Written by: John Sernaque
Dear Reader,
This will be the fifth part of a series of articles outlining the history of the Bible. These articles will point you to the most accurate translation of the Bible, and will help you to avoid the many spurious translations which exist today. This series of articles are based on the book “The King James Bible and Modern Translations” written by Vance Ferrell. Let’s pick up where we left off.
Effects of the King James Bible
Not only did the King James Version become the Bible of England, it also became the Bible of America. It was only 27 years after the King James Bible was printed that Roger Williams founded “Providence” in Rhode Island. His settlement, founded in 1638, became the first government in history based on total religious freedom.
The Counter Reformation and
The three agencies engaged to destroy the Protestant Reformation:
· The Jesuits
· The decisions of the Council of Trent
· The production of Catholic Bibles with their various mistranslations and errors.
The Jesuits (1534)
The Jesuits were established to secure wealth and power, to be devoted to the overthrow of Protestantism, and the re- establishment of papal supremacy. They wore a garb of sanctity, visiting prisons and hospitals, ministering to the sick and the poor, and bearing the sacred name of Jesus. Under this exterior, the most criminal and deadly purposes were concealed. It is a principle of their order that the end justifies the means. Lying, theft, perjury, assassination, etc. were not only pardonable but commendable. “Under various disguises the Jesuits worked their way into offices of the state, climbing up to be counselors of kings, and shaping the policies of nations. They became servants, to act as spies upon their masters. They established colleges for the sons of princes and nobles, and schools for the common people; and the children of Protestant parents were drawn into an observance of popish rites.” --Great Controversy, pp.234-235. Created by Ignatius Loyola, who was dedicated to the Church of Rome, to aid the pope and destroy Protestantism. He vowed that “the Jesuits will capture the colleges and universities, gain control of instruction in law, medicine, science, education, and weed out from all books anything injurious to Roman Catholicism. We will mold the thoughts and ideas of the youth. We will enroll ourselves as Protestant preachers and college professors in the different Protestant faiths. We will undermine the authority of the Greek New testament of Erasmus, and of those Old Testament productions which have raised their heads against the Old Testament of the Vulgate and against tradition. Thus, we will undermine the Protestant Reformation.” --B.G. Wilkinson, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, pp. 59-60. Ignatius Loyola was guided by demons. He had a place in the woods near Rome where he would go for private seances. The training for Jesuit agents was likened to reducing its members to the placidity of a corpse. “and let everyone persuade himself that he who lives under obedience should be moved and directed, under Divine Providence, by his superior, just as if he were a corpse which allows itself to be moved and led in any direction.” --R.W. Thompson, Ex-Secretary of Navy. USA, The Footprints of the Jesuits, p.51. The Pope’s instruction to the Jesuits was to select the most intelligent of the Catholic young men and to make the initiation rites a lifelong impression upon them. The youth are admitted under a test which binds forever the will. They were told that eternal life was secure and all is for the greater glory of God. Then follows long years of intense mental training, interspersed with periods of practice. Jesuit teachers were scattered throughout secular, Catholic, and Protestant universities. “They early realized the vast importance of directing higher education as a means of gaining control of the lives of the ablest and best-connected young men and making trained intellect subservient to their purposes.” ---Albert Henry Newman, Manual of Church History, Vol 2, p 374. Once a Jesuit professor gained the friendship of a student, he would gradually work to win him fully over. More time was used in molding their religious and moral characters into complete harmony with the ideals of the Jesuit Society. The Jesuits have a special dispensation from the pope, that they do not have to wear any special religious clothing or sleep in a monastery at night. This makes it possible for them to enter many different walks of life and carry on their work for the pope. Today, there are 33,000 official members of the Society who operate all over the world as heads of political parties, high ranking officials, generals, magistrates, physicians, professors, etc., to bring about the plans of the papacy. ---Edmond Paris, Secret History of the Jesuits, p. 30. Their reputation for lying, espionage, subversion, arming the hand of the assassin, and worse, is well known in history. It was their effort to take over England and destroy the King James Bible.
The Council of Trent (1545-1563)
The 16th century Reformation alarmed Rome severely. Part of the solution to stop the Reformation was to convene a church council to define their doctrines to attack the Protestants. Pope Paul III set the Jesuits in charge of infusing the council with their strange logic and to make sure everything went well during the sessions. Throughout the Council of Trent, the question that could not be settled was: what was the basis of Roman Catholic authority? They couldn’t say it was the Bible as this would take the power away from the papacy. Jesuit logic was that as the papacy had centuries before changed the Bible Sabbath to Sunday; Therefore, it had authority above all things, including Scripture. That is the logic of Jesuit thinking.
