What we have learned over recent years,, however, is the writers of these new translations have a point of view they are pushing. The NIV has many verses missing and what's worse, most of them are about Lucifer or Satan. Now this guy is fence jumping on sodomy. The recent movie called " The Shack" was pushed in many churches, but the liberalism dripped off the screen so I decided to check out the author. He doesn't believe in Hell, so nobody is going. There was some decent messaging in the movie, but preaching Grace all the time is leaving out the whole council of God.
I think I will discourage people from paraphrased Bibles and just stay with what I know works. I wish I could read Hebrew and Greek to make sure the translators were on track. I've found reading the Septuagint there are important differences in the NKJV. The Septuagint was what the age of the Apostles had to read. It has much more information than modern Bibles have about the OT.
I hear you.
Back-in-the-day, the big paraphrase was “The Living Bible”. It was an easy read and very popular at the time. However, it never purported to be anything BUT a paraphrase, which was OK by me. Nice to read out loud, but certainly not the best for a deep word study or for teaching doctrine.
For the 36 years that I have been a Christian, I have seen other books come and go. They make a big splash (I worked in a Christian bookstore) so I know. Some were ok as devotional reading, but some were so pernicious that they caused church turmoil and even split-ups.
Here are a few I remember:
Prison to Praise
Pigs in the Parlor
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
The Prayer of Jabez
The Purpose-Filled Life
The Shack
Jesus Calling
The Circle-Maker
and many, many more.
Anyway, I REALLY love reading the KJV just for the majesty of the language, but I do understand that 500 years of changes in English requires some explanation of some of the passages. (I LOVE Strongs, and now it’s available online...no schlepping required!)
May God bless you in your ministry! :-)