WHAT ABOUT THE GOMEZ BIBLE?

By Jeff McArdle

Before getting down to "brass tacks" as it were, let me start off this article by pointing out just one (among the dozens of them) extremely dangerous and erroneous change that our eminent Dr. Gomez has made in his Laodicean refabrication of the time honored Valera text. With the Catholic Church teaching that the "fire" of 1 Cor. 3 (the judgment seat of Christ) is "purgatory," it is sad that Bro. Gomez destroyed the only verse in the Valera Bible that does away with this hellish doctrine forever. The Roman whore has the "venial sins" of the Christian being "purged" in "purgatory" 2 – 3 thousand years after Christ paid for our sins on the cross of Calvary. This is false teaching and any Christian can prove this from a King James Bible. We read in Hebrews 1:3 of the perfect word of God in English that Jesus Christ "…had by himself purged our sins…" when He died on the cross. When were your sins "purged"? At the cross? Or are you still waiting to spend any number of years having your sins purged in "purgatory"?

Here is the sad part of this tragic corrupting of the word of God by the Catholic Church. With 99% of all Latinos professing faith in the Pope and his hellish heresies, you would think that a missionary to Mexico would have better sense than to change the Spanish Bible and thereby destroy the doctrine of Jesus Christ’ efficacious "purging" of our sins at Calvario. But, no way José. Bro. Gomez’ sloppy revision of the Valera text twists Heb. 1:3, where for four hundred years it read exactly as the King James with these words: "…habiendo hecho la purgación de nuestros pecados por sí mismo…" Note the Spanish word purgación which does NOT appear in the Gomez Bible.

Now, we know exactly what Bro. Gomez is going to do once he reads this article. He has already revised the Spanish Bible 4 times in 4 years. And every time we have pointed out to him an error in his Bible, he went back and changed it (see for example his alteration of Matt. 25:1 in regards to the words "esposo" and "desposado"). At this rate he will have revised the Valera text 20 times by the year 2024. He’s doing his best to keep up with the English Bible revision sausage mills found throughout Laodicean America in the 21^st century. Up until the year 2000 they had produced an average of at least one new English revision per year for 200 years and still were not able to supplant the King James Bible in beauty, accuracy, correctness, purity, perfection and inspiration. Our hat is off to Bro. Gomez if he is able to single handedly reproduce in Spanish what Laodicea has done for the English Bible.

Now the purpose of this article is really to expound the differences between two men who play a significant part in the recent history of Spanish Bible revision. Both of these men, Dr. Angel H. de Mora of Madrid (Earned Doctorate), and Dr. Umberto Gomez of Mexico (honorary doctorate), attempted a revision of the famous Valera Bible of the Castilian language of 1602. Both of these men revised the Valera Bible and this is what they have in common. I shall attempt to demonstrate in this article that this is one of the only things that they had in common. Apart from this, the differences between the two men are vast and extreme.

Understand, that this is not an attempt to discredit Gomez in regards to his work as a missionary in his native Mexico. Nor is this an attempt to disparage his personal life as a man. We are thankful for his work in winning souls to Christ in Mexico. We could care less about his personal life as a human being. We are only interested here in his attempt to revise the word of God. We believe that it is an extremely dangerous thing to change the word of God. We believe that it is a very dangerous thing to claim to be able to correct what God has written in any language.

If Gomez believes that he is qualified to change God’s word that is his business. But this does not require us to remain silent about the truth. The truth is that Umberto Gomez is not qualified to write children’s stories in the Spanish language, let alone change the Bible. I know Bro. Gomez personally and have spoken to him about these matters. I know that his ability to handle the Spanish language is not any better than my own, and I am a gringo who was raised until the age of 14 with no knowledge of the Spanish language whatsoever.

I know for a fact that I personally am not qualified to change the Valera Bible or correct it. I know that I am not qualified to mess with the Spanish Bible, even though I have been speaking Spanish for more than 25 years. I know that I have no business revising the Valera Bible in Spanish even though I have extensive training in the Greek language and have served as an adjunct professor of Greek in two Baptist seminaries on the island of Cuba, where I taught my students Greek using their own native language, Spanish. I know that I am not able to retranslate the Spanish Bible even though I am fluent in English and Spanish, have more than a working knowledge of N.T. koine Greek and am familiar with the Hebrew of the O.T. If is not qualified, how then is Umberto Gomez qualified?

Umberto Gomez speaks what can only be described as a degraded form of street Spanish. It is as far removed from the Castilian of the Valera Bible as the Ebonics of Compton, CA is far removed from the Elizabethan English of the King James Bible. This is not to say that Gomez is not qualified to preach the Valera Bible to the inhabitants of old Mexico (Monte Rey, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, etc.) or even other parts of Latin America (Tegucigalpa, Panama City, Cali, Santiago de Chile, Santiago de Cuba, Montenegro, etc.). He is qualified to preach the word of God but he is NOT qualified to change the word of God!

