Jordan says, “When people talk about translating the Bible, the great translation problem was taken care of long before anybody had to worry about English; if you can translate deity thoughts and deity words into human words, now that’s the translation product!
“People talk about language limitation--there’s the language limitation! If you could take the thoughts of the godhead and put them in Hebrew and Greek, anything else taken from one language to another is a snap. God revealed it, made it known. He translated His thinking into our thinking.
*****
The Bible itself, through many different verses, tells you it’s going to be translated into all the languages of the nations.
Romans 16:25-26 says, “Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, [26] But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.”
“In II Thessalonians 2:2 there were some people counterfeiting epistles, writing them and saying they were from Paul when they weren’t,” Jordan says. “But the local church there had an office, a prophet, a God-empowered person with a supernatural ability as a gift of that church to say, ‘This is scripture,’ and to speak for God.
*****
Zechariah 8:23 is a verse in Israel’s program about the millennial kingdom as an illustration of what it means to preach to all nations: “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”
Jordan explains, “Now if you get 10 dudes come up there from 10 different languages and grab a hold of you and start talking, you got a problem because if you’re going to talk back to them, you got to do it in 10 different languages. You know what you’re going to need? The gift of tongues.
“Can you understand why, on the day of Pentecost, God gave to the apostles the gift of tongues? They’re flat going to need the ability to speak a lot of different languages.
“You see this effectual reversal of Genesis 11 in Acts 2:4: ‘And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.’ God is talking through them in other languages.
*****
“I Corinthians 14:21 says, ‘In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord.’
“Notice God can speak more than one language. He tells Israel, ‘I’m gonna speak to you in a bunch of different languages, and when I do, it’s still going to be me talking.’ Language is not a barrier for God to talk.”
Acts 2 goes on, “Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. [7] And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? [8] And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?”
*****
Jordan says, “You see that? They’re filled with the Spirit, they take God’s Word and they translate it into all these different languages ‘and they were all amazed and marveled . . .
“ ‘How come all these dudes from up north (Galilee) can speak all these different languages?’ Look at all those different languages! ‘And we’re all hearing in our native language,’ and they’re saying, ‘What in the world does all of this mean?!’
“When Paul says that over there in Romans 16:25, he’s expecting God’s Word to be taken and placed in the languages of the nations so that they would hear God’s Word in their own language.
“I Corinthians 14:21 is a quote out of Isaiah 28 and that’s God Himself talking. Notice God Himself can speak with other tongues.
“God speaks every language, and when His Word is placed in those other languages, it is as much the Word of God as it was in the original language as far as He’s concerned.”
*****
Another great illustration is in Esther 1:21-22: “And the saying pleased the king and the princes; and the king did according to the word of Memucan:
[22] For he sent letters into all the king's provinces, into every province according to the writing thereof, and to every people after their language, that every man should bear rule in his own house, and that it should be published according to the language of every people.”
If you look at verse 1, it says, “Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces.”
“This dude’s the ruler over 127 different provinces. Do you think there must have been a little bit of a diplomatic communication issue here?!
“Verse 22 says they’re going to take that letter and translate it into 127 different languages, and when those 127 different nations and languages got that letter in their language, it was the word of the king and it was just as authoritative as it was in the original language the king spoke and wrote it in. Because once you put it in that Receptor language, that’s what he would have said had he written it in that language to start with!
*****
“The translators of the King James Bible wrote a preface from the translators to the reader. In it they said, ‘As the king’s speech which is uttered in parliament, being translated in French, Dutch, Italian and Latin, is still the king’s speech, no cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the Word. . . ’
“And then they referenced that passage in Esther 1:22. You see, the translators understood they were handling God’s Word and that when you translate it, it’s still God’s Word because the commandment of the everlasting God was that His Word would be made known to all nations.
“Somebody says, ‘Well, what about the language limitations?’ Obviously it didn’t stop the word of the king from getting into the other language. You say, ‘Well, you can’t translate perfectly from one language to another.’ Duh!
“If that’s a problem for you, I suggest you go to Acts 22 and read the first 18 verses where the Apostle Paul stands at the porch of the temple and speaks to his brethren, the Jews, in the Hebrew tongue, according to the text.
“Paul spoke at least 7-8 different languages. He spoke that in Hebrew but when Luke wrote it down, in every copy of any text that anybody ever reads, they say he wrote it down by inspiration of God in Greek.
“Hebrew and Greek are very different languages with different syntax, grammar, vocabulary and even letters. They use different alphabets. Hebrew says something very condensed; Greek is fuller.
“But that’s no big thing for Luke to do that. Moses talked to Pharaoh in Egyptian, but when he wrote it down in Exodus, he wrote it in Hebrew. When God the Holy Ghost decided to write down what Moses said, God the Holy Spirit dictated it in Hebrew. So God the Holy Spirit translated it!
“This translation issue is not the blank wall people make it sound like. The issue is to take God’s Word and to put it in the various languages of the nations and that’s been done since the very beginning.”
(new article tomorrow)
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