Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of?, Judges 6:13.
We pray because we believe that God intercedes in the lives of men and of nations. We read in our bibles of great works that God has done throughout our bible. To be a bible believer is to believe that God can and will do miracles, but that those miracles are limited to promises in his word. We pray for the sick, we pray for the power of God upon preaching, we pray for safe travel, we pray for marriages, and we pray for all those in authority.
These and a few other things are things for which we can find specific instruction and commands within our bibles and have confidence that the Lord could intervene in accordance with our prayers. I have known many people who have misapplied apostolic promises to themselves and believed that if they asked for something in the name of Jesus Christ, God was honor bound to grant their request. Churches are full of people who talk as if they have great faith but in reality are jaded. They have ascribed promises not meant for them to themselves and then quietly grown doubtful of God.
When a miracle does occur, men find worldly reasons to explain it away. Perhaps the new birth and the subsequent regeneration of the believer is most often subjected to the carnal reasoning of men. In my 17 years as the pastor of the Black Creek Baptist Church we have watched the Lord slowly fill the pews with alcoholics who have lost the taste for booze and drunkenness. We have see abusers become loving. We have seen the wretched find hope and love. We have seen children find security in parents who had never known how to give it. We have seen the proud become humble.
The families and friends, social workers, and doctors of these people are more apt to attribute the changes to some psychological factor than to the God of Israel giving these people a new nature. They may see God as a factor in what happened but to attribute the astonishing changes to God is beyond their level of faith.
Likewise, when scholars read of the dividing of the Red Sea, or the Manna the Israel ate, or any one of the many miracles described in the bible, they seek to find a worldly explanation that gives them the comfort of believing in the bible, but not to be so silly as to think that there were walls of water lining Israel's path out of Egypt. Instead, they grope for reasoning that appears more scientific to them such as fluctuating water levels in the marshes around the Red Sea.
All such reasoning offends the Neo-Evangelical who prides himself on believing that the miracles are literal. He strongly believes in miracles until he is confronted with one of the few miracles absolutely guaranteed in the New Testament. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away, Mark 13:31. Like the humanist who seeks humanistic explanations for the conversion of sinners, or the liberal who seeks worldly explanations for bible miracles, the neo-evangelical suddenly retreats to viewing the bible through the lens of archeology.
The King James Bible is a miracle. It is a living proof of the intervention of God in the affairs and lives of men that has stretched far beyond apostolic times. That explanation, even though promised and demonstrated in the scripture, is simply too far out for the average neo-evangelical who boasts that he believes in miracles until he is actually confronted with one.
Their rejection is twofold. They can't believe that the actual words of any book of scripture survived through history, and for those few (TR men) who do believe that, they don't believe that those same words are as potent when translated into another language. Both the transmission of scripture and its appearance in infallible English offends the basic humanistic impulse in sinful man who relegate all miracles to carnal reasoning.
How do they miss the clues? Did Jesus Christ speak in Greek? Why was he recorded in Greek? If the ancient heresy that no translation can be inspired is actually true, then what the authors of the New Testament wrote could not have been inspired. He spoke in either Hebrew or Aramaic, they recorded it in Greek.
The very first public preaching of the gospel was preached in Hebrew and heard in at least 17 different languages. And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?, Acts 2:8. If the old worn out trope is true that a translation cannot be inspired, then the hearers of the very first time that the gospel was preached did not hear inspired scripture.
Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days, Ecclesiastes 11:1. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, Revelation 17:15. God has cast the bread of life out upon the many waters of this earth. The nations deceived by the Whore of Babylon have been offered the scriptures. Many of those nations have gladly partaken thereof, none more so than the English Speaking nations.
I often grow weary of trying to explain that to carnal brethren. And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh, Ecclesiastes 12:12. For every fact uncovered to support the King James Bible, there are countless books written to ridicule and disparage the idea that God could ever, or intended ever, to give us an infallible book in English.
There is a ripe field for teaching such truth. The troubled seas of humanity need to know that God promised us an infallible bible and that he kept his promise. The whores, whoremongers, the wounded, the drunkards, the abusers of themselves with mankind, the disrespecters of parents, the truly lost and hopeless rejoice to know that God has not forsaken them. They rejoice to see that God has given them an infallible book.
But of these who seemed to be somewhat, (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no man's person:) for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me, Galatians 2:6. I care nothing for your conferences if those conferences cannot see the infallibility of a King James bible. I care nothing for your carefully crafted statements of faith that say much without saying anything. Just as the Apostle Paul said; Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles, Acts 18:6; I will lose no sleep for the Fundamentalist who parses words about scripture. I go the troubled seas. They do and will hear.
To borrow from Tyndale, the English plowboy (add to that the drunkards at our local bar, the sons of single mothers, the addicts, the jailbirds, the depressed, the hopeless, and the blasphemers of this world) will know more scripture ten years from now and be more useful to God than the graduates of any five fundamental bible colleges.
How do I know that? Those graduates are being taught that only the originals are inspired. They are not being taught how to trust their bibles and only their bibles. Not so those sinners currently broken but hearing the word of God from pulpits such as Black Creek. Already the Lord has raised up a cadre of men who will carry the simple and profound truths of a King James bible to our neighboring towns and counties. I trust that there will be more.