I Pray for an Apology from Leaders or Institutions in KJV-Onlyism

by Nov 18, 2024KJV5 comments

I’m done addressing KJV-Onlyism at the popular level on December 31, 2024 (with a few little exceptions I mention in my wrap-up video), so I’m clearing out my files—and posting a few scripts that never made it to the channel.

 


 
One of my life’s long-term prayers is that someone of stature within KJV-Only circles will publicly apologize for promoting false doctrine.

A major difficulty, I find, is that everyone who comes out of KJV-Onlyism as an adult has already paid a price for their change of mind—and the last thing I want to do is add a burden to people who have lost ministry positions and strained and broken friendships. I have taken the risk of approaching several different ex-KJV-Onlyists to inquire whether or not they ought to issue any kind of public apology. Each had excellent reasons—and I mean this, excellent reasons—to politely decline.

Ultimately God only knows what moral culpability individuals bear for teaching things that aren’t true and thereby dividing the body of Christ. God only knows who is a victim and who is a perpetrator, or what proportions of perpetrator and victim a given person represents. But I just can’t imagine that all this untruth and division that’s been generated by KJV-Onlyism could occur without individual people sinning—sinning against the teaching of 1 Cor 14 that edification requires intelligibility, sinning against commands for unity and for sound doctrine, sinning against God’s providential opportunities for doing better study. And we’re Christians here: we know that the thing to do when we sin is confess and forsake. “Confess your faults one to another” probably doesn’t mean that we should go around telling everyone we know all the bad things we’ve done. No, I think that verse is most likely meant to encourage us as believers to confess our sins to those people whom our sins affected.

And that’s why large institutions issue public apologies. There’s no way they could possibly figure out the identities of all the individuals they harmed with their actions, so they put their apologies on websites or even on TV. One of my proudest days as a graduate of Bob Jones University was in 2008 when the administration apologized for being beholden to racist Southern culture instead of to the Bible in their now-long-dead interracial dating bans. In my experience, you don’t get a lot of kudos when an insitution or public person apologizes—but people do notice. The haters are gonna hate, and their hatred will go up as they laugh about their victory. But the silent majority will make a silent judgment: if the apologizer is clear and sincere, that majority will gain respect for the one who did wrong but is now admitting it.

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5 Comments
  1. Burt

    I get a “can’t open log file” when I try the link to the “wrap up video” but I do find a video from 11 days ago on YouTube “I’m Done* with KJV Onlyism – Dec 31, 2024” and assume that is what you are hyperlinking to.

    Reply
    • Robert Vaughn

      I get the same message. Seems to be something wrong with the link. It seems to work in the other posts.

      Reply
    • Mark Ward

      Fixed! Thank you for the tip!

      Reply
  2. Christopher Yetzer

    Separation isn’t necessarily “sinning”. Separation for distinction and purity are not the same as causing division as you have tried to do. 1 Corinthians 14 is not about quoting or reading Scripture and even if it were, the chapter permits translation.

    Reply
    • Mark Ward

      The King James Only movement has formed a doctrine that is not taught in Scripture and then has separated from (and frequently reviled) fellow Christians who believe the same gospel and the same Jesus and yet refuse to believe that doctrine that is not taught in Scripture. KJV-Onlyism is guilty of causing many breaks in the body of Christ, and it generates tons and tons of division, contention, and strife, which are works of the flesh. It isn’t all evil; there are many, many good people overtaken in the fault of KJV-Onlyism—which is a huge reason why I do the work that I do. I want to regain unity with them.

      Reply

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