Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Way back in 2005, we were preparing Did the Catholic Church Give Us the Bible? and we wanted to have a way to introduce the topic. Some suggested to have the priest in Jack’s comic drawing say,

“Mother Church can change the Bible because she gave it to us!”

I asked them, “Have you actually heard Roman Catholics say this?” Yes, they had. Then I saw more testimonies that the Catholic Church claimed to be able to change the Bible. Do you want to see a recent example? Enter Pope Francis. In November of 2016, he proposed six new beatitudes. Even then, no one took his ideas seriously, to add them to the Bible. But now, in December 2017, he went a step further: he proposed changing the actual words of the Lord Jesus in the mis-named “Lord’s Prayer” at Matthew 6:13 and Luke 11:4.

As my friends point out, other translations have already changed “lead us not into temptation” to something like his proposed “...do not let us fall into temptation.” The 1998 New International Reader’s Version (NIrV) says “Keep us from falling into sin” and the 2007 New Living Translation (NLT) says “And don’t let us yield to temptation”. And this is amazing enough, because the Greek text clearly says “lead us not.” They literally changed Jesus’ words, and these are both supposed to be Bible translations.

The pope may just be “testing the waters,” to see the people’s response to his proposals. One day a pope may have a lot more power, and may actually force publishers to change Jesus’ words in places like these.

We at Chick do all we can to support and promote Bibles that are translated correctly, such as the King James and Reina Valera Gomez 2010. We do our best to make sure our tracts have the words of God in them, not the changed words of sinful men. And we must be diligent, because, as Jack always said, “The power is in the scriptures.”

May God bless you as you pass out gospel tracts, to point the world to God’s holy words, while we still have time.

In Christ Jesus, and for His service,