Battle of the Bibles - Present Truth

(By the late nineteenth century, these contaminating theories were to bear
poisonous fruit as demonstrated in the efforts of two traitorous Anglican clergymen, Drs
Westcott and Hort. Their hatred of the Received Text and the lasting effects of their
Roman-inspired attack on the King James Bible will be discussed at length in chapter
eighteen).
Not surprisingly, this climate of doubt and questioning gradually led to a general
loss of faith in Christianity, and in France there arose a savage backlash against the
organisers of the debacle. In 1773, the Jesuit Order or Society of Jesus was banned.
This action was merely a precursor to the impending bloody French Revolution, which
occurred sixteen years later.
During the following quarter-century, the revolutionary armies of Napoleon
rampaged over Europe in an orgy of antireligious conquests which were seen by some
as "The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit" (Revelation 11:7).
Even the pope was dethroned and Christianity, especially as practised by the
Roman Catholic Church, appeared to have received a mortal blow. Careful students of
prophecy realised that they were watching the fulfilment of prophecy where the Beast of
Revelation was "wounded to death" (13:3).
Had these same students studied with more understanding, they would have
noticed that the "deadly wound" was later to be "healed" (Verse 12).
After the overthrow of Napoleon in 1812, in which the British played no small
part, there emerged a confused and changed Europe. In France we find the pope's
faithful lackeys - the Bourbons - being rapidly restored to power and the reinstatement of
the previously banned Jesuits.
Although England had escaped the upheavals of the revolution, plans were
rapidly set in place to educate Englishmen in European Catholic seminaries in order that
they might re-enter Britain as theological warriors of Rome. Many of these were clerics
who had been trained in the Church of England's newly acquired tradition at Cambridge
and Oxford. One such person was Nicholas P.S. Wiseman who went to Rome ostensibly
to undertake Oriental studies, yet incredibly, he returned to England as an "expert" in
textual criticism! His theories which denigrated the Received Text, and consequently the
Authorised King James Bible, were avidly adopted by scholars whose names have since
become synonymous as revisionists, not only of the Authorised Version, but of
Anglicanism itself.
However, we are indebted to Wiseman for revealing the true source of his
theories which actually came from his close association with Jesuits. In later life he was
to admit:
"Without this training I should not have thrown myself into the. Puseyite
Controversy at a later date" (Ward, "Life and Times of Wiseman", Vol. I p 65).
(The Puseyite Controversy here mentioned refers to the activities of Dr Pusey
who took Newman's place in the Oxford Movement). Not surprisingly, Wiseman soon
openly defected to Romanism and was later rewarded with a Cardinal's hat.
Another of Dr Wiseman's contemporaries, John H. Newman of Oxford, also
defected to Roman Catholicism after going to Rome and exposing himself to the poison
of the papal bug.
In order that the reader might gain an insight into this era of papal intrigue and
subversion of English clerics, we shall devote the following chapter to a more detailed
account of Newman's fatal attraction to the ritualism and traditions of Rome. His story
will graphically illustrate the importance which Rome attaches to displacing Bibles of the
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