The “Greatest Commandments” of KJV-Onlyism

The “Greatest Commandments” of KJV-Onlyism

Some teachers, in practice, seem to establish a different set of “greatest commandments” concerning the Bible.

The first commandment becomes:

“You shall love the KJV with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

The KJV is treated not merely as a faithful English translation of Scripture, but as the uniquely preserved, perfect, and final form of God’s Word. Loyalty to the KJV can therefore become a test of faithfulness. A person who reads the NIV, ESV, NASB, or another translation may be viewed with suspicion, even when that person believes fully in the inspiration and authority of Scripture.

But Jesus did not say, “You shall love one particular translation with all your heart.”

He said:

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”
— Mark 12:30

The object of the greatest commandment is God Himself, not an English translation.

Then comes what sometimes functions like a second commandment:

“You shall love the Textus Receptus as you love yourself.”

The TR is treated as though it were the uniquely preserved Greek New Testament, even though the historical Textus Receptus is not one single immutable Greek edition. Erasmus produced editions of the Greek New Testament, and later editions by Stephanus, Beza, and the Elzevirs were not identical in every reading. Furthermore, the Textus Receptus is not simply synonymous with the entire Byzantine manuscript tradition.

Yet Jesus said:

“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
— Mark 12:31

The second commandment is about loving our neighbour, not defending a particular Greek textual edition.

The irony

The irony is that a teaching intended to defend the authority of the Bible can sometimes shift the believer's attention from God and neighbour to translation and textual tradition.

The biblical order is:

Love God.
Love your neighbour.
Receive, believe, obey, and proclaim God's Word.

It is not:

Love the KJV.
Love the TR.
Then judge your brother according to whether he agrees with you about the KJV and TR.

The KJV can be deeply respected without being worshipped. The Textus Receptus can be valued historically without being treated as a verbally perfect Greek text delivered from heaven. And Christians can disagree about textual criticism and Bible translations without turning those disagreements into tests of Christian orthodoxy.

A sharper formulation

We could express the critique this way:

When the KJV becomes the object of absolute loyalty, the first commandment has been subtly redirected. When the Textus Receptus becomes a test of Christian fellowship, the second commandment has been displaced.

Christ did not command us to love a translation with all our heart. He commanded us to love God.
Christ did not command us to love a Greek edition as ourselves. He commanded us to love our neighbour.

Therefore, the Bible must lead us to Christ, not become a substitute for Christ; and textual convictions must serve Christian unity and faithfulness, not become weapons against fellow believers.

There is also a particularly strong theological point here: we can love Scripture without confusing Scripture with a particular translation of Scripture. The KJV is a translation; the TR is a particular printed Greek textual tradition. Neither should receive the devotion, loyalty, or authority that belongs to God Himself.

Jesus identified the greatest commandment as loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind (Matt 22:36–40). He immediately paired this with a second commandment—to love your neighbor as yourself—and stated that all the Law and the Prophets depend on these two (Matt 22:36–40).

This dual emphasis reflects Jesus’ grounding in Torah, beginning with the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5[1]. The command to love others appears in Leviticus 19:18 within teachings on just and moral behavior[1]. Rather than treating these as separate obligations, Jesus placed them in relationship with one another so they amplify each other[1].

What makes Jesus’ formulation distinctive is its ethical totality. For Jesus, life on earth fundamentally concerned loving God and neighbor—this was his answer to why people had failed God’s standards[2]. While other Jewish teachers had discussed the greatest commandment, Jesus wielded unique moral authority among his followers to focus their entire ethics around this single theme, making the primacy of love central to all subsequent early Christian ethics[3].

The remaining biblical passages reinforce this theme: Romans 13:9–10 summarizes all commandments in the instruction to love your neighbor, concluding that love fulfills the law. Galatians 5:14 similarly affirms that the entire law is fulfilled through the single command to love your neighbor as yourself.

[1] Larry Duggins and Elaine A. Heath, Simple Harmony: Thoughts on Holistic Christian Life (New York, NY: Cascade Books, 2018). [See here, here, here.]
[2] John Dickson, Life of Jesus: Who He Is and Why He Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 103.
[3] Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009), 531.

The Bible and John Sung

John Sung was a preacher, evangelist, Bible teacher, and man of prayer. But I have found no reliable primary evidence that he taught a doctrine of “one perfect Bible” identified with the KJV, the Chinese Union Version, the Textus Receptus, or any other particular modern Bible edition.

