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Bibles

Nothing is as personal to a Christian as his or her personal copy of the Bible. Often given to us by our loved ones, its margins are marked with our notes and its edges bear the stains of our hands.

This section is long, but the length is required to present the evidences that expose one of the best hidden threats to the church today: most modern English translations of the Bible are based on, translated and published by entities linked to the occult. While this may seem improbable, the evidences below speak for themselves.

Let's start with a few verses from John chapter 1 in the New King James Version (NKJV) and The Message:

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." (John 1:14 in NKJV)
"The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood..." (John 1:14 in The Message)

"...whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.” (John 1:27 in NKJV)
"... I’m not even worthy to hold his coat for him.” (John 1:27 in The Message)

"I did not know Him; but that He should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water.” (John 1:31 in NKJV)
"I knew nothing about who he was - only this: that my task has been to get Israel ready to recognize him as the God-Revealer. That is why I came here baptizing with water, giving you a good bath and scrubbing sins from your life so you can get a fresh start with God.” (John 1:31 in The Message)
 
While the discrepancies in the first two comparisons above may seem harmless and even humorous, there is no humor in the third comparison, which contains a deadly heresy. According to The Message, it is the baptism of John, not the blood of Jesus, that serves the role of "scrubbing sins from your life."

Other examples abound that show The Message to be so flawed that it can be dismissed without detailed scrutiny, which is better engaged in a comparison of the NKJV against the New American Standard Bible (NASB).
 
For the most part, the differences between these two versions amount to words or phrases that are present in NKJV but not present in NASB. Stated conversely, they are absent in NASB but not absent in NKJV. While the majority of these differences seem to be small and insignificant at first, some of them aren't so insignificant upon closer look.
 
Take as an example the word "Lord" in the New Testament. The verses below are from the NKJV, and the underlined words are absent in the NASB:

"Jesus said to them, “Have you understood all these things?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord." (Matthew 13:51)
 
"always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body." (2 Corinthians 4:10)
 
In these two verses, the absence of the word "Lord" in the NASB doesn't change the meaning of the verses, but they do make them less reverent toward the Lord.
 
Now read these next two verses carefully with and without the underlined words: 

"concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3)
 
"The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven." (1 Corinthians 15:47)
 
In these two verses, the absence of the underlined words in the NASB results in the loss of precision as to whom the verses are referring. In the first of these two verses, Romans 1:3, we need to wade through three commas and four phrases beyond it in NASB to decipher that "His Son" does in fact refer to Jesus, while in the latter verse, 1 Corinthians 15:47, the NASB version never clarifies who the second Man is.
 
Next, compare 1 Timothy 1:1 very carefully, presented in both the NKJV and the NASB. From here on, the underlined words indicate the key differences between the versions:
 
NKJV - "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope"

NASB - "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope"
 
The NKJV equates God = Savior = Lord = Jesus Christ, or describes Jesus Christ as God, Savior and Lord. But notice what the "," and the "of" in the NASB does to the verse. It changes the meaning so that Christ Jesus is only "our hope"; He is no longer "God our Savior".
 
NKJV - "I solemnly charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom” (2 Timothy 4:1)

NASB - "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom" (2 Timothy 4:1)
 
Again, the textual difference can hardly be any more subtle or smaller. This time, there isn't even a comma. Yet the NKJV equates God with Jesus or describes Jesus as God, while the NASB differentiates Jesus from God.
  
NKJV - "Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant" (Hebrews 13:20)
 
NASB - "Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord" (Hebrews 13:20)
 
The NKJV identifies Jesus as the great Shepherd who was brought up from the dead by God, while the NASB suggests that Jesus is in addition to some other great Shepherd that God brought up from the dead.
 
These are the just some of differences between NKJV and NASB concerning just one word: "Lord". There are other differences involving this word, and of course myriad other differences involving other words (a few others are presented below) in the New Testament, and many of these differences are significant.
 
The question arises, "If the NKJV and the NASB are both translations of ancient Greek manuscripts, why do they differ?”
 
