“And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.” “And THIS GOSPEL (capitals mine – Bible) of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”

Matthew 24:4-5, 14

Shortly after Jesus chastised the Scribes and the Pharisees in Matthew 23 for their hypocrisy and failure to teach the True Word of God, He was on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24) and was confronted by several of His disciples who wanted to know exactly when all the things Jesus had told them about would happen and what would be the coming signs of the end times. I believe we are now all very familiar with many of those things Jesus prophesied would be witnessed, like the “…wars and rumours of war”, “nations shall rise against nation”, “kingdoms against kingdoms” and that “there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in diverse places.” These tend to be the signs most Christians are looking for today as to when we should expect the End Times to begin. But if you read Matthew 24:4-7 closely, you will see the very FIRST thing He warned them about was to be careful NOT to be deceived! In other words, we will see many of the things He told us about would happen but FIRST we need to make sure we are NOT deceived as to the times and the signs. We are to be especially aware of those who claim to be speaking like Jesus who, in fact, will be lying to us.

A short time ago I posted an article (The Prophesied End of the “Christian” Church) to my website where I discussed the 7 churches of the Church Age discussed by John in the Book of Revelation (chapters 2 & 3). Most notably, Jesus gave Praises and Warnings to the first 6 churches but to the last church, the Church of the Laodiceans, He only had negative things to say about them. As I mentioned, while John was told to write to the 7 churches he had previously formed in western Asia Minor, many Biblical scholars have also equated each of those churches to the chronological timeline of the Christian Church, from the time of Pentecost right up until today. The consensus of their opinion is that we are currently living in the time period of the dominant, “lukewarm” church, the final church of the Church Age, the Laodicean Church.

In writing that previous post, one of the things which surprised me in my research was the time periods associated with each church. For example, Jesus gave high praise and no warnings to the 6th church, the church of Philadelphia, for their evangelism and missionary work. Bible scholars have pinpointed the primary time of that church from around 1750-1900 A.D. while the Laodicean Church is believed to have become “lukewarm” beginning around 1900 A.D. and notably remains so right up until today. While I believe that previous post adequately explained the differences between the various churches in the Church Age, I was, to be totally honest, confused by the chronological timeline. Why did they believe the Laodicean Church began around 1900 A.D.? Why not 1917 (the Balfour Doctrine)? Why not 1948 (the return of the Jews to the Promised Land of Israel and their Declaration of Independence)? Or, why not 1967 (the recapturing of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem)? I could not find any answer to my questions and remained baffled.

The Lord works in mysterious ways! As I continued to search for an answer to my questions, I came across an article on Facebook that struck me as a potential answer. The more I researched, the more convinced I became as to how 1900 A.D. became the cornerstone year for the birth of the dominant church of today, the “lukewarm” church which is potentially deceiving tens or even hundreds of millions of people TODAY.

I grew up using the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. I am not sure when I became aware of many of the other Bible versions in circulation but over the years of studying Bible prophecy and the sometime confusing language of the KJV, I would look at other Bibles to see if their words were clearer. Below I have listed the Bibles in my library. While this list is not all inclusive, I do believe they represent the vast majority of Bibles in circulation today:

• King James Version (KJV)
• New King James Version (NKJV)
• New International Version (NIV)
• Revised Standard Version (RSV)
• New American Standard Bible (NASB)

There are many other Bibles in print in different languages but these 5 comprise the vast majority of Bibles in existence today. In fact, the KJV was first printed in 1611 A.D. and it is believed to be the most printed book in the history of the world with over one billion copies printed. It was revised and printed as the Revised Version (RV, not RSV) in 1885 A.D. But, this is where it gets VERY interesting! The timeline for the publishing of other versions of the Bible is below:

• 1901 A.D. – American Standard Version (ASV) is first published, an American revised copy of KJV
• 1946-1952 A.D. – Revised Standard Version (RSV) is first published
• 1971 A.D. – New American Standard Bible (NASB) is first published
• 1973 A.D. – New International Version (NIV) is first published
• 1982 A.D. – New King James Version (NKJV) is first published
• 1996 A.D. – New Living Translation (NLT) is first published
• 2001 A.D. – English Standard Version (ESV) is first published

Wow! For almost 300 years the KJV Bible was basically the only Bible version for all of Christianity and during that same time period, the Church of Philadelphia as prophesied by Jesus Himself was THE evangelistic, missionary church that deserved all praise and no warnings or condemnation. The church age of Philadelphia basically ended with the beginning publication of various other, newer versions of the Bible. Coincidence? I doubt it!

So, if the supposition the “lukewarm church” of the Laodiceans began at the end of the evangelistic Church of the Philadelphians and this happened around 1900 A.D. when NEW versions of the Bible started showing up, what is your takeaway? In order to answer that question and agreeing some versions are “easier” to read in modern day English rather than ancient English, I would like to tell you a personal quick story of how words can change the original writings.

I compiled my first book Comfort One Another – 2017 in early 2018. As you may know, all 5 of my books are simply my posts from that specific year assembled into a soft cover book format (by the way, these books are FREE to all who subscribe to my website www.comfortoneanother.com). Since I had never written and self-published a book before, I gave a copy of my manuscript to my printing company but failed to ask them to NOT spell check all of my writings. To be fair to them, they did what I did or did not ask them to do. Before printing they spell checked my book and I failed to proofread what they had changed. As a result for example, in most places where I quoted Scripture and used the KJV word of “thee” (as in, I will Bless THEE), the spell check changed the word to “the” (as in, I will Bless THE). That shows just how quickly the meaning in the Bible can change with just one small correction, addition or omission.

The more I looked into this, the more convinced I became that the original wording of the KJV has been corrupted with new Bible versions while trying to convince Christians they were simply trying to make the Bible easier to read. Let me give you just one very important Scripture example from the KJV and how it has been manipulated with newer versions:

“For the Son of man is come to save that which is lost.”

Matthew 18:11 (KJV)

What do some of the other versions say? NOTHING!!

• NIV – goes verse 10 to verse 12 with verse 11 omitted. Check it out!
• RSV – goes from verse 10 to verse 12 with verse 11 omitted. Check it out!
• NASB – While verse 11 is shown, it is in parenthesis with a footnote (1a) at the beginning but no explanation of what it means
• NKJV – This version includes the phrase, but footnote declare this verse was excluded from the fourth edition of the United Bible Societies version

I strongly suggest if you doubt what I have said, get a few of these other Bible versions and compare them to what is said in the KJV. Remember, the KJV was in existence for hundreds of years BEFORE they were published and were at the epicenter of Christian evangelism in the 1700’s and 1800’s. Below are listed just a few of many other Scriptural changes/omissions to the original KJV Bible:

• Matthew 17:21 “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
• Matthew 23:14 “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.” (Jesus said this!)
• Mark 7:16 “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Jesus said this!)
• Mark 9:44 “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Jesus said this!)
• Mark 9:46 “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Jesus said this!)
• Mark 11:26 “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.” (Jesus said this!)
• Mark 15:28 “And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.”
• Luke 17:36 “Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.” (Jesus said this!)
• Luke 23:17 “(For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast).”
• John 5:4 “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water; whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”
• Acts 8:37 “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
• Acts 15:34 “Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still.”
• Acts 24:7 “But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands.”
• Acts 28:29 “And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.”
• Romans 16:24 “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”

I don’t know if you are shocked as I am with all of this but to have the Apostles of Jesus Christ write what HE said directly to them and have that then deleted out of many of the various Bible versions which have been published over the past 100-125 years, changing or omitting what was used for centuries by a “church” Jesus praised for their missionary work is astonishing. Now, to be very honest, I had never noticed the missing verses in these other versions, where a certain chapter of a book has verses that go verse 6 to verse 7 to verse 8 to verse 10, omitting verse 9. Where did it go?

By omitting even a short part of the sentence, it can drastically change the meaning of what the KJV originally said:

“And Jesus answered him, saying It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, BUT BY EVERY WORD OF GOD  (capitals mine).”

Luke 4:4 (KJV)

Jesus is quoted here directly by the Apostle Luke!!

If you use the NIV, NASB, ESV, CSB or the NLT, check it out. They all omit the words which says “…but by every word of God.” If various Bibles published recently exclude those words, what does it tell you? Or, what about John 6:47 (KJV)? “Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth ON ME (capitals mine – omitted from all other versions) hath everlasting life.” Jesus said this also! So, what does that tell you? Perhaps the words are being manipulated in such a way to sway you from what the Bible actually says in a Satanic way to reduce your knowledge and understanding of what Jesus actually said.

For many years in the 1600’s, 1700’s and 1800’s A.D. the “Christian Church” was made up primarily by Catholics and Protestants who used only the KJV Bible, since it was basically the only recognized Bible in existence. However, in the early 1900’s many churches started to change, consolidate and even formed. Again, is it coincidental at the same time new versions of the Bible were being introduced lacking what the KJV said and established churches were merging or being created? The Bible is almost one third prophetic and yet how many churches today teach prophecy? Today, there are many churches (and I believe you know who they are) who blatantly ignore the Bible’s warnings on homosexuality, gay marriage, and yes, even abortion rights. The church I grew up in, the Lutheran Church, recently came out and said abortion is a woman’s right and should be respected. Does the Bible anywhere say it is ok to abort a child who God knew long before conception?

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee (and) I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5

Other churches brag about the fact they have gay ministers. Do these ministers teach what the Bible says about a man laying with another man or a woman with a woman?

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination (sin).”

Leviticus 18:22 (KJV)

Look, I know by now I have probably alienated or offended many Christians who don’t like the KJV because of its “old” style of English. I understand that. My point in all of this is to be aware of what the original Bible (KJV) says and don’t be deceived by a pastor or minister who fails to adequately teach what Jesus actually told us. When it is all said and done, I feel strongly the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every Believer will ultimately bring us to His Truth. But, we must follow Christ’s warnings to His disciples to “…Take heed that no man deceive you.”   When we know it and are not deceived by Satan with even small differences, we can then tell others of His gift of eternal salvation to us. As He has told us, all we must do is accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, acknowledge we are all sinners, repent of our sins and recognize our need of His sacrifice on the cross to cleanse us of our sins. If we do this, we will be saved! Oh, and don’t forget to also always do as He told us to “…therefore comfort one another with these words”. Not my words! His Words! The Word, the Holy Bible, He has given to us as a guide to live the life He wants us to live, now and forever!

May God Bless you as we await His VERY soon Return!