In fact, the evidence we have points in a rather different direction.

1. John Sung certainly believed strongly in the Bible

There is no question that Sung was a Bible-centered preacher.

Timothy Tow's recollection of Sung describes him as a very serious student of Scripture, and Sung's evangelistic ministry involved giving people Bibles and encouraging them to read them. Tow recalls that during Sung's 1935 Singapore meetings, people bought English Bibles, Chinese Bibles, and Chinese-English New Testaments, and Sung personally autographed some of their newly purchased Bibles. (True Life BPC)

So it would be wrong to portray Sung as indifferent to Scripture.

But loving the Bible is not the same thing as teaching a particular theory of textual preservation.

That distinction is extremely important.

2. I find no evidence that Sung taught KJV-Onlyism

This is the part that deserves emphasis.

Sung died in 1944. His major ministry was conducted in China and among Chinese-speaking Christians in Southeast Asia. His preaching was primarily in Chinese, with interpreters when necessary. Contemporary accounts describe his use of Chinese and English Bibles, rather than a doctrinal insistence that one particular English edition was the only perfectly preserved Word of God. (Home of Grace)

I have not found a statement from Sung saying:

“The King James Version is the only Bible.”

Nor have I found him teaching:

“The Textus Receptus is perfectly preserved.”

Nor:

“The Hebrew and Greek text underlying the KJV has been perfectly preserved.”

Nor:

“The KJV is the perfect Bible.”

Those are much later controversies and formulations. They should not simply be placed into John Sung's mouth.

3. The Chinese Union Version is especially important here

There is an obvious chronological problem with claiming that Sung taught the Chinese Union Version as the one perfect Bible.

The Chinese Union Version was published in 1919. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Sung certainly lived and ministered during the CUV era, and Chinese Christians used the CUV extensively. But that does not establish that Sung regarded the CUV as an absolutely perfect, verbally preserved Chinese Bible.

In the evidence I have located, I do not find Sung making such a claim.

That is a very important distinction:

Use of a Bible ≠ declaration that that Bible is perfect.

The same principle applies to his use of English Bibles.

4. What did Sung actually emphasize?

This is where the contrast becomes quite striking.

The documentary evidence repeatedly emphasizes:

the Bible, prayer, repentance, evangelism, the Holy Spirit, revival, holiness, and obedience.

And his final emphasis was famously:

「要多多祷告，今后的工作是祷告的工作。」

“Pray much; the work from now on is the work of prayer.”

The historical material surrounding this statement does not turn the conversation toward Bible versions. It turns toward prayer and dependence upon God.

Likewise, Sung's 1941 correspondence about revival emphasized that revival would come not through human ability but through the work of the Holy Spirit, with Christian workers uniting in prolonged prayer.

That is much closer to Sung's actual documented emphasis than trying to make him a twentieth-century spokesman for KJV-Onlyism.

5. We should therefore distinguish three different things

This is perhaps the most important conclusion.

First: What John Sung actually taught.

He taught and preached the Bible intensely. He called people to repentance, faith in Christ, holiness, evangelism, prayer and dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

Second: What John Sung did not clearly teach.

I find no reliable evidence that he formulated a doctrine of:

“one perfect Bible edition.”

And I find no evidence that he identified such a doctrine with the KJV, CUV, TR, Majority Text, or any other particular textual tradition.

Third: What later Christians may believe about Bible preservation.

A twentieth- or twenty-first-century Christian is free to develop an argument for KJV-Onlyism or another doctrine of preservation. But that argument has to be established from Scripture, textual evidence, historical evidence and theological reasoning.

It should not be strengthened artificially by saying:

“John Sung believed this.”

unless John Sung actually said it.

6. This gives us an important principle for your KJV-Only research

I think this could become a very useful methodological point in your broader study:

Do not make historical heroes into advocates of controversies that they themselves never addressed.

John Sung is a particularly good example.

Someone can say:

“John Sung loved the Bible.”

That is historically defensible.

Someone can say:

“John Sung preached the Bible with extraordinary conviction.”

Also defensible.

Someone can say:

“John Sung believed the Bible was God's Word and should be obeyed.”

Clearly defensible.

But:

“John Sung believed the KJV was the only perfectly preserved Bible.”

That requires documentary evidence.

And at present, I have not found it.

The same caution should apply when someone invokes Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Moody, Torrey, fundamentalist leaders, Chinese revivalists, or other respected Christian figures as authorities in the modern Bible-version controversy.

7. A concise thesis

I would state the conclusion this way:

John Sung was unquestionably a Bible-centered evangelist, preacher and teacher, but there is no reliable evidence that he taught KJV-Onlyism, Chinese-Union-Version-Onlyism, or a doctrine that one particular Bible edition constituted the uniquely perfect and verbally preserved Bible. He died in 1944 and therefore never addressed later versions such as the RSV, NIV or ESV. His documented emphasis was on the authority and proclamation of Scripture, prayer, the work of the Holy Spirit, revival, repentance and evangelism. Therefore, John Sung should not be recruited retrospectively as an authority for a modern Bible-version controversy that he himself did not formulate.

That is, in my view, a much stronger historical argument than simply saying “John Sung did not talk about Bible versions.” It acknowledges what he did believe and preach while refusing to attribute to him a position for which the documentary evidence is lacking. (True Life BPC)

“The work of the future is to be the work of prayer.”

John Sung (宋尚节, 1901–1944)

He said, “The work of the future is to be the work of prayer.”

It is also reported in slightly different English forms:

“Pray much; the work henceforth will be the work of prayer.”

The Chinese is often rendered approximately as：

“将来的工作，就是祷告的工作。”
or
“今后的工作，是祷告的工作。”

What did John Sung mean?

He did not mean that Christians should stop preaching, evangelizing, teaching, or doing practical ministry. Quite the opposite. Sung had spent much of his life preaching and conducting evangelistic meetings. What he came to understand increasingly during his final years was that the lasting spiritual work of the church cannot be produced merely by human activity.

For Sung, prayer was not preparation for ministry; prayer itself was ministry.

He saw something like this:

Preaching → people may hear.
Organization → activities may increase.
Human effort → visible results may appear.
But prayer → asks God Himself to do the work.

This became especially important to him during his prolonged illness. His final years were marked by severe physical suffering, yet he devoted increasing attention to intercession, Scripture, and prayer. The Global China Center describes his final period as one in which he became particularly known for intercession and prayer. (Global China Center)

There is also an important statement from Sung's own writing that helps explain what he meant. In a 5 August 1941 letter, Sung wrote that God had shown him that a great revival of the Chinese church would come “not through man but through the work of the Holy Spirit”, and that workers would need to unite for an extended period of prayer. (FEBC)

So his idea was essentially:

The future work of God must be God's work, and therefore God's people must learn to seek God in prayer rather than depending upon human strength.

When did he say it?

This is where we need to be a little careful.

The quotation is widely described as John Sung's final message to the church, given near the end of his life in 1944, shortly before his death on 18 August 1944. Several biographical sources describe it in precisely this context. (Harvey CP)

One account says that, as he knew death was approaching, he advised:

“The work of the future is to be the work of prayer.”

Another source records it as:

“Pray much, the work henceforth will be the work of prayer.” (Global China Center)

The wording appears in later biographies and recollections, and the English versions vary slightly.

What we can establish with considerably more confidence is that the statement belongs to the closing period of Sung's ministry, particularly the years 1941–1944, when illness had forced him into a much more intensive ministry of intercession.

There is an even deeper background

Interestingly, Sung's thinking about prayer can be traced to before his final days.

In his 1941 letter, he wrote about the coming revival and said that it would occur as the Holy Spirit moved God's workers to come together “for a long time of prayer, to do prayer work in the Spirit.” 

This shows that “the work of the future is the work of prayer” wasn't simply something he suddenly said on his deathbed. It represented a mature conviction that had developed during his later ministry.

And there is a fascinating connection with his own ministry practice. Sung reportedly carried thousands of prayer requests with him and continued praying for people even after leaving the places where he had preached. One historical account describes how he kept prayer cards and interceded for people in different cities after his meetings had ended. (Yeshu2007)

So when Sung spoke about “the work of prayer,” he meant something much more demanding than simply saying, “Remember to pray.”

He was saying, in effect:

The evangelist may leave. The preacher may leave. The missionary may leave. The meeting may finish. But the work of intercession continues before God.

That is probably why the statement has had such a lasting influence.

A particularly important lesson for the church today

I think Sung's statement can be misunderstood in two opposite ways.