The answer lies in the fact the two are the translations of different ancient Greek manuscripts. NKJV is the English translation of the Textus Receptus ("TR"), while NASB is based on the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus ("SV").
 
The question then evolves into, "Which of these ancient manuscripts represent the original text?"

Given the nature of the differences (for the most part, what's in TR is absent from SV), this question in turn boils down to, "Are false details in TR, or are authentic details missing from SV?"

Supporters of SV argue that because the manuscripts of SV discovered to date are slightly older than the manuscripts of TR found to date, false details must be in TR. While this may seem reasonable at first, the evidence actually points in the other direction.
 
Consider the following NKJV translation of TR, and NASB translation of SV:

NKJV - "And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” So he, trembling and astonished, said, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” Then the Lord said to him, “Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." (Acts 9:5-6)
 
NASB - "And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” (Acts 9:5-6)
 
Were the underlined details fabricated by someone and added to TR, or are they authentic details missing from SV?
 
The answer is found elsewhere in SV, which records Paul recounting his meeting with Jesus later in Acts: "And I said, 'What shall I do, Lord?' And the Lord said, 'Get up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.'" (NASB Acts 22:10). So according to SV itself, a part of the conversation that is present in the TR version of Acts 9:5-6 but absent from the SV version is in fact authentic.
 
Let's consider the passage that until recently was the subject of heated debate: the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark:

NKJV - "Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they said among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away - for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples - and Peter - that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.” So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons. She went and told those who had been with Him, as they mourned and wept. And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe. After that, He appeared in another form to two of them as they walked and went into the country. And they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either. Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen." (Mark chapter 6)
 
The entire block underlined is present in TR but absent in SV, which ends this gospel not only with the statement that the women were afraid, but on a Greek word that is a conjunction. Yet for the past century, supporters of the SV argued that this underlined block is not authentic. The notation at the bottom of NASB's Mark chapter 16 reads, "Later manuscripts add verses 9-20." NIV adds a little more color: "The most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20."

Bruce Metzger, the renowned New Testament scholar explained in 1971, "Besides containing a high percentage of non-Markan words, [the last 12 verses]'s rhetorical tone differs totally from the simple style of Mark's Gospel", and concluded, "Thus on the basis of good external evidence and strong internal considerations, it appears that the earliest ascertainable form of the Gospel of Mark ended with 16:8. At the same time, however out of deference to the evident antiquity of the longer ending and its importance in the textual tradition of the Gospel, the Committee decided to include verses 9-20 as part of the text, but to enclose them within double brackets to indicate that they are the work of an author other than the evangelist."
 
The top New Testament scholar of the modern era thus declared that based on his expertise, the last twelve verses of Mark aren't original. Case closed, right?
 
Not quite. Here’s Metzger sixteen years later in 1987: "Already in the second century, for example, the so-called long ending of Mark was known to Justin Martyr and to Tatian, who incorporated it into his Diatesseron. There seems to be good reason, therefore, to conclude that, though external and internal evidence is conclusive against the authenticity of the last twelve verses as coming from the same pen as the rest of the Gospel, the passage ought to be accepted as part of the canonical text of Mark."
 
What happened between 1971 and 1987? Writings by early church leaders were discovered that quoted from the last twelve verse of Mark. Since those writings pre-date the SV by a couple of centuries, Metzger had no choice but to take back his earlier "expert" opinion.
 
More recent versions of the NIV now admit, "There are several different ending to the Gospel of Mark found in the various Greek manuscripts. Most Greek text and several ancient translations conclude with the ending familiar to us as Mark 16:9-20. The earliest Greek manuscript with that ending is from the fifth century, but evidence from the church fathers suggests that it was already in existence during the second century."
 
