ANSWERING PASTOR BRYAN ROSS YET AGAIN

Introduction

Bryan Ross has written a counter article to my recent articles called Providence, Special Revelation, and Verbal Equivalence in the PCE Debate as published through his Grace Life Bible Church blog. What he calls the “PCE Debate” means his rejection of the idea that God has jot and tittle exact perfection of His words in English.

We all believe that about the autographs, and it’s okay to say that they were perfect, but Bryan Ross has allowed the influence of deistic assumptions of the modernists to keep him from recognising that there is any perfection in present history.

At last he has had to give up openly accusing that I recognised the Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE) on some sort of mystical, special, private or charismatic-style revelation. Obviously, though, he still believes this falsehood, which is why he has written an article to carefully try to reason (i.e. baselessly assert) that this is really what I am still “guilty” of after all.

He has tried to make a kind of seeming analytical criticism of my position, but it is honestly objectively his position which is the weaker one, since he cannot point to the “certainty of the words of truth” (Prov. 22:21) where “Every word of God is pure” (Prov. 30:5).

My view recognises the specificity of words and their meaning, e.g. when our Bible has “fishes” compared to when it has “fish”, even to the very specific “sneezed” versus “neesings”. (This is not an “edition” issue.)

What Ross relegates to the mere orthographic rather than meaning, like, “astonied” and “astonished”, is in fact a very fine difference. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and other sources indicate that “astonied” has more the idea of being sort of dumbstruck and stuck (like a stone) than “astonished”. They are not the same word, the OED lists them as two separate entries.

In America there has indeed been some confusion over words, like their common misuse of “farther”, when there is in fact a proper (Biblical and OED-recorded) understanding for how “farther” and “further” should be used, with different meanings.

(There needs to be a lot of study in these areas, as someone could falsely say that “grins”, a once Anglo-Saxon word, has been allegedly “deleted” from the Bible, for a different word with a generally similar meaning from French, “gins”. We are downstream observers, and can suggest many things, including that the meaning of “gins” was intended all along.)

We are empirical observers of the orthographical and lexical details. Our attitude towards them matters. We should seek to understand why “astonied” is legitimately a different word with a different meaning (though obviously very similar) to “astonished”.

We are admonished to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15). That verse was not talking about the hermeneutical model of hyperdispensationalism but about proper interpretation. Part of proper interpretation is to have very definite and specific meaning for words.

Bryan Ross’ views are uncomfortably close to those of modern translation users who say that they all are really saying the same thing. We know they are not.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

Interpretation matters

Saying that something has theological and logical tensions doesn’t mean that there are. Saying something can be just framing, just propaganda, mere words. Expressing a view is not proof.

It’s like saying you know a view is wrong, wishing it’s wrong, but not proving it because it’s just your opinion. This is how Ross presents my views in his short essay.

What this is all really about is interpretation of scripture, and in a broad sense what I will call the schema. This is like a way of slotting all ideas into a model of looking at Scripture (and reality) according to an accepted Divine Œconomy.

Ross says he cannot find the “Pure Cambridge Edition” pointed to in the Bible. In this case here, we are discussing what the Scripture says about beliefs we hold.

For example, the Scripture doesn’t explicitly teach the Trinity, it teaches it as a model of reality. The Bible doesn’t use the word “Trinity”, and we have to bring together various passages, like Jesus’ water baptism, 1 John 5:7 and other passages, to construct the proper doctrine.

So likewise with the Rapture. The word doesn’t appear in the Bible, and you have to join together a bunch of verses to understand it. So it is going to be no different with other doctrines about the Bible itself.

There’s no mention of “Received Text” nor of “King James Bible” in the Scripture, yet according to Bryan Ross’ model, he holds to both those things. Is he holding to the King James Bible (KJB) because an angel appeared to him and told him to? I wouldn’t think so. I would think he would recognise the Scripture pointing to it in a broad way at least.

It turns out that if you believe in Historicism, the way of interpreting the Book of Revelation as pointing to events throughout Church history, you can find prophecies and indications about the King James Bible.

There are implications from verses in Revelation, as well as general teachings in Scriptures, which point at the idea of there being a Pure Cambridge Edition as well.

So Ross is wrong when he writes, “identifying a specific edition as divinely intended without explicit Scriptural warrant functions similarly to extra-biblical revelation.”

According to that way of thinking, his own views about the King James Bible would have to be suspect, especially if he does find things pointing consistently towards it in the Scripture. Now if he doesn’t argue from the basis of Scripture for the KJB, then we may as well ignore what he has to say because he would be hypocritical. But if he does use Scripture to point to the KJB, then actually he should be able to understand how we use it to point to the PCE.

Ross tries to say that word differences in editing are orthographic variations in editions of the KJB, and that they are sufficient or satisfactory, where no substantive doctrinal meaning is affected or changed.

He is asserting his position as if it is ipso facto correct without any basis. I know he will try to use some dictionary to either make the words appear to have similar definitions, or where some dictionary might even say that the words might have common origin or even be an obsolete form of the same, but a robotic adherence to fallible dictionaries is not expressive of the whole of the situation, besides, the OED still lists the different words as separate entries with distinct definitions, and Blayney didn’t eliminate the so called “variant” forms, meaning it is all quite deliberate.

So Ross’ position is not correct, because the tiniest degree of variation can amount to a meaning difference. In all kinds of places where different words which look similar appear, he is advocating that these words are really just the same. (How strange that editors like Dr Blayney just left all these variant spellings everywhere, and didn’t regularise these places.) Ross is allowing them to remain as what he thinks they are meaningless variations. And when American publishers in the past varied all these words, he doesn’t mind because he argues that big picture doctrines are not being affected.

In a way, in a broad brush approach, it is possible to argue in the big scheme of things that no major doctrine is affected. So maybe things like the virgin birth or the second coming are not affected. However, meaning and doctrine, even if some tiny sliver of a nuance, is affected. And if one hair’s breadth is affected, the whole law is rendered void.

