Excerpted from "Answers To Your Bible Version Questions" © 2001 by David W. Daniels
Question: It is true that I don't find lots of verses and words in the text of my NIV. But a lot of times I find the words in the footnotes. Isn't that good enough?
Answer: It is never "good enough" to take out or replace God's words. The text of the Bible is what the translators want you to think is the word of God. By putting the words into the footnotes, they make the reader think 1) they did not really belong in the Bible and 2) they are not really important.
But those words are very important. Look at these Scriptures:
With an NIV it's pretty easy for a Christian Scientist to say that God is "in everyone," even those who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
Anyone who believed that Joseph, not God, was Jesus' true father would love the NIV (or any other of the Alexandrian perversions).
The perversions spread the lie that it is hard to get to heaven. That makes it easy to say we need to do good works to be saved.
This is the only place in the New Testament that shows us the fulfillment of this prophecy in Isaiah 53:12. The perversions hide a fulfilled prophecy!
The Alexandrian writings make this passage meaningless! The preserved Bible shows us that Jesus' disciples are not to take revenge, nor to "destroy lives," but to "save them." The whole lesson here is removed in the perversions.
There are many other examples. Many can be found in the excellent book, If the Foundations Be Destroyed by Chick Salliby
But these show us that every word of the Bible is very important. That is why God warns us about adding to or taking away from His words.
God's preserved words in the King James Bible are what we need as Christians, to prepare in this life for the life to come, and to know what God wants us to know. Anything short of that-is not God's word.