Book Burning... Bring Your Bible And Your Billy Graham CDs

Book burning, the refuge of the ignorant and tyrannical.  Nazi burned books.  Fanatical Christian and Muslims burn books.  Can you tell I’m not really fond of these people or their small mindedness.  The only reason, I’m bringing this up is that the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in North Carolina is planning what they hope will become an annual event this coming Halloween.

They will be burning books.  But not just any books… they want to burn Bibles.  Well not all Bibles, just the ones that aren’t the King James Version.

“I believe the King James version is God’s preserved, inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God,” Pastor Marc Grizzard told a local news station of his 14-member parish.

This is some text lifted from their website (I left their typos in):

Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.

We will also be burning Satan’s music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contempory Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

I wasn’t surprised to see that these people aren’t music lovers.  It’s a cliche that they would burn rap, rock, and heavy metal since that’s what followers of Satan listen like to play on their iPods.  But country music!? Sure country music can be subversive, but I didn’t think book burning types were smart enough to figure that out.  Conway Twitty can be nasty if you read between the lines.

This was featured on their site under the “Index of Country Filth”
Bon Jovi, Chris Cagle, Clay Aiken, Dolly Parton, Faith Hill, Joe Nichols, Johnny Cash, Keith Urban Mindy McCready, Reba McEntire, Shania Twain, and Toby Keith

I wouldn’t call Bon Jovi “county”.  But I’m shocked that they aren’t in that big Toby Keith fans, must mean that they’re on the side of the Dixie Chicks in that feud.

But they aren’t stopping with burning bibles and music.  They are also going after Satanic Christian writers.  In their own words:

We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll , John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.

Wow, that’s the biggest demonstration of player hating ever.

Let’s look at their maniacal love of the King James Bible from 1611.  Somehow this is the only Bible worth reading and all others are heresy.  All of the answers can be found in the KJV. That’s funny, I have a JKV and it won’t tell me what the weather is, what the spread is on the Texas-OU game, or what’s on FOX News tonight.  Hmmm.  I’m beginning to think that its just a book written by people.   Its a translation like any Bible– its accuracy is dependent on the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic skills of the people who rewrote and reinterpreted it.

With a translation there are two points to keep in mind:

(1)  Who made the first copy?

The Council of Carthage, held in 397 under the tutelage of the Bishop of Carthage but with imperial and papal approval, issued a definitive canon (legal decree) of Scripture setting out all the texts that form what is now universally called “The Bible”.

That’s right, the Roman Catholic Church made the first significant translation and ordered the Christian Bible. This canon remained unchallenged for over 1,000 years until Protestant Reformation when the inclusion of the “Apocryphal” by Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans and others but are often included in some Protestant translations.  So the fire and brimstone acid-trip that is the Book of Revelation wasn’t in the Bible for 1000 years until the Protestants tried to spice it up and scare their congregations.

(2) If you’re making a translation you’re going to be influenced by your political climate.

The translators of the KJV were authorized by King James I of England to undertake their translation work because of the very clear “spin” put upon the texts by the Geneva Bible (another popular English translation) which both King James and the Church of England rejected.

For example, the Geneva Bible translated episkopoi as “elders” rather than as “bishops”. This the KJV translators rejected and returned to the more traditional rendering of “bishop”. King James famously said “No bishop, no king” and so would not tolerate the Presbyterian rendering of “elder” which he knew spelt the end of the bishops and thus of himself as king.  King James was right to be paranoid about such things.  His son King Charles I was decapitated by Oliver Cromwell’s anti-monarchist forces.

David Lynch, a resident of nearby Asheville, N.C., told Raw Story “it’s a little disconcerting how close this is to my home.”

“They are burning so much stuff I’ve dubbed them the hypocritical Christian Taliban,” Lynch said in a phone interview with the website Raw Story. “Just the scope of all the information they want to destroy is pretty disturbing.”

In the digital age, a book burning doesn’t really hold the same power.  I’ll still have my copy of Slippery When Wet. It just sounds like the desperate attempt of 14 people to get some publicity for their “church”.  Its America they are entitled to their beliefs no matter how out of touch or completely asinine.