Question:
I’ve always heard Dr. McGee and other great Bible teachers talk about all the words that are mistranslated in the KJV. Any comments?
Answer:
As to J. Vernon McGee, he was subject to the same frailty that we are today, and also that C. I. Scofield was in his day. In Scofield’s day, to be “scholarly” in Bible teaching, they felt they had to answer the “supposed fact” that the world was “millions” and “billions” of years old. To do so, Bible teachers came up with the “Gap Theory.” That was a “supposed gap” between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. A “gap” big enough to hold the “millions and billions” of years that the scientists said were a “fact.” The problem is that there was no need to answer the world with their millions and billions of years, because they were wrong. I Timothy 6:20,21 says, “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE FALSELY SO CALLED: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.”
Some people have “erred concerning the faith,” because they have taken “oppositions of science” as fact. Bible “textual criticism” is called a “science,” but it is not. It is a “theory,” and a false one at that.
Dr. McGee was just a man, and he lived in the days when many preachers accepted what Westcott and Hort said as “fact.” They came up with a supposed theory of finding “more accurate” Scripture manuscripts. Their theory is just as false as evolution, but many old-time preachers fell for it, because it seemed “scholarly” in their day. I have no doubt but that Dr. McGee would see the whole thing much differently, if he were a young to middle-aged preacher living today.
Rather than pick on the preachers of yesteryear; or, on the other hand, blindly follow them, let us humble ourselves before Almighty God, and pray for grace to humbly follow God’s Word. The devil will surely have some errors for us to be tempted to swallow in our day, too. What we must do is keep faithfully reading God’s Word and believing it, no matter how foolish it may seem in the “scholar’s” eyes.