Despite the increase of secularisation and false religion in the Western world, the work of the Trinitarian Bible Society continues to grow. The Society’s annual report for 2001 states that the total number of Scriptures distributed during the year was 11 119 328 (including 734 518 Bibles), an increase on the previous year of over 1.25 million items. These Scriptures were published in 38 languages and circulated in 129 countries. The number of English Bibles published was 396 433, an increase of 80 000. During 2001 large quantities of the Society’s Scriptures were again distributed to Eastern Europe and Africa through agencies based in The Netherlands and, says the report, “our cordial relationship has been maintained with the Society’s good friends at the Gereformeerde Bijbelstichting, from whom the Society has received considerable help over the years”.
During 2001, revision of the spelling in the Spanish Bible was completed, as was revision of the Society’s new Romanian Bible. The Society continues “to proclaim the excellence and accuracy of the Authorised (King James) Version of the Bible while at the same time redoubling our efforts to expose sinister revisions and the errors they espouse”. Translators of many new versions, while “claiming to be producing Bibles of ‘greater accuracy and fidelity to the original languages’, are incorporating gender-inclusive language”. The political-correctness agenda is driving these revisions, bolstered by translators attempting to alter the Scriptures to teach their own views, and by publishers looking for new inroads into the Bible sales market.
We have read reports of some dissension and disorder at the Society’s annual general meeting in London in June, in connection with certain managerial and administrative matters, and the meeting decided not to re-elect the Committee en bloc as was usually done. The new Committee has issued a statement (1) in which it “records, with gratitude to God, the years of endeavour on behalf of the Society of the Committee members who declined to stand for re-election following the vote not to re-elect the Committee en bloc. Our heartfelt thanks are extended to these brethren.”
The statement continues, “The Committee regrets that members of the Society were not given, either before or at the Annual General Meeting, a full report of the proceedings of the foregoing year. . . . The Committee also regrets the consequent bewilderment, frustration and disorder that this caused at the Annual Meeting.” We are glad to note that “the new Committee confirms that the principles for which the Society has stood since its inception in 1831 remain absolutely unaltered. In particular, there remains full commitment to the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Greek Received Text of the New Testament, along with the Authorised Version as the only English version to be published by the Society.”
The Committee quote the words of Micah 6:8: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” and conclude their statement by saying: “We pray for the grace to follow these divine directions, at the present time and also in the future”.
In its annual report, the Society “reverently acknowledges its complete dependence upon Almighty God, reaffirms its constant adherence to the Scriptural doctrines and principles upon which the work was established, and seeks the divine blessing upon its endeavours to promote the worldwide circulation of Protestant or uncorrupted translations of the divinely-inspired Holy Scriptures, which are able to make wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus, and which are ‘profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works’ (2 Tim 3:16-17)”.
The report concludes: “The future is all unknown to us, though we know that it is the Lord’s expressed will that His gospel should be published among all nations before the end of time. It is our continued prayerful desire that He may be pleased to use the Trinitarian Bible Society as an instrument to accomplish this. Thus may many more be brought to prove the truth of the words, ‘The entrance of Thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple’ (Ps 119:130).”
Endnotes:
1. Available from the Society at Tyndale House, Dorset Road, London, SW19 3NN.
Return to Table of Contents for The Free Presbyterian Magazine – September 2002