An Open Appeal to Our Brothers and Sisters in FEBC and Life BPC

An Open Appeal to Our Brothers and Sisters in Far Eastern Bible College and Life Bible-Presbyterian Church

Remember Therefore From Whence Thou Art Fallen

A pastoral paper on verbal plenary preservation, the way of Balaam, and the first love

Beloved Brethren,

I write as a pastor, not as an enemy. I love the institutions that train men and women for the Lord's work, and I thank God for the generations of faithful teachers who stood for the inerrancy and authority of Scripture when much of Christendom surrendered both. This letter comes from grief and not from spite. I believe your college is walking into a dark tunnel, and I would rather be a trumpet that wakes you than a flatterer who lets you sleep.

I. The Doctrine in Question

Verbal plenary preservation (VPP) holds that God not only inspired every word of Scripture in the original languages but also promised to preserve every word in a specific, identifiable text. For most who hold it, that text is the Masoretic Hebrew and the Textus Receptus Greek, and often the King James Version in English. When the doctrine is made a test of orthodoxy, it ceases to be a preference about manuscripts and becomes a gate to fellowship.

I do not question your love for the Word. I question whether this doctrine is found in the Word.

II. Where the Doctrine Strains

First, Scripture promises preservation but never names a text. Jesus said that heaven and earth would pass away but His words would not (Matthew 24:35). I believe it with my whole heart. But He did not say where the preserved words would be gathered, in which edition, or in whose printing house. To make that claim, one must argue from history, and not from the page of Scripture.

Second, the proof texts do not carry the weight placed on them. Psalm 12:6-7 is often cited as a promise to preserve words. Many careful Hebrew scholars, including many who defend the King James Version, observe that the pronoun in verse 7 points back to the poor and needy of verse 5, and not to the words. If a college builds a doctrine on a disputed pronoun, it has built on sand.

Third, history refuses to cooperate. The Textus Receptus is not one text. Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza, and Elzevir differ from one another, and Scrivener's later edition was assembled to match the English of 1611. Erasmus himself, working from limited manuscripts, translated the closing verses of Revelation back from the Latin. A doctrine of perfect preservation that cannot tell us which printing is perfect has a serious problem, and it must not be hidden from our students.

Fourth, the doctrine inverts the order of Scripture and tradition. The Reformers appealed to the Scriptures over the church. VPP, in its stricter forms, begins with a conclusion (this text, this translation) and works backward to defend it. That is the very pattern we rightly condemn in those who exalt tradition above the Word.

Brethren, God has preserved His Word. He has done it through thousands of manuscripts, through faithful copyists, through translators, and through the church in every age. That is the preservation I confess. It is richer and more resilient than any single edition, and it does not collapse when a scholar finds a variant in a footnote.

III. The Sin of Balaam

You will say, "Pastor, you accuse us of Balaam? We take no money from Balak." Hear me gently.

Balaam could not curse Israel, so he did something subtler. According to Revelation 2:14, he taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel. Peter says he loved the wages of unrighteousness (2 Peter 2:15), and Jude warns of those who ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward (Jude 11). The sin of Balaam is not only greed for gold. It is leading God's people into compromise and division because of what the teacher stands to gain, whether that is position, a following, security, or standing within a tribe.

Search your hearts, for I must search mine as well:

• When a student who loves Christ and trusts the Bible leaves your fellowship because he reads a modern translation, have you cast a stumbling block, or removed one?
• When a faithful pastor is labeled an enemy of the Book for holding a view of preservation that Spurgeon, Warfield, and a thousand godly men would have recognized, who has divided the flock?
• When the stability of an institution, the loyalty of donors, and the approval of a movement depend on a doctrinal line that Scripture never drew, whose wages are being loved?

I do not accuse any man of malice. Balaam's tragedy is that he knew the Lord and still counseled what harmed the Lord's people. Sincerity is no safeguard. The Pharisees were sincere.

IV. The Tunnel and the Pit

In Revelation 9, the bottomless pit is opened and smoke rises, and the sun is darkened by it. Error rarely announces itself as darkness. It arrives as zeal and a higher view of the Word, until the smoke blots out the light we claimed to be defending. A school that trains its students to measure one another by a text-theory instead of by Christ is walking toward the dark. Graduates leave knowing whom to separate from, and little of how to weep over the lost.

V. The First Love

Consider Ephesus. The Lord commended that church: they labored, they could not bear evil, they tested false apostles and found them liars, they hated the works of the Nicolaitans. Their doctrine was vigilant. And yet He said, Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love (Revelation 2:4).

A church or college can be right in vigilance and wrong in heart. When we love being correct more than we love Christ, when we love the defense of the Book more than the people the Book is for, the lampstand is in danger (Revelation 2:5). Pergamum, we should note, was the church where Balaam's teaching was tolerated. The two warnings stand side by side in the same chapters, and I tremble that they might describe us both.

VI. The Appeal

Therefore, with a full heart, I ask:

1. Remember. Recall the day you first loved Christ and His Word with no thought of editions or camps.
2. Repent. Where the doctrine has become a test of fellowship, a weapon against brethren, or a source of pride, lay it down. Repent of any stumbling block you have set before a brother or sister.
3. Restore the ordinary works. Preach Christ crucified. Visit the sick. Evangelize the neighbor. Train students to love the local church more than a position.
4. Teach with humility. If you hold your view of preservation, hold it as a conviction, and not as a creed over the consciences of others. Let students see the manuscript evidence honestly, and let them love the Scriptures in whatever faithful translation they read.
5. Return to the body. Seek reconciliation with those you have divided from. The Lord's prayer in John 17 was that we would be one, so that the world would believe.

I will pray for you, and I ask you to pray for me. May the One who walks among the lampstands find in us the love that we had at the beginning.

Your servant for Christ's sake,
A fellow pastor