One phrase you will hear many preachers say today is, “the original Greek says” and then they will go on to tell you why your English bible could or should be translated in a different way. This technique which I will call the Greek game is used to support some theological position which the English just will not support.
I recently heard the Greek game used this way: a preterist preached that in Matthew 24:31 the Greek word translated “angels” really means messengers. Then he went on to say that instead of angels (heavenly beings) gathering the Lord’s elect from one end of heaven to the other at the second coming, this is really about preachers of the Gospel going out as messengers after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. There is a huge problem with this line of thought. There is no well known translation that supports angels really being messengers or Gospel preachers. If you look at the top ten English translations in use today, they all without exception use the word angels. Instead of modifying the Bible, this preacher should have modified his theological position.
Here is one of the great secrets in the Church today when you talk about Bible translations. There are no original manuscripts in existence today. There is no original Greek or original Hebrew to refer to. The basis for our English Bibles today are two manuscript lines. One line from Antioch is the basis for the KJV and the NKJV. The other line from Alexandria, Egypt is the basis for the NIV, NASB, NRSV, Amplified, and the ESV.
When someone in the Church today says, “the original Greek says” what they are referring to is manuscript copies along one of these two lines. The Alexandrian line has mainly two supporting Greek manuscripts called Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Almost universally believed in the Church today is that these two manuscripts are the original Koine (common) Greek. They are not!!! They are fourth century documents written in classical Greek. They are what we would call legaleze today. These two above mentioned manuscripts are translations from the old Latin which earlier was translated from the original Greek. These two manuscripts are physically well preserved because they were written on vellum but the quality of the copying is very sloppy. The Alexandrian line is the support text for the Roman Catholic Jesuit bible.
The line from Antioch is the true preserved text of the Bible. Please do a study on Egypt and Antioch and decide for yourself which textual line has the supernaturally preserved words of God. In Psalm 12:7, (unless you are using an NIV where this promise has been removed) God promised to preserve His words. He has kept His promise. We have a perfect English Bible today in the KJV.
There are not hidden nuggets in the Greek and Hebrew. There is only confusion and justification of false teaching to be found there. Trust your English, KJV Bible, and compare scripture with scripture for interpretation of difficult texts. You will find if you study that one of the miracles of the KJV is that the English of the OT translated from Hebrew and the English of the NT translated from Greek have direct cross references. An example of this is the word abundantly found in Genesis 1 and also in John 10 (see my teaching on the number 5).
The KJV Bible has been purified seven times and is the perfect Word of God for English speaking people.