CHARLO, New Brunswick, October 31, 2023 – As most of you already know, I’m a born-again believer. I love God and I follow Jesus and I have God’s Holy Spirit in me, which enables me to communicate with God and Jesus at all times, and also at times to have them right here with me in person. This ready communication through God’s Spirit and at times in person was promised me by Jesus, in John’s gospel.

I love the Bible. I read it daily and I always have a Bible within arm’s reach wherever I’m living. At night, I sleep with the Bible next to me.

I offer these insights as a frame to what comes next in this article, which is that I don’t think that everything in the King James or any other published Bible is the Word of God. Certainly, these Bibles contain the Word of God, but they also contain words that are not God’s. There is a mixture of God’s Word and other words. I fully understand that stating this makes me a heretic in the eyes of many who identify as Christians. I also understand that heretics used to be tortured and on occasion publicly burned at the stake. One such “heretic” who was burned at the stake was William Tyndale, the Bible scholar, linguist, and chaplain who first translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew to English.

In the early years of my rebirth, when I used to attend Roman Catholic masses, the Catholic Bible would be brought to the altar in a procession. The procession included the officiating priest, along with the deacons, altar boys, and a few laypeople. A massive, ornately covered, and I assume quite heavy and costly Bible would be held aloft by the priest, who was preceded by an altar boy waving a thurible filled with burning incense. Behind the priest would trail the others, with another altar boy at the very rear of the procession, waving more incense.

Like an idol, the Bible was held up for reverence, and the faithful would cross themselves and bow their heads as it passed by; some would even genuflect. When the procession reached its destination, the Bible would be gently laid on the altar like a child being placed in a crib. The priest would then kiss the Bible, much like a mother would tenderly kiss her sleepy child. The entire procession, from the back of the church to the altar, would take about five minutes.

I kiss my Bible. I unabashedly and without hesitation admit that I kiss my Bible. But I don’t worship it and I don’t hold it aloft for others to bow down to and genuflect. The Bible is not an idol to be worshiped; it is a book that contains love letters from God to his people – love letters from a stern but adoring father to his cherished children – as well as information and useful instructions on how those children should behave. But mixed in with the words of love and promise and information and instruction are other words that have been added for various reasons, not all of them well-intentioned. We know that such mixing has been done in the past, as why else would a warning against adulterating the text be explicitly included in the book of Revelation, accompanied by a curse aimed at whoever still chooses to do so?

I am a prophet not by virtue of anything I’ve done but by virtue of God’s Spirit dwelling in me. The indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit is the very definition of being born-again. All born-again believers have God’s Spirit within them to varying measures. Jesus had the fullest measure (no-one will ever have as great a measure as Jesus had), but we all have a measure of God’s Spirit. That’s what puts us in a state of grace. As long as we remain in a state of grace with the presence of God’s Spirit indwelling us, we’ll be God’s prophets.

But my being a prophet of God doesn’t mean that everything I say is prophetic or that everything I do is holy. Far from it. Still, being in a state of grace and having the advantage of God’s Spirit, I can see and discern things of God that others without that advantage cannot. And what I see, when it comes to the Bible, is that some of the words in it come straight from God, whereas others have been added for context or agenda or confusion. So when I kiss the Bible, I’m kissing the love letter of the Word of God that is contained within it, but I still wouldn’t hold it aloft and idolize it, as that would be breaking a Commandment.

The Bible should not be idolized, first and foremost because to do so would be to break a Commandment, but it would also require willfully overlooking the man-inspired rather than God-inspired words contained within it. God gave us instructions and also discernment so that we shouldn’t do that. We are not instructed by God to idolize the Bible; quite the opposite, in fact. We’re to learn from the Bible and honor God’s Word, but we’re also, by the warning that comes at the very end of the Bible, be aware that just as false prophets have crept into the worldly church, so too have false words and translations crept into the Bible.

Does this certain knowledge stop me from reading the Bible? Absolutely not. I read it cover to cover several times a year, and every time I read it, I see something new. I say “I read it”, but in fact it’s God reading it to me, it’s God, through his Spirit, showing me something new every time I open his book.

I wrote years ago about how the Bible is not just another book, and my assessment has not changed. Nothing over the 24 years of my rebirth has changed my regard for the Bible. However, the Bible itself has changed for me, or better said, my understanding of God’s Word has changed over time: the closer I grow to God and Jesus, the deeper my understanding of their words. This should not be surprising, as we serve a living God, not an idol that’s writ in stone (or on paper), and as we change, so too does our perception of God and his Word. They don’t change; we do. As the measure of God’s Holy Spirit in us increases, God can show us more and more and more.

If speaking God’s Truth as a prophet of God makes me a heretic, then so be it. I cannot or rather will not speak otherwise. The Bible, as I mentioned earlier, has been messed with, so we need to have God read it to us through his Spirit in order to discern his Word from words that are not his. Without God’s very present hands-on guidance, the Bible runs the risk of being just another book, which we born-agains know for certain it is not.

In fact, we’re so certain, we’d stake our lives on it.