There is a practice in the modern church, even those that claim to use the King James Bile. That practice is to use Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit interchangeably. This ought not to be and this is why.
(Revelation 22:18-19) “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: {19} And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”
Any time you change the words from what the King James Bible records you are doing two things:
- Removing words (i.e. “take away”)
- Adding words (i.e. “add unto these things”)
This is a scary thing based on the warnings in Revelation 22:18-19. Consider the following facts from the King James Bible (1769):
- “Holy Ghost” appears 90 times in the KJB.
- “Holy Spirit” appears once in the KJB.
- “holy Spirit” appears five times in the KJB.
- “holy spirit” appears once in the KJB.
Now, let’s look at a modern Bible version – the New International Version © 2011. (NOTE: I wasn’t able to find a website with case sensitive searching capabilities for the NIV.)
- “Holy Ghost” appears zero times in the NIV.
- “Holy Spirit” appears 96 times in the NIV.
Of all the Bibles commonly used today, only the KJB has the Holy Ghost. (It should be noted that the earlier English Bibles also contained “Holy Ghost” – the Geneva Bible – 1560, the Tyndale Bible – 1526, and the Wycliff Bible – 1382.) Why then, we must ask, do people who use the King James Bible change this one word from Ghost to Spirit? We will dig deeper into this topic in future posts.
God bless, Mike