Whose Voice Is This?

“The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”

Genesis 27:22

My church received a copy of The Baptist Voice, Issue 39 from Lancaster Baptist Church and West Coast Baptist College in Lancaster, California. The theme of the magazine is “God is able,” reflecting on 40 years of Pastor Paul Chappell’s efforts there. The articles all spin off that main theme with sub-topics like: prayer, teamwork, missions, addiction, and– what caught my interest today– the preservation of the Bible.

If you’ve never seen an issue of The Baptist Voice, you should know that one copy of it costs probably as much per issue as this website does for an entire year. It is a high-quality piece, designed to catch the eye. Prospective students and parents will find plenty to attract them in its 75-page reading. A fundamental Baptist, conservative Christian, or traditional Bible-believer ought to be able to rejoice in good material, competently presented.

The article entitled “God is Able to Preserve His Word” is written by Joe Shakour, who is an adjunct instructor for West Coast Baptist College. He has doctor’s degree and has been a pastor since 2011. I have respect for a man to answer the call into the ministry, and who has applied himself to education, working at it personally as well as teaching others.

The article begins with a clincher: “If you’ve ever paused while reading your Bible and wondered if you could really trust the words in front of you, you’re not alone.” This problem seems to target the new believer, or a young Christian who has not put faith in the Book in front of him. This level of audience would excite a pastor to be able to write and instruct them on the primary ways of believing the Bible. An untaught convert is not a burden, but a blessing to give them “sincere milk of the word” that they may grow thereby.

He continues, “From the very beginning, Satan has sown doubt about God’s Word. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent asked Eve, “Yea, hath God said?” (Genesis 3:1). That question still echoes today. If the devil can make you question what God has said, he can make you doubt everything built on it.”

The first paragraph offers a solid foundation, promising good stuff. Unlike my toothier brethren, I root for the truth, even if it is proclaimed from a different camp, or from a different point of view. Other voices may reach farther; or teach better than mine, and this world is ever growing dense to the easy purveyance of Truth. My attention is on the facts, I have little desire to be skeptical or fault-finding.

By the second paragraph the tightly packaged hopes that I had unrolled into a threadbare mess. “But God is not silent about the permanence of His Word. Again and again the Bible declares, “It is written.” The phrase itself– gegraptai in Greek– means “it was written, it stands written, and it will always be written.””¹

Greek, really? My heart begs on behalf of practicing (and professed), studious (and just starting) King James Bible believers in my church, my hometown: Why?

Why start with a Greek proof if you believe that God’s Word is preserved in English?

There is nothing wrong with studying ancient languages. I took 2 years of Spanish, 3 years of Greek, and 1 year of Hebrew, not counting post-graduate work. My studies in Biblical languages were to combat the critics of the King James Bible. Spanish training helped me to get a job when I lived on the Gulf Coast. Post-graduate work has centered on root word meanings. Etymology is the most enlightening. I need all the help I can to communicate in English, with English speakers.

God said what he wanted to each time He said, “It is written.” If He didn’t intend that phrase, then He would have had it translated something else. That is the proper attitude of one who believes that “God is Able to Preserve His Word.”

So what if that verb can be rendered in several expressions. Why stop with three? Why not “it shall have been written?” Or ” it was being written?” The professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, J. Gresham Machen, suggests, “Here the English it is written is not a present tense at all, but reproduces the Greek perfect very well; the meaning is it stands written, or, it is in a state of having been written.”²

The seminary behind this article has the same philosophy about the Bible that Machen had. Metzger, Aland, Nestle, and more recently Dirk Jongkind and Peter Williams operate with one non-negotiable rule: the King James Bible is always wrong and can be improved upon.

There is a cheap thrill of using only Greek, when more than three-fourths of the Bible came from Hebrew. “It is written” in English shows up in the Old Testament 17 out of 80 times. The phrase, “It is written,” occurs in the O.T. 63 times in Hebrew. “It is written” refers to that bulk of Scriptures written before Christ. Which then is more vital- the Greek which talks about the Hebrew, or the Hebrew that is being talked about?

Why would he use Greek to prove English preservation? Because deep down, he doubts that it really is.

Why cheapen Greek if the root language truly adds a depth to the meaning?

What power does Greek add to English? If there is any to be had, it is completely cheapened by the phoneticizing of the Greek letters. People won’t know the Greek alphabet, you say? But you expect them to grasp ‘gegraptai’? (No wonder that Hebrew is utterly neglected.)

As I write this, I am feeling sleepy. Sleep is “Sueno” in Spanish. Well, almost. You see, I lack the appropriate typeset to communicate an “en-ye” to make it sound like “Suenyo.” But now, that is not Spanish, is it? It’s an approximation; a phoneticization of Spanish. Does that impress you with my knowledge of Spanish? It doesn’t help my tiredness any, either.

Why use Greek at all in an article aimed at young believers?

This is Voice’s ‘villain arc’ as the kids would say. Under the mask of sincerity exists a rather sinister pedagogy. “You’d use Greek too, if you had an education like mine.” Its a brain flex; I’m right because I’m smarter. It’s a play on words. It is pride.

I wish no evil on those who believe differently than I do. If you don’t care to trust the Book that was Divinely delivered to the world, fine. Stop masquerading like you do, just to get votes/students/readers/likes/followers/etc. Say what you really think. At least we’ll know where you stand.

You can cat around the outside of the doghouse all you want. You can tell all the other cats how big’n’bad a dog you are. But if you think for a second you can run around inside the kennel, beware. The dogs can smell a cat, no matter what he looks or sounds like.

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1. The Baptist Voice, Spring 2026 ↩︎
2. Machen, J. Gresham, New Testament Greek for Beginners, Second Edition, “Lesson 29, The Perfect Tense, The Pluperfect Tense” Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004 p. 243, ↩︎