Growing up in Mexico does not give anyone a command of the Spanish language. Growing up in Mexico does not give a person the ability to master the Spanish language any more than growing up in Gary, Indiana gives a person the ability to speak proper English. It may be possible for a black boy from Detroit to communicate in English. This does not mean, however, that he is ready to revise the King James Bible. Growing up in Mexico may mean the Gomez can communicate in the Spanish language. This does not mean however that he is prepared to revise the work done by Cipriano de Valera in 1602. The fact that he is able to win a lost soul in his native language does not qualify him to be able to change the word of God in his native language.

In this article we are attempting to deal with the facts surrounding these two men as they concern the Spanish Bible issue. Dr. Angel de Mora was trained in Biblical languages and earned (not honorary) whatever degrees he held. Back in the days before the Laodicean mentality took hold on Western culture, an honorary doctorate was a rare thing indeed. Angel de Mora did not have an honorary degree, he earned it. But an honorary doctorate on the other hand, according to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is never substantively earned but rather given for the purpose of:

The same article states that "in recent years a trend lamented by many has been to award degrees to popular icons, such as politicians and actors, rather than to scientists and scholars." They are "considered not to be of the same standing as substantive degrees."

Here are some examples of some recent honorary doctoral recipients in the United States:

There are dozens of other celebrities and stars who have received honorary doctorates. All of them are goodwill gestures and feel good measures to increase the stature and "image" of the school giving the award or the celebrity receiving the award.

This writer himself has an earned doctorate in theology. However, I rarely use the title in Christian circles in the United States because it has been cheapened to the point to where any independent Baptist receives an honorary doctorate who can reach an attendance of 100 in Sunday School. I’ll never forget the feeling I had watching a famous preacher award an honorary doctorate to the wife of Curtis Hutson for only the Lord knows what reason. I suppose it was for baking cookies and "standing by her man" (see Patsy Kline circa 1960). What about all the sisters who down through the centuries have served Christ and paid the ultimate price for that service by giving their lives as martyrs. Should we not award them posthumous honorary doctorates?

I have seen and been witness to personally the granting of Doctors degrees by men who had no business pretending to have such authority to men who had no business receiving such acclaim. I personally witnessed a pastor in Liberty, MO, who was the "chancellor" of a "video" college, confer upon another pastor friend the degree of "doctor" for having simply been a pastor for a number of years (I think it was about thirty). The conferring pastor himself did not hold an earned doctorate and I can speak from experience (he was my pastor for 2 years) that he himself missed one of the qualifications for a pastor in 1 Timothy 3. He was not "apt to teach." This man ended up destroying his church that had been there for 70+ years because of his own greed, arrogance, pride and avarice.

Recently there appeared in a nationwide Baptist publication a list of sixteen pastors who were to be the guest speakers in a Bible conference. Every one of them was listed as "Dr." Now it may be that a number of these pastors actually earned a doctorate from some institution of higher learning. But with at least one of these men I know for a fact that he never even graduated from high school. The man is neither lettered nor is he a "Doctor" of anything. It is for these reasons and many others that I have vowed never to receive an honorary doctorate for any reason from any institution ever.

The Wikipedia goes on to state, "In many countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, it is not considered correct for an honorary doctor to use the formal title of ‘doctor’ regardless of the background circumstances for the award." If this is true, then there are about 2,000 independent Baptist preachers in America who are using the title "doctor" falsely, and I am sure that many of them do so in order to boost their "image" before their congregations or the brethren.

"Doctor" Humberto Gomez is using his title falsely. He has plastered this title 4 times in the first 3 title pages of his revision of the Bible. He consistently repeats the title to make sure that all will believe that he is a lettered and learned man. The truth is that he has no formal Greek training, no formal Hebrew training, no earned doctorate and only a street level ability to handle his own language. Did I also mention that he speaks broken English? All this, and suddenly he is qualified to revise the greatest piece of literature ever graced upon the Spanish speaking populace. Mike Tyson could better revise Shakespeare!

"Doctor" Gomez has also elevated his name to the illustrious level afforded to only two men: Casiodoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera. Both of these men paid a high price for their Bible translation. The famous Valera Bible is the cornerstone of Spanish Protestant literature and was despised, prohibited, reviled and burned by the Roman Inquisitors during the reformation (the picture to the left is the Roman whore burning old Valera Bibles in Bogota, Colombia, circa 1921). Both de Reina and de Valera were learned men who studied in Spanish and also at Oxford University in England and in Geneva under John Calvin. They were both fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Greek. Both of them suffered for their faith and for their fidelity to the word of God, as did Luther and Tyndale.

