Baptists burning Bibles?

I thought it was a play on words but it is not. A Baptist church is going to be burning Bibles that are not the King James Version. They are doing this in celebration of Halloween of all things. (Maybe they got tired of handing out candy.)

Is this what happens when you have religion without Christ? The Bible says that cursing and bitterness are in the mouths of those who do not know the way of peace and do not seek God (Rom. 3:13-17).

This is another example of a religious group trying to keep people from reading the Bible in their own language. In the mid 1300’s John Wycliff was scorned for translating the Bible into English. They said, “The jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity.”

Opponents burned every copy of the English Bible they could find. Wycliff’s translation survived and became the foundation for the King James Bible.

Jan Hus was another reformer who believed that the Bible should be in the language of the people. He was burned to death by religious leaders who started the fire with pages from Wycliff’s translation.

Thankfully, these contemporary enemies of the Kingdom of God are limited to burning Bibles, music and the writings of some leading Christian thinkers, such as Billy Graham and Mother Theresa.

The biggest irony is that this particular group took the name Baptist, a group that has championed religious liberty from the beginning.

They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known. Romans 3:12-17 (King James Version)