Antichristianism
W. G. Broadbent

DECEPTIONS HEADING FROM ANTICHRISTIANISM

In his prophetic "Lectures on the Book of Revelation" (given about 1858) William Kelly made the statement "Christendom and Judaism will each contribute to the last form of evil --- antichristianism". Antichristianism is now with us. It is all that calls itself Christian in profession and practice, which however, is contrary to true Christianity. It is Christian in name and pretence, but what they call Christianity is antichristianism. It is that which waters down and spoils all that is essential in Christianity and presents instead something which appears like it but is opposed to it. This involves the following deceptions:

1. Deceptions of a mutilated unauthoritative Bible.
2. Deceptions of watered-down aborted doctrines.
3. Deceptions of Devil-orientated spirituality.
4. Deceptions of a gospel which is not the gospel.

1. UNAUTHORITATIVE BIBLES

"If the foundations be destroyed what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11: 3). The Devil accordingly has set out to destroy the Bible, so that the righteous will have no foundations for faith or teaching or knowledge of God and His purposes. The deception of the modern Bibles is that they look like modern versions of the true Bible but they do the Devil’s work in two respects : a) In thousands of small changes they detract from the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the main the changes tend to the support of the views of those who deny the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, bodily resurrection, the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures and other fundamental doctrines. b) They cannot be read and accepted without the readers also accepting that with all the different versions around, based on different Greek texts etc., that there is no way of knowing what is the true Bible. The modern splurge of Bibles by this scholar and that proclaims that all these particular scholars admit and accept that there is no true Bible available. If they agreed there was a true text or true Bible, then they would not all produce things different. And the reader who accepts and uses these Bibles is also accepting that there is no true Bible that may be referred to, or he would not bother with anything other than that. That the Devil has succeeded to produce this position today, is the greatest break-through he has had in his warfare against Christ and His Church since Pentecost. All the modern variant versions are based on the so-called "Codex Vaticanus" of the Roman Catholic Church and other kindred texts from the stream of texts to which it belongs. The history of these texts has been clearly shown from the research work of godly men in recent years. These texts are the product of erroneous teaching in the second century and they were rejected by the virile Christianity of those stern times. The true texts were preserved faithfully in another stream of copies and our Authorised Version which has come to us from and through these texts is the true Bible in the English language. The people of God who preserved the true texts over the centuries ever rejected the false texts with Apocrypha upon which the Roman Catholic versions are based. But now, "scholars" have elevated the spurious texts and they are deceiving God’s people with them. Modern Christians are not proving as discerning as the people of God were in the early centuries or even in the dark ages. The Waldensians, the Huguenots, the Albigenses and the Reformers of the Reformation period all rejected what is now deceiving the modern Christians. God made a perfect Book and intended it to be absolutely authoritative even to jots and tittles of its text and of its thought and expressions. It was given "that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works". (2 Tim. 3: 17). Accordingly the suggestion that God has failed and that it is not now possible to know the actual Scriptures in word or detail – authoritatively - is a slander against the Almighty - and it is a wicked deception of Satan.

God did something extraordinary when the Bible was set up in English, and became settled in the form that is called "The Authorised Version". There had been a period of about one hundred years or more of English translation from the same stream of Greek texts, but in the reign of James the First the Bible came into use in English in a way that was obviously ordered of God Himself. It is not called the "Authorised Version" because King James authorised it, for he did not presume to do such a thing. But because godly Christians everywhere recognised it and accepted it and acted upon it as the only true and authorised version for the Churches of God in English- speaking countries. In the same way that the canon of Scripture became recognized by godly people after much heart-searching, and over a considerable period of time, so also did the English Bible become settled, accepted and loved and acted upon as the Bible by English-speaking peoples. And for three hundred years the Church has accepted the Authorised Version as the true Bible and has acted boldly upon it in every way. But now modernist scholars are seeking to set it aside, and thus is the work of Satan effected today. It should be noted that all the modern versions are based on the Roman Catholic stream of Bible texts, in the places where they all at variance with the Authorised Version. Similarly it should be noted that no variant translations in English have been made based on the true texts from which the Authorised Version came to us.

This is because the Authorised Version is completely satisfying and is the only true Bible in English which relates with the true Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek. It should also be noted that the modern "translations" are the work of scholars who do not believe in the inspiratio-1 of Scripture and who deny the deity of Christ. Can any Christ-honouring Christian commit himself to and rely on the work of people who do not honour their Lord and whom they know from Scripture that God will not honour ? Could God possibly have committed His Holy Word or His Church to the administrations of such men? The answer is sometimes given by people who are mystified by the references to this Hebrew or Greek text or that, that this is a realm for scholars only and that only those who are experts in Hebrew and Greek and in textual knowledge, have a right to treat in such matters and that the ordinary common Christian must rely on specialised scholarship for direction in this field. The answer to this is that God never commits His essential things to worldly scholarship. He does not prize it very highly. The consistent pattern of God’s dealings in such matters is "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty: and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are : that no flesh should glory in His presence" (1 Cor. I : 27 - 29).