The evidence in favor of the TR representing the original text also comes from the ancient Greek manuscripts themselves. Of the over 5,600 ancient Greek manuscripts discovered to date, only 1-5% (depending on which side you believe) are SV, while 95-99% of the 5,600 are TR. Moreover, the TR copies match each other despite being spread over a large area - stretching from Spain and Ireland to Ethiopia and the Middle East - and across a millennium of time, while the few copies of SV do not match each other despite being confined to one area - Alexandria of Egypt - and a narrow time period (4th century AD).
 
To illustrate this, imagine 5,600 high school kids rushing into an empty professional sports stadium to play the human telephone game. After they have spread throughout the stadium, the referee whispers identical words into the ears of the kids near the center circle, and they in turn whisper to other kids behind them, and so on until every kid in the stadium, right up to the cheapest seats at the top. Then you walk around to ask the kids what they heard, and all of them tell you the same thing except for a handful of kids in one area of the stadium. The problem with that handful of kids is that their words don't match even among themselves, and those kids are part of a group with a reputation for lying and spreading false rumors.
 
Which set of kids would you believe to be telling you the original words of the referee - the 95-99% of the kids who cover the stadium, or the conflicting words of 1-5% of the kids who belong to a shady bunch?
 
But is it fair to imply SV has shady origins? It is, because Codex Sinaiticus (the "S" in SV) on which the Vatican's Codex Vaticanus (the "V" in SV") is based, is from the Alexandrian regions of Egypt near Mount Sinai.

What is wrong with that? The Alexandrian region was the epicenter of Gnosticism, the first heretical cult which taught that Jesus isn't God, Jesus didn't come in the flesh, Jesus didn't die on the cross, and that salvation is attained through some secret knowledge ("Gnosis" means "knowledge").
 
Here is Bruce Metzger on Alexandria: "Among Christians which during the second century either originated in Egypt or circulated there among both the orthodox and the Gnostics are numerous apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses. Some of the more noteworthy are the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Kerygma of Peter, the Acts of John, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse of Peter. There are also fragments of exegetical and dogmatic works composed by Alexandrian Christians, chiefly Gnostics during the second century. We know, for example, of such teachers as Basilides and his son Isidore, and of Valentinus, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, and Pantaenus. All but the last-mentioned were unorthodox in one respect or another. In fact, to judge by the comments made by Clement of Alexandria, almost every deviant Christian sect was represented in Egypt during the second century; Clement mentions the Valentinians, the Basilidians, the Marcionites, the Peratae, the Encratites, the Docetists, the Haimetites, the Cainites, the Ophites, the Simonians, and the Eutychites. What proportion of Christians in Egypt during the second century were orthodox is not known." (The Early Versions of the New Testament, Clarendon Press, 1977, p. 101)
 
Is Gnosticism in any way reflected in SV?
 
It is. Just scroll up and review the above comparisons again. The SV (NASB) versions downplay the deity of Christ, and the discussed NASB version of 1 Corinthians 15:47 denies that Jesus came in the flesh.
 
Speaking of Jesus coming in the flesh, by the time John's later epistles were written, Gnosticism had already reared its head, and John specifically warned us against it. Compare John's warning in the two versions:
 
NKJV - "and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world." (1 John 4:3)
 
NASB - "and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world." (1 John 4:3)
 
The SV (NASB) version is missing "that... Christ has come in the flesh". The result is a warning that has lost its precision: "every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God?" Confess what about Jesus?
 
Here is another verse:
 
NKJV - "in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:14)
 
NASB - "in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:14)
 
The phrase "through His blood" states that we are redeemed - our sins are forgiven - through the blood of Christ, meaning His atoning death on the cross. Take out the blood, i.e., take out the cross, and this verse loses not only its precision but becomes deceptive since without Christ's death on the cross, there is no redemption or forgiveness of sins.
 
This begs the question, why did B.F. Westcott and F.J. Hort, the two Cambridge scholars who brought the SV to the world as the Westcott & Hort Greek Text, use Codex Sinaiticus, found in the garbage pile of a Catholic convent at the base of Mount Sinai, and Codex Vaticanus, which the editors of TR had deemed worthless because it was filled with errors and corrections on itself, omitted 46 chapters of Genesis, 32 chapters of Psalms, entire books of Paul's epistles, etc, and instead contained the Catholic Apocrypha, which even the Catholic bibles today admits isn't part of the bible (see their Preface section)? Why did they ignore the 95-99% of the kids in the arena and choose to believe the handful of kids with the shady reputation?
 
Here is a hint from Hort himself: "I had no idea till the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so little Greek Testament, and dragged on with the villainous Textus Receptus...Think of that vile Textus Receptus leaning entirely on late manuscripts; it is a blessing there are such early ones." (Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, 1896, Vol 1, p. 211)
 
Hort's assertion that TR leans on late manuscripts is false and undermined by his own admission that he has read "so little" Greek Testament. What makes this quote significant is that it was written in 1851 when he was only 23 years old. Why would he call TR "villainous" and "vile," having "read so little" of it?
 
The answer has to do with the fact that Westcott and Hort didn't end up with SV after setting out to get as close as possible to the original text of the Word of God. They ended up with SV because they set out to zero in on SV and use it to attack the "villainous and vile" TR.
 
Why would they do that? Here are some more of Hort's own words:
 
"I have been persuaded for many years that Mary-worship and Jesus-worship have very much in common..." (Hort, Arthur Fenton, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, New York, 1896, Vol. 2, p. 50)
 
"The Romish (Roman Catholic) view seems to me nearer, and more likely to lead to the truth than the evangelical." (Hort, Arthur Fenton, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, New York, 1896, Vol. 1, p. 76)
 
"Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue." (Hort, Arthur Fenton, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, New York, 1896, Vol. 1, p. 400)
 
"The popular doctrine of substitution (Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross) is an immoral and material counterfeit." (Hort, Arthur Fenton, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, New York, 1896, Vol. 1, p. 430)
 
"But the book that has most engaged me is Darwin...my feeling is strong that the theory is unanswerable." (Hort, Arthur Fenton, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, New York, 1896, Vol. 1, p. 416)
 
Hort sounds like a Darwinian Catholic, but was in fact more than that: Hort and Westcott were not simply the members, but, from their college years, the founders of four occult organizations - Cambridge Ghost Society, Hermes Club (named after the Egyptian-Greek god who brings messages from Hades), Eranus, and Company of Apostles - that communicated with the dead via seances, mediums, psychics and other occult activities.
 
In Hort's own words, "Westcott, Gorham, C.B. Scott, Benson, Bradshaw, Laurd etc. and I have started a society for the investigation of ghosts and all supernatural appearances and effects, being all disposed to believe that such things really exist... Westcott is drawing up a schedule of question."
 
Westcott's son wrote in the biography about his father, "[Westcott] had a lifelong faith in what for lack of a better name, one must call Spiritualism."
 
And in Westcott's own words, declared as a professor during one of his lectures: "Recent historical and textual criticism had shown beyond doubt that most of the evidence for the New Testament miracles, not to mention the Old Testament, can not be unfairly described as remote and hearsay… It is quite certainly far weaker than the evidence for, let us say, the miraculous events associated with modern Spiritualism."
 
These four occult organizations went on to spawn other occult organization, and Westcott as a professor actively recruited his students to not only join but to lead them. Westcott and Hort were two of the figures who helped fuel the 19th century New Age movement in England. Their Greek Testament wasn't the work of two scholars seeking the truth. It was an attack on the Word of God by two occultists.
 
The question that arises is, 'How could the rest of the world let them get away with it?'
 
There are at least four answers. First, in the 19th century, London was respected as the world's center of Christian scholarship, and Oxford and Cambridge universities were revered as the pinnacles within the center. People tended to trust what came out of Oxford and Cambridge based on their names alone.
 
