Is your Bible truly the "Word of God Settled in Heaven?"

by Terry Watkins and James L. Melton (edited, updated, and revised by Tom Mack)

  • God Says, "For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven." Psalms 119:89
  • Jesus assured us, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Matthew 24:35
  • When Jesus defeated Satan in the wilderness, He did so using the Word of God, settled in heaven!
  • Therefore, if we have the Word of God - Settled in Heaven, we can defeat Satan too.

When we started to research 19th and 20th century church history, we discovered much to our surprise, that most of the churches in the early 19th Century had a considerable amount of power over the devil and his forces. If you read the accounts of the activities that went on at the time, there is no question that this is true.

The erosion in power began when the Bible Publishing Companies started deviating from the 1769 Cambridge King James Version of the Bible. When the King James Version was first published in 1611, no true copyright was ever assigned to the version. Printers could publish the KJV, but so could their competitors. Competition was wide open and, as a result, prices for Bibles were cheap. This led to a very heavy distribution of Bibles from the 18th century onward.

Publishing Companies however, make their money when they have a copyright on a book and are the only ones who can print and distribute a popular book. They know that they can make the maximum amount of money if they can control the distribution and keep the cover price of each book high. They can get by with this because the copyright laws give them exclusive control over the printing and distribution of their books. Publishing KJV Bibles was not an easy way to make money. Everyone was doing it and so the prices were cheap. Therefore, the publishing companies had to come up with a way to publish a Bible, then create a demand for it, and control price and distribution.

The first English Revised Standard Version and the American Standard Versions were initial attempts to publish a Bible. Unfortunately, since these versions were very similar to the existing King James Bible, there was not much interest or demand. The Revised Standard Version first published in 1950 was the first bestselling version that a company could make make serious money with. By the 1960s, multiple Bible versions came on the market. All of them were copyrighted and all of them had high price tags.

The profit motives of the publishing companies clearly overrode Jesus' warnings about serving mammon. Thanks to a well-planned marketing effort by the publishers, the Revised Standard Version was successfully launched in 1950. Most of the mainline denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Northern "liberal" Baptists) adopted the version and began using it in their pulpits. As a result, most of their people were obliged to visit their Christian bookstore and buy that version of the Bible that their pastors and teachers were using. As these companies and their cooperating church knelt at the altar of mammon, it became apparent that the churches' ability to overcome evil waned considerably.

By the 1980s, even many of the more "evangelical" denominations of Christianity (Assembly of God, Southern Baptist Convention) have adopted the New International Version (NIV) as their standard Bible. When the NIV is evaluated carefully, it becomes clear that this transation is an almost plagiarized copy of the Jehovah's Witnesses' old New World Translation. While most scholars have no problem making "pot-shot" attacks at the New World Translation, the New International Version is almost a "sacred cow;" apparently immune to objective evaluation.

The Foundation understands that there should be NO SACRED COWS in Christianity. Every work of literature should be subject to academic scrutiny; tried and tested to see if it truly is of God. Just because some publisher releases convincing advertising telling Christians that their Bible product is a quality product does not mean that it is. The subsequent pages in this website will discuss the history and scholarship of the Bible Versions and determine which ones are the most accurate.

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