Why Can’t We Take Away or Add to the Word of God?
We all agree that we believe in God.
Yet, without the entire scriptures, we have no backing of who He is except our own thoughts and ideas, based on something we heard, experienced, or read elsewhere.
We’ve all heard phrases such as …
“My God doesn’t ….. ”
“That’s not the God I know.”
“God made me this way.”
Our Thoughts
Such statements reflect that they are coming from our understanding, making our own God, based on our desires rather than His.
Proverbs states, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man,
but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
We are fallible human beings. We make mistakes because we thought our plan would work, and we see it did not.
As Socrates said, “Do not think you know what you do not know!”
His Thoughts
God said in Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God is infallible and cannot make mistakes. He knows everything because He made everything. His plan always works perfectly the first time. And because He Loves His Children, His thoughts show his Love for us in everything He has done.
In the Book of Jeremiah the Lord said, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
God’s Word Is Alive
Because His plan works perfectly the first time, nothing needs to be added to it, nor taken away from it. Can we as imperfect add to that which a perfect God created?
Can you take a healthy human body and graft additional parts to make the body more complete? If you saw a child wanting to get rid of a part of their body that they didn’t like,
immediately you’d want to explain to the child how much they really need that part of their body to function has a complete human being.
For example, we know if we were to remove an artery from our body, we would die or lose a limb from lack of circulation. Can we expect anything less from the Bible?
A Gangrene Bible
The definition of gangrene is “localized death and decomposition of body tissue, resulting from either obstructed circulation or bacterial infection.”
Everything that is alive must flow with life from one part to another.
God’s Word is also living. If you take away a part of something living, you stop the life from flowing perfectly through it as it was made to do. If we were to inject our imperfect ideas while reading the Word, it would infect the Word to us and cause confusion and death.
This transaction is first seen in the very first sin in the Garden of Eden.,Genesis 2:14-17:
“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’”
In Genesis 3:4-5, Satan in the form of a serpent said to Eve, “Ye shall not surely die: 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.” Satan took out a part of God’s Word and injected his own, with a promise that led Eve and Adam to death instead of wisdom.
God Is Love
In John 12:44-45, Jesus cried and said, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.” [46] “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.”
The most important part of this to us is that God is Love. If we take away from Him, we take away His love. The part that we don’t want, an imperfect decision bringing us to an imperfect fruit of that decision, takes away from life and leads to death.
As Jason DeMars said, “God’s Word is like a copper wire, and the Holy Spirit is the electricity.”
We cannot, and must not, break the perfect continuity of the scriptures just because we don’t understand them.
One Changes The Other
The only reason we need to address the subject of adding to or taking away from the Scriptures is because when man is confronted with a need to change, but approaches the Scriptures with his own thinking, if he is proud, his thinking will tell him, “Change the Scriptures!” If he is humble, his thinking will tell him his own need for change. Thus, he is moldable and God conforms him to His image, not his own.
God’s Word Sanctifies Us
John 17:17, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
John 17: 19, “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”
Sanctify = “set apart” “holy” “consecrated.”
Consecrated = from Latin consecrare: “dedicated, devoted as sacred.”
Sacred = connect to God or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration
from Latin sacrare, from sacer, sacr- “holy.”
God’s Word is purposed to set us apart for a holy, consecrated connection for His purpose. We are to be respectfully devoted and dedicated to His Truth, which performs the aforementioned in us. For us to take away from this model would prove that it has not been implemented and thus not taken effect in us.
King Josiah
King Josiah at 18 years old was a perfect example of this when he was read the scriptures for the first time in his life.
2 Kings 22:11-20, [11] “And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.” Then he commanded that the high priest enquire of the Lord…
[18] “But to the king of Judah which sent you to enquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, As touching the words which thou hast heard;
[19] “‘Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord.
[20] “‘Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place.’ And they brought the king word again.”
The Choice of Human Rights
We can choose to be proud or humble.
Pride blocks the flow of God truly showing Himself to us.
The Book of James says, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.”
True humility is to ask for God’s forgiveness, invite Jesus Christ into our hearts, and completely surrender our life. This is the first key to opening our understanding to the scriptures, allowing the flow of Jesus Christ, who the Bible states is The Word, to transform us into His image.
David Daniel
David Daniel of Chick Tract Publications gives us a good example of what adding to or taking away from God’s Word looks like.
He talks about how a group “revised the King James Bible” taking out the “offensive verses” against homosexuality.
They took out 8 verses totaling 69 words equaling .0000872 of the bible, or 9/100th’s of 1 percent, or 3/100th’s of 1 percent of verses.
I am reminded of what Jesus says in John 5:38-47,
“And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
I receive not honour from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.
I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?
Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”
God’s Word is a Sword and Shield
As Shield
Proverbs 30:5-6, “Every word of God is pure:
he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words,
lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.”
As a Sword
Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
God’s Word is good for attacking and defending us from every evil that we come in contact with! If we take a part of God’s Word away or add to it, we are retrofitting the already perfect God-given weapon against Satan, and our own worst enemy, ourselves!
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