God Bless the USA Bible

This post is not a recommendation of the Bible views of Tim Wildsmith. However, his review of the God Bless the USA Bible is timely and interesting because of the political circumstances. The reviews are not political, but rather talk about the binding and print quality of this particular Bible.

The flying roll

The flying roll.

Zechariah 5:1-4.

5:1-4 Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll. And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered, I see a flying roll; the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof ten cubits. Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth: for every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be cut off as on that side according to it. I will bring it forth, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by my name: and it shall remain in the midst of his house, and shall consume it with the timber thereof and the stones thereof.

Lambert’s Cafe in Sikeston, Missouri has a tradition of throwing dinner rolls to customers. That might be the first kind of “roll” that enters the thoughts of American readers. However, this flying roll in Zechariah is a scroll, the “roll of a book” (cf. Jeremiah 36:2,4,32; Ezekiel 2:9), a written message from God. The Messiah the Branch will remove sin from the land (3:9b; Daniel 9:24-27). This removal of sin is either through forgiveness or destruction. Luke 13:3, 5 “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Cf. Zech 3:8-9 and 4:6-7.

3:8-9 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH. For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone shall be seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.

4:6-7 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.

The law of the Lord is worldwide it “goeth forth over the face of the whole earth” (v. 3)

• John Gill notes that God has exact knowledge of the sins of all men, and strict remembrance of them.

The law of the Lord is equal, it is “for every one” (v. 3).

Matthew 22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

• On this side “that stealeth” (the 8th commandment on the second table; relationship to man)
• On that side “that sweareth” (the 3rd commandment on the first table; relationship to God)

The law of the Lord is fixed in God’s purpose, enforced by the Lord, “I will bring it forth” (v. 4).

• The curse of the law and the wrath of God are certain, fixed in God’s purpose.

The law of the Lord is triumphant, enforced on the sinner, “it shall enter…and shall consume it.”

• The curse of the law and the wrath of God are certain of victory. God will overcome and overwhelm all sin.

Conclusion.

The curse of the law extends as far as the rule and control of the law. The law is in writing “on a roll” and “in the hearts” (Joshua 8:34; Romans 2:15).  It is universal in its scope of time (perpetual) and space (global) and impartiality (for all man). “What I have written I have written" (John 19:22; Daniel 6:8). The angel asks “What seest thou” and Zechariah answers, “I see a flying roll.” In size the roll was twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide, that is, 30 feet X 15 feet. It is an uncommon size.

The sinners against whom the judgment of the curse of the law is levelled are: (1) “every  one that stealeth” and (2) “every one that sweareth.” The curse lands on those that break either table of the law. Here God does not rank one sin above the other. These two kinds of sin are representative of and summarize the “two tables of the law,” man’s relationship to man and man’s relationship to God. The curse applies equally to those who break either table. James 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

In the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, God has inscribed and preserved his law and his gospel. 

Galatians 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

Sin must be removed through either forgiveness in Christ or destruction from Christ. God’s word is the standard by which we are judged, and all must give account to God. God’s roll of his writing has flown through the face of the whole earth. The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men – but God does not tolerate sin. The unrepentant unbelieving will be punished, with the Lord “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.”

When the great day of his wrath is come, who shall be able to stand?

John’s Baptism

“…John the Baptist had the greatest ministry with regard to his baptism. Since there was no antecedent to baptism in the Tanak, he initiated that which the Saviour declared was required for all Christians—believer’s immersion. After all, the Lord asserted, saying, ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned’ (Mk. 16:16). Moreover, the Lord asserted obliquely that John’s baptism was from heaven (Lk. 20:4). Although denominationalists have desired to relegate the ministry and baptism of John to the Old Testament, Scripture is clear that he inaugurated the New Testament Era (Lk. 16:16). If John were an Old Testament prophet, then his baptism by immersion subsequent to salvation would be invalid for Christian churches. Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of the Christian faith (Heb. 12:2), and He certainly did not have an ‘Old Testament baptism’!”

Thomas M. Strouse, “Foreword,” The Church that John the Baptist Prepared

I long to be soaring away

Maria De Fleury was a Baptist poet and hymnwriter, descended from French Huguenots. Additionally she engaged in religious and political controversies of her day. Her father was probably J. de Fleury, Sr and her brother J. de Fleury Jr, the artist, engraver, and painter. George Dyer eulogized Maria de Fleury as “Maria” in his ode “On Liberty” – written after her death in the fall of 1792.

The following, titled simply, “An Hymn,” appeared on pages 95 and 96 of de Fleury’s book Divine Poems and Essays on Various Subjects (1791). The third stanza is the text of a popular Sacred Harp song, Panting for Heaven.

1. Ye Angels, who stand round the throne,
And see my Immanuel’s face,
In rapturous songs make him known,
Tune, tune your soft harps to his praise:
He form’d you the Spirits you are,
So noble, so happy, so good,
While others sunk down in despair,
Confirm’d by his power, you stood.