Now their monumental tome can no longer be classified as "The Reina-Valera Bible." Rather, this nomenclature has been changed to "The RVG 2004." You may well guess what this alpha-numeric appellation stands for. It stands for "Reina-Valera-Gomez." Our good "doctor" has elevated himself to the level of the men who produced the Bible, which thing NO other Bible reviser has ever done previously.

For example: In 1865 Dr. Angel de Mora (more about him soon) revised the Bible. Note that his revision was completed during the Philadelphia church period and not the Laodicean. Note also that his name did not appear along with that of Drs. de Reina and de Valera. I am looking at a 142 year old volume called the Valera 1865 Bible. It was printed by the American Bible Society, which at that time only made use of one Greek Text, the Textus Receptus (Stephens edition of 1550). They had commissioned Angel de Mora to do the work, yet his name appeared nowhere in the Bible. It should have been that his name appears with the names de Reina and de Valera because his qualifications were similar to theirs. But Dr. Angel de Mora was not so arrogant or lifted up as is "Dr." Gomez.

In 1909 a team of Latin American scholars revised the Valera Bible in order to line it up with the 1901 American Standard and the 1881 Revised Version (both Alexandrian in nature). Though their work destroyed the beauty, grandeur, exactness and divinity of the original Valera Bible, even they did not add their names to the Text. They continued to call it the Reina-Valera Bible.

In 1960 Eugene Nida headed up the project to once again revise the beloved Valera text. Though this work is thoroughly an Alexandrian revision, and Nida admits to this, nevertheless even he, an unsaved liberal scholar called the "father of dynamic equivalence," did not dare to call the 1960 Bible the Reina-Valera-Nida (RVN1960).

How is it then that a man who cannot hope to match any of these men in scholarship and more importantly, cannot hope to match Dr. Angel de Mora in spirituality (more about de Mora soon) could possibly claim to be able to revise the Valera Bible with his limited learning, false claims of scholarship and paramount arrogance and haughtiness? The answer is found in Revelation 3:14-19. The answer is that we are living in the Laodicean church age. The answer is that we fancy ourselves to be "rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing" all the time failing to realize that we are "wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked."

As everyone knows, the American Bible Society did not switch to the Wescott and Hort Text until at least 30 after de Mora made the revision of Valera’s Bible. Dr. de Mora of course did not work alone. He worked side by side with H.B. Pratt, a missionary to Bogota Colombia who was also commissioned to revise the Valera Bible along with Dr. de Mora.

I would like to point out at this juncture that "Dr." Gomez is not working alone either. Gomez is doing all of his Bible corrupting with a man who does not even believe that the King James Bible is inspired. This is not slander, it is the truth. So that the reader does not get all choked up about what I am saying, I would like to quote from the Dean Burgon Society Regional Meeting in Chicago, Illinois from March 5-6 of 2007, where Humberto Gomez was one of the panel members. At this meeting Gomez’s fellow Valera Bible corrupter, Dr. D. A. Waite, took the microphone and said these words:

I would like to state for the record that I, Dr. Jeff McArdle, want nothing to do with Dr. Waite, "Dr." Gomez, the Dean Burgon Society, or any of the corruptions that can be found in Gomez’s translation. If you would like to hear Dr. Waite’s words for yourself you should go to http://www.BibleForToday.org. There on the main page you can click on "Special on Demand Messages from the Dean Burgon Society Regional Meeting in Chicago, March 5-6, 2007." Go to "Panel Discussion #2" and fast forward to 15 min. and 30 seconds (15:30).

There is not any space here to go into H.B. Pratt’s qualifications except to say that H. B. Pratt graduated from Princeton seminary in 1855. He was sent by the Presbyterian Church to Bogotá, Columbia in 1856 to begin missionary activities there. For the next 4 years he spent his time mastering Spanish and writing a handful of pamphlets and books, most of them written as attacks against the Roman Catholic Church. We already know what Dr. Waite thinks of the AV1611. Now hear what H. B. Pratt thought.

These words were written 50 years before D. A. Waite and Peter Ruckman were born. H. B. Pratt and Angel de Mora believed that the King James Bible was superior to even the original manuscripts, or else Pratt would not have said that IT (the KJB) was the "incomparable model and mould" for all Bible translation work. Obviously Wait and Gomez don’t believe this or else Waite would not have said what he said and Gomez would not have changed Hebrews 1:3.

The Valera Bible Society, as of the writing of this article (Jan. 2008) "has strictly and solidly broken" with anyone who denies the inspiration and the King James Bible and with anyone who denies the inspiration of Valera1865 Bible. We have examined Bro. Gomez and when compared to Dr. Ángel H. de Mora and the Valera Bible he produced we find Bro. Gomez and his RVG 2004 revision to be "…weighed in the balances, and…found wanting." "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit."