It’s readily apparent that the Bible has been significantly messed with at various points in time. And it’s not just the Mandela Effect of the wolf lying down with the lamb and the new wine causing bottles to burst instead of wineskins. This one, you can check for yourself and see very easily.
Open up your NIV Bible. Go to Matthew 17. Then read verse 21. That’s right, try to find it. You can’t. It was removed, and your NIV Bible will go from verse 20 directly to verse 22. You can even see this on Bible Gateway.
It’s not every Bible. I checked my Italian Bible and my French Bible. Both of them contain verse 21, and it contains something important that was clearly removed intentionally. It’s Jesus’s words explaining to his disciples why they couldn’t cast a demon out of a boy.
Questa specie di demoni non esce se non per mezzo della preghiera e del digiuno.
This species of demons doesn’t come out without prayer and fasting.
Mais cette sorte ne sort que par la priere et par le jeune.
But this type doesn’t leave but for prayer and fasting.
The thing is, I clearly remember this verse from when I was younger. And checking the Living Bible, it is in there, along with a footnote.
21 But this kind of demon won’t leave unless you have prayed and gone without food.”
- This verse is omitted in many of the ancient manuscripts.
Interestingly enough, the wineskins reference from Mark 2:22 is also there:
22 You know better than to put new wine into old wineskins. They would burst. The wine would be spilled out and the wineskins ruined. New wine needs fresh wineskins.”
It’s interesting because supposedly, the Living Bible, being a paraphrase rather than a translation, is supposed to be less accurate. Yet my Italian Bible also refers to otri vecchi, old wineskins, and not bottiglie vecchie, old bottles.
However, the NIV also has wineskins. So, I don’t trust my memory of the King James version, because I’m quite confident that most of my childhood reading of the Bible was either the Living Bible or the NIV. So, naturally, I went and checked the first thing that came to mind and my suspicions were confirmed:
The NIV (New International Version) is one of the translations used in the Scofield Study Bible, specifically in the Scofield Study Bible III edition.
That being said, none of this should trouble Christians in the least. God’s Word is not limited to ink on paper. And the fact that both human and supernatural forces strive to keep any of it from us is testimony to its importance as well as a reminder to resort to it.