I will be quoting from a book entitled "Which Bible is God's Word?" It is comprised of a series of questions asked to Gail Riplinger regarding her book, "New Age Bible Versions". An excellent book and well written.
Q
Hosts of one national program have questioned your scholarship,
contending the only subjects you ever taught at the university
were home economics courses. Would you first restate your
educational background and your qualifications for writing your
book, New Age Bible Versions?
A
I will remind the "Answer Man" program that truth is
independent of who presents it. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:3-
4, "it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or
of man's judgment...he that judgeth me is the Lord." The callers
to the "Answer Man" program are calling the wrong source. God
said in Jeremiah 33:3, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee"
God is the "Answer Man." Proverbs 15:28 tells us, "The heart of
the righteous studieth to answer." It is apparent the host did
not put "study" into his answer regarding my credentials. My
scholarship has been evaluated by my university colleagues who,
unlike my detractors, actually have access to my records. By the
grace of God, I was awarded tenure and graduate faculty status at
the large state university where I was a full-time professor for
a decade. My colleagues elected me to membership in a national
education honorary. Through the mercy of the Lord, the president
of the university awarded me a Mortar Board Honor Society
teaching award. On the national level, other universities have
received with enthusiasm the six college textbooks that I have
written. On an international level, I have been listed in an
edition of Who's Who, and was invited by President Reagan's
Citizen Ambassador program to be a representative to Finland and
Russia.
For the first ten years of my academic career I researched
and taught in the area of the built environment. At the Lord's
leading, and because of my Christian convictions, I have spent
the last eight years researching on a full-time basis, the
transmission, text, and translations of the holy scriptures. I
am more qualified, I suspect, than my detractors, to discuss the
variant readings in the new translations because, unlike them, I
have done a six-year-long, laborious, word-for-word collation of
these texts. This was made possible because of my disability
retirement from the university.
But we must remember, as Paul said, "But God forbid that I
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal.
6:14). "My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble
shall hear thereof, and be glad" (Ps. 34:2). "Do we begin again
to commend ourselves?... Not that we are sufficient of ourselves
to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of
God" (2 Cor. 3:1,5). God said, "that which is highly esteemed
among men is abomination in the sight of God" (Luke 16:15). I
have just paraded my abominations before the readers. Academic
credentials have never been God's criteria for using a person.
Moses did not go to Desert State for forty years.
God warns us in Psalm 62:9, "men of high degree are a lie."
I believe the church is dying by degrees, with men going to
seminary before they've been to the altar. The only D.D.'s in
the bible are the "dumb dogs, they cannot bark" (Isa.56:10), but
speak "smooth things" (Isa. 30:10) to mausoleums of "dead men's
bones" (Matt. 23:27). God's comment about scholars is in Malachi
2:8,12. He says the scholar "caused many to stumble," and
"corrupted the covenant." Today, scholars are creating new
versions that corrupt the Old and New Testaments.
To whom will God reveal knowledge? Isaiah 66:2 says, "to
this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite
spirit, and trembleth at my word." If the new version
proponents, or the new version editors "tremble" at God's word,
then the Lord will reveal something to them. If they don't
"tremble," it does not matter if they have a Ph.D., a Th.D., or a
D.D., the words of knowledge are going to be "hid" from them
(Luke 10:21).
According to Romans 8:29, we are going "to be conformed to
the image of his Son." But recall that while he was here on
earth "his visage was so marred more than any man" (Isa. 52:14).
So we can expect this same genre of religious leaders, who turned
Jesus Christ over to the soldiers for abuse, to mar the image of
anyone who looks to Jesus Christ for authority and not to them.
