Zechariah 12:1. The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
If a man wanted to be trapped in a corner from which he could not escape, or be in a round room looking to sit in a corner, he could perform this spiritually by getting his definitions for Bible words from a lexicon. And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, Ezekiel 14:9. In the Old Testament the Lord used lying spirits to deceive prophets. He need not bother today, we have the lexicons.
The lexicons used in our Fundamental colleges and seminaries are almost exclusively written by rank apostates or lost liberals. Their scholarship is not without prejudice. James Strong for example was a unitarian who hated the Gospel as preached by men like Spurgeon and Moody. He labored to only use Greek and Hebrew definitions that would lead young men away from the truth as the King James translators saw it. Were he to show up in the flesh in a Baptist Church today, he would not be allowed in the pulpit.
He does show up in our churches however. Preachers have a secret place that is not God's secret place. In secret they consult James Strong or one of his cohorts for some fresh way to describe a verse. They then reject the unanimous opinion of the King James translators. Every word used by men can have multiple definitions. Sometimes those definitions can even be opposites such as the word "cleave". It was the delight of 19th century and 20th century lexicographers to find definitions that debunked King James meanings. Without ever questioning their pedigrees, or wondering how these men became smarter than the King James translators, our modern preachers consult their wizardry in secret and Sunday after Sunday confound their congregations with rank nonsense. Modern Christians are stupid enough to call this scholarship. Through the help of lexicons, pastors wave a King James Bible and preach NIV doctrine.
There is probably no place within the realm of Bible understanding where this has more crippled the church's understanding than in the collective understanding of the word, "spirit". Likewise, there is probably no place in the scripture in which the Pure Cambridge Text shines more brightly and accurately than in its usage of the word, "spirit". Once a person grasps the idea that every single time the word is used in a Bible printed accurately, in accordance with the seventh purification of the English text, the word can be trusted to be upper or lower case exactly as God sees it.
Once a person gets that through his skull, he is free to really study his Bible. Until then he is in captivity to doubt. He is in subjection to men who are unworthy of attention and who for the most part burn in hell today. When I am dead and gone, I want my ministry to be described as having liberated men to fully explore the depths of God. I am not plugging my theology, I am plugging the Word of God. I am saying that the God of Abraham, Isaac and of Jacob can give us a 100% reliable Bible in the English tongue in the year 2017. If I put forth an idea or interpretation it is only to highlight the exactness of the text, not the exactness of my ideas. If someone refutes my thoughts from within a perfect Bible, I rejoice. If someone refutes the exactness of the Bible itself, I grieve.
A perfect Bible requires a perfect text. Is that so hard to grasp? In the next post (or maybe few posts) I will be exploring the spirit of man more fully. What will make my explorations different than most is that I will never attempt to alter the text I hold. If a man has a better champion than mine, let him bring it forth. It will not hold up to the scrutiny of history or of the unity of the Bible with all verses being examined in context.