Self-Refutation Flowchart

I just wanted to create an article about my thoughts regarