“But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom” (Heb 1:8).

One of the worst changes to the text which affects the deity of Jesus Christ is found in the book of the prophet Micah.  The KJV has: “But thou Bethlehem Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel: whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Micah 5:2).  Compare this to the NIV, which has: “….whose origins are from of old, from ancient times”.  And to the Watch Tower translation: “whose origin is from early times, from the days of time indefinite” (NWT 1984), and “Whose origin is from ancient times, from the days of long ago” (NWT 2013).  In fact, the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses can be regarded as more orthodox than the NIV because its reading “the days of time indefinite”, despite its vagueness or perhaps because of it, can be understood to mean eternity (KJV marginal note: “the days of eternity”); whereas the NIV absolutely precludes eternity and limits Jesus to time only.

However, only the KJV makes it clear that Jesus has existed from eternity, so we don’t have to juggle verses from other parts of scripture to explain this verse, which we have to do with every other version.

What a gift the modern and corrupt reading of Micah 5:2 is to the Watch Tower Society!  Indeed, a gift to all the enemies of the Gospel!  In one of their publications, under the heading “Where Did Jesus Come From?” the Watch Tower Society writes, “The Bible teaches that Jesus lived in heaven for a long time before he came to earth.  Micah said that the Messiah was ‘from ancient times’ (Micah 5:2)…..Some people believe that Jesus and God are the same person.  But that’s not what the Bible teaches.  The Bible says that Jesus was created, which means that Jesus had a beginning.  But Jehovah, who created all things, had no beginning” (“What Can the Bible Teach Us?” p 44).  (Emphasis mine). 

Before I get to the main issue here, I would correct an error in this statement from the Watch Tower where they say: “Some people believe that Jesus and God are the same person”.  Orthodox Christians do not say that Jesus and God are the same Person; we say that Jesus and God are two of the separate and distinct Persons within the Godhead, which consists of three Persons; it is the Sabellians and Modalists and Oneness Pentecostals who say that Jesus and God are the same Person.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are correct in deducing that Jesus was created, according to the reading in Micah 5:2 in all the modern bible versions.  How could they come to any other conclusion based on this verse?  But the big question and more important issue is: how can Evangelical and other Bible-believing Christians accept that this is the true and correct reading?  Can they not smell a rat?  Can they not see the implications for the doctrine if the NIV reading is true?  It totally undermines and opposes every other passage which teaches the deity of Jesus Christ.  It clearly and specifically declares that Jesus had a very ancient origin.  So, no matter how far back in “ancient times” one likes to go, Jesus had a beginning; therefore he was created.  No matter how glorious a Being he might be, he is still a creature, and thus falls infinitely short of deity.  Such a conclusion cannot be avoided if the reading in the modern bible versions is accepted. 

But the writer of Hebrews had no illusions or doubts as to the deity of Jesus.  He writes: “But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.…..Thou, Lord, in the beginning, hast laid the foundation of the earth” (Heb 1:8, 10).  And Moses says of God, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Ps 90:6 cf Jn 1:1-3, 10).  This is Jesus, our God and Saviour; the One of whom the prophet Micah speaks, “whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting”.

Henry Morris, in the comments on Micah 5:2 in his Study Bible, says, “The Messiah was to be brought forth as a baby in Bethlehem, but was also to have been ‘going forth’ from eternity.  Such an amazing prophecy sounds impossible, but was literally fulfilled when God became man, in divine incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ.  The ‘goings-forth’ of Deity also imply the perpetually outflowing energy which sustains the created universe, ‘upholding all things by the word of his power (Heb 1:3)’” (Morris 2012, p 1327).

Matthew Henry says, “Going forth is used (Deut 8:3) for a word which proceeds out of the mouth, and is therefore very fitly used to signify the eternal generation of Him who is called the Word of God, that was in the beginning with God, John 1:1-2” (Comment on Mic 5:2 in the Matthew Henry Study Bible).

Only the KJV preserves and protects this doctrine of the deity, and consequently the eternal pre-existence, of Jesus Christ.  If it wasn’t for the correct reading of this verse in the KJV, it could well be that Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals and other Unitarians and deniers of the deity of Jesus would have legitimacy.  And if the readings in the modern English versions were genuine, even those other verses in the bible which testify to the deity of Jesus could be legitimately understood or reinterpreted to mean that Jesus had a beginning and therefore has not always existed.  And verses such as Genesis 1:1, for example, would have to be interpreted as God having a beginning, an origin, and that there was a time when he was not; likewise, the Word, who is stated to be God in John 1:1-2, would also have a beginning.  In Colossians 1:15, Jesus is called “the firstborn of every creature”, and is a favourite proof text of the Watch Tower that Jesus was created.  However, Matthew Henry gives the correct understanding of it when he writes: “Not that he is a creature, for the word is “born or begotten before all creation,” or before any creature was made, which is the scriptural way of representing eternity.  It signifies his dominion over all things” (Matthew Henry Study Bible Col 1:15).

