“If ‘King James Only’ defines one who believes the preserved Word of God is available only perfectly in English, I am not ‘King James Only.’ ”

Goodrick begins his book by saying,

“Your Bible is not inspired! In fact, nobody’s is, because only the autographs were inspired. That is, inspiration is limited to the words as they were originally written down. Divine inspiration is both inerrant and infallible, and this can be said only of the autographs, the very first copy of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and the very first recording of Isaiah’s prophecies. Copies and, much less, translations cannot be inspired, for both contain errors; and translations, being in different languages, contain none of the inspired words.

The preceding paragraph ought to disturb every pastor, every teacher, every pew-run Christian who loves his Bible, loves to study it, loves to teach it. It disturbs me considerably, especially when it comes from the very champions of orthodox inspiration. Something is very wrong with that paragraph. It leads us to conclude that, inasmuch as it is virtually certain that all of the autographs have perished, we are left with only copies and translations of an extinct inspired Bible. How it must knock the props out from under the simple, believing Christian when he is told that the church has been bereft of an inspired Bible for almost all of its lifetime.

This book is an effort to correct this viewpoint and, by examining the character of the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts that survive and the character of their translation, to restore confidence in the very Bible you and I hold in our hands. It is a corrective that is needed by each one of us. For to the degree that the Bible we hold in our hands is inspired, to that degree is it authoritative. A person who cannot quote Scripture with a confident “Thus saith the Lord” is a shorn Samson.

Most books written to defend the inspiration of the Bible say little or nothing about the inspiration of that particular Bible you and I actually hold in our hands. The authors of these books are called apologists, and they often write in response to attacks against the Bible. Since the apologist doesn’t defend a segment of the wall not under attack but the segment that is, he can’t choose his subject matter. When infidelity attacks the character of what Paul actually wrote or Isaiah actually said, it sets the parameters for the attention of the apologist. This is why most books written today to defend the inspiration of the Bible zero in on the autographs to the neglect of your own Bible, the translation you bought and now read and study.

Since he uses the NIV in this book when he quotes Scripture, he definitely is not a KJVO person.