History of the Protestant Bible

Posted by Hridoy Ahmed on November 4th, 2022

Dear Christian Believer

You hold in your hands the first true Protestant Bible ever printed in Chinese. Though the Protestant Bible first arose in Europe in the 16th Century during the time of Martin Luther, it is just now coming to China. The history of the Protestant Bible distinguishes it from all other Bible versions available today, as the most accurate, the most loved, and the most spiritually vindicated Bible of all time. This is the Bible version used by Martin Luther, William Tyndale, David Livingston, John Bunyan, and Jonathan Edwards. This is the Bible from which Charles Wesley preached his sermons, and so did John Knox, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, Hudson Taylor, William "Billy" Sunday, William "Billy" Graham, and William "Billy" Branham. This is the Bible through which revival fires have been lit in nations all around the world for hundreds of years, saving souls through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the Bible trusted by the Reformers to counter the false doctrines of the Catholic Church, and every other wind of false doctrine that has arisen through the centuries. In the history of the world, no Bible version has been more mightily used by God to spread the gospel, edify hearts, and save souls. And for almost 400 years, this was the only Bible version available to the Protestant church.

Underneath its translation into various languages lies a Greek text known as the Textus Receptus. The history of the Textus Receptus itself is remarkable. Church history reveals that God watches over His Word, and the progress of Bible versions parallels the anointing of God upon different ages. In 1382, John Wycliff translated the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. But Latin was not the original language of the New Testament, Greek was, and it was necessary to go deeply into this language to create a truly accurate Bible. The Textus Receptus, written in Greek, arose in the season when God was anointing Reformers to restore the true Gospel to the church, lifting it out of the gross errors of the Catholic church through the Dark Ages, from 312-1520 AD. One of the earliest and best known of these Reformers was Martin Luther, who challenged the Catholic church with a list of 95 Theses, nailed to the door of the Whittenburg Chapel in Germany, on Oct. 31st, 1517 AD. Up until that time the Catholic church was able to succeed in spreading false doctrine because the common people did not have access to the Bible. Printing was a long and arduous process done by hand, and those Bibles that did exist were kept in churches and printed in Latin, which was a dying language. With no Bible by which to check what the Catholic Church was teaching, the masses were deceived.

If the King James Version has been vindicated by God in the fruits that followed it, the Revised Version has had the opposite legacy. In the little more than a century since its publication, not one true Spiritual Revival has ever been kindled around the Revised Version. Rather, scholars have poured over it, arguing over the meanings of words and the superiority of various readings. The Revised Version has been the intellectual plaything of colleges and seminaries, rather than the soul-gripping Bible of Salvation and Regeneration. Worse, it has led to confusion in the English-speaking world. For centuries, the English-speaking church had one Bible underlying their various translations, the Textus Receptus, which all agreed upon. But the Wescott and Hort theory led to translators picking and choosing from different manuscripts and readings to make new Bible translations. This led to the production of dozens if not hundreds of Bible versions, each with its distinct readings. With no clear standard for the Word of God, the English-speaking church was thrown into confusion and weakened.

In this Bible, you will find many places where the reading has been corrected to agree with the King James Version, and in some places, whole verses have been added, which the Union Bible did not include. In total, about 400 major corrections have been made to the New Testament, and 1000 to the Old Testament. In addition, about 3000 meaning changes have been made, and about 30,000 other modifications. Through these changes, the Chinese Bible has been brought into agreement with the King James Version. An index will be made available on a new Chinese Bible website for everyone to view, listing every change made to the Union Bible. Thus we can confidently declare that this true Protestant Bible, for the first time available in Chinese, is the most accurate Bible China has ever had.