“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” (James 2:10).

By one “point” we can see a kind of double meaning, it would mean even one dot.

“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:19, which comes after which verse Ross misinterprets?)

Bryan Ross is therefore as if he is the least in the Kingdom, for he appears to be teaching his spiritual charges in his adult Sunday School that “astonied” and “astonished” are not two different things.

He doesn’t get that from Scripture, not even by a minute examination in an objective sense of Scripture passages, which use either of these words rightfully in their places. He is just reading in his opinion as based on some statement from wayward American editors, and throwing out his hypothesis as fact, that varying words are just orthographical variations, and apparently are not varying words at all. Hence his desire to run to various old table alphabeticals and so on to try to prove that the early modernising of American editors was right.

As a consequence, his thinking becomes fuzzy and he cannot detect the legal and semantic difference between things like “stablish” and “establish”, “ensample” and “example”, let alone other things, ranging from “fishes” and “fish” to “naught” and “nought”, etc.

Reality about sufficiency versus Ross’ universal hypothesis

Ross is trying to apply his principle of “verbal equivalence” in inspiration and to today, when at best it can only apply to the intervening period of the scattering and progressive gathering of the Scripture’s readings, and the progressive work in translations and in editing.

The problem is that Ross is not overtly appealing to any authoritative standard where a perfect set of words exist. (That is, to what standard or authority does he measure “equivalence”?) What he has mistakenly done is apply the sufficiency (his “equivalence”) in transmission to the fixedness and rigidity of primal and final forms. (He therefore accuses the inspiration of the New Testament of making sloppy quotes of the Old as well as saying there is only “equivalence” today, even though his own hero, Laurence Vance, points to a Cambridge standard.

There is no “verbal equivalence” in the mind of God, in Heaven or in inspired autographs, as if they are uncertain or varying. There are variations and sufficiency in transmission, but that’s not the
imprimatur of God, as though He wants things to be a tossing sea of “equivalence” without finality.

But unlike Ross, the Scripture and I are pointing to the fact that there is an end of the variants of transmission, a final form, answerable to its first and divine origins.

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11).

Ross says, “Ultimately, the debate centers on whether doctrinal certainty demands absolute precision or whether substantive fidelity is sufficient”.

It’s weird that Ross would admit this, because true doctrine isn’t just about all the big ticket items, it’s about the legal framework and minor minutiae as well. The infallibility of the Scripture and truth in the details requires precision in minor Biblical statements as well as the major doctrines.

(Logically, we fix printing errors, so why is it natural to strive as humans for perfection in the very details if apparently this is not something of the nature of God?)

Ross and I both think that God has had a sufficiency in Church history. Ross sees this with the dangerous “near enough is good enough” flavour (consistent with his definition of “grace”) which approaches the matter with a kind of deistic leaven of the small “m” modernists like James White, Mark Ward, John Piper and a host of the off-white brethren in this Laodicean era who hold to their inability, unwillingness and rejection of there being exact knowledge of the very words of God.

However, I see from the outset, the seed and intention of God is perfection, so then His work in history is under His superintendence. Ross may try to argue that this sort of interventionism is somehow linked to an idea of a “special revelation” that we might receive, but it is the work of the perfect Spirit, Who is in His works doing perfectly (see John 16:13).

This is expressly taught at Deuteronomy 32:

2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:

3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.

4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

As for Ross’ question about how to recognise Providence. Might I suggest this passage, and see if spiritual knowledge is required, from 1 Corinthians 2:

12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Answers to Ross’ endless questions

Ross discusses the debate questions, for example, the one asking, “How does God guide the preservation of Scripture?”

My answer is we can learn much from both studying Scripture and also with believing empirical examination. A Historicist framework would help Ross immensely too.

Ross puts forth another debate question, “What counts as the Word of God when editions differ?”

Ross would be foolish to continue to question this one, for it is obvious that what believers in history had as the Word of God to them was the Word of God to them. (I mean that God genuinely sent His truth to them.)

I laid out for Ross the distinct difference between “Scripture” (written copies including the autographs, referred to by Paul to Timothy), version/Text/readings, translation and editions.

I am confident that a 20^th century Oxford edition is over 99.99% the same as a Cambridge one.

So the question cannot be as Ross phrases it, “What counts as the Word of God when editions differ?” It’s obvious that the Word of God has been printed in Oxford editions regardless if they had “whom he” at Jeremiah 34:16 like the old Cambridge editions had.

Is that “h” technically the actual, inspired Word of God? No, but thankfully it hasn’t been leading people into heresies because it has minimal doctrinal meaning. I doubt most Christians ever are reading the verse in the course of devotions or Bible teachings, even with the correct “whom ye”. Ironically, it’s the fact of the typographical error/old editorial mistake which makes people look at that verse!

But thank goodness such minor issues have been cleared up … unless you are running rudderless listening to Scrivener, Norris and Norton, then you will think there are numberless undetected errors still floating about. These are the kinds of people who are disparagers of Dr Blayney’s work.

Ross asks the big question, “is verbal equivalence sufficient, or must we have verbatim identicality down to letters and punctuation?”

This question is wrongly framed. Bryan Ross has to be explicit and say what standard his “verbal equivalence” is matching to. (It is odd he never shows us his standard — I suspect it’s a variation of the modernist view that it will be “the originals” — but he can’t actually pin down a correct copy of those either, and they aren’t in English, so what’s his lexical authority?)

Ross also has to be intellectually honest. He accuses me of the old slur (of naïve KJBOism) about so called “verbatim identicality”. But identical to what standard?

I am very clear: the perfect standard is 1. In the mind of God, 2. In Heaven. 3. In inspiration and the general witness of copying. The ultimate or anti-form perfection is the last end, which is the PCE. The PCE has the properties to which the 17^th century millenarians (Bacon, Mede, Hartlib, Cromwell, etc.) sought in their pansophical program.

Ross has hoped that truth (that there has been editing in the history of the KJB) would be an instauration of wrong thinking, only history, nature, logic, scripture and providence itself is showing Ross to be wrong about his view of there not being a final edition.

Again, we must divide between Ross’ terminology in relation to transmission as opposed to editions today in our current state. We are not accessing the Scripture in flux. This means that while there was historical sufficiency where there were tiny textual, translation and edition differences, we are not living in that state any more, for all things have worked towards the solution. The progress of history, the process of Bible transmission and the plan of God has all had an end goal, and it has been arrived at.

Well, Ross thinks he is accessing the Scripture in flux, because he can’t see that “stablish”, “throughly”, “ensample” and so on are legitimate specific words with specific meanings and not synonyms to other similar words. Apparently present day KJB editions that have the varying words (he rebrands them as just orthographical variations of single words) are all equal.

It is possible that there are kinds and species in Bible words, but Ross has erased any specificity of the species by only recognising kinds.

So, here’s the problem. Ross’ terminology should really be “there was justifiable flux in the transmission of Scripture through history, but it wasn’t anything substantively changing major doctrines, but I (Bryan Ross) also don’t believe there is a fixed state or that we can know what the resolution to it all is.”

If Ross just said that honest statement about his position, it would be clear. He simply doesn’t believe there is a fixed state, he simply doesn’t expect to find a fully corrected edition, and he certainly thinks that we cannot find out (the arm of the Lord apparently is shortened) what is an exactly right edition.

In fact, it sounds like the modernists saying, “there couldn’t be a perfect edition because it would have to be edited and printed by infallible men, and you would have to be claiming infallibility to recognise a perfect edition”. This is what I suspect Ross is really thinking. I suspect something is bucking within him about it, and that he and his friends have been searching the internet for “evidence” that I claimed special Pentecostal “revelations” on this topic.

Providence and plan has happened since eternity

God planned in eternity, and therefore all the actions of history, are towards the ends of the Gospel being made known to the nations and families of the Earth being blessed.

So, God has, as part of this big plan (called “the Gospel”) aimed to have a perfect representation for the entire Earth in the latter times.

Ross states, “Scripture does not specify which printed edition of the KJB is perfect.” Yet, there are indicators from the Scripture that point to it, in prophecies, promises, elements of the nature of God (as revealed in Scripture) and the Historicist structure of Daniel and Revelation. The KJB is pointed to and the PCE in ways as well.

For example, the Scripture speaks of a “pure language”, but we know that technically the purity of Biblical English required editing by Dr Blayney, for example, therefore as we go to the exactness of meaning, we must have an exact Bible with precise Biblical English (which is the PCE in specific rather than just the KJB translation in general).

Ross is faulty in his logic, he says, “If that certainty cannot be derived from Scripture alone, and if it is not based on new revelation, it must arise from interpreting historical signs as indicators of God’s will.”

Well, Scripture does point to it, but this is actually a controversy about a whole other issue, one of presupposition. Ross is hiding this fact in how he frames his incorrect logic.

We have multiple presuppositions in approaching the Bible. They include: the pre-existence of God Himself, the notion of language and the fact of human experience (including history) and so on. Of course, this is not the Roman Catholic idea of putting tradition equal to Scripture, but it does mean that we receive Scripture in a cultural-intellectual context, not a vacuum.

Thus, there comes an interrelation between what the Bible says and our experience (e.g. the application of Scripture), and therefore, not only can we find the Bible talking about purity of its wordings, etc., but also we can then observe it and study it in empirical and rational senses. Thus, it is not wrong for us to look in the dictionary to see that there is a difference between words. But it would be desperation to lurch the other way and say that similar words are really the same words with variant spellings.

Ross is blinded to precision

Ross argues that his hypothesis “is that variations in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, or minor wording across KJB editions do not corrupt the doctrinal content; the substantive meaning remains intact.”

Everyone in the King James Bible camp in practice believes that, it doesn’t require Ross to try to own it with his pet coined phraseology as though he suddenly has intellectual property ownership of the idea.

The problem for Ross is that he has got himself stuck because he cannot resolve the editorial differences. He is arguing essentially to keep a level of uncertainty, inexactness, looseness, imprecision and variation. He really doesn’t want to resolve the differences because it would end his big new idea that he wrote a book about.

This is the opposite of editorial good sense.

The fact is that while major doctrinal issues are not affected with the kinds of variations in printings of the KJB (notwithstanding, obvious typos like substituting Jesus with Judas are quickly corrected), it is always a theoretical danger that some problem could have arisen from some printing variation.

It’s not as if the KJB was actually corrupted by such matters. But there has been a real doctrinal issue, for example, in dealing with 1 John 5:8, which many old editions had “spirit”, but some modern editions now have “Spirit”.

Logic alone is that “spirit” can include meaning “Spirit”, whereas “Spirit” excludes meanings communicated by the representation “spirit”, so ultimately, it is wiser to have the PCE for just that point, let alone all the other reasons for it.

Ross also misrepresents my position, making it like it an absurd dichotomy: either you believe every letter is pregnant with meaning or else you don’t. His framing of the issue is incorrect.

Punctuation, case and letters of spelling are important because of meanings they convey. Realistically there might not be much meaning difference in the American, Scottish, London, Oxford or Cambridge spellings of “razor”/“rasor” or “basin”/“bason” or “ax”/“axe”. Yet, despite the extremely negligible doctrinal impact the “wrong” spelling will have, there still needs to be a standard.

Now the reality is that worlds are framed by the Word of God (see Heb. 11:3) so there can be the whole turning of some vital thing on a singular letter or comma. The Bible is a legal document (see Rom. 7:12), the Testaments are legal documents, so every jot and tittle counts for something. Nothing is just line filler or padding.

There is an “exact sense” being communicated through the entire Bible. Holiness becomes the house of God, and it was built exactly, and kept clean. So too must every letter have its place in the Bible (see Psalm 93:5). We don’t have a superstitious adoration of letters like some other well known false religion, but meaning matters, and meaning is communicated by the substructure of letters and dots.