So the correct reading of Micah 5:2 as found in the KJV is essential to the pre-existence and deity of Jesus and thus to the Gospel itself – see Jn 20:30-31.

God was Manifest in the Flesh – 1 Timothy 3:16

“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory”. 

If you use a modern English version, you won’t have this reading which is such a powerful testimony to the deity of Jesus Christ; indeed, it is one of the clearest declarations that Christ is truly God; and you will be very much the poorer for its absence in your bible.  This verse is an early creed with clear statements of doctrine, and at the top of this creed is the central doctrine that God became truly human.  Without this fundamental and crowning statement, the others don’t have any value for us.  If the Divine Son of God did not become truly human and die in our place, our sinless Substitute and atonement, what does it matter if he was justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, and received up into glory?  Is he not that anyway?  And what does it matter if he was preached unto the Gentiles and believed on in the world – what would be the point?  What would we be putting our faith and our trust and believing in – a great teacher?  There are plenty of great teachers for us to choose from.  A great example?  What good is that to fallen sinners who are at enmity with God?  What did he achieve for us if he was not God manifest in the flesh?  He couldn’t die in our place if he wasn’t human, and his death would be of value only to himself if he wasn’t God; so who really cares about what else he did, however kind, loving and noble?  I speak hyperbolically here, of course – the things that Jesus did are important, but if we don’t have salvation, we will end up in hell; consequently, no matter how lovely Jesus is, we’d never be able to have anything to do with him.  Without his being God and born as a human being, all the rest is useless to our eternal salvation, and we’ll languish in hell for ever, without him.

So what reading do the modern versions based on the Critical Text have if they don’t tell us that it was God who was manifest in the flesh?  Instead of “God”, they have “He” or “Who”, or “He who”, or “Which”, or “the one”.  A couple even have “Christ”, but even that isn’t an unequivocal declaration that Jesus is God.  And besides, the word “Christ” isn’t even in the text.  A Jehovah’s Witness can say that Christ came in the flesh but they don’t believe that he is Jehovah.  Even a Muslim will say that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and thus came in the flesh, but they categorically deny his deity.  Unless you have a King James Bible, you will be without the clearest statements of Jesus’ divinity.  And with all the enemies ranged against us as Christians, we need every such verse with all their clarity and unequivocal and unapologetic definitions we can get.

The verse only makes sense and becomes significant if it reads “God was manifest in the flesh”.  To say “Christ was manifest in the flesh” is obvious, because he was a man, and it doesn’t necessarily ascribe deity to him anyway.  To say “who” or “which” or “that” was manifest in the flesh doesn’t make sense.  You don’t start a sentence with a relative pronoun out of the blue – it must refer to something antecedent to itself.  But there is nobody in the passage to whom it could refer except God (verse 15).  And the word “he” isn’t even in the text; it had to be inserted into it by the translators to try and make the verse more intelligible than leaving it as “who”, “which” or “that”.  David W. Daniels writes, “Without a doubt, the Scripture says, ‘God was manifest in the flesh.’  The vast testimony of history shows us clearly that the word in question is ‘God’, not ‘he’ or ‘who’” (Daniels, 2003, p 62).

The Three Heavenly Witnesses (or the Johannine Comma) – 1 John 5:7-8

“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.  And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.  For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.  And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (1 Jn 5:6-8).

As can be seen in the above verses, this passage clearly and unequivocally and explicitly declares and describes the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead, and is the only passage in the whole Bible which does so.   In making this clear statement of the unity in trinity of the Godhead, it necessarily implies the deity of Jesus.  In his gospel, John declares that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1).  In so doing, he reveals that the Godhead consists of more than one Person.  In this passage, the Johannine Comma (a technical name for it), John gives us further and final revelation, that the Godhead consists of three Divine Persons, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and that they are One.  Therefore we are able to speak of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit; this is a correct statement based on these verses even though it is not stated in this way in scripture, and it makes clear which Divine Person we are speaking of. 

Although there are other passages in the New Testament which bible-believing Christians use for their proof that God is triune in nature, they do not state the Trinitarian nature of God unequivocally, and leave room for other interpretation.  Being the only verse which states the Trinity so clearly, its absence by omission allows a question mark to hover over the doctrine of the Trinity.  It is the verse upon which the other Trinitarian verses depend for clear definition of the doctrine.  Its presence in the bible stops all denial of Jesus’ divinity dead in its tracks.  Every single verse which is presented as proof against Jesus’ divinity, or proof that he had a beginning etc. is dashed to pieces against this immovable rock.  As long as 1 John 5:7 is in the bible, the doctrine of the Trinity is invulnerable to any attack. 

