From "Answers To Your Bible Version Questions"
© 2002 by David W. Daniels

Question: I know some people who basically refuse to read the KJV because they claim they don't understand it. However, they are willing to read the NIV. I feel bad recommending the NIV to them if they aren't willing to read the KJV because I do feel that the KJV is the word of God. But in a case like this, is it better to have them read the NIV over nothing at all?

Answer: A false Bible is not the truth. It's that simple. I am a kind and soft-hearted person. I would love to tell people it is okay to read other Bibles, and they're just as good for them. That's my personality. But I cannot. I cannot compromise the truth and tell people that a Bible that is missing or adding or changing the truth is STILL the truth. False Bibles are not "The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth."

I have to tell people the truth. I myself found it out at 17 when I started reading a King James Bible and needed to understand it. This truth is simple: It is by the Holy Ghost that we understand the King James Bible. Look at these scriptures.

Luke 24:45 — Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,

1 Corinthians 2:12-16 — Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Acts 17:11 — These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

It is by God's great grace that we can understand His words. Here is what I did. Just as the Bible says, I pray to the Father (Colossians 3:17; 1 Peter 1:17) in the name of Jesus, God the Son (Matthew 18:20; John 14:13-14; 15:16), and ask that the Holy Ghost reveal the scriptures to me (John 14:26; 15:26; 1 Corinthians 2:12-16).

Since the first day I prayed that way to God, even though I was still in the occult, the Lord began to show me His truth as I read His words in the King James Bible. Two weeks later I was saved!

What's more, I was amazed to find out two years later in Bible college that what God had shown me about the Bible was correct. What a blessing! And God is "no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34) so I believe what He did for me He will also do for you or anyone who asks Him.

If we need help with words we do not understand, we use a Bible dictionary or the King James Bible Companion. But when we do not understand Bible teaching, we pray to our God, in Jesus' name, who by the Holy Ghost richly supplies "all things that pertain unto life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3).

May God bless us all as we read and trust God to understand His preserved words in English, the King James Bible.

How Many Words Do You Know?

Is "King James English" all that hard to understand? I bet you know more than you think you do. —David W. Daniels