One misunderstanding is:

“Prayer is important, but real ministry is preaching, administration, evangelism and church programs.”

Sung would have rejected that separation. For him, prayer was part of the actual work of ministry.

The other misunderstanding is:

“Since prayer is the work of the future, therefore we don't need to do anything.”

That is also wrong. Sung himself was one of the most active evangelists of his generation.

His point was closer to:

Work without prayer becomes human work.
Prayer without obedience becomes empty words.
But work born out of prayer becomes dependence upon God.

That fits very naturally with Acts 6:4:

“But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.”

And it also explains why Sung's statement remains so powerful: he wasn't advocating less ministry; he was calling the church to put prayer back at the center of ministry.

“John Sung did not mean that the church should cease working. He meant that the church's future work must increasingly become God's work, and God's work must be sought through prayer. The greatest work of the church may not always be what people can see; much of it takes place unseen, on our knees before God.”

There is a particularly interesting connection between this and John Sung's 1941 vision of a future revival in China. His words there give us a much stronger primary-source basis for explaining what he meant by “the work of prayer.” 

“John Sung's final message was not, ‘Stop working.’ It was, ‘Pray much, then go down and work.’ He had learned that the church's greatest work is not merely what happens on the platform, in the pulpit, or in a meeting. Much of God's work is done invisibly when His people kneel before Him.”

We should be careful about saying that Sung's famous statement about prayer was his “last message to the church” as though those were his own words.

That description comes from later biographical interpretation. The underlying evidence is his final instruction to those around him on 17 August 1944, preserved through later recollection.

Similarly, we should not take a later biographer's description of Sung and turn it into a systematic theological position that Sung himself never formulated.

That is precisely the same historical discipline we should apply to the Bible-version question.

Should We Burn Incense and Smoke the Church Today?

Insights from Revelation 8:1–5

In Revelation 8:1–5, the breaking of the seventh seal introduces silence in heaven for about half an hour. Following this, an angel stands at the altar with a golden censer, given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, mixed with the prayers of the saints, ascends before God from the angel's hand. Afterward, the angel fills the censer with fire from the altar and throws it to the earth, producing peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.

From this passage, we can learn several key spiritual lessons:

• The Efficacy of Prayer: The incense symbolizes the prayers of God's people. Just as sweet-smelling smoke rises upward, our prayers ascend to the heavenly throne and are valued by God.
  
  
• Heavenly Intercession: The angel offering the incense highlights how our earthly prayers are received, purified, and presented before the divine presence.
  
  
• Divine Justice and Response: The fire taken from the altar and thrown to the earth signifies that God hears the cries of His people (often connected to justice and suffering) and actively responds to set things right in the world.
  
  

Should We Burn Incense and Smoke the Church Today?

No, literal incense-burning and filling a church building with smoke are not required or taught as a Christian mandate based on this passage.

Here is why:

• Symbolism vs. Literal Practice: The scene in Revelation 8 is heavenly, apocalyptic imagery. The "incense" explicitly represents the prayers of the saints, not a physical recipe or ritual command for New Testament congregations to replicate with physical smoke.
  
  
• New Testament Worship: In the New Testament, the focus of worship shifts from physical temple rituals, altars, and burning sacrifices to worshiping "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23). Believers themselves are now considered spiritual stones and a royal priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices (1 Peter 2:5).
  
  
• Historical and Denominational Context: While some liturgical traditions (such as Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some Anglican churches) use physical incense during services as a rich sensory symbol of prayers rising to God, it is a traditional practice of worship atmosphere rather than a mandatory commandment for every church. Filling a church building with physical smoke carries no inherent spiritual power or New Testament requirement.
  
  

Ultimately, Revelation 8:1–5 teaches us about the power, beauty, and impact of prayer reaching the throne of God, rather than instructing us to physically smoke out our church buildings.

The vision in Revelation 8 doesn’t prescribe literal incense-burning for the church—it describes heavenly worship symbolically. The angel’s incense mingles with the prayers of God’s people before the throne, establishing a symbolic connection rather than a liturgical mandate.

Throughout Scripture, incense functions as a figure representing the prayers of the faithful[1]. This symbolic association appears consistently: the psalmist requests that prayer be “set before you like incense” (Ps 141:2), and the heavenly elders hold golden bowls of incense identified as the prayers of God’s people (Rev 5:8). The imagery conveys how prayer ascends to God with the same rising, pleasing quality as fragrant smoke.

The early church’s relationship with incense was cautious. There was no ceremonial use of incense in the first three centuries of Christian worship because of its association with emperor worship and use in pagan cults[1]. Up to Constantine the Great or later, there was no use of incense in public church worship, and for the first five centuries there was striking unanimity among the Fathers against offering incense as a sacrifice to God[2]. The New Testament contains no reference to incense in the Christian church in Acts and the Epistles—only in the Apocalypse’s symbolism—which may be rightly regarded as an argument from silence: having the substance, what need is there of the shadow?[3]

When incense eventually entered Christian practice, it carried different meanings. In the Western church it has been primarily a symbol of prayer[1], and honorific use developed, with the Seventh Ecumenical Council declaring it proper to burn incense in veneration before icons, the cross, and the Gospels, as honor shown to Christ[2].

The question ultimately hinges on whether you view Revelation’s imagery as prescriptive or descriptive. The text invites the church to understand prayer itself as the true incense—the substance rather than the shadow.

[1] Frank C. Senn, “Incense,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI; Leiden, Netherlands: Wm. B. Eerdmans; Brill, 1999–2003), 2:679.
[2] Geoffrey Wainwright, For Our Salvation: Two Approaches to the Work of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 62–63.
[3] T. B. Kilpatrick, “Incarnation,” in A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels: Aaron–Zion, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh; New York: T&T Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 1:814.

A letter to JK, QSY and Prabhu

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, though I write to you today with a heavy heart, constrained by love for the truth and a duty to the flock of God.

It has come to my attention that you have devoted much of your platform to launching public attacks against modern, faithful translations of the Word of God—specifically the New International Version (NIV) and the English Standard Version (ESV). In doing so, you have sown seeds of suspicion, division, and unnecessary doubt among the faithful, declaring that these translations somehow compromise or corrupt the divine witness. I must write to urge you to consider the grave theological and historical weight of your position, and to call you to a quiet, humble cessation of these divisive accusations.

As one who labors in the study of Sacred Scripture, I ask you to reflect upon the historical context of the divine revelation itself—specifically the period of the New Testament.

During the first century, the primary Scripture utilized by the Apostles and the early Church was the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. As any serious student of the text knows, the Septuagint is not a word-for-word, literal transliteration of the Hebrew Masoretic traditions that developed later. It contains significant textual variants, dynamic translations, interpretive paraphrases, and expansions.

Yet, look closely at the testimony of the Gospels.

When our Lord Jesus Christ stood in the synagogues, when He debated the Pharisees, and when He quoted the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Not once did our Lord issue a condemnation of the Septuagint. He did not launch a polemic against the Alexandrian translators for their stylistic choices or dynamic renderings. He did not accuse those who read the LXX of using a "corrupted text." On the contrary, He affirmed that the Scriptures—even in their translated, Greek form—bore authoritative witness to Him (John 5:39).

If the Incarnate Word of God displayed dynamic silence regarding the textual variations of the Septuagint—choosing instead to honor the translation insofar as it delivered the true message of God’s redemptive covenant—by what authority do you sit in judgment over modern translations?

The NIV and the ESV, while reflecting different translation philosophies (formal versus dynamic equivalence), are the product of centuries of rigorous, godly, evangelical scholarship. Both committees sought to render the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts into the vernacular with fidelity, accuracy, and reverence. To claim that minor textual decisions or translational variations constitute a betrayal of the faith is not orthodoxy; it is a peddling of fundamentalist legalism that elevates a specific human translation or tradition above the living Word.

By making an absolute warfare out of translational nuances, you pull the eyes of believers away from the Gospel of grace and fix them upon foolish controversies (Titus 3:9). You act as a stumbling block to seekers and cause young believers to question whether they truly possess the Word of Life.

I urge you, in the strongest terms, to learn the wisdom of our Lord’s silence. If Christ Himself did not spend His ministry attacking the prevalent Greek translation of His day, it is far better that you close your mouth and cease your crusade against the NIV and the ESV. Bridle your tongue before you cause further harm to the Body of Christ (James 1:26).

Subdue your zeal for controversy, turn your labor toward preaching Christ and Him crucified, and let the Word of God—which endures forever—do its work in the hearts of His people, regardless of the faithful translation through which it is read.

In the hope of your repentance and restraint, 

A Servant of the Gospel

Reverend So and So

Singapore