The Plastic Bible - Moriel Ministries

that is not good – now we have crossed the
line. Again, if we are doing it with children
or something like that OK, but what happens
when we begin doing it for people
who are not children? Now the line is completely
“black.” Now we are in the “black
zone,” What do I mean? The Message.
Crossing the Line
When someone goes into Dynamic
Equivalence, something subtlety begins to
happen. They are going more from translation
to interpretation. But when someone
goes from Dynamic Equivalence into paraphrases,
now they are going further away
from translation, mainly into the realm of
interpretation. It is progressive, it is subtle,
but that is how it goes.
Nehemiah says this is the standard,
but when people cannot read the standard
someone has to explain the exact meaning.
Well, that is the work of an expositor.
“So we’ll go literalist so it will be readable
then we’ll go into Dynamic Equivalence.
But that’s not good, we should stick with
literalist.” Yes, but we still have a problem
with the Septuagint. It is not as easy as they
make out. “We shouldn’t have paraphrases!”
Don’t we want to be able to teach little
Henry about Jesus?
They do something else when they get
to Dynamic Equivalence and it is also done
with the literalist approach: they annotate.
When they annotate a Bible it may not be
completely bad what they are doing, but
a Schofield Bible is annotated so one will
read the Bible along the lines of dispensational
presupposition. The reader will see
it the same as a Dispensationalist. That is
the Schofield Bible. The Catholic Jerusalem
Bible annotates to explain away how
Joseph could have known Mary and how
she stayed a virgin. That is a pretty good
one. How does someone consummate a
marriage and the bride remains a virgin? I
do not know, I am not a Catholic priest, but
they seem to have it figured out.
Some undertake to annotate, but the tendency
is to read the text through the prism
of the annotation. So now what they are
doing is building commentary into the text.
The first ones to do this were not Christians;
the first ones to do this were rabbis
– Talmudic commentary on the Haftorah
but they would read it together and things
like this. The first ones to do this stuff were
the ancient world, but we are talking now
about Evangelicals. Peter says they are going
to aim at us. (2 Pe. 2:1) They are going
to aim a plastic Bible at us.
Proof-Texting
Look at what Rick Warren is doing
with The Message. Notice how in his Purpose
Driven books it is always The Message
he uses. He engages in a practice
called “proof-texting”. Proof-texting is a
form of bad exegesis that uses a form of
hermeneutic (“hermeneutic” is “biblical
interpretation”) invented by liberal theologians
– “conscientiousization.”
This is what guys like Onino and Sabrino
said: “Well, the main need of the people
in Latin America is for a political liberation
against the hacienda class, so therefore we
have to reinterpret the Bible to meet our
need. The Exodus of the Jews was a national
liberation so therefore the central event
in Scripture is not the death, resurrection,
and promised return of Christ, but it’s rather
the Exodus.” Instead of doing what Habakkuk
did, get up on the watchtower and
look out, (Hab. 2:1) instead of observing a
situation from the perspective of the Word
of God, they look at the Word of God from
the perspective of their situation. Instead of
looking at a situation biblically they look
at the Bible from the point of view of their
situation and assign their own meaning.
This begins with proof-texting. Someone
comes with a presupposition about
what they want to say and then they go try
to find a verse that fits it. They do not begin
by doing an exegesis of the text to determine
this is what God says about the situation,
instead they have their own preconceived
idea and try to find a text that supports it,
which usually means taking a text out of
context and making it a pretext. Usually
they have to take a text out of context and
make it a pretext. “If you can’t find it in the
original Greek and Hebrew, go to a translation.
If you can’t find it in a translation, go
to a paraphrase.” That is exactly what Rick
Warren does. He will bounce from version
to version but it is mainly The Message.
The fact that he is not consistently using
one translation or not appealing to the
original meaning of the Greek and Hebrew,
that should be the first warning sign. The
first warning sign is he is not appealing to
the original language; the second warning
sign is he is bouncing from translation to
translation; the third warning sign is he is
going to a paraphrase.
Maligning the Truth
He was not the first one to do this,
but something else happens. They malign
– they malign the way, the truth. (2 Pe. 2:2)
The first ones to do this, and they still exist,
were the ancient Samaritans. They actually
changed the text of the Torah to make Mt.
Gerazim look like the holy mountain and
they dropped all the prophets; they only
kept the five books of Moses, which they
doctored. This is the whole background of
John 4, the argument between Jesus and
the woman. They were the first ones to do
it. These guys still exist. They still sacrifice
Feature Article – Continued
sheep and everything, the same ones from
the books of Nehemiah, Ezra, and John 4.
They were the first ones to do this.
The first ones in the modern world to do
this, and these guys took the cake I thought
– The New World Translation. It had a
green cover and it was the translation of the
Jehovah’s Witnesses. They would butcher
the text. “The word was A God?” And
they “worshiped?” No they “did obeisance
to Him.” Now the Greek word is “proskuto”
– they “worshiped” Him, not “obeisance.”
What are they doing? Pseudologon?
No, a plastois logon; a plastic Bible.
Believe it or not, it gets even worse
than this! What can be worse than a bad
paraphrase like The Message? “Inclusivist
translations.” They have to be inclusive
– feminists, homosexuals, non-Christians.
Romans 1, Leviticus, they say homosexuality
is wrong so that has to come out. “Our
Father and our Mother who art in heaven.”
This is Inclusivism.
With a pseudologos, with the Quran,
we have a false word of God that actually
tries to correct errors in our Bible according
to their claims. They claim our Bibles
are wrong. The Muslims say the 5 th Century
Gnostic forgery of the Gospel of Matthew
is the real gospel and the Quran is the
final testament that sets out to correct the
Old and New Testament. The Old Testament
Messianic prophecies about Jesus are
actually about Mohammed – this is what
they do. But this is another book. The Book
of Mormon is another book. What happens
when we have something called “The Holy
Bible.” It has the same name – The Holy
Bible, it has the same number of books, it
has the same order of books, and it calls
itself The Holy Bible. What do we have
now? We do not have a pseudologos, we
have a plastois logos. Now The Holy Bible
itself has become a false word of God.
Peter says this will happen in the Last
Days. The Bible itself becomes a false
word of God. Same name – “Holy Bible” –
sixty-six books with the same name, same
order, but now it is inclusive. The Reader’s
Digest published the first major edition of
it. There are several of them now.
Something Never Done
Before
But what if I told you it gets even
worse? What if I told you something is
happening now that is so unbelievable a
Jehovah’s Witness would not have the audacity
to do it. What if I told you something
has happened now that is so outrageous the
Inclusivists would not have the audacity to
do it? What if I told you something was
happening now that is so demonic nobody
has ever done it before and the one who is
doing it is the most respected born again
March 2010 • Moriel Quarterly