The Rheims-Douai Bible (1582-1610)
The Catholics needed a Bible of their own. Because of Tyndale, the Protestants all had their English Bible and could refer to it quickly, while the Catholics only had the Vulgate, that needed to be translated from Latin to English. As the people were armed with the Bible, and the priests had little knowledge of the Bible, their ignorance became embarrassing, and they knew something had to be done. William Allen, a leading English Catholic, appealed to the pope for permission to produce a new translation from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate in English. There was a need for an English translation which could twist the Scriptures around. They needed to change every verse where the scriptures mentioned repentance to penance, as Catholics do not repent, they only do penance. So, Allen came up with the idea to produce an English Bible at Douai, France, which would contain Roman Catholic teachings. In 1568, Jesuits worked with English Catholics and started an English college at Douai. It became the center for the training of English agents, spies, teachers, and translators. In 1578, the entire project had to be moved to the city of Rheims, where the New Testament was published in 1582. It included pro Catholic and anti-Protestant notes in the margins. In 1593, the college moved back to Douai from Rheims, where the Old testament was published in 1609-1610. The translation is extremely literal, even where the Latin is obscure and confused. This Catholic Bible was heavily worked over about a century later. In the 18th century revision, it was so far reaching that barely a word of the original remains. This is an indication that the original was terrible. The current version still contains many of the Roman Catholic errors. Following are some examples: we must confess our sins to fellow human beings, 666 refers to Martin Luther, Mary destroys the serpent, Mary’s body is immaculate, definition of sin is sin. This Bible is based on Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which contains many serious errors. All Roman Catholics are required to swear allegiance to the pope and the Tridentine Profession of Faith (1564). Yet, Roman Catholics are taught to avoid the Bible. They are taught that Mary, the Rosary, the Confessional, and the Mass are what is important. Roman Catholic Bibles continued to be translated from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate until the mid-20th century, when one was translated from a modern critical Greek text. No Catholic Bible has ever been translated from the Majority Text.
The Jesuit Effort to Regain England
In 1579, ten years after the first school was established in Douai, a second school was established in Rome for the training of Jesuit missionaries to Britain. By 1585, 268 graduates had secretly infiltrated England. After learning spy methods, they were sent to Oxford or Cambridge, where they graduated into the ministry or government positions. This method is still used today throughout the Protestant denominations. Once Jesuit agents have attained a high position in the colleges and churches, they make sure to hire more Jesuit agents. Two Jesuit agents, Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion, disguised as English military officers, were assigned to overthrow Queen Elizabeth. They used many disguises to hide their identity. English authorities began an investigation. Parsons managed to escape. Campion was captured and tortured. Campion did not relent. On December 1, 1581, he and 14 others were hanged. In 1583, Pope Gregory XIII devised a plan to infiltrate England from 3 sides at once: from Ireland, France, and Spain. British agents became aware of the plan and the scheme was abandoned. In 1586, Jesuit agent John Ballard was arrested for plotting an uprising of English Catholics to overthrow the Queen and bring Mary Stewart of Scotland to the throne. He and 13 others were hanged. In 1587, when Mary Stewart (Queen Elizabeth’s half-sister) was implicated in the plots, she was beheaded. A few weeks after Mary’s execution, Pope Sixtus V pledged 600,000 gold crowns to Philip II if he would invade England. In 1588, the Spanish Armada, about 130 ships set sail from Lisbon to attack England. After the sea battle, only 51 ships from the Spanish fleet survived to retreat back to Lisbon. After this defeat, the Jesuits returned to their methods of infiltration by agents. They realized they needed to devise a way to destroy the English Bible, the source of the Protestant strength.
A flood of error, apostasy, and perversion followed. Then came the birth of German higher criticism, British Textual criticism, and Modern Bible versions based on corrupt bible manuscripts. Also, Darwin’s theory of evolution, atheistic totalitarianism- i.e. communism by Karl Marx and his associates Theories of sociology, progressive education, Sigmund Freud’s “psychology”, and spiritualism all brought the Word of God under attack.
To be continued in the next article, Part 6.
