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Goodbye Jesus

Growing Up As A Baptist, Fundamentalist, King James Bible Believer


Unbound

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I assume KJO is in reference to churches that teach that KJV is the only reliable translation of the Bible. My pastor teaches this and makes it mandatory for people going through the seminary, college and discipleship homes attached to the church to use only KJV. My dad uses an ESV Bible on his phone despite what the Pastor says though.

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I assume KJO is in reference to churches that teach that KJV is the only reliable translation of the Bible. My pastor teaches this and makes it mandatory for people going through the seminary, college and discipleship homes attached to the church to use only KJV. My dad uses an ESV Bible on his phone despite what the Pastor says though.

 

You have various degrees but yeah, KJO means "King James Only". The argument is the TR (textus receptus, a Greek eclectic text of the NT) is the most reliable text because of the region it came from (the other manuscripts of Alexandrian origin are considered areas historically associated with "heretics" or ungodly people in general) and that these are unreliable because they are old. Yes, that's right, you heard me. They argue that older texts mean that they weren't used because they were known not to be correct and discarded of. The good texts were used all the time, and thus worn out. There's also arguments that the other texts attack the deity of Christ and so on. Westcott and Hort's text is often attacked because they were "ungodly" men and people often try to find something to discredit the new translations but mostly it's to do with the text's origins and the fact that they disagree with the TR.

 

Most people would be TR only, i.e. the KJV isn't a perfect translation but it's based on the best available text. The next step would be that it's the best possible translation of the best text. The next would be that it's a perfect translation (i.e. there is no information loss at all) and then pretty much after that it goes into Ruckman territory where it corrects the text and that one can only be saved from the KJV.

 

Your situation isn't that uncommon in the IFB movement, someone owning another translation than a KJV was thought of being a liberal and wishy washy or a non believing "Bible corrector".

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I also found their beliefs amusingly crazy. One of my friends believed (not sure if this is characteristic of Ruckmanites though) that the Bible was written originally in English, and that the KJV was a restoration of the original work (hence why the KJV corrects the Hebrew and Greek). I even remember Ruckman was releasing a reference Bible a couple of years ago. It's been in the making for ages and it would be interesting to read it if he ever actually released it. This is the last person who should release a Bible.

 

 

He did release it. My parents gave me a copy of it for Christmas in 2009. I read quite a bit of it (I was still going back and forth with Christianity at the time). It has a large appendix in the back which contains many of his nutty teachings. Perhaps the most ridiculous book he's written is "Black is Beautiful". It's about UFOs and aliens, how aliens are the offspring of the sons of God (Gen 6), and how the government covers it all up (men in black and all that jazz).

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The next step would be that it's the best possible translation of the best text. The next would be that it's a perfect translation (i.e. there is no information loss at all) and then pretty much after that it goes into Ruckman territory where it corrects the text and that one can only be saved from the KJV.

The truth is that there could inherently be no such thing as "no information loss at all". Even if God used zombies to write down exactly what he wanted to say, there is still the fact that no two people can read any single paragraph, holy or otherwise, and not come to two different understandings of (1) what it means and (2) how to apply it.

 

There is also the problem that for most of human history most people were illiterate and could not afford to own or study the entire scriptures for themselves. The common man heard only whatever excerpts were read to them on occasion by clergy, and certainly was not encouraged to study or think for themselves. That was the job of specialists for millennia, at least until the invention of the printing press -- a relatively very recent event in the context of human history.

 

We're so used to having affordable printed books and relatively ubiquitous education, especially in the West, that we forget what a completely awful mode of transmission a book was for any kind of information that is supposedly critical for everyone to know, and where for them to NOT know it puts them in jeopardy of eternal damnation. Without that historical context its easy on the surface to buy into ideas like inerrancy and to take the idea of Truth being written down in a Book as somehow comforting. But like a lot of things in religion, if you actually think about it objectively for ten seconds it turns out to be entirely smoke and mirrors.

 

The only way for such critical information to be accurately transmitted is for it to be directly downloaded to people's brains and then for the "correct" understanding and application to be miraculously enabled. And for an omnipotent God this would be no harder than the tortuous process of writing a book over thousands of years and not even bothering to miraculously preserve the original manuscripts.

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Really enjoyed your story, Unbound. Wow I didn't know there was so many of us former crazy IFBers? Here's the link to my testimony if you'd like to read it: http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/48493-lost-my-faith-while-on-staff-at-my-church-and-i-still-am-working-there/

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Really enjoyed your story, Unbound. Wow I didn't know there was so many of us former crazy IFBers? Here's the link to my testimony if you'd like to read it: http://www.ex-christ...-working-there/

 

Yeah, I didn't think there would be so many of us here considering statistically you'd imagine the larger denominations having more deconverts (Pentecostals, Charismatics and Baptist Union types). The fact that you're a Calvinist IFB (like I was) pretty much puts you in a minority within a minority :P At least we have people here who understand the uber quirkiness that is the IFB movement.

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Really enjoyed your story, Unbound. Wow I didn't know there was so many of us former crazy IFBers? Here's the link to my testimony if you'd like to read it: http://www.ex-christ...-working-there/

 

Nice to meet you, ChurchSucks. I enjoyed reading your testimony. Are you still working at the church?

 

Btw, I love the DFW area. I spent a couple of months in Plano and had a great time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Really enjoyed your story, Unbound. Wow I didn't know there was so many of us former crazy IFBers? Here's the link to my testimony if you'd like to read it: http://www.ex-christ...-working-there/

 

Nice to meet you, ChurchSucks. I enjoyed reading your testimony. Are you still working at the church?

 

Btw, I love the DFW area. I spent a couple of months in Plano and had a great time.

 

I am actually sitting in the Church office right now - haha - so yes I still work here. Luckily though it looks like I might be getting a media job. Albeit it, more than likely still at a church, but it has a better salary and won't really feel like a "church job" as I'll be doing strictly media.

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  • 2 months later...

I realized that any time I wondered back toward Christianity, it was not because of reason, but because of fear and emptiness. I embraced the truth. I looked back on who I was when I was a Christian and knew that I could never be that person again, nor did I want to be.

 

I really love this line. It connects a lot with why I named my YT page after a fox, which will make sense with the next video. Glad you made it here.

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