Honesty is such a lonely word.I am so disappointed!
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.
Answers in Genesis claimed their "Charles Spurgeon-Reloaded" series would "update" Spurgeon's sermons, "not to change the meaning, but to make them more easily understood by modern readers." Moreover, they said, "the original text [would] also [be] included so that [readers] can see what was changed."
How disappointing, then, to find what they have done with only the 30th sermon they have "updated."
Due to limitations of the blogging software I'm using (I can't get any table cells to align vertically to the tops of their cells), I am breaking sentences apart into separate cells within the following table . . . so the actual quotes will align as closely as possible one with the other. However--as you will see if you visit the referenced sites, I have removed no sentences from either quotation, nor altered the wording in any way. I have added italics and bolding to call attention to the obvious tampering that AiG has done with the text of Spurgeon's sermon as preached:
| Original | AiG's "Modernized" Version | John's Comments |
|---|---|---|
| In the 2d verse of the first chapter of Genesis, we read, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." | In Ge 1:2, we read, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” | Yes. Very minor update. |
| We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be--certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam. | !!!! Oh! Can you say "point-of-view censorship"?!? How about honoring Spurgeon enough at least to point out the massive emendation? Spurgeon's actual views about the age of the earth--views he expressed four years before Darwin's Origin of Species came out--didn't align with AiG's. "Too bad! Down the memory hole with them!" How incredibly dishonest, don't you think?!? | |
| Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, wherein man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator gave up the world to confusion. | Our planet has passed through various stages in creation, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, when man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator initially created the world as a chaotic mass on the first day of creation. | Sorry! "Pass[ing] through various stages of existence" isn't quite the same as "pass[ing] through various stages in creation. Close, but not quite the same. Worse, however, "[giving] up the world to confusion" has a very different meaning than "initially creat[ing] the world as a chaotic mass on the first day of creation." Not even close. The original leaves plenty of room for a gap of millions of years (as is rather clear Spurgeon allowed for, based on what he actually said in the sentence two up from this one--the sentence AiG's "modernizers" so carefully removed!). But AiG's rephrasing leaves no such option. Anyone who would speak as AiG has made Spurgeon to speak would have to be a literal, six-day, young-earth creationist. But based on what he actually said, Spurgeon--at least at the time he preached this sermon--obviously believed in a world that was "certainly many millions of years" old. Is AiG being honest with the historical record? I don't think so! |
| He allowed the inward fires to burst up from beneath, and melt all the solid matter, so that all kinds of substances were commingled in one vast mass of disorder. The only name you could give to the world, then, was that it was a chaotic mass of matter; what it should be, you could not guess or define. | Oops! Another major emendation. And AiG expects us to believe this is a faithful rendition of Spurgeon's meaning? (Remember their promise "not to change the meaning"?) | |
| It was entirely "without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer "without form, and void;" but became round, like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly, as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation. | It was entirely without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer “without form, and void;” but became round like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation. | Ah! How nice! Back to our regular broadcast |
If [AiG does, indeed, decide to engage in such behavior,] I go back to my original post that kind of sparked this entire discussion: Are you being treated like a child? Who controls what you get to hear?Apparently, if you can't win your argument on the merits, AiG believes in winning through altering the historical record--as I intimated above, the old "memory hole" trick.
Oh. And in case, for some reason, you are unaware, the memory hole was not merely a literary device dreamt up by George Orwell. No. He got his idea from a master of such historical lies. Look at how Joseph Stalin dealt with inconvenient history. . . .
--Thanks to Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn for bringing this story to my attention. (See their comments yesterday in answer to my post in which I asked, Does old-earth/old-universe creationism=Liberalism? Atheism?)
I wrote my comments above before reading Tim's post on the same subject.