2. Ye Saints, who stand nearer than they,
And cast your bright crowns at his feet,
His Grace and his Glory display,
O tell of his love as is meet;
He sav’d you from Hell, and the Grave,
He ransom’d from Death and Despair,
For you he was Mighty to Save,
Almighty to bring you safe there.

3. O when will the period appear
When I shall unite in your song!
I’m weary of lingering here,
And I to your Saviour belong!
I’m fetter’d, and chain’d up in clay,
I struggle and pant to be free,
I long to be soaring away,
My God and my Saviour to see.

4. I want to put on my attire,
Wash’d white in the Blood of the Lamb,
I want to be one of your choir,
And tune my sweet harp to his name:
I want—O I want to be there,
(Where Sorrow and Sin bid adieu,)
Your Joy and your Friendship to share,
To wonder and worship with you.

In other words, a to v

• advect, verb. To move by the process of advection (the horizontal flow of atmospheric properties).
• convect, verb. To transfer heat or a fluid by convection (the vertical transport of atmospheric properties).
• fiat, noun. An authoritative command or order to do something; an effectual decree.
• desuetude, noun. (In law) a doctrine or principle that that long and continued non-use of a law or statute renders it invalid.
• expurgate, verb. To clean up, remove impurities, especially to expunge objectionable materials from something before publication or presentation.
• fatuous, adjective. Foolish; inane; silly; complacently or inanely foolish (applied both to persons and to their acts).
• innocuous, adjective. Not causing disapproval; lacking intent or capacity to injure; harmless.
• mendacious, adjective. Telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful.
• nocebo effect, noun. When a patient’s negative expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a worse effect than it otherwise would have. Opposite of placebo.
• parsimony, noun. Unusual or excessive frugality; thrift; extreme economy or stinginess.
• persnickety, adjective. Overparticular or fussy about trivial details; fastidious; demanding.
• piffle, noun. Nonsense; trivial or senseless talk.
• placebo effect, noun. When a patient’s positive expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a helpful effect (especially in reference to a placebo, an inactive “look-alike” treatment). Opposite of nocebo.
• rodomontade, noun. Pretentious boasting; bluster; a bragging speech.
• saudade, noun. A deep emotional state of melancholic longing for a person or thing that is absent; yearning for something indefinite and indefinable (from Portuguese).
• scriptorium, noun. A room set aside for the copying, writing, or illuminating of manuscripts and records (especially in a medieval monastery).
• sine die, adverb. Without a day specified for a future meeting; indefinitely (from Latin, without day).
• teleology, noun. The philosophical interpretation of natural phenomena as exhibiting purpose or design.
• telestich, noun. A short poem in which the last letters of each successive line form a word or name.
• verisimilitude, noun. The quality of appearing to be true or real; something that has the appearance of being true or real.

Some praise for old Bancroft

Romans 13:7 Render therefore to all their dues...honour to whom honour.

At the time the King James translation was made, Richard Bancroft (1544-1610) was Bishop of London and then in 1604 made the Archbishop of Canterbury. Bancroft was the supervisor and overseer of the translation project. He died before the finished product was published. Much of what I hear and read about Bancroft is negative (and some deservedly so). For that reason, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across a short piece about Bancroft by Paul V. M. Flesher, a professor in University of Wyoming’s Department of Religious Studies. Writing about the discovery in 2016 of the remains of Bancroft in a crypt beneath the St. Mary-at-Lambeth Church, Flesher included this tribute to his connection with the translation authorized by King James I.

“Bancroft was perhaps the most important figure in the creation of the King James Bible…

“James convened the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604 to address their concerns. It was not a success for the Puritans. Bancroft, who was then bishop of London, was widely known as a fierce opponent of the Puritans. He helped persuade the king to reject the Puritan calls for church reform.

“But, James shared one desire with the Puritans, which he granted. That was their request for a new, ‘authorized’ translation of the Bible. Even as he acceded to their request, he added a twist: James put the anti-Puritan Bancroft in charge of the project…

“Archbishop Bancroft pioneered a new approach to Bible translation, one which helped the translation overcome the political and religious conflict in which the project was conceived.

“Earlier translations had essentially been done by individuals, without consultation or review. Bancroft brought together 47 experts in biblical studies from Oxford, Cambridge and London. Here, he was surprisingly even-handed, bringing in the best scholars whether they were establishment or Puritan…

“And, by all accounts, the King James Bible succeeded. Within 50 years, its ‘majesty of style’ made it the widest circulating English Bible. It traveled to the American colonies, where it was frequently reprinted. For more than 300 years, it was the main Bible used in the English language, and no other Protestant Bible could compete with it.

“Archbishop Bancroft, whose burial site we now know, was a partisan bulldog for the Church of England establishment. Yet, he guided the creation of a new Bible translation that lasted for more than four centuries and was accepted by most branches of Protestant Christianity.”

The Coffin of Archbishop Bancroft and the King James Bible, by Paul V. M. Flesher, professor in University of Wyoming’s Department of Religious Studies.