Thus it is that God did not rely on scholars to fix the canon of Scripture, but the common people of His Church, whom the scholars despise, has God used to recognise and give the Bible to the World. Similarly today, God is not using the world of scholarship to give a conflicting maze of different Bibles. Somebody else is doing that. God is still however causing simple true believing souls to recognise correctly what is of Himself. He has done this for English- speaking people since the English Bible became generally accepted by His saints, and He is still doing it. The Almighty laughs at "modern textual scholarship" which sets itself against Him and His Book, and Christ is spurning today the peddlers of the scholars’ products and the scholars likewise. The common believer who understands the English language only, may know His God, God’s Christ, and the Holy Bible, as no modernist professor will ever d$). He can manage without the Professor’s help, because he has illumination spiritually from the Holy Ghost. Actually the great professors are professing to try to understand the words of simple fishermen and other straight-forward people who are so unlike themselves that they have a lot of trouble with it. The common Christians of the Church are not so inhibited with such an incubus of doubt and they get the truth loud and clear while the professors are stumbling about in the murk, professing their doubt, depression and despondency. How do we deal with this deception ? There is only one thing to do with the deceptive unauthoritative Christ- dishonouring trash Bibles of our age. ‘That is to get them out of our houses. And let us elevate and treasure the only true English Bible. It has been attacked and besmeared, but it is safe and sure under God’s own protection. It will be available to the Church until Christ calls the Church away to be with Himself for ever. Those who may require further information on this subject are referred to the following books now available: "God wrote only one Bible" by J. J. Ray. "Believing Bible Study" by Dr. E. F. Hills." Which Bible?" by Dr. D. O. Fuller.

2. HATH GOD SAID? ABORTED DOCTRINES

The next deception of antichristianism is related to the scholars’ unauthoritative Bibles. If you cannot be sure of the true text or Bible, how can you be sure of any teaching ? Once doubt is suggested about the authority for this or that Scripture, it is an easy further move to doubt what it teaches and the Devil is riding again with the age-long question of the serpent : "Hath God said ?" Every truth falls under suspicion and so is produced the final doubt - Is any truth or teaching or doctrine important at all ? –seeing there can be nothing sure if there is no authoritative Bible to refer to ? And so we have the "Love greater than doctrine" nonsense of the scholarly no-hopers in the pulpits and colleges of the main-line "protestant" Churches today. It will be no loss to the true service of God when they finally trundle off into full association with Rome in the mysteries and abominations of Babylon the Great. This deception is dealt with by firmly holding the shield of faith and using only the tried and tested sword of the Spirit tuned and tempered to the English language, and marked "A.V."

3. DEVIL ORIENTATED SPIRITUALITY

While undermining the authority of the Bible on the one hand, on the other hand the Devil is offering today something else to take its place. The proposition of this deception is that while you may not be: sure of any text of Scripture, you can at least be sure of personal subjective spiritual experiences and revelations. And so we have the authority of dreams and imaginings, of alleged interpretations of ‘Tongues" and of alleged prophecies and healings and spiritual "experiences" and "leadings" of many kinds. And so we have the modern cults and the occult. The deception is that these experiences are from God when they are really from the wily old serpent himself, and not from above but from below. Readers are referred in this connection to the writer’s booklet "The Doctrine of Tongues" for a more detailed study of the working of this deception. This deception extends from the cults through all branches of Protestantism and in Roman Catholicism. It is a unifying factor in the process of ecumenism. The Lord does lead His own people, to move rightly in their individually appointed paths of life, but the Word of God is ever enthroned and supreme in relation to such leading. The modern deception is that Satan leads those who are not obedient to the every commandment and precept of the Written Word. The penalty for side-stepping the clear authority of God’s Word and not implicitly acting upon it, is that Satan finds a victim to lead and confuse contrary to the plan and will of God. How do we deal with this one ? We repent of our doubts and we return to the precision and exactitude of the only certain Lamp to our feet and Light to our path. With this position accepted and acted upon, "the Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore" (See Psalm 121).

4. A WARPED GOSPEL

The unauthoritative Bibles with the aborted doctrines and abandoned directions of God, supported by manifestations and eruptions of fake spirituality, produce "novel" and "modern" ways of preaching and teaching. The deception is that these "ways" and "messages" are from God, but Satan has through them completed his full circle of triumph for he has thus misled multitudes of God’s people to neutralise their effectiveness in God’s service by thinking they are pleasing God when they are not and by making it almost impossible for sinners to be reached with the potency of the true Word of God in Holy Spirit power with the unction of the voice and instrumentality of obedient and trusting servants of God. Thus it is that we have "Gospel" crusades run by committees of mixed believers and unbelievers. And thus it is that we have believers claiming that "the end" justifies the means. And thus it is that Roman Catholics are regarded as "Christians", and their gospel that built their institutions is seen as the same gospel ,that Billy Graham has on the one hand, and that the apostles had on the other !Thus it is that Coffee-Bar vaudevillists pass as Christian preachers or teachers. Thus the Ladies’ Coffee-hour sips and socialises, deceiving and being deceived that that form of fellowship is God-approved and Spirit-blessed. Thus it is that we have antichristianism rampant everywhere today.

WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT ALL THIS?

Well, if we want to be "with it", and if we want to enjoy popularity, then we carry on with the crowd, and enjoy the prosperity and ease and good fun and comradeship of Laodiceanism. But if we want to be looking to please our Lord, to really obey Him and do His service in the way He desires and "be ready" when He comes, then "every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure" (1 John 3: 3):

TO PURIFY:

1. Use the pure Bible only.
2. Believe it; obey it: act on it.
3. Pray it: meditate it; eat it: live it out.

"The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening; the eye" (Ps. 19: 8). This eyesalve will deal with all the deceptions of Satan - and more - it will enable the man of God to see clearly how he should redeem the time for God, in these evil days. "With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure" says the Psalmist, "and with the froward thou wilt snow thyself froward" (Psalm 18:26).