*.WEEKLY CHURCH NEWS NOTES* September 19, 2009 The Weekly Church News Notes is designed for use in churches A WARNING ABOUT BIBLE TRANSLATION WORK TODAY The amount of Bible translation work that has occurred over the past 100 years appears impressive. In 1910, the Bible in whole or in part was available in 722 languages, whereas today the number is roughly 2,500. The problem is two-fold. First, the vast majority of the new translations are _base_d on the exceedingly corrupt critical Greek text, which omits 2,886 words from the Greek Received Text upon which the old Reformation Bibles were _base_d. This is equivalent to omitting the entire books of 1 and 2 Peter from the Bible. These omissions include 45 entire and 185 partial verses and have significant doctrinal implications (Everett Fowler, Evaluating Versions of the New Testament). Further, the modern translation methodology itself is corrupt. Created by Eugene Nida fifty years ago, it is called “dynamic equivalency.” By this method, the translator is allowed to take frightful liberties with the infallible words of God, modifying and adapting the _script_ure to “the culture.” The dynamic equivalency methodology even adopts pagan names for God. For example, the United Bible Societies and Wycliffe Bible Translators have used the following names for God: In Samba of Africa they used Nyaama (the sun); in Lame in Chad they used Yafray (mother of the heavens); in Ga in Ghana they used Ataa Naa Nyonmo (the father mother God). Philip Noss of the American Bible Society says, “God reveals himself through his word and through each culture” (“Bible Translation in History and into the Future,” Lausanne World Pulse, September 2009). EPISCOPAL NUNS JOIN ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Ten nuns of the Episcopal Church in America joined the Roman Catholic Church this month. The nuns, from the All Saints Sisters of the Poor of Maryland, left the Episcopal Church because it has “become too liberal in its acceptance of homosexuality” (“Episcopal Nuns Leave,” USA Today, Sept. 9, 2009). The community’s chaplain, Warren Tanghe, also joined Rome. Christina Christie, the order’s superior, said, “We were drifting farther apart from the more liberal road the Episcopal Church is traveling. We are now more at home in the Roman Catholic Church.” In truth, they have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. The Roman Catholic Church is not only permeated with its own heresies (e.g., the papacy, a sacramental gospel, veneration of Mary, priests who allegedly stand in the place of Christ, the transubstantiation of the mass wafer), it is also filled with theological modernism. Pope John Paul II stated that the theory of evolution must be taken seriously by Christians (Vatican Information Service, October 23, 1996). Pope Benedict XVI calls Mary “Heaven’s Gate” (“All can enter eternal life, but the door is narrow,” Catholic News Agency, Aug. 27, 2007). As for homosexuality, it has been stated that 50% of Roman Catholic seminarians in America are homosexual (David France, “Gay and the Seminary,” Newsweek, April 20, 2002). This article describes “an aggressive gay ethos.” The total payout for sex abuse by the Roman Catholic Church in America is well over $2 billion. A conservative Catholic organization documented this wretched business in the fall/winter 2002 issue of the magazine Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, observing, “… the overwhelming majority of sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church