“Bile Dat Cabbage Down”
January 2010 Bible Believers’ Bulletin
The old timers had a song called “Bile that cabbage down, man; bile that cabbage down.” It meant “BOIL the cabbage until it is soft.” The cabbage can be “biled down” till it “ain’t fittin’ to eat,” but still, “biled down” it tastes a sight better than Yankee cabbage, which is like raw shoe leather. “Them thar Yankees don’t know how to ‘bile’ nothin’. Theys beans tastes raw, and theys carrots taste raw, an so do everthin’ else.” (Ruckman’s Living Bible in up-to-date, readable English that will “communicate” to the “receptor,” etc.).
When you boil something right down, you get the essential stuff: the nitty gritty. You boil it and boil it till all the germs are killed, all the vitamins are gone, all the juice is burnt up, and you ain’t got nothin’ left but CABBAGE.
It is time to “bile” some cabbage down.
There is on the Bible market today a mass of stuff that looks like cabbage, and there is enough to choke a herd of mastodons. Every grade of fidelity and infidelity from Origen (A.D. 254) to Robert Sumner (A.D. 1989) can be found, with questions fired from all corners like a dove field at sundown.
- “How do you account for the marginal notes in a King James Bible?”
- “Where was the inerrant word of God before 1611?”
- “Do other languages have an inerrant Bible?”
- “What about the differences in the AV editions?”
- “Why would the Anglican Church be trusted with a translation?”
- “Wasn’t Erasmus a Catholic?”
- “Didn’t Spurgeon suggest improvements on the AV?”
- “Wouldn’t Burgon and Hills correct some places?” etc., etc.
All of this hot air blasting is impressive to a novice or a new Christian who is impressed by scholarship. To those of us who have been dealing with such matters for nearly forty years, the barrage resembles nothing but a sirocco. Someone is belching because they have air in their belly. Someone is trying to set up a smoke screen to hide behind; someone is camouflaging SIN so they can get away with it.
[*Rebuttal Questions]
- Not one man asking one question above could tell you how the original autographs were “God-breathed,”
- which ones were original and which ones weren’t,
- why some were and others weren’t,
- which ones God decided were and when He decided it,
- or how anyone could tell He had decided which ones were and when He did,
- or even how every word of God could have been every word of the writer at the same time without being mechanical.
Faith decides such matters, and the people who are always blabbing about “original autographs” could no more prove the details of their beliefs on inspiration than a Bible believer could explain in detail what God did in the AV committee of 1611 and subsequent legitimate revisions—which, by the way, absolutely exclude any revisions done after 1880.
Now let’s boil it down. Let me show you for a minute (if you will “put your ears on”) what the real issue is. Whatever talents I may lack (and God knows I lack plenty), and wherever I may be “short” on abilities and learning (and God knows I am“short”), there is one place I have never been lacking, not even in the eyes of my worst enemies. No one yet has ever accused me of generalizations or obscurities in dealing with an issue. If I have had one fault, it has been in being too much to the point, too direct, too thorough, too concentrated, too vulgar, and too specific in making charges.
Right now I am going to capitalize on this vice (or virtue!) for about two pages and show you what is behind all of the ranting and raving and roaring on the King James issue. I am going to sidestep completely all of the supposed problems and “insufferable” difficulties in “explaining” someone’s “position.” For a moment, I am going to set the pot on the “eye” and let the cabbage “bile” down to where you can see what it is. For just a moment, I am going to pull off an aikido (hapkido in Korea) movement and slip in past the blows of our opponents and break both of their wrists and elbows in a few quick moves. Bypassing autographs, translations, revisions, marginal notes, methods of inspiration, transmission of texts, versions in non-English languages, Greek and Hebrew words, variations of texts, differences in viewpoint, etc., I am going to nail the apostates to the floor. I am going to show you what is actually the matter with these Bible-rejecting Fundamentalists who want to be accepted as believers when they are nothing but stupid critics.
1. Every saved scholar has two natures: an old nature and a new nature. That is not a matter of conjecture, hypothesis, theory, or opinion. That is a FACT. I mean every scholar living right now. (No, you are not going to apply that to the King James translators in order to justify YOUR sins. I am talking to you, now. If they were saved, they had two natures, but that has nothing to do with the problem now. I am talking about 2010—NOW.)
2. The first operation in every Laodicean, saved scholar’s old nature is the first operation of Satan in the Bible: to question the word and words of God. The temptation to become like “gods, KNOWING” is the temptation set before the lusts in the old nature.
- Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
- For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
The “old man” worships himself. He is an egotist. He sits in judgment on God and God’s words. He is “fallen.” In no area could he prove that he was more “godly” and godlike than in correcting God. “I will ascend . . . I will exalt my throne ABOVE” etc. (Isa. 14:13). That is not a theory or Ruckman’s opinion or anyone’s “religion.” That is a fact.
