KARL KEATING’S E-LETTER

July 29, 2008

TOPIC: FORGET COLLEGE, SAYS THE BIBLE

Dear Subscriber:

I first learned about Pastor Steven Anderson from someone’s blog. A link took me to a YouTube video of what probably is Anderson’s most bizarre sermon. It was his exegesis of 1 Kings 14:10, which in the King James Version (the only translation that Anderson will use) reads: “Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall.”

For Anderson’s somewhat scatolgical take on that passage, I refer you to his web site: http://www.faithfulwordbaptist.org.

At his web site Anderson explains that he “started Faithful Word Baptist Church on December 25, 2005.” Curiously, he does not say that he started his church “on Christmas Day, 2005.” But perhaps that’s understandable, since the omitted word comes from “Christ” and “Mass.”

The first word is okay, since you can find it in the Bible. The second word is taboo, because it is not in the Bible and because it is used by fake Christians who look to Rome for leadership. Or so say Fundamentalists of the sort that Anderson might appeal to.

The young pastor is married and has four children. He is proud to declare that he “holds no college degree but has well over 100 chapters of the Bible committed to memory, including almost half of the New Testament.”

When I first read this, I was reminded of Fundamentalist preacher Peter Ruckman, whom I debated in 1987. While he did not disclaim attending college, he did make a point of saying that he had read the Bible straight through 106 times, which worked out to two or three readings yearly during his adulthood. I suppose by now Ruckman’s tally must be 150 or 160 times.

In 1987, when his tally was so much lower but still impressive, I thought to myself that he inadvertently demonstrated the folly of sola scriptura. He had read the Bible straight through a staggering number of times, but still he got so much wrong. What does it profit a man if he reads Scripture daily yet understands little of it because he has insisted on being his own magisterium?

So it was with Peter Ruckman, and so it is with Steven Anderson.

Ruckman’s career has been based on the insistence that any translation other than the King James contains errors; he even claims a kind of inspiration for the KJV. Anderson may not be a follower of Ruckman in the strictest sense, but he follows Ruckman’s line of argument. He says that “for our generation God has provided the King James Bible.” (“Our generation” goes back four hundred years?)

“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” says Anderson, “the nation God was using the most was the nation of England. Over time, the United States of America picked up the torch of the gospel and has been used by God unlike any other nation. . . . In God’s foresight, he supplied the English-speaking people with a perfect preservation of his word, the King James Bible. . . . If the King James Bible is not God’s word, then where is God’s word?”

I often have wondered how this thinking goes over with European equivalents of American Fundamentalists, if there are any. Does a Bible-toting German Protestant concur that God’s word has been preserved accurately only in the English-language KJV? What about a descendant of the French Huguenots? How about a Calvinist in today’s Geneva?

Let me return to the bit about not having gone to college. Anderson finds the word “college” only twice in Scripture, in parallel passages, 2 Kings 22:14 and 2 Chronicles 34:22. Each is a reference to “Huldah the prophetess,” who “dwelt in Jerusalem in the college.”

Anderson takes “college” to mean today what the KJV translators meant by it four hundred years ago. He has in mind a place of higher education. (Well, actually he has in mind a modern Bible college.) But that was not the early seventeenth-century sense used by the translators. Modern translations use terms such as “the Second Quarter,” which is explained (in the New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture) to be an extension of the city west of the Temple, an area which was enclosed by a new outer wall that included the Fishgate. It was not a place of higher education in the modern sense.

Anderson comments: “Personally, I do not believe that anything in the Bible is incidental, coincidental, or accidental. If Bible college was such an important part of God’s program, then why is it never mentioned in the Bible in a positive light? . . . Therefore the only mention of ‘college’ in the Bible involves a woman preacher” . . . . This cannot be an accident.”

Anderson, who opposes women as preachers, argues that Bible colleges have sprung up because not enough “teaching, edifying, and perfecting [of] the saints” has occurred at Sunday worship services. Instead, the services have been geared toward converting the unconverted who may be in attendance. This shortchanges believers. “The result is that the common man in the pew who is not a Bible college student goes unfed.” What counts, then, is not whether a preacher has gone to college, Bible or otherwise, but whether he feeds his flock well.

There is some truth in that, but in much of what Steven Anderson writes and preaches one finds truth mixed with ignorance--but I suppose it wouldn’t do much good for me to say as much to him. After all, I’ve been to college.

Until next time,

Karl

This is what the church people I live around believe. They are incredibly ignorant

There are many good Christians who are fundamentalists, just as I'm sure there are many good Christians who are also Catholics. I think this sort of thread does nothing but further divide the body of Christ. There are many crazy Christians...like Mel Gibsons Catholic Priest father who doesn't believe the Holocaust happened and believes that the Catholic Church is under the control of a Jewish conspiracy. To paint all who believe a certain way by the crazy beliefs of the minority is unfair.

My cousin was raped by a group of Mexicans, should I assume all Mexicans are rapists? If I were to follow your example, I would.

As usual...you're very wise spider. Thanks for the comment.

very funny how a simple thread touches the sensivity of some people.
ask Luther who was the divider.
by the way the body of Christ is still one.
we can't divide the undivisable.

OK let's analyze this.
First of all, where in this article there is a generalization with regard all fundamentalist.
The author (a very respected apologist) was referring only about two particular people. He never said all are the same.
Therefore, I don't understand your analogy with the mexicans.

The title of the thread...



Your past behavior and comments on fundamentalists.

Luther made excellent points and a great number of Christians agreed with him.

my most honest feelings. with all due respect ofcourse.

Are you a Christian?

yes, I am.
but just to be straight.
what my behavior seems to be for you?

You usually appear to be a good Christian, but sometimes you make this same mistake. Not every Christian is going to be walking side by side with you. Some are ahead of you and some are behind. That doesn't mean that they aren't Christians. These guys have crazy beliefs, no doubt. But you seem to be trying to get "street cred" by belittling the beliefs of protestants. You have issues with the beliefs of Fundamentalists...guess what? Your beliefs contradict those of many Christians. Grab your Bible and read Romans 14 and tell me if you should continue to put stumbling blocks in front of other Christians. You can't tear a Christian down, you have to build them up. Write about why Catholicism is right, not about why protestants are wrong.

very good point, acknowledged.

yes, but when christianity is used to diminish others just because they are not christians, then is the issue.
I'm not a member of that "christianity."
I belong to the christianity which says we all are God's children regardless.

Jesus would disagree with you on that one.

the Jesus depicted in the King James Bible.

That's right.

Jesus said that we are all Gods.

John 10:34 "Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?"

Jesus said that he did not come to change the law. Here he is pointing out that in the law he said, "Ye are gods".

Jesus said that we are gods.

For the Bible tells us so.

i hate quoting.