Battle of the Bibles - Present Truth

was formed, known as the Trinitarian Bible Society. The year was 1831 and the Society
is s active to this day, remaining firm in its resolve.
With the advent of the Revised Version in 1881, the British and Foreign Bible
Society Committee's report for that year records its attitude to the New Testament
Revision. Because of the First Amendment restricting distribution in the English
language to the King James Version, much difficulty ensued. Obviously, some on the
Committee had been fooled into believing that England had been given a genuine
Revision, while others, like Burgon and Scrivener, had seen through the Romish plot to
give England a Catholic Bible.
By the year 1901, the Society caved in to mounting pressure and by a majority
vote it was agreed to include the Revised Version in its own published editions (Roe, "A
History of the British and Foreign Bible Society", Introduction).
But the Trinitarian Bible Society would have nothing to do with the Revised
Version. Its members had noted that Unitarians had been on the Committee of Revisers
and consequently concluded that the Revised Version must be tainted. Some members
of the British and Foreign Bible Society were already transferring their support to the
Trinitarian Bible Society. In July 1902 the Trinitarian Bible Society officially rejected the
Revised Version (Brown, "The Word of God Among All Nations", p 84).
In spite of the acceptance of the Revised Version by the British and Foreign Bible
Society, it failed to replace the Authorised Version which Protestants had grown to love
and revere, which just illustrates how pressures for change towards apostasy usually
come from the top.
Meanwhile, as mentioned in the previous chapter, Societies had been formed in
America. In 1817 the British and Foreign Bible Society entered Australia by forming an
Auxiliary in Sydney, which soon became known as the British and Foreign Bible Society
(in Australia).
The British and Foreign Bible Society quickly showed that it was living up to its
name by disseminating Bibles on a global scale. As the Scriptures were brought within
easy reach of the literate, so the economics of large production made them easily
affordable by the masses.
In many places around the world, people were seriously studying the Bible but
unlike the Roman Catholic Bibles, there were no explanatory notes, and people were the
more likely to interpret Scripture as the Holy Spirit directed them. This had always been
Rome's great fear and the very reason why she had bitterly opposed the free use of
Scripture among her laity.
Hence there arose a great number of non-conformist sects, many of which were
to blossom into well-known and highly respected Protestant denominations. Especially
was this so in North America where the American Bible Society flourished as a
Protestant institution.
As to the apostolic pedigree of the Authorised King James Bible, we can be
certain that the American Bible Society had no doubts. As recently as 1939 their periodic
publication, "The Book of a Thousand Tongues", made this highly significant statement:
"Our Gospels also existed separately in Syriac dress. They were termed the
Gospel of the Separated, to distinguish them from Tatian's work [Alexandrian Text] .... It
passed from East to West. It took a Latin form, as Dr Wace has shown in the sixth
century, and then in the ninth century was turned into old Saxon .... In this form, says Dr
Wace, the Gospel lived in the heart of the German people, and in due time produced
Luther and the German Bible, thus binding together the second century and the
sixteenth, the East and the West" (p 902).
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