This day

Halloween is the United States is a mostly secular holiday, which has mixed pagan and other religious roots. The Celts of Ireland, Britain and France held a pagan harvest festival called Samhain beginning at sunset of October 31st. The mixed roots show up in Roman Catholicism and other denominations who mark the Roman Catholic holidays. October 31 is Hallowe’en (Hallow evening), the beginning of Allhallowtide – a three-day Catholic tradition dedicated to remembering the dead, Halloween (October 31), followed by All Saints or All Hallows Day (November 1), and All Souls Day (November 2).[i]

For many Protestants, October 31 is Reformation Day – a religious holiday or commemoration of the beginning of the Reformation. According to Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg, Germany Catholic Church on October 31, 1517.

For some churches, like the Catholics before them, this has become a day or time to repurpose or rebaptize Halloween, and still celebrate it as a “Fall Festival” or “Harvest Festival” or “Hallelujah Night.”

For Bible-believing Baptists, let it be “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” This is a bold banner that may be highly hung over each day to which the Lord leads us on.[ii] And in its context, Psalm 118:24 is a reminder that the stone Jesus, which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner. “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.”

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[i] Probably Greek Orthodoxy as well, but I do not know as much about them, and did not take the time to look it up.
[ii] Thus far the Lord hath led me on. Thus far his power prolongs my days. And every evening shall make known, some fresh memorial of his grace. (Isaac Watts)

“Who” is Antichrist?

Q. The New King James Version Bible (NKJV) capitalizes personal pronouns that refer to God. The NKJV capitalizes the pronoun “Who” in Zechariah 11:17. This does not refer to God, and some even interpret it to mean the Antichrist. Why is “Who” capitalized here? 

A. Yes, the New King James Bible capitalizes personal pronouns that refer to God (e.g. “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?” Psalm 13:1; “for He dried up her expectation” Zechariah 9:5). This problem in Zechariah 11:17 is an unfortunate unintended consequence of the intersection of two NKJV editorial choices – the choice to capitalize pronouns that refer to deity, and the choice to format some verses as poetry so that each “line/verse” begins with a capital letter. 

The capitalization of pronouns in the NKJV (and some other translations) is an editorial or publishing choice. It is not matter of matching capitalization in inspired originals, but is rather a matter of interpretation and insertion made by the translators. The Hebrew and Greek do not distinguish such, so the translators have to make an educated guess. They probably get it right most of the time. However, rather than mostly getting it right, they could leave it alone in order for the readers under the leadership of the Holy Spirit to interpret whether or not it is a reference to God. The NKJV Preface describes their relevant (to this question) formatting in this way.

“...reverence for God in the present work is preserved by capitalizing pronouns including You, Your, and Yours, which refer to Him. Additionally, capitalization of these pronouns benefits the reader by clearly distinguishing divine and human persons referred to in a passage. Without such capitalization the distinction is often obscure, because the antecedent of a pronoun is not always clear in the English translation.” (“Preface,” Holy Bible, The New King James Version, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982, p. iv)

“Poetry is structured as contemporary verse to reflect the poetic form and beauty of the passage in the original language.” (“Preface,” Holy Bible, The New King James Version, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982, p. iv)

These two rules combine to confuse the reader in Zechariah 11:17. “Who” is significantly capitalized here in the NKJV Zechariah 11:17 simply because it is a word that begins the line of poetry. Its capitalization has nothing to do with the rule regarding capitalization of pronouns that refer to God. Nevertheless, it is ripe for confusion. A reader thinking of capitalized divine pronouns and recognizing “Who” as a pronoun may miss and misunderstand the reason for the capitalization of “Who” in this verse in the NKJV. (This style is also found in translations such as the LSB and NASB.)

Another thing that can exacerbate the problem is that some online sources do not keep the formatting found in the print edition of the NKJV.

If I copy the NKJV Zechariah 11:17 from the “NKJV only view” in Bible Gateway, it looks like this.

“Woe to the worthless shepherd,
Who leaves the flock!
A sword shall be against his arm
And against his right eye;
His arm shall completely wither,
And his right eye shall be totally blinded.”

However, if I copy the NKJV Zechariah 11:17 from the “all English translations view” in Bible Gateway, it looks like this:

“Woe to the worthless shepherd, Who leaves the flock! A sword shall be against his arm And against his right eye; His arm shall completely wither, And his right eye shall be totally blinded.”

Some people make statements like this: “The capitalizing of pronouns that refer to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a way of honoring God and showing esteem.” With this rule, translators and writers become stricter than God himself, who did not inspire distinguished capitalized pronouns. God chose to inspire his words originally in Hebrew and Greek. Hebrew has no such thing as upper-case and lower-case letters. The Greek manuscripts have either all uncial/majuscule (upper-case) or all minuscule (lower-case) letters. God did not inspire his penmen to give any special attention to pronouns that refer to him. We would do well to follow God’s example rather than preferring our own traditions. Uzzah may have meant well when he reached to steady the ark, but how much better to obey rather than just mean well.

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Note: I am not extremely familiar with the NKJV. I do not use it for reading and study. However, a random search did not reveal to me any instances when the “Who” and “Whose” pronouns referencing deity were ever capitalized, as it with “You” and “Yours,” “He” and “His,” etc.