Unlike Ross, I really do think that there is a discernible difference and nuance of meaning (that does affect doctrine because truth has meaning) between “alway” and “always”. (It is easy to show it from the OED too.) These are not merely differences in orthography which Ross tries to suggest.

Thus, the Bible is a full conceptual communication, not just in its broad doctrines. Every word actually matters, everything that is present in the Bible is there for a reason. God wants us to know the truth, the very truth of truth.

Ross omits important information

Ross is still trying to justify his wrong accusation about me, where he is trying to make out that I think only the Pure Cambridge Edition is pure and actual Scriptura Ultima and everything else isn’t.

But I want to categorically say that the Scripture in the mind of God, in Heaven and in the autographs was equally as pure and perfect as the PCE in a technical, letter exact sense. (Ross is one of those who quibbles about the meaning of “perfect”, which usually means trying to make the word just mean “mature”.)

And I also showed that all the copies that might have had typos are no less Scripture. Ross seems to be flogging a dead horse.

Doesn’t he realise that the only way that God can excuse the typos is by making sure He has a copy without typos existing and/or coming to pass?

Ross then made a “meme” (pretty boring looking) which says that I agree with him about so called “verbal equivalence” in Reformation Bible translations and other KJB editions.

I’ve been open about it. I’ve said that Ross is not entirely wrong, I’ve said that he has said some good things. I guess his big meme is probably a celebration for him, because he actually read what I wrote and suddenly realises I am not 100% against him.

I think he has over reacted in the past to some criticisms I have made, when I have been critical of say 15% of what he says.

Ross is the one trying to push as if I totally reject everything he says, and it sort of feels like that in the way he has tried to so hard to keep pushing to justify his saying of incorrect things about me.

He also has a problem with his analysis and judgment. Not only in how he views the PCE and my approach, but also in relation to other matters. He has asserted (was that a prophecy?) that Laurence Vance’s work on the textual history of the King James Bible would be a firestorm for King James Bible onlyism. I have Vance’s book sitting by me, and it’s quite fine with a lot of solid research, but hardly incendiary.

If Ross thinks he is coming to the Body of Christ with a message that “alway” and “always” are just the same and that the differences don’t matter and that the differences can be erased by just having “always” … then Ross is actually dangerously fighting against divine propriety. Is he so sure and confident that he isn’t wrong, that “astonied” really is just “astonished”? Wouldn’t it be better to let caution guide us rather than insist upon something which may be incorrect?

If we use the minds of generations of learned Bible users guide us, then to them the distinction of words might have felt like a distinction in meaning, even if they couldn’t articulate the technicalities. They would have had a sense of the meaning from another word that looked similar, but as it is to this hour these words’ existence has not been erased, nor even minished by Ross.

A proper conclusion

The assertion about the PCE’s reliable vocabulary prevails, regardless of Ross’ wishful thinking and claimed vague inconsistencies in what I have said about something or other. Most of it is about how Ross is trying to read me as meaning something else than what I am saying.

I do thank the Lord that we have doctrinal exactness of every letter, punctuation mark and orthographic detail in the PCE. It’s a blessing for unity for believers across the Earth to say the same thing and even get the same number in the word and letter counts of their KJBs!

I’m happy Latin speakers had the Word of God. I don’t know why Ross is trying to invent some tension between Latin speakers having their Bibles, and us having the PCE from the 20th century to today.

I have to laugh at the sheer effort Ross is putting in, saying that my “appeal to Providence compounds the problem.” How? It’s God that is self-evidently showing His works. I didn’t make providences happen, that’s what God has evidently done.

As for knowing and understanding the distinctions in King James Bible words, which are in the Pure Cambridge Edition, we have the advantage of being able to study the Bible and have access to tools to help us. Even current AI can help explain the difference between words.

It’s almost like Ross is being a Luddite when it comes to this. Considering (as I do as an outsider) to where he lives, one would have thought that the climate of publishing and Dutch theology in his area would have had some impact. I think about my own town, which was the centre of Dutch theology, and I grew up in a school dominated by this persuasion. So let me appropriate the words of Peter Van Kleeck, Jr., “Change the words and you change the Bible”.

By removing distinctions in words like “stablish”, “alway”, “ensample” and “throughly”, Bryan Ross is taking away from the meaning of the Bible. Removing words removes meanings.

Introduction

I have the feeling of a strong man rejoicing to run a race as I saw and now write in response to Pastor Bryan Ross’ article about the Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE).

Ross has been pushing his narrative for a few years, that there is no single exactly correct edition of the King James Bible (KJB). He wants to embrace a host of badly edited American editions with all their divergences rather than run the course of a pure exemplar edition.

It has taken me some time to try to understand what he is arguing for, since it seems to me that he is saying that there is only general truth and not singular perfect truth, or perhaps, there is a single perfect set of ideas in the Bible but no actual copy of the Bible that expresses that perfectly as far as being letter perfect. I’ve found it difficult to understand precisely what he does believe.

Now I want to be fair, and since I think my view is correct, I don’t have to misrepresent or twist Ross’ view. Whether or not he made a spelling mistake in his heading on the word “Prespectives” is not the sort of thing I want to concentrate on. I’ve had to edit my own writing for typos too.

Ross has written a whole article trying to frame me as inconsistent. His article Inconsistent Logic & The PCE Position Examining Three Perspectives is an attempt to try to make out either I am illogical or have changed my ideas.

While it is true we all develop and grow, and we all improve our understanding, I will show how Ross is wrong, how Ross has misunderstood me and how I think Ross wants to frame me as wrong.

An attempt to present Ross’ position

I am going to do my best to try to present what Ross believes, as relevant to this debate. He believes that the King James Bible is the best English translation. He thinks that the King James Bible preserves what was in the Textus Receptus (TR), which he upholds. He thinks that the variations in editions and printings of the KJB do not amount to “corruptions”, but since he is measuring to the TR, he is accepting the various editions of the KJB are reliably presenting “substantively” the same meaning.

Ross also makes much of “verbal equivalence”, a term which his group has coined which describes that meaning of words are the same as the meaning in the original languages even if spelling has varied in English. In the same way, the Tyndale Bible might use a different word to the King James Bible, but the overall meaning is still “substantively” the same. He measures this in a doctrinal sense, and seems to base this on the idea of how the Bible seems to loosely (rather than precisely) quote itself between the Testaments.

He rejects “exact sameness”, which his group has termed “verbatim identicality”. This is the alleged idea that there must be a robotic and rigid “xerox” (i.e. photocopy) of what was written in the originals as to be given today. He applies the same with comparing the English orthography of the 1611 printing of the KJB with what was printed in the 20^th century. I suspect that as a younger Christian, he had some sort of nebulous view that this was true, but as he became older and wiser, he realised he had to explain real editorial variations in editions since 1611. He took the same view that the modern supporters do, that the truth must generally be there, and that specifics of typography must not count for much. What matters, apparently, is the preservation of the message, while specific words don’t really matter so much, especially if comparing words like “ensample” and “example”, etc.

As far as interpretation of Scripture, there are two key passages that define Ross’ view. One is 2 Timothy 2:15, which speaks of “rightly dividing the word of truth”, which he takes to describe the dividing up of the Divine Œconomy into various dispensations, and specifically applies the verse to highlight that the writings of Paul are particularly relevant for Christians today (essentially part of Acts to Philemon). This might be termed the Pauline Dispensational Method.

The other passage of importance is Matthew 5:18, where he takes the “jots and tittles” to mean the descriptions of things in the message and not specifically the written legal form of those promises. This means that he is looking at Scripture as a set of ideas and doctrine rather than the narrow meaning that it is something which is communicated by a specific string of letters making words.

He therefore would read Scripture as primarily literally and he starts from a Grammatical-Historical Interpretation. It is important to note that he holds to the “Grammatical” part as how one should read a genre of writing rather than any specificity about the words or letters being used themselves. In the “Historical” aspect, he sees the Bible within the cultural lens of its communicating to the original audience.

He is a Futurist (i.e. anti-Historicist), and a Cessationist (i.e. anti-Pentecostal). While leaning to Paul’s writings as specifically relevant for the present day, he still allows for a broad application of all Bible passages to the present. Most especially, in all this, he places less emphasis on words and verbiage as conceptual containers, and so therefore, he must most especially be polemically moved against any position which constrains or narrows down on words as being specifically emphasised upon as the precise conveyers of an exact sense.

In looking at the printed history of the King James Bible, in the first instance, much of Ross’ targeting has been against a kind of unlearned Ruckmanite position that had tended to deny editorial work within the King James Bible, and the almost strawman view that the King James Bible today is identical to what was printed in 1611 except for some minor typographical errors.

My general comments on Ross’ approach

There are parts of Ross’ approach and thinking which I would quite noticeably differ with. I have tried to present this without the kind of editorialisation which Ross has practiced against me.

For example, he has tried to colour me as holding a “unique position”, using “unrealistic” ideas and being a practitioner of “private interpretation”.

Ross, as aided by his friend Nathan Kooienga, has tried to use “logic” to make out as if what I am saying is “inconsistent”. They say my position is “confusing”, but it seems to me that they have refused to understand my explanations.

I think this is related to an underlying problem, what I might call “Grace Libertarianism”, basically, by not approaching the Bible in a legal sense, one can see the corollary fuzzy thinking. I think that the same malaise which affects the charismatics also addles the thinking here of Ross and Kooienga, who both are intelligent enough, yet are surprisingly willing to adhere to a view which defies authority, precision and clarity.

Ross has been pushing his narrative for a few years, that there is no single exactly correct edition of the KJB. He seems to think that truth can be contained within parameters, rather than that there is a specifically accurate written word of God anywhere in existence. He is using a kind of logical fallacy that if something can be permissively correct, that is, generally correct, that it cannot ever be specifically correct.

That is, that if various possible ways of saying something exist, that these multiple possibilities seem, in his mind, to allow him to deny that there is one specific way to say something exactly correctly. Thus, Ross is anti-perfectability.

I don’t understand how Ross doesn’t see there needs to be a perfect standard to which all the permissible possibilities are ultimately adhering to. In order for there to be permissibility there must be an ultimate legal jot and tittle correct written standard.

By disconnecting conceptual accuracy from the specificity of words, letters and punctuation, he is more in the realm (akin to the thinking of many charismatics) that God’s truth is in ideas and that God is I guess apparently not tied to the letter of the law. Ross thinks that God’s ideas are being communicated in the King James Bible, but it’s not so far to backslide to the position of Ross’ acquaintances J. Burris and J. Armstrong, who along with the host of Reformed, Charismatics and Baptists think that various translations are okay as long as they are presenting the approximate same gist or message. Ross’ decoupling from the anchor the exactness of the words of Scripture is the first slipping towards that modernistic position.

Ross wrote his article against me, with the help of his circle and some background AI assistance, to essentially try to charge me with apparently being inconsistent. Actually, Ross was stung into writing more because I called him out for wrongly saying that I say that if it isn’t PCE, it must be corrupt.

The actual article he wrote is more about him trying to save face than about me. Ross said that he concluded from a 2009 copy of my book Glistering Truths that I must be saying or implying that if it isn’t PCE, it must be corrupt. He didn’t get it from what I actually stated, he got it by a kind of convoluted way of thinking.

In other words, he has in his mind a way of thinking about what I was apparently meaning. That is really all it is, and then it was attaboyed by Kooienga trying to make a strained logical syllogism which totally says something I have expressly denied! It’s a conceptual mess, and it is designed to undermine my position by gross misrepresentation.

Ross tries to argue this as based on the fact that he used a monograph I wrote in 2009 (Glistering Truths), which he used to assess my views. Now, just as an aside, I edited that monograph in 2019 and 2024, to fix up typos and to rephrase some parts to make them clearer. But my argument and views expressed are not changed in light of this area of discussion.

How strange it is that Ross is writing an article trying to make out as if I am saying something different now to what I said before. In other words, he’s trying to frame me as inconsistent, when the reality is I can show in 2008 that I said the Latin Vulgate contains the word of God! See this link: https://av1611.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4258&postcount=5

Therefore, I would like to highlight how ridiculous it is, with minimal need for rhetorical effect, that I ever said, meant or implied that if it isn’t PCE, it must be corrupt. The Vulgate is far from the PCE, and I am not denying it was the word of God to those historical Latin-speaking Christians.

Ross’ approach is quite weak and really falls down when we try to find what exactly is his standard of what is the word of God. He seems to be allowing all kinds of things collectively to be the word of God without any specific ultimate form, method or measure. He is left trying to say that “Beer-sheba, Sheba”; “Beer-sheba, and Sheba” and “Beer-sheba, or Sheba” are all concurrently and equally the word of God at Joshua 19:2, even though the count will alter, and the Scripture says there are thirteen cities and their villages.

My approach is way better

Unlike Ross, I begin by pointing to the Scriptures and what the Bible says about itself in relation to its authority, origins and pre-existence.

The Scripture, I can show from the Bible, existed in the mind of God in eternity. (What troubles people get themselves into when they try to use the Greek to change the meaning of the Bible: but the Bible was known to be written in the mind of God, so they oughtn’t throw pencil shavings!) When Heaven was created on the start of day one in Genesis one, the Book was made and in the Heavenly Tabernacle.

Then, after many years, God moved through Moses, who while wrote the first Books of the Bible on Earth, God essentially worked through Moses and put that power into the words in the Earth. Inspiration essentially means putting spirit into, that is, putting the nature of spirit into those words which Moses then was writing (see also John 6:63). While on one level Moses was writing as a human to a human audience, it was actually God writing to mankind.

I think Bryan Ross has been addled by his going to the Greek and trying to Snuffleupagus “breathing out” like the Yahweists teach.

When we see the New Testament authors not quoting word for word the Old Testament, this is not because they were using some changed translation, nor because God is into deliberate or accidental carelessness, but because the same author of the Old (the Holy Ghost) is fit and free to give (and interpret) His own words in the New.

It’s very important to see that Luke quoting Isaiah is itself an inspiration, that Luke’s writing is as much inspired as the former writing of Isaiah. The Holy Ghost varying the wording is part of a Scriptural interpretative model that adds and aids meaning by the preciseness in the variations. Difference itself is new information. All such information is infallible and true, and reconciling it builds the full picture. There is no contradiction between any passage in the Scripture.

But Ross seems to think that variations in the New Testament quotes are the precedent for possible variation in orthography all being acceptable with some sort of latitudinal magnanimousness and perhaps even God ordained. There is little difference between this doublethink and the doctrine of modernist Rick Norris who says the same thing as Ross by allows for acceptability of various modern translations. Ross is just being less of an unbeliever than Norris.

Now in the copying process various errors, variations and corruptions occurred. No one can truly be as stupid as Ross makes out in believing that there is an exact sameness in manuscripts over the centuries. So the modernists, Ross and I all agree that there was no single perfect copy of the Bible being passed through time on Earth.

And yet, unlike Ross, I point to the indefatigable rock of the Scripture in Heaven, no matter what waves beat upon the Earth, truth existed there. I also articulate very clearly the doctrine of the scattering and gathering. The Scripture was scattered, and then with the scriptoria, and especially as leading on with the Textus Receptus tradition, we see singular gathered printed copies which begin to reconstitute the Text of Scripture.

Furthermore, in the various translations being made in English from the time of King Henry VIII to the apocalypticon of King James I.

Here we come to the most important point that blows up everything Ross the arsonist tried to do. He deliberately ignored this teaching about the modes of being of Scripture and its levels of perfection and purity, which ends his entire fake accusation against me.

Read closely. I do not believe that only the KJB is the word of God, yet I do believe it is only the Word for us now and for the world more and more. I do not believe that only the PCE is the word of God, but I do believe if you want to know exactly, precisely to the minutest detail it is true, that the ultimate knowledge of doctrines hang upon its words, and that doctrines therefore are in the balance based upon the very case of the lettering and punctuation marks.

You see, there are seven levels of the Scripture and its form.

First, the Scripture exists in the mind of God, which is also called Theistic Conceptual Realism. It’s a fat load of good being there alone, but because it is revealed in this time of creation first in Heaven and then on Earth for us through the process of inspiration, it is good.

So the second form is that it exists in a perfect form written in Heaven. We can prove this from many passages too, such as Psalm 40:7; 119:89, Daniel 10:21 and Hebrews 8:5; 9:19, 23.

The third form is the Scripture itself. Scripture having all the attributes we ascribe to it, such as inerrancy, infallibility, inspiration etc.

So now, taking this third form, we can argue three things:

1. That a copy of the Scripture is the word of God,
2. That a copy of the Scripture is the word of God to the people who use it as the word of God, and
3. That a copy of the Scripture is the word of God in as much as it is faithful and substantively so.

Therefore on this basis the Greek copies of the Scripture in Constantinople, and even the Latin Vulgate was the word of God.

Now we know that there are Textual variations and translation issues in the Vulgate, so we know that the Vulgate does not match “verbatim” what would exist in Heaven or in the mind of God, but we do know it is accepted in general.

(In fact, the ESV contains the word of God where it matches the KJB, though the ESV be corrupt and the corruption have rendered it practically unusable to a person who has an awakened conscience on these matters.)

The next level, the fourth level, is that of the Text. We can argue for purity of Text. This means a perfect Version, this means a perfect set of Readings. We now point to the King James Bible as being this exactly, as it being the final form of the Received Text.

The next level, the fifth, is that of the translation. We can argue for the purity of the translation. That means a perfect translation, not just a good one like Tyndale or Geneva. We can argue that God’s words have come into English properly and exactly. We can say that the King James Bible is the best translation in the world.

The next level, the sixth, is that of the Edition. One Edition of the King James Bible is better than the others, because of accuracy, because of getting the orthography right. We can argue for a progress in this matter from 1611 to the 20th century. We can see how far advanced the work of Dr Blayney was in 1769.

When I said that Dr Blayney did well, that he had a moral obligation to fix typos and to standardise and improve the English, did you know that Bryan Ross and his friends laughed me to scorn. I cannot understand their attitude at all except to understand it spiritually. I shall not render evil for evil for this, but show that in the love of God, God has given Pastor Ross a fine gift of the benefit of the 1769 work, something good.

Now there are a series of editions of the King James Bible, and editors have worked to fix typographical errors, standardise the spelling and grammar, etc., and there are seven major Editions, which are editions of significant editorial importance, they are the folio Editions of 1611, 1611 again, 1613, 1629, 1638, 1769 and the Pure Cambridge Edition (which is not a folio but exists in a series of various printings). The PCE therefore presents the word of God exactly with proper editing in English.

This brings us to the seventh level, which is the Pure Cambridge Edition, but specifically, a copy-edited form of it, a resolved, exactly correct copy. I didn’t invent the Pure Cambridge Edition, I didn’t make a computer file copy of it based on some sort of “pentecostal experience” or “supernatural guidance”, I did it in line with Providence, and I used a believing textual analytical method. The setting and setting forth of the PCE as a resolved and acknowledgeable perfect textual form therefore presents the word of God exactly correctly to the letter.

Now Ross has quite wrongly said that I say that my holding to the Pure Cambridge Edition (level 6) invalidates every manuscript and copy and Bible (level 3), every Bible version (level 4) and every translation (level 5) and every other edition of the King James Bible. This is so blatantly wrong, and yet he has built his entire attack on me on this silly and false syllogism.

It should be obvious that every edition of the KJB has the same version and translation, and therefore how could I be casting them out on that ground? The fact is that I personally only strive to use the PCE of the KJB for the reason of love of accuracy and wanting to ensure reliance on the exactness of the very presentation of truth.

And so, at the last, we have, before the end of the world, a very perfect, precise and exact knowledge of the very words of God to the very details and possible grasping of the very nuance of meaning, by having a perfect form of the PCE, which in itself answers here below to that which is above in Heaven.

Semantics required for conceptual accuracy 

The fundamental foundation of my belief system, and of the argument for the KJB and the PCE, is that worlds are framed by the word of God, and that the “word of God” is made up of words, and words have meanings. Therefore, exactness of meaning is rooted in exactness of words.

(This is, I am sure, what the rabbis thought too, after their own fashion. My own theological belief, being Word and Spirit, is built directly upon Word of Faith theology, and this emphasis on words as “containers” is central. The Puritan Calvinist, being primarily a legalist, also shares the centrality of God’s law being communicated by words, that words have meaning, because the law is words of meaning. And so, language is a kind of presuppositional framework that exists, it comes from the mind of God, and it enters creation, which is why we call our Saviour by the title Word. The modernists, in their foolishness, have called Him Logos, but I say that we must dominate the Platonic understanding and plunder their words and use words in a Christian way, and not subject Christianity to Platonism.)

Words matter. Things cannot exist except words describe them, and the perfect form of the things exist because they exist in the mind of God, therefore, Theistic Conceptual Realism (the ideas that God knows) dominates Nominalism (mere words). Meaning requires words, just as God’s ideas were expressed by the divine utterance and reverberance in creation, And God said!

Bryan Ross is so far from these mysteries, floundering about with his six different spellings of a word, that he cannot detect that perfection is come.

He cannot accept that the very truth is communicated precisely by jots and tittles which are necessary for conveying the exact sense of the Scripture.

He accuses me of believing in “verbatim identicality”, yet I do not believe in such a thing, but I do believe in the perfect Scripture in Heaven being the progenitor of perfection that is here now in the whole world, and that its force is of full effect in its operation in the Earth.

I can point to scripture reference after scripture reference of promises, prophecies and implications that we should have the Bible perfectly and exactly before the end of the world.

Of course, any edition of the King James Bible which, at the point where it is varying from the PCE, is at that point not giving the “exact sense”. 

Doctrine, statutes, precepts, the very nature of our religion, is based upon the legal nature of covenant agreements and written testaments. Righteousness is measured by the very exact “every last whit” of the law.

The specific and exact state, word order and lettering of Scripture has an effect on nuance, concept and meaning. Therefore, the very letters of the King James Bible are important, because life and death can depend upon them.

Ross intentionally misreads me as though a world of meaning exists in a letter “w” sitting by itself on a piece of paper made by the calligrapher’s art. Ross writes, “Whole doctrines in the Bible do not hang on letters; they hang on Bible verses in context”. This is exaggerated nonsense about a single letter hung with doctrines. But in that a letter changes doctrine, in a verse, in context, that is evident: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” (Galatians 3:16).

So, a letter does make a difference. When we look at editorial variations, we would not be so foolish as to not correct typographical errors, and we would be not so foolish as to insist that “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh” (in Joel 2:28) is identical or else meaninglessly distinct to “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” (in Acts 2:17). Every word matters, every capital letter matters, even dots matter.

I cannot believe that Ross would stoop so low as to use such a willfully “on the spectrum” style of gullible reasoning to accuse me by saying, “The way doctrines are derived in the Bible is not by looking at a single letter or word in a single verse.” As we can see here, I am using a variety of letters making words and typing out a response here which you can read and which makes sense. I am not striking the letter “L” over and again on my keyboard as if one letter is going to do anything by itself. I mean, how does it edify anyone if I really was doing what Ross suggests and I was abasing myself before the letter “L” and insisting it, in some sort of new religious cult-like way, was some angular power to whack his lambda?

Surely Ross knows he is being dishonest. Surely he knows I am not saying that some mere letter on a page in the Bible itself is full of doctrines. Surely he knows what the nuance of “Glistering Truths” shows.

Ross can easily observe that I actually teach that the “neesings” of the leviathan is full of meaning that is not merely the same as someone sneezing. Now, I know how Ross will run to the Oxford English Dictionary, and claim with umpteen examples that “neesing” was a 17th century form of “sneezing”. I can imagine Ross right now pumping AI for info, that neesing is just an old and archaic spelling for sneezing. But he has missed the point: the Bible trumps the dictionary, and adhering to the divine trumps mere human reasoning.

We approach Scripture with a believing sense of wonder, we don’t impose fake criteria by sullying Bible words with the tyranny of subjective opinion and dictionary dictatorships. Dictionaries are tools, they are servants, they exist downstream from the Providential supply of words and their meanings. We should not be so foolish as people like Mark Ward who petulantly proclaim that usage determines meaning. Divine usage, not human usage, determines meaning.

Let us humble ourselves gladly to then find out what “ensamples” means rather than just say it must be the same as “examples”. To ignore or conflate them would be anti-intellectualism or vain deceit.

Ross also makes a weird accusation that I did not get my views on the PCE by comparing Bible verses. I assume he means the comparing of Scripture with Scripture, and I assume he is meaning a doctrine about there being a perfect exact standard of God’s words. Well then, Pastor Ross can be assured that the entire doctrine of the PCE is based upon Scripture. I also appeal to Providential and internal arguments, but the entire argument is built upon Scripture, it is itself a scriptural doctrine. I’ll be happy to give him an extensive list of Bible verses, but I know already what he will say. He will find it incompatible to interpret the Scripture that way, because I know the problem actually lays in how he interprets Scripture. He’s demonstrated that with how he rejects the teaching of Matthew 5:18.

In fact, Ross came up with his “verbal equivalence” by just trying to explain (wrongly) why New Testament quotes of the Old Testament are not identical. Other than that wresting, his views and his rejection of the PCE are nothing really to do with Scripture.

And so we arrive at the nonsense position of Ross, as if that “alway” and “always” are the same word spelt two different ways. It’s very easy to prove in all kinds of ways that these are two different words with different meanings. Ross has committed himself in writing that they are not different, that they don’t present a different sense. His position is forced to accommodate the places where editions which vary the spelling, orthography, wording or made typos and to uphold them (those places that differ) as equal to what the PCE has now. (Obviously, Bryan Ross accepts the PCE is an edition, but he deliberately tries to deny its specialness.)

Answering Ross’ accusations 

Ross wrote accusingly of me, “He developed his position on the PCE through private interpretation (his Pentecostalism & Historicist interpretation of Revelation) to determine what he thinks the reality of the printed text should be, rather than what the actual reality was.”

This is loaded with wrong and false accusations.

I did not argue for the Pure Cambridge Edition based on private interpretation at all, it is based upon open analysis, providence and tradition.

The accusation that I used some sort of “Pentecostal” experiences to determine the PCE is just completely made up, and I have rejected this ridiculous accusation many times.

I also did not use the Historicist interpretation of Revelation to develop my position on the PCE. In fact, I did not understand Historicism very much when first studying about the PCE. I have written on multiple occasions about how I came to understand about the PCE, and Ross can easily correct himself by reading my several accounts.

It was later that I found in Historicist writings that they pointed to the King James Bible in how they interpreted Revelation 10. In general, I did not initially build or understand the case about the PCE as based on Historicist prophecy.

It is strange that Ross refers to the “reality” of the Pure Cambridge Edition. What is his “reality”? That we cannot get exactness in editing? I’d sure like to know how Ross proposes to have an exactly correct printing of the King James Bible. The history of editing from 1611 to 1769 is obvious, but why doesn’t Ross be more clear in recognising the improvement in the printed history?

Things are heading somewhere, editing has not been for no reason. It staggers belief that Ross would be fighting so hard to reject a post-1769 standard edition. Is he denying that God would want to get a correctly edited KJB Edition for the Body of Christ?

I also can’t understand how he doesn’t recognise that words mean something, his reluctance to get exactness, and his trying to just make “throughly” and “thoroughly” the same. If KJBOs didn’t make an academically rigorous case for the distinction in meanings then why not make an academically proposition to understand why there are detectable differences (according to God’s academia, not the worldly peer-reviewed mafia).

Apparently he doesn’t understand how constitutions and the courts work. Words are full of meaning, but if words can just be just smudged because they seem similar, then I think Ross would be the most sloppy lawyer in the world.

In all of this, Ross’ attacks have done one thing, and that is make me explain more, and I expect it all is more of an encouragement for believers to:
* stick with the reputable Pure Cambridge Edition
* understand and stay with the “glistering truths”
* align with Divine Providence

Conclusion

Pastor Ross may continue in the same denial he seems to hold to but never articulate: that the Scripture cannot have an ultimate final, exact form on Earth. He needs to see that all things move with purpose instead of “verbal equivalence” of general ideas, of approximation, which avoids admitting that God’s Word is communicated in words, not in loose impressions. And because he rejects exactness in the written form, he cannot penetrate a standard beyond conceptual boundaries.

But creation itself testifies otherwise. The sun shines as one light. So too with Scripture. Many copies may vary, many translations may obscure, but the light of truth itself has a penetrating form. Not because man contrived it, but “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11).

Heaven and Earth follow patterns. The tabernacle below reflected the pattern above; the law given had a heavenly origin; the Scripture is both divine in source and earthly in manifestation. This correspondence is what God designs in perfection and brings to completion in history. Ross seems to be ignorant of this principle, though it be through the whole Bible.

I stand for that God’s Word existed eternally in His mind,
was written perfectly in Heaven,
was given and used throughout all ages as Scripture on Earth,
was gathered through the Received Text,
translated exactly into English for the world,
edited providentially into a standard Edition,
and resolved in a stable and exact form.

This is not private interpretation, it is not whimsical opinion, but the belief in a precise God with an actual set of words telling exactly what we need to know. We can enter into every exact nuance of doctrine by knowing we have every jot and tittle in its right order.