I love the Lord, and I love His Word. Yet many times, no matter how much I love the Lord and even “how smart I am”, I just can’t get certain meanings or connections between verses and chapters in the Bible. I need help. I need someone to kind of point the way and give me a deeper meaning. I read books by C.H. Mackintosh, J. N. Darby, Charles Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, Andrew Murray, and many other spiritual writers, including Watchman Nee, Oswald Chambers, Madame Guyon, Witness Lee, etc. The riches the Lord brought to light through all these dear saints throughout the ages are simply amazing! Some are easy to read, others are hard to understand, while even others need you to have a dictionary with you all the time. However, when I started reading the footnotes in the Recovery Version, I simply understood the meaning of the text (first of all) and then I was brought into a deeper appreciation of the Bible and a sweeter love for the Lord! Here are some things that I really love about the Recovery Version: The Outline of the Recovery Version – Each book of the Bible has a subject, which encapsulates the meaning and essence of the book, and there’s an outline which gives you a sense of what the book, the chapters, and the verses talk about. Many times I thought that the miracles performed by the Lord are “randomly arranged” in the different Gospels – but just read the outline, you will see the big picture! Recovery Version Footnotes - they are SO RICH! So deep. So sweet. So enlightening. I have no words to describe some of these notes. They not only give you the literal translation of some words (sometimes), the meaning of the verse, or the context of that verse – they bring you into a deeper appreciation of God, His economy, and His Word. Many times I read a verse and then the footnote and I just said, AMEN! I love You, Lord! (I’ll give some examples later; see some here) The Cross-References - it is good to have cross references to similar passages in the Bible, and it is even better to have references to verses that express the same burden, principle, or meaning. The Readability of the Recovery Version – It is so easy to read the text, so clear to understand, and so good to get a richer meaning of the Bible! The up-to-date expressions, language, and writing, including the elevated language of the footnotes gives you the impression that you read a commentary on the Bible and yet you understand it perfectly and you have an Amen! in your being. The riches brought out by the Recovery Version – I personally recommend the following footnotes for your prayerful reading: Acts 2:21 (the note on calling on the name of the Lord), 2 Cor. 13:14 (footnote on the Triune God), John 3:16 (footnote on, believing INTO Him), 1 Cor. 15:45 (note on, life-giving Spirit), Matt. 1:1 (and note on Jesus, the first and last name of the Bible), John 1:14 (the note on God – the Word – becoming flesh), Matt. 26:8 (note on why this Waste?), 2 Cor. 3:18 (footnote 11, on the Lord Spirit), etc. The thorough analysis and deeper study of certain terms - do you know how many kinds of Greek words are there for LIFE? (hint: zoe, psuche, and bios – divine, psychological, and biological) How many kinds of love are there in John 21? (more than 1!) What is the real meaning and how many places in the Bible the word TRUTH is used? There are so many word studies in the Recovery Version, that you will “feel like a scholar” while at the same time love the Lord more! It’s quite cool when you not only understand the Word but are also brought into an appreciation of God and His plan… The charts - there are some very good charts like the one explaining the genealogy of the Lord’s ancestors, the chart of the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Heavens, etc. They require many verses and much study to fully comprehend… The spirit of the translator and of the ones who wrote the footnotes in the Recovery Version. It is not only the development of a language, the new meanings of certain words, or the more accurate translation possible that should be the base of a new version of the Bible. It is the increase of the Lord’s light, the advance of the divine revelation, and the accumulation of the divine truth released to God’s people, including the pure spirit of the translators and compilers that make the Recovery Version a great translation with excellent footnotes! Brother Witness Lee had inherited so much from brother Watchman Nee, and he released many messages and compiled many footnotes for the Bible Recovery Version – and today we can benefit from all his labor in the Lord!
Posted on: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 07:52:15 +0000
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