“This is a hard saying. Who can hear it?” (John 6:60)
“In (Paul’s letters) are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15-16).
A fellow arguing for a cult religion scoffed at my statement that some doctrines are difficult and sincere Christian people differ on their interpretation.
“If it’s difficult,” he said, almost yelling with delight, “it’s because you are getting it wrong!”
I knew enough about his religion to be wary of anything he said. The leaders of that religion grew tired of having to explain away the obvious teachings of Scripture that contradict them, so they brought out their own translation. Bible scholars scoff at what they did and Greek/Hebrew linguists assure us that no one involved in that translation–if we want to call it that–was trained and capable of such a mammoth task.
What these people did with Scripture in order to get it simple and make it say what they wanted was akin to a fellow trying to close an overstuffed suitcase by taking the scissors to anything that didn’t fit and snipping it off. At the end, it closed easily. The only problem is that everything inside was injured. (After note: He was a Jehovah Witness and their monstrosity is called New World Translation.)