Second, the attack was well planned and executed. Knowing that their work won't survive close scrutiny, Westcott and Hort spent twenty years on the Greek text and then another decade on the English translation, all in relative secrecy, and then sprang both on the world in 1881 as the "new and improved" bible. In the words of Hort to Westcott in 1861: "Also - but this may be cowardice - I have sort of a craving our text should be cast upon the world before we deal with matters likely to brand us with suspicion. I mean a text issued by men already known for what will undoubtedly be treated as dangerous heresy, will have great difficulties in finding its way to regions which it might otherwise reach, and whence it would not be easily banished by subsequent alarms."
 
Third, even outside Cambridge University, they were protected by powerful collaborators, including the Archbishop of Canterbury - the leader of the Anglican church - E.H. Benson, who cofounded the Cambridge Ghost Society with Westcott and Hort, and the Prime Minister of England Arthur Balfour, who was the brother-in-law of Henry Sidgwick, Hort's student who led the Cambridge Ghost Society after Westcott, Hort and Benson.
 
Fourth, London in the late 19th century was in a state of spiritual chaos. The churches were reeling from Darwin's Origin of the Species, published in 1859, which declared that there is no divine Creator, the New Age movement had been unleashed, mediums, seances and psychics were very much in vogue.
 
What is the status of Westcott & Hort's Greek New Testament today?
 
Their text was discredited long ago. The only modern "bible" translated still directly from it is that of the Jehovah's Witness cult.
 
But the Westcott & Hort text survived, was touched up, and has been marketed under different names. In 1898 Eberhard Nestle, who had helped translate the Westcott & Hort's Greek text into English, "updated" it and re-published it as the "Nestle Greek New Testament". In 1950, Kurt Aland, who had worked under Nestle, took it over and re-published it as the "Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament".
 
The majority of modern English bibles, including the New International Version (NIV) and NASB, are based on this Nestle-Aland text, which despite having been "improved" 27 times to its current "27th Edition" in the last 56 years (by comparison, TR hasn't had to be updated at all in the last 400 years) still remains in essence, Westcott & Hort's.

Do NASB and NIV admit their textual origins? The NASB seems to, by stating in its introduction: "In most instances the 26th edition of Eberhard Nestle's New Testament Greek was followed." This admission is buried in the seventh paragraph at the bottom of a page and is hard to find, in contrast to what it prominently declares at the top of its "Preface" on the preceding page: "In the history of English Bible translations, the King James Version is the most prestigious. This time-honored version of 1611, itself a revision of the Bishop's Bible of 1568, became the basis for the English Revised Version appearing in 1881 (New Testament) and 1885 (Old Testament)."
 
Why misrepresent your true origin and instead pay homage to a version that is based on Textus Receptus, which Hort called, "villainous and vile"? When trying to overthrow something, claiming to be its successor isn’t a bad idea.

Instead of such outright misrepresentation, the NIV tries to camouflage its origins in more nebulous terms: "The Greek text used in translating the New Testament was an eclectic one. No other piece of ancient literature has such an abundance of manuscript witnesses as does the New Testament. Where existing manuscripts differ, the translators made their choice of readings according to accepted principles of New Testament textual criticism. Footnotes call attention to places where there was uncertainty about what the original text was. The best current printed texts of the Greek New Testament were used."

Citing "the best current printed text" as the source wouldn't pass for a high school paper, and this is what is cited as the source for the Bible? And this stands in sharp contrast to the paragraphs just above it, which spells out in detail the dozen or so manuscripts used for the Old Testament.

Does the NIV ever admit to its origins? It does, but you need to find and download a long document titled, "The NIV: The Making of A Contemporary Translation" from the website of the NIV committee and then do a word search. That document’s chapter 4, titled, "The Rationale for an Eclectic New Testament Text", states, "What Greek text was used by the translators of the NIV New Testament? It was basically that found in the United Bible Societies' and Nestle's printed Greek New Testaments, which contain the latest and best Greek text available."
 
Who publishes the NIV and NASB and their sibling version? It's Zondervan, owned by HarperCollins Publishers, which is owned by News Corp, which in turn is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Catholic media mogul who is close to the Vatican.
 
