PopsWeb » Page 29 of 106

The Father and the Son are one (Jn.10:30) in purpose but not in substance. God is one single being, not two, three or a family of Gods. You cannot know the Father unless you come to the son, and you must worship God (the Father) in spirit and in truth. Your charitable, selfless activities will not save you! Your distinctive doctrines will not save you! Your law keeping will not save you! Your church attendance will not save you! Your religious idols or your money will not save you! Many are worshipping God in vain (Matt.15:8-9).

Many will cry, "Lord, Lord!" when Jesus returns on the last day, only to be told by Christ, "Depart from me, I never knew you!" (Matt.7:21-23). You must repent (turn around) and believe, and then be obedient to God's will thereafter (Mic.6:8; Acts 2:38-39; 3:19; 5:29-32). Anything short of this is vanity and ultimately dooms you for destruction. My friend, it is appointed for man to die once, then the judgment, and you will face Almighty Yahweh your only God (Heb.9:27). Are you ready? You never know what tomorrow, or even the next moment, will bring. Your life is but a breath, a vapor that will fade, probably sooner than you would think. Are you ready to meet the Judge? (END)

What “Corrupted Text” Means

A philosopher once said, “If you would speak to me, define your terms.” Good idea, because words mean things and word meanings are variable in various contexts. In Textual Criticism, when it is said that a text is “corrupted,” the word does not necessarily mean that the text in question is “worthless” or “useless.” On the contrary, a change might be a real correction. A corrupted text is simply one that has seen change, negative or positive, from its original composition.

The term “corrupt” in Textual Criticism means, containing alterations, foreign admixtures, or errors; or it is contaminated or deteriorated, from the exemplar or archetype.

A text can be altered and made better than it was previously. This happens many times in the print media. When our good friend Dixon Cartwright (editor of The Journal) receives a Letter to the Editor, his journalistic experience and expertise often tells him to revise the letter a bit, at least to shorten it. In his capacity as editor, if Dixon is able to recover some rational thought from the letter, he has improved the piece for possible publication.

As a stream can rise no higher than its fountains, so no New Testament text can obtain a just weight of influence above that of its supporting manuscript source. It should be then, a matter of great interest to examine the basis of prominent NT Greek editions.

Alterations in a text can be deliberate or accidental. A New Testament scribe or copyist by definition is not a legitimate or official text editor. Scribes were not unbiased. While slips of the pen are common and mistakes are frequent in every single NT manuscript, the scribe may (innocently, of course) decide that he is better equipped than the author to harmonize or refine the writing since it is obvious to him that the author meant to have his words in harmony with certain other doctrinal positions. Or, he may decide that a different word other than the original fits better, so he removes the one and inserts the other. Or, he might be a zealous monk who decides to clarify a concept and add a line or a paragraph of text in support of some church dogma. This is how deliberately altered “Nature-of-God” texts come to be, and according to my research, such alterations can and do significantly change biblical doctrine.