For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (Revelation 22:18-19)
Most Evangelicals believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. The Bible is a supernatural book written by a supernatural God; without error and incapable of being wrong. While Evangelicals have a variety of ways to explain these beliefs, to the person they believe the Bible is the very words of God. God used human instrumentality to write the sixty-six books of the Bible, but the words are exactly what he wanted written down. According to Evangelicals, the Bible is different from other books. It is the book above all books, in that its supernatural author, God, revealed to humankind everything pertaining to life and godliness. The Bible covers everything from the creation of the universe and the first humans, Adam and Eve, to the history of the Jewish people. We learn from the Bible that humans are sinners needing redemption, and 2,000 years ago, God took on human flesh in the personage of Jesus Christ, lived a sinless life, and then provided himself as a blood sacrifice for sin. Jesus was resurrected from the dead three days later, victorious over death and the grave. Jesus ascended to Heaven forty days later and hasn’t been seen since. According to Evangelical theology, Jesus promised that after he ascended to Heaven he would send his followers the comforter, the Holy Spirit — the third person in the triune Godhead. The Holy Spirit lives inside every believer, teaching, guiding, and directing them, convicting Christians of sin, and revealing exactly what the Bible says and means.
Most Evangelicals are woefully ignorant about how the Bible came into being, who its human authors were, and how it came to have sixty-six books. The Bible is littered with mistakes, contradictions, and errors, yet Evangelicals believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible. Cognitive dissonance keeps Evangelicals from knowing and understanding the history and nature of the Bible they believe is the very words of God. Take Revelation 22:18-19. Many Evangelicals believe these verses teach that it is a mortal sin to add to or take away words from the Bible. Little do they know, that in its 4,000-year history, numerous verses and words have been added to and taken away from the Bible. There’s no such thing as a singular inerrant, infallible Bible. Yet, Evangelical preachers will preach sermons from Revelation 22:18-19, warning congregants of the penalty for tampering with the Word of God.
When the words of Revelation 22:18-19 were written, there wasn’t a Bible per se. The New Testament would not be collated for another 200-300 years, and the book of Revelation was not considered canonical by some early church fathers. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther said that the book of Revelation was “neither apostolic nor prophetic.”
A clear reading of Revelation 22:18-19 shows that the text is not talking about the Bible as a whole. How could it since the Bible as we know it today didn’t exist when Revelation was written? At best, the “words of the prophecy of this book” refer to Revelation as a whole or prophetic parts of the book. The judgments warned of in this passage of Scripture refer to adding to or taking away from the book of Revelation.
Revelation is one of the most interpreted and explained books in the Bible. You would think if God wrote the book of Revelation, Evangelicals would be of one mind on what it says, but that’s not the case. Pretribulational. Midtribulational. Posttribulational. Prewrath. Preterism. Premillennial. Postmillennial. Amillennial. The events recorded in Revelation are prophetic and have not yet happened. The events recorded in Revelation are not prophetic and have already happened. Added to these broad theological positions are countless interpretations of what the various events in Revelation mean and who the entities mentioned are. In other words, virtually every Evangelical preacher adds to or takes away from the book of Revelation. And those who do this will face God’s judgment and end up in the Lake of Fire. Or so says the Bible, anyway.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Why does the writer of Revelation need to warn people about not altering his book? Because he knew it was a common practice. People were taking books and altering them, either by accident or on purpose. For instance, people didn’t like the abrupt ending of the original Mark, so they wrote in their own endings to make the book say what they wanted. And the book of Matthew copies so much of Mark, often word for word, that it might be better to call it an altered copy of Mark rather than a new book.
And so, even if somebody believes the original copies were perfect, how would they trust what they read today? For even the writers of the Bible acknowledged that this would get altered in the process of transmission.
The Book of Revelation scared the crap out of me. When I was a teen, we were studying it in Training Union at church (TU were Sunday evening classes before Sunday evening church services like Sunday morning’s Sunday school – because evangelical Sunday is nearly all day). We were being taught by a 20-something young woman who probably wasn’t educated herself in theology, but such is evangelicalism – one is “led by the Spirit”. It wasn’t until I was in college and took a “History of Christian Thought” course that it ever occurred to me that there was a process by how those books were all selected. Church didn’t teach that.
Studying the history of the Bible and the history of the Christian church was a major influence in my leaving the Christian faith. You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. Boy, did it ever! 🙂
Happy Friday the 13th fellow heretics. It’s a religious holiday of sorts. My Mother, who was very devout and very superstitious, taught me Good Friday, the day Jesus died, fell on the 13th, and that’s why it was a day of bad luck. Like so many “beliefs”, which day Jesus died is debatable, the very definition of a day at the time of his death does not even conform to the modern definition. I don’t want to be superstitious but the stubborn persistence of childhood indoctrination lurks in the back of my mind causing me vague discomfort on this this day. I admit to being a bit more circumspect than usual because it is this day. You heretics be careful out there. OK? Look both ways before crossing. And if you spill salt, toss some over your shoulder. And watch out for balck cats too. Me? I’m going back to bed now.