, the theological position of the modern church is totally undermined. Of this future ruler of the church, the Apostle writes that he …opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God (2 Th 2:4 NKJ). If this prediction of the Apostle is true, and from a first-century perspective it would soon come to pass when the very Prince of Darkness would sit in the …temple of God, showing himself that he is God, and be worshiped by a disillusioned people who would falsely believe they were calling upon the name of the Lord, then all people who consider themselves to be sincere believers today had better rethink their position with respect to the purity with which the scriptures has been preserved. Moreover, in view of the fact that the Apostle warns that the church would be guided by false apostles -- some of whom were the very scribes who copied the biblical manuscripts we use to make our translations today -- then for the sincere believer to blindly accept the position of the modern church that the scriptures were preserved in a pure state, is merely asking to be deceived and misled. In our search today for Truth and Light, it is imperative that we recognize the warning in the Apostle’s own Epistles where we can clearly see that Paul predicts that counterfeit apostles and ministers would arise, and would control the church of this world which the masses of people will mistakenly believe is the genuine church of God. Of these false apostles and their leader, the Apostle warned the faithful flock: For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works (2 Cor 11:13-15 NKJ). The problem is that, regardless of how much evidence is shown to the majority of modern Christians -- evidence which demonstrates conclusively that the New Testament scriptures were severely altered by the Church of Rome -- they will refuse to acknowledge the facts. Why? Because the majority of modern Christians are a disenfranchised people -- severed from the presence of the indwelling Spirit which is given to the truly faithful disciples in order to teach them -- and they are afraid to deviate from their present-day doctrine and church dogma. In the Living Spiritual Church of the New Covenant that was ordained by the Son of God, all revelation is made directly from God to the faithful congregation. But because the modern believer has been alienated from the very essence of the fundamentals of New Covenant teachings, they fear the spiritual journey associated with the beginning of the walk in The Way. The Son of God calls out to them -- but because they are anchored to this world by the doctrines and traditions of men, they are afraid to actually pick up their own crosses and follow in the Master’s footsteps in The Way.. When directly confronted with the overwhelming evidence and facts with respect to the wholesale corruption of the scriptures, the fundamentalist defensively responds with the rather absurd assertion that God wrote the King James Version of the Bible. Thus, no amount of rationale will convince them that because we are the prodigal sons of our Heavenly Father, and the Kingdom is within us (Luke 17:21), that all those who truly live a consecrated life will be shown the undefiled Word of God that can be accessed by journeying along the narrow path that opens the strait gate that leads to the indwelling Temple (1 Cor 3:16). The great truth which the modern Christian fails to comprehend is that, even in its corrupted form, the Bible as it has been passed down to us is sufficient to manifest the Living Word of God in the life of the individual believer. One only has to open the New Testament to almost any page to find the message: If the believer consecrates their lives -- becomes teachable by releasing their minds from an adherence to the doctrines of men -- forgive and judge no one -- live a simple life that is unencumbered -- do no harm to any of God’s creatures -- and seek in solitude the companionship of the Lord in the inner Temple -- that the Holy Spirit will Anoint and Teach you all the Mysteries of God as the believer begins the journey home to the Kingdom. If the believer begins to live the consecrated Christian life -- free of the thinking and entanglements of this world -- then the indwelling Word will reveal all things to those who are sincere in their search for the Truth. If it is true that the fourth century Roman Church severely altered the written word of the scriptures, then it is absolutely necessary for the modern believer to search out the facts. Faith in the Word means that if we are a truly faithful people, that the Son of God will open our minds and enlighten us to the Truth. When we therefore ignore the facts, and blindly cling to the error of the corrupt church of Rome, then we inhibit the Lord from teaching us the truth. If Satan is the god of darkness, then it is Satan who seduces Christians into believing that our scriptures were protected from being altered. Contrary to our many assertions of denial, the historical evidence shows conclusively that this is not the case -- and the Bible no longer represents the original form of the text. Yet, it is only because the modern church no longer possesses the spiritual essence and vision of the original Church that was established in the first century, that the corruption of our scriptures creates a hindrance to the believer in our present time. One of the most common biblical manuscripts used to make our modern English translations is known today as the Nestle Text. Yet it was Prof. Eberhard Nestle himself who warned us in his Einfhrung in die Textkritik des griechischen Testaments: Learned men, so called Correctores were, following the church meeting at Nicea 325 AD, selected by the church authorities to scrutinize the sacred texts and rewrite them in order to correct their meaning in accordance with the views which the church had just sanctioned. When the Church of Constantine endeavored to make the teachings of the New Covenant in sync with fourth century Roman Pagan thought and culture, to ignore the facts with respect to the manner in which the corrupters of the Word recreated the message of the scriptures in order to make it compatible to church doctrine, is to make oneself disingenuous to the very Son of God to whom we proclaim to be faithful to. The truth and the facts to the matter is very clearly expressed in the words of Prof. Bart D. Ehrman in his book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he warns us that: ...theological disputes, specifically disputes over Christology, prompted Christian scribes to alter the words of scripture in order to make them more serviceable for the polemical task. Scribes modified their manuscripts to make them more patently ‘orthodox’ and less susceptible to ‘abuse’ by the opponents of orthodoxy -- which orthodoxy was to bring the text of the Bible into conformity with the doctrines and tenets of the Church of the Roman Emperor Constantine. To close our hearts and minds to the facts, and ignore the truth, is from a New Covenant perspective synonymous with relinquishing any claim whatsoever with respect to being a follower of Jesus. With regard to the condition of the Bible we presently use: The surviving Greek texts of the book of Acts are so radically different from each other, that it has been suggested that perhaps there were multiple versions written. In his book The Text of the New Testament, Dr. Vincent Taylor writes that The manuscripts of the New Testament preserve traces of two kinds of dogmatic alterations: those which involve the elimination or alteration of what was regarded as doctrinally unacceptable or inconvenient, and those which introduce into the Scriptures proof for a favorite theological tenet or practice. To put Dr. Taylors words in perspective: What Dr. Taylor is stating is that, whatever doctrine Jesus taught which the Church of the Roman Empire did not agree with, there is overwhelming evidence that the church corrupters removed what was objectionable from their perspective. In like manner, whatever doctrines the Church regarded as being true, regardless of whether that belief was supported in the scriptures, the Church inserted this belief into the Bible in an attempt to make it authentic. What Dr. Taylor is warning us is there is good reason to conclude that our scriptures have been rewritten by the Church of Constantine. Now the question that is being posed here is whether you believe the theological tenets of Rome, or the disciples of Christ -- because the two are not the same. In the year 1707, John Mill shattered all faith in the infallibility of the Bible by demonstrating 30,000 various readings which were produced from 80 manuscripts. The findings of, first Mill, and then Wetstein (1751), proved once and for all that the variations in the biblical texts, many of which were quite serious, had existed from the earliest of times. In the Preface to the Revised Standard Version of the bible this notable statement is made regarding the need for a revision of the English translation: Yet the King James Version has grave defects... was based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying. It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts. The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus. One of the oldest copies of the Bible which dates back to the fifth century is the Codex Bezae, of which the Britannica writes: Codex Bezae… has a text that is very different from other witnesses. Codex Bezae has many distinctive longer and shorter readings and seems almost to be a separate edition. Its Acts, for example, is one-tenth longer than usual’. How can we have a Bible that is said to be almost… a separate edition? If this is true, it is important for us to know which edition is the correct one? And in answering this question, we must also determine the criteria we should employ in our effort to choose which of these separate editions we should use in our Bible translations? The traditional answer to this question is very simple -- i.e., we choose the biblical texts that support our doctrines of belief, and reject the texts that do not -- but is this the means by which we are able to be certain that we have chosen the correct edition? Regarding this serious problem presented by Codex Bezae, Dr. Vincent Taylor writes that: It is characterized by a series of remarkable omissions in Luke, especially in chapters XXII and XXIV, and by many striking additions and variations in the Acts (The Text of the New Testament, Dr. Vincent Taylor). How would these