King James Onlyism

I grew up in a King James only church, that is a church were we were taught that the only true, accurate and inspired translation of the Word of God was the 1611 King James Version. Everything else was trash! Literally, we were taught that the newer versions were based on a manuscript found in a trash can in Alexandria, Egypt.

I can remember when I went off to Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College how rocked I was when I learned that only the original autographs were inspired, and while our translations today are authoritative and reliable, they are not themselves inspired. I had a real crisis of faith when I learned that simple truth.

Later, as I developed a proper bibliology my faith in God's word was restored. However, it was a long process for me to go from the KJV to the NKJV to what I use today, the NASB.

I can still remember visiting my home church (Yakima Bible Baptist Church) with my wife who happened to bring her NASB with her (discreetly) but somehow the Pastor found out about it and after the service, with several people around, held it up and called it trash! How sad that made us.

Any way, that church today has left the Baptist Bible Fellowship because it wasn't "conservative" enough and not "KJVO" enough, if you can believe that. They helped start a new "fellowship" called the "Global Independent Baptist Fellowship" which could just as well be called the "King James Only Baptist Bible Fellowship."

I still love that church and have many friends there. It is hard to see that they are still being taught this heresy. The sad part, and ironic as well, is that they claim to be big on the Word of God yet, topical sermons were / are the norm. I pray that they will see the light.

Fred Butler is doing a great job dealing with this issue at Hip and Thigh. Through one of his links I came across this article that really puts things in perspective about the whole movement.