- For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
3. Every Laodicean saved scholar has a new nature. It loves the word of God and rejoices in it and desires to serve it. This nature likes nothing better than to place the scholar in total subjection and absolute submission to God, obeying the word of God from the heart and worshipping God “in spirit and in truth.” This new nature “rejoiceth in the truth” and enjoys bragging about God’s word, magnifying it, exalting it, and proclaiming it.
- For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
- God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
- Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
4. Sometimes the new man is manifest in the saved scholar and sometimes the old man is manifest in the saved scholar. (That is not one of “Ruckman’s peculiar teachings” or some of his “rabid ravings.” That is a FACT.)
Now! “Bile that cabbage down!”
Which nature is it in Doug Kutilek, Robert Sumner, Robert Walker, James Melton, James Price, Arthur Farstad, Curtis Hutson, Donald Waite, Gary Hudson, or any other ten thousand—including all of the “godly,” dedicated, militant, fundamentalist “soldiers of the faith”—that leads them to sit in judgment on the Authorized Version and makes you think it has errors in it and that they know what the corrections should be? We say it is the old Adam in their flesh.
It’s “biled” right down to “pot licker.”
According to every man listed (and most of their friends and the men they quote to justify their dirty, rotten sins), the nature that leads them to do this is the sinless, incorruptible new spirit that was born of God by the Holy Spirit. [*Their deceitful lie.]
Take the pot off the stove; there ain’t no more.
That is all there ever was to it in the first and last place. The issue was never more complicated than that one time since 1880; not once. And all of this gas about transmissions of texts, variations of readings, various editions, marginal notes, Anglican bias of the translators, and “Ruckmanism” was just a thermonuclear explosion of hot air with no more substance to it than a vacuum.
Some people believe the Book and some don’t. The ones that don’t seek to bring into bondage those that do. That’s the whole head of cabbage. There isn’t one iota of information beyond that which would contribute anything to the issue at all.
• We magnify the Book; they magnify scholarship. • We magnify faith; they magnify “reasonable positions.” • We brag about what God gave us; they find fault with it. • We trust what we can’t explain will be explained in Heaven; they profess to be able to explain anything. • We are Bible believers; they are not. • We want to be in subjection to God; they want us to be in subjection to their opinions. • We believe the Book; they “prefer” the Book. • We swear by the Book; they “use” the Book. • We have the Bible; they don’t. Their Bible is an unknown, unseen, unread, unexamined pile of lost papers that would stretch from Sinai to Athens and from Rome to Antioch. • To them, the final authority is a Greek or Hebrew lexicon; to us the final authority is the Book. • They trust their knowledge and education to open the Book to them; we trust the Holy Spirit.
They are genuine apostates as long as they profess to believe something they do not believe, and where they are not apostates, per se, their old natures speak for them when they attack the Book. We bet our orthodoxy on the Book; they bet theirs on “historic positions.” We are not the same crew.
They all think they are “godly,” and they use that word until its repetition becomes absolutely nauseous. They are trying to sell you on the idea that THEY are “godly.” We believe one of the most ungodly, hellish, rotten, damnable sins that any “godly” Fundamentalist can commit is to destroy the faith of young preachers in the Holy Bible (AV) and replace it with faith in their own Christian scholarship.
If you want first-rate, downright hellish ungodliness, that would be it in my book, for that sin alone would account for the condition the churches are in today and have been since 1880. I have nothing but the utmost contempt for a Fundamentalist who raises hell morning, noon, and night about “abortion” and “shorts” and “slacks” and “porno literature” and “Rock and Roll” and “New Evangelicals” and “divorce,” while spending his time demonstrating his ignorance by making young men think he is smart and then using the Holy Bible as a tool for carrying out this operation.
You ungodly old reprobate you! Don’t you talk to this generation about “SIN”! You sinful old devil, you’ve yielded to your old nature so many times it has just about mastered you. Your old nature delights in Satanism (Gen. 3:1; Isa. 14:10–15)— the work of the Devil. Don’t you go around strutting your stuff to this generation, condemning the sins of the flesh. You would put the junkies, hustlers, divorcees, pimps, prostitutes, and “rock and rollers” out of business.
- Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
- All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?
- Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.
- How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
- For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
- I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
- Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit..
The cabbages are boiled. Nothing unspecific is left. There are no generalities to hide behind. We openly accuse every modern, apostate Fundamentalist in America of being a dirty, low down, mean, vicious, lying dog if he has been entrusted with the lives of young men, and has betrayed that sacred trust by teaching them to sit in judgment on the greatest Book this world has ever seen or ever will see.
In our catalog of sins, you would make Jezebel, Samson, Ahab, Rehoboam, Solomon, David, Moses, Demas, and Manasseh come out as “purty good folks.” Frankly, I prefer the Mafia and the Cosa Nostra. They don’t give you the pious bit when they are blackmailing you or assassinating you. These “godly” boys are just too much to stomach. They are about as “godly” in their approach to Biblical authority as the College of Cardinals.
Pass the butter and black pepper, mama. Smack! Shore do taste fine! Ain’t had nothin’ like it since the last time.