Are Roman Catholic views reflected in the NASB and NIV? Consider the following:
 
NKJV - "And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!" (Luke 1:28)
 
NASB - "And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." (Luke 1:28)
 
Calling Mary a woman isn't convenient to hailing her as being more than a human being.
 
NKJV - "and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son. And he called His name Jesus." (Matthew 1:25)
 
NIV - "But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (Matthew 1:25)
 
Stating "firstborn" implies Mary had other sons, which isn't convenient to claiming that she was a virgin all of her life.
 
Among the other books that Murdoch publishes through HarperCollins, which owns Zondervan, is The Satanic Bible, used by those who worship Satan.

Speaking of Satan, here are a couple of other comparisons of intrigue. First, Revelation 22:16 in three versions:
 
NKJV - "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star."
 
NASB - "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star."
 
NIV - "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star."
 
All three versions identify Jesus as the Morning Star. No problem there. Now read the three versions of Isaiah 14:12:
 
NKJV - "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations!"
 
NASB - "How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations!"
 
NIV - "How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!"
 
The interesting thing about this passage is that the original language isn't even Greek. It's Hebrew. And the words in bold just above are the translations of three consecutive Hebrew words that respectively mean, "shiny one", "son", "morning". The NKJV correctly recognizes the context and translates the "shiny one" as Lucifer, the angel of light who was thrown down from heaven after rebelling against God. If NASB and NIV had translated the "shiny one" simply as "star", we can attribute that to a simple error by the translators who weren't paying attention to the context of the verse. But why "morning" star? And remember that the original Hebrew has one word that means "morning". Why do NASB and NIV translate this one word twice, once as "morning" and a second time as "dawn", with the result that instead of Satan being hurled out of heaven, it's Jesus being hurled out of heaven? Is Jesus Satan?
 
At best, this causes confusion, doesn't it? Or how about the most famous verse in the bible?
 
NKJV - "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
 
NIV - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

The NKJV correctly translates the original Greek word monogene as "only begotten", meaning "unique" in the sense of being "incomparable". In contrast, NIV's "one and only" means that there is no other, which is confusing since all Christians are also the sons and daughters of God the Father.
 
Is confusion something that comes from God? Not according to 1 Corinthians 14:33: "For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints."
 
Who then is the author of confusion? For the answer, let's turn to a few verses near the beginning of the bible and compare what God said and what Satan implied God to have said:
 
"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die"... Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?"" (Genesis 2:16-17 and 3:1 NKJV)
 
Slightly twisting the Word of God to confuse and distance us from God is Satan's oldest trick in the book, literally. Jesus called Satan, "a liar and the father of it" (John 8:44) and the fingerprints of this liar are on the works of the 4th century Gnostics, Westcott, Hort, Nestle, Aland, and the English translations based on their work.
 
Heed the words of Hort himself, written to a friend in 1870: "It is quite impossible to judge the value of what appear to be trifling alterations merely by reading them one after another. Taken together, they have often important bearings which few would think of at first…The difference between a picture say of Raffaelle and a feeble copy of it is made up of a number of trivial differences…We have successfully resisted being warned off dangerous ground…It is, one can hardly doubt, the beginning of a new period in Church history. So far the angry objectors have reason for their astonishment." (Hort, Arthur Fenton, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, New York, 1896, Vol. 1, pp. 138-139)
 
And Hort has reason to fear the wrath of God, who chose to close the Bible with this warning: "For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." (Revelation 22:18-19 NKJV)

But the damage has been done, and millions of Christians are reading "bibles" that Satan has laced with enough poison to cause confusion and division within the church, but not enough to be detected by unsuspecting eyes.

What should be done?

1. Keep the King James Version (KJV) or the New King James Version (NKJV) of the bible.

2. Throw out all other version, all of which are based on the occultic Westcott & Hort text.

3. Advise everyone you know to do the same, but be careful. Telling people, especially pastors, that their bibles have occult origins will draw knee-jerk denials and rebukes. Feel free to refer them to this page so that they can read the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions.