Scripture reading: Revelation 3:14-18
We are at present at the end of the age of the Laodicean church which is described in Revelation 3:15 as being “neither cold nor hot,” but “rich, increased with goods and having need of nothing.” This means that all the seven churches with all their rebellion have come together in one church. This is the picture of a church well settled in the world, being the richest institution on the face of the earth, and wielding political and economic power of great proportions. Spiritually, she is inept and sick unto death with divisions and sin. The doctor would say her condition is incurable. The modern church system has slipped into a quagmire of preaching one thing, and finding it totally impossible to practice its own preachings from the Bible. Thus something more like the generation gap exists, ever widening, between her and her Bible. Something has to give. Therefore the Church, instead of giving way to the Bible, has been trying to bend the Bible to the Church.
By 1991, many of the churches had changed their hymnals to suit the trends of the time. Some have printed a new Bible which puts God in the feminine, and now we see the “overspreading of abominations” (Daniel 9:27) in the holy place. This alerts us that there will soon be the desolations and then the consummation of which this passage speaks.
The difficulty is like dealing with a pernicious disease, for the Bible was never written for carnal men and CARNAL INTERPRETATION. To remedy this ailment, every major religion has either done it herself, or embraced a translation of the Bible which appears to support her position doctrinally. In spite of this, the Bible as a whole condemns these organizations of man. Men who lack godliness institute doctrine to bind their adherents. Thus in this late hour of time, we find an influx of translations, with some passages being made clearer, and at the same time, other passages being made darker, increasing the confusion. It is alleged that even the Communists made a Bible translation.
One POPULAR TRANSLATION changes all the figures in the Bible, bringing them to their English equivalent, thus destroying all their SYMBOLIC meanings. For instance, 12,000 furlongs translated to 1,500 miles destroys the symbolism of 12 with three zeros behind it to a meaningless figure. Not only this error, but others of a far-reaching nature such as errors of making a passage clearer according to the writer’s natural scope of understanding, when there is a spiritual understanding beyond the scope of the writer. Because of the number of men who translated and cross-checked the King James Version of the Bible, it does not carry any slant of any special doctrine for any particular group, whereas most of the other translations do carry such a slant.
(Excerpt from The Pattern, page 8-9)
Thought for today: Remember: The Church is to give way to the Bible and not bend the Bible to the Church.
Sonlight Devotional 
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