Guarding the Flock from False Teaching

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

My heart overflows with love for you, this precious flock entrusted to my care. It is precisely because of this deep love, and my solemn responsibility before God (Hebrews 13:17), that I must address a matter of profound spiritual importance. We live in times where, as the Apostle John warned us long ago, “many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Our call is not to fear, but to faithful discernment rooted in love for Christ and His truth.

John’s exhortation is urgent and clear: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Why this testing? Because the spirit of Antichrist is actively at work, opposing the true Christ and seeking to lead believers astray. “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world” (1 John 4:2-3).

This testing is crucial for any teaching that arises among us, regardless of how familiar or traditional it may sound. It grieves me to say that teachings like Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP) and KJV-Onlyism demand this careful, biblical scrutiny. At their core, these doctrines claim that only the King James Version (or its underlying Greek text) is the perfectly preserved, inerrant Word of God for English speakers, often asserting that all other translations are corrupt or unreliable.

Now, beloved, holding a high view of Scripture’s divine inspiration and providential preservation is good and right (Isaiah 40:8, Matthew 5:18). However, when this view morphs into an exclusive dogma about one specific translation or textual tradition, elevating it above all others as the only valid Word of God, it crosses a dangerous line. Here’s why such teachings require us to “test the spirits” and why their teachers may, tragically, fall into the category of false prophets or teachers:

1. They Shift the Foundation: The true foundation of our faith is Jesus Christ Himself (1 Corinthians 3:11). While Scripture is the divinely inspired and authoritative revelation of Him, these teachings subtly (or not so subtly) shift the ultimate object of faith from the living Christ to a physical book or a specific translation. This risks bibliolatry – worshiping the created thing (the text in a specific form) rather than the Creator revealed through it (Romans 1:25).
2. They Deny the Sufficiency and Clarity of God's Preserved Word: By insisting that God’s Word is only perfectly accessible in one 17th-century English translation, these teachings imply that the Holy Spirit has failed to preserve His Word reliably in the vast majority of manuscripts, translations, and for the vast majority of believers throughout history and across the globe. This contradicts God’s promise that His Word endures forever (Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:23-25) and is effective wherever it is faithfully proclaimed (Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12). It suggests God left His church without a truly reliable Bible for centuries until the KJV appeared.
3. They Breed Division and Pride: Instead of uniting the body of Christ around the clear gospel and the person of Christ, these teachings often foster suspicion, elitism, and harsh judgment towards fellow believers who use trustworthy modern translations based on older and more abundant manuscript evidence. They create unnecessary and unscriptural divisions within the body (1 Corinthians 1:10, Ephesians 4:3-6).
4. They Obscure the Central Message: The relentless focus on textual minutiae and translation superiority can tragically divert attention away from the core message of Scripture: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His atoning death, His glorious resurrection, and His call to repentance and faith (1 Corinthians 15:1-4, Romans 10:9-10). When the means of delivery overshadows the message of salvation, something is deeply wrong.
5. The Test of 1 John 4: While proponents of VPP/KJV-Onlyism would affirm Christ's incarnation, the spirit behind such divisive, extra-biblical dogmas often manifests characteristics John associates with the "spirit of the antichrist": causing division (v.6), rejecting the testimony of the wider apostolic church (v.6), and potentially leading people away from a simple trust in Christ alone towards a trust in a specific form of His Word. "We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood" (1 John 4:6). Does the teaching align with the apostolic witness found in the substance of Scripture recognized by the historic church, or does it impose a novel, exclusive standard foreign to that witness?

Therefore, my dear family, I urge you with pastoral love and concern: Be discerning. A teacher who insists that salvation, sanctification, or true biblical understanding depends on adherence to the KJV alone, or who claims other reliable translations are corrupt, is not speaking according to the Spirit of God who inspired all Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16) and who illuminates believers through His Word. Such a teacher may well be influenced by a spirit contrary to Christ – a spirit that twists God's good gift of Scripture into a tool of division and error. They fit the warning of Peter: "But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies... In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories" (2 Peter 2:1, 3). The "fabricated story" here is the claim that God’s Word was lost until 1611 or is only perfect in one English form.

Do not be deceived by appeals to tradition or fear-mongering about modern scholarship. Trust the Holy Spirit who indwells you (1 John 2:27) and the witness of the broader, faithful church throughout history. Compare teachings to the whole counsel of Scripture (Acts 20:27), focusing on Christ crucified and risen.

My deepest desire is for us to be united in the truth of the Gospel, anchored in the living Word, Jesus Christ, and faithfully nourished by the written Word of God in its many reliable translations. Let us cling to Christ alone, test all teachings by His Spirit and His revealed Word, and pursue love and unity grounded in truth.

"Dear children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21). Let nothing, not even a cherished translation, become an idol that distorts the truth or divides the body. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

With love and prayer for your discernment and faithfulness,

Pastor and Fellow Servant of Christ,

Reverend So So