But so effective has been the strategy, instigated by Satan, to remove it from the texts that today hardly a Reformed, Evangelical, or Fundamentalist scholar, theologian, or pastor (all supposedly the bible’s friends) believes that the Johannine Comma has a right to be there.  And this success was achieved by corrupting the text early in its history.  And now, the Johannine Comma is missing from every Greek manuscript except four, all of which are very late, and every English bible except the KJV/NKJV.

One speculative reason that there are no early copies of a Greek text which has the Johannine Comma would have to be that the verse was removed from the text at a very early date.  This would mean fewer copies to tamper with and which were closer together geographically.  John wrote his letters at the time of early heresies such as proto-Gnosticism, Docetism, Cerinthianism, and the Ebionites; in his second letter, he writes, “Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God.  He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.  If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed” (2 Jn 9-10).  So even at this seminal period there were enemies of the Gospel and false teachers, none of whom believed in the deity of the Son; and any one of them would have taken the opportunity, if it was presented, to change the text of scripture.

F. H. A. Scrivener writes, “It is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected originated within a hundred years after it was composed; and that Irenaeus and the African Fathers, and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used manuscripts far inferior to those employed by Stunica, Erasmus or Stephens thirteen centuries later when moulding the Textus Receptus” (TBS booklet quoting Scrivener, p 8; emphases mine).

Providentially, however, the fact is that some manuscripts which contain 1 John 5:7 escaped the vandalism of unbelievers because we find the verse in many Latin copies.  For example, Cyprian (200-268), Bishop of Carthage, in discussing the unity of the Church, uses the divine unity of the Trinity as an example of unity, and quotes from two scripture passages: “The Lord says, ‘I and the Father are one;’ and again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, ‘And these three are one’” (Cyprian p. 423).  The latter is from 1 John 5:7.  For Cyprian to have used these words he clearly had the complete verse in his copy of scripture, and quoted it directly or from memory.  One obvious inference from this is that the Latin manuscript from which he quoted was a copy of an even earlier manuscript.  For it to have been copied and reached Cyprian in Africa from wherever the apostle John wrote it would have taken some time so it is at least possible, even likely, that it originated in the 2^nd century from a still earlier Greek manuscript very much closer to the autograph.  And Cyprian wrote this at least a hundred years before Codex Vaticanus, that much vaunted “oldest and best” manuscript, supposedly dated 300-325 AD, and which omits 1 John 5:7. 

Concluding Comments

The above passages which declare the deity of Christ can only be found in the King James Version of the bible.  They have antiquity and majority and are widely spread around the Roman world, and this is very much in their favour.  Those manuscripts which omit, weaken, or change them, while being relatively early, are in the small minority and are restricted geographically to one area.  Unfortunately the promoters of the modern versions have chosen to base their translations on a corrupt text, a text which undermines the deity of Jesus Christ.

There is a danger, if the Church is not more diligent, that our Christian young people will be confused because of such contradictions they see in their bibles and will look for answers; consequently they will be vulnerable to false teachers such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.  And when these and other avowed enemies of Christianity such as atheists and militant ex-Christians, and false religions such as Islam, attack the bible because of its apparent contradictions and discrepancies which, on the surface, look very intimidating, these young people may well be so confounded that they will abandon the faith, just as the ex-Christians did for the same reason.  Perhaps this is the means by which the final apostasy will commence (2 Thess 2:3).  The majority of testimonies I’ve read of Christians converting to Islam, for example, did so because of the doctrine of the Trinity

 References

Cyprian of Carthage, 200 AD- 268 AD, “Ante-Nicene Fathers: On the Unity of the Church”, Vol. 5, p. 423 (see also note 5), publ. Hendrickson, Peabody, Massachusetts

Daniels, David W. 2003, “Answers to your Bible Version Questions”, Chick Publications, Ontario, California

Henry, M. “The Matthew Henry Study Bible: King James Version”, ed. A. Kenneth Abraham, copyright 1994, 1997 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.  Publisher Hendrickson Bibles

Morris, Henry M. 2012, “The Henry Morris Study Bible”, Master Books, Green Forest, Arizona, USA

TBS booklet “God was Manifest in the Flesh: 1 Timothy 3:16”, publ. Trinitarian Bible Society, London, England, copyright 1993, 2002

“What Can the Bible Teach Us?” Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2015