remarkable omissions and striking additions and variations effect our doctrines of belief? We dont know, because we only translate what supports church doctrine and agrees with what we want to believe. From a biblical perspective, this is not only spiritually dishonest, but could well be detrimental to our spiritual well-being! Christians who desire truth over error will want to know when the problem of scriptural alteration began? Something which no sincere believer today should take lightly is the charge against Christians by Celsus, the second century Epicurean philosopher, who alleged that: Certain Christians, like men who are overcome by the fumes of wine and care not in the least what they say, alter the original text of the Gospels so that they admit of various and almost indefinite readings. And this, I suppose, they have done out of worldly policy, so that when we press an argument home, they might have the more scope for their pitiful evasions. To which allegation the third century Church Father Origen replied: Besides, it is not at all fair to bring this charge against the Christian religion as a crime unworthy of its pretended purity; only those persons who were concerned in the fraud should, in equity, be held answerable for it (Origen, Contra Celsus). What we see is that the words of Origen -- which were composed in the third century when he was commissioned by the church to answer the allegations of Celsus that were written in the second century -- is an acknowledgement that there: are some who corrupt the Gospel histories, and who introduce heresies opposed to the meaning of the doctrine of Jesus. In this statement we can thus readily see that Origen not only admits to the alteration of the scriptures -- alterations made for purely doctrinal reasons -- is a fact, and that many of these heresies that have been introduced into the text of the Bible are intended to oppose the genuine doctrine of Jesus. Further, Origen’s reply also verifies that this wholesale corruption of the scriptures took place as early as the second century when Celsus originally made this allegation against the Church. And what was it that Celsus alleged? That the Christian scriptures admit of various and almost indefinite readings because the original text of the Gospels has been altered to coincide and substantiate the doctrines of the Gentile converts in an attempt to prove their tenets of belief. How can we claim today that our Bibles accurately portray what the Lord spoke, when in the second century it was alleged that our scriptures admit of various and almost indefinite readings? Thus we must ask: On what basis do we choose which reading we will put in our Bibles, and which we will ignore? Again, the answer is simple: We choose the readings that say what we want to hear. The problem is that there is strong evidence to support the position that many of the most important original passages of scripture have been so cleansed from all the surviving Greek Manuscripts, that they no longer exist in the texts we use to make our modern-day translations. The fact that the very people who copied the scriptures often altered the original words and meaning in accordance with their own beliefs is confirmed by St. Jerome when he wrote: They write down not what they find but what they think is the meaning; and while they attempt to rectify the errors of others, they merely expose their own (Jerome, Epist. lxxi.5). Thus, each copy was edited to clarify the beliefs of the copyist. Each scribe who copied the manuscripts and found something he did not agree with, viewed the offending verse of scripture as an error of the previous copyist. Under the title Versions of the Scriptures, The New Ungers Bible Dictionary states that: Jerome had not been long in Rome (A.D. 383) when Damasus asked him to make a revision of the current Latin version of the New Testament with the help of the Greek original. There were, he says, almost as many forms of text as copies. The gospels had naturally suffered most. Jerome therefore applied himself to these first. But his aim was to revise the Old Latin and not to make a new version. Yet, although he had this limited objective, the various forms of corruption that had been introduced were, as he describes them, so numerous that the difference of the old and revised (Hieronymian) text is clear and striking throughout. Some of the changes Jerome introduced were made purely on linguistic grounds, but it is impossible to ascertain on what principle he proceeded in this respect. Others involved questions of interpretation. But the greater number consisted in the removal of the interpolations by which especially the synoptic gospels were disfigured. It is true that many interpolations were inserted into the scriptures by men who attempted to prove the validity of their beliefs. The problem was that many genuine passages of text were removed because they did not conform to the beliefs of the Roman Church -- and what was considered an interpolation, were in many instances the most important passages of the original scriptures from the position of a Spiritual Church vs an Institutionalized one.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 10:29:06 +0000
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