If you have been reading along we just finished the Voice.
Assuming you have been following this blog and my emails since day one you will
have been through the NLT, NIV, ESV and now the Voice. The one thing that
shines through in all is the love of God is with us and He wants us to know Him
more. You don’t need to do as I have done and read a ton of versions, but
choose one and live in it, highlight what stands out, pray for enlightening
insight and do it daily.
I like the study of the context and verbiage used and this
started because a preacher told me I was going to hell because I did not read
the KJV. Ironically through the years of study I learned that the KJV had many “biases”
that were conceived from the Catholic doctrine and although the Anglican Church
of England commissioned it, these biases existed. The irony is he was a
Baptist, preaching from a book biases by the same church that persecuted the
founding of his church.
Don’t get me wrong the KJV is a great translation and the
wording is beautiful in many cases. To me most of the time it’s difficult to
read or understand since many words used then have changed meanings, like
gay;-) Also, the style of writing is difficult for me to follow so I tended to
get lost reading that version, while the others were a breeze.
Specifically what I like about the voice is when they
address God by name it’s not Lord, but rather The Eternal. It’s a more precise translation
of Yahweh in the English. Also, notice they never used Christ as a name for
Jesus. The only place that word appeared was when talking about the
anti-Christ, otherwise the translations used “The Anointed One”. Christ is
actually a transliteration of the word “Christos” which translated into English
would mean The Anointed One. So while many get up in arms about the
translation, I believe it is true and gives us a cleared understanding of God
and how we relate to Him.
The final warning in Revelations about not adding or subtracting
from the text is of concern with most translations. I touched on this
concerning hell and if the lake of fire was eternal or not. This version like
many others added the words “an eternity in” to verse 21:8 to imply the
lake of fire was a long suffering. This is supported later in the text, but is
not a precise translation and was added. This has me concerned since most
translations need to do this so we can understand the subtle differences with
the Greek and Hebrew texts. I feel the most “liberal” of these are the Message,
while all seem to add words to enhance our understanding, The Message tends to
take more liberties and some in my opinion are very dangerous (you need to read
back to figure out which ones since I cannot recall off the top of my head.
Anyway, the key here is pray, read, pray, read more
and repeat, forever. There is no stopping the pursuit of God on this earth. Now
as for this blog and my continuing, not sure what I am planning next although I
am thinking of exploring prayers and how to dig into the scripture to form more
powerful prayers. So I am not going away with the thought at this time, it’s just
“morphing” into a prayer and scripture study. Keep on watching!!