Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
February 2008, Bible Believers’ Bulletin
- Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
If you have your eyes open and do any reading, you will perceive two conflicting “historic positions” of modern, 21st-Century, apostate Fundamentalists. Both positions come out of two sides of their mouths at the same time. The Bible would characterize one as “blessing” and one as “cursing” according to the verse above.
Not only does the Apostle James say, “these things ought not so to be,” he also adds that fresh water and salt water can’t both come out of the same fountain (James 3:11–12). And yet that is exactly what happens in the speech of Conservatives and Fundamentalists. In literature this is illustrated by the famous story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The apostate Laodicean will stand up with a King James Bible in his hand and say, “This Book is inspired.” That’s Dr. Jekyll. Does he mean it? Of course not. What he meant to say, if he told the truth, was: “This book WAS inspired.” That’s Mr. Hyde.
So here are the two persons of the modern apostate, laid out where you can see the two-faced hypocrite for what he really is.
Dr. Jekyll: “This book is the Word of God.” Mr. Hyde: “Well, actually, all that means is that it contains the message of the truth.” That is Neo-orthodoxy as espoused by Barth and Brunner. You will hear it taught at Bob Jones University, Tennessee Temple University (see the tape by Alex Underwood, “What it Costs to Stand for the King James Bible,” KJ-SP3 @ $3.00), Crown College, and any other place where they talk about believing “the preserved Word of God,” but not the w-o-r-d-s of God. That is Mr. Hyde.
Dr. Jekyll: “We HAVE an infallible, God-breathed Bible.” Mr. Hyde: “What I meant to say was that we had one but we lost it, because no translation can be ‘God-breathed.’”
John R. Rice, who wrote Our God-Breathed Bible, never saw a God-breathed book a day in his life. The title of his work doesn’t even refer to what is in the book. Our God-Breathed Bible contains fifty to sixty quotations, and every one of them was from a translation: the King James Version. According to John R. Rice, he didn’t have one “God-breathed” verse in the whole lot; he should have entitled the book “Our God-Breathed Piece of Junk.”
Dr. Jekyll: “Study the Scriptures!” Mr. Hyde: “You really can’t find the Scriptures to study because they were lost 1,900 years ago.” But “all scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim. 3:16), isn’t it? Wasn’t the KJV “given by inspiration?” “No.” Was the NIV? “No.” Was the RSV? “No.” Was the New American Bible? “No.” Was Weymouth, Moffat, or Goodspeed? “No.” Was the Centennial or Riverside “given by inspiration?” “No.” Were the ASV, the NASV, the NKJV, the RSV, the NRSV, or the RV verbally inspired? “Of course not. They are all just translations. The Scriptures were lost 1,900 years ago, but study the Scriptures! Let’s memorize this verse of Scripture! Turn to this verse of Scripture!”
You dirty, black-hearted coward; get out of the pulpit. You are a disgrace to the name of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Jekyll: “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Mr. Hyde: “Not really, the main fundamental doctrines and principles are ‘life.’”
Dr. Jekyll: “I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.” Mr. Hyde: “It is the word of God in that it preserves the main fundamental doctrines and principles, except where it errs in the following places.” Mr. Hyde then lists 5,000 changes in the New Testament.
That is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Such two-faced, split-tongued, double-dealing, double-speaking hypocrites are a penny a dozen. Ninety percent of them are “Conservatives” and “Fundamentalists.” If you want to study the phenomenon further, get the Bible Believer’s Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles and look up the Appendices in the back where we document the specific statements of several particular Jekylls and Hydes.