“But to the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom’” (Heb 1:8 NKJV).

In a booklet which defends the true reading and doctrine of 1 Timothy 3:16, the writer from the Trinitarian Bible Society says, “The denial of the eternal Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ has troubled the Church in every period of its history.  Although the opponents of the truth have been known by different names, Arians, Socinians, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others, they have had many things in common, including an intense hostility to the doctrine set forth in this text of Holy Scripture”. 

It then shows how “Professor A. A. Hodge, expounding the true doctrine on the basis of this verse, declares that Socinians, Arians and Trinitarians worship different gods and that every non-Trinitarian conception of God presents a false god to the mind and conscience.  He contends that it is an historical fact beyond dispute that in whatever church the doctrine of the Trinity has been abandoned or obscured, every other characteristic doctrine of the Trinity has gone with it.  There can be no mutual toleration without treason” (TBS booklet p 3).

Why I favour the NKJV over the KJV

Until 1982, the King James Version was the bible available in the English language.  But in that year the New King James Version was published.  Although both are based on the Hebrew Masoretic text for the Old Testament and the Greek Textus Receptus in the Byzantine family of manuscripts for the New Testament, the NKJV is preferable because it consults the Dead Sea Scrolls and some other texts which hadn’t been discovered when the KJV was translated and published.

The NKJV has corrected all the words in the KJV which have changed their meaning over time, such as “prevent” for “precede”, “let” for “restrain etc. simply by virtue of updating the English in line with modern usage.

It also corrects words such as unicorn, cockatrice, phoenix, satyr and dragon, again, by simply updating the language to more contemporary usage.

The NKJV, due to its reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the other more recently discovered manuscripts, has marginal notes which are an essential and permanent part of the NKJV text, to show the variation of readings in the other families of manuscripts.  This is a very useful tool for every bible reader. 

Another more obvious improvement is the updated English text and syntax.  The text closely follows the KJV text and only varies when a more contemporary word or sentence structure is required.

So, in this article, I only refer to the NKJV because of its updating of the KJV; it takes for granted that the KJV is implied and associated in all that is said of the NKJV.  And it should not be implied that the KJV is an inferior translation.

Modern Bible Versions and the NKJV

It is not true that the modern English versions of the bible don’t show the deity of Christ in their translation.  However, it is true that they obscure some verses which, in the New King James Bible, clearly do show the deity of Jesus Christ; and some others they change or even omit.  If we only possessed the modern English versions, our doctrine of and faith in the deity of Jesus would be much weaker and more susceptible to attack.  It is also true that these modern English versions mostly correctly translate the Greek text which is the basis for their translation.  Therefore, it is not necessarily true that they have dishonestly changed the text; in general, they are essentially good translations of a corrupt text.  But, if the text upon which the version is based is corrupt, as noted in the opening paragraphs, it stands to reason that the version itself must be corrupt.

Of these corrupt texts, Trinitarian Bible Society states: “The most ancient surviving Greek manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures differ greatly from each other and exhibit the worst corruptions of the text in great abundance.  Many of the later manuscripts were executed with greater care and are more reliable guides to the true text.  The early manuscripts were adulterated in various ways, sometimes through mere carelessness, sometimes through ignorance of the language, sometimes through deliberate heretical attempts to suppress what was written, and sometimes through pious but misguided endeavours to embellish or enlarge upon what was written” (TBS booklet p 8).

In this article I intend to show that the clearest testimony to the deity of Jesus is found only in those versions which are based on the purer Byzantine text, such as the NKJV and KJV.

Eternal Pre-existence of Christ

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 NKJV has: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The one to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are 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 1984 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 NKJV makes it clear that Jesus has existed from eternity, so we don’t have to juggle verses from other parts of scripture to try to make Micah 5:2 support the eternal pre-existence of Jesus, 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). 

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 to the Son he says: Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.…..Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You….You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth” (Heb 1:8-10).  And Moses says of God, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (Ps 90:2 cf Jn 1:1-3, 10).  This is Jesus, our God and Saviour; the One of whom the prophet Micah speaks, “Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting”.

Henry Morris, in his 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).

Only the NKJV 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 NKJV, 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 the KJV of 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, the NKJV correctly emends this reading to “the firstborn over all creation”, thus correcting both the KJV and the false interpretation of the Watchtower.

Even so, the KJV reading has validity.  Matthew Henry 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 NKJV is essential to the eternal pre-existence and deity of Jesus and thus to the Gospel itself.

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

“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in 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 fundamental to 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 manifested 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 the lake of fire; 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 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 New King James Bible, you will be without the clearest statements of Jesus’ divinity. 

The verse only makes sense and becomes significant if it reads “God was manifested in the flesh”.  To say “Christ was manifested in the flesh” is obvious, because he was a man, and all men are manifested in flesh; therefore this reading doesn’t necessarily ascribe deity to him anyway.  To say “who” or “which” or “that” was manifested 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

“For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one” (1 Jn 5:6-8).

As can be seen in the above verses, this passage unequivocally and explicitly declares and describes the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead.  There are several trinitarian passages in the bible, so this passage isn’t necessary to prove the Trinity; but it is clear and in-your-face, and is thus further confirmation of this central doctrine of Christianity.   In making this clear statement of the unity in trinity of the Godhead, it necessarily implies the deity of Jesus.  In his gospel, John also 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, John gives us further and final revelation, that the Godhead consists of three Divine Persons, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, 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. 

But so effective has been the strategy 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 NKJV.

One possible reason that there are no early copies of a Greek text which have 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; in his second letter, he writes, “Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him” (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 reach Cyprian in Africa from the Aegean Sea where 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 New 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 (many of which I’ve read), 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

“Scripture taken from the New King James Version.  Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.”

All scripture references in this article are taken from the New King James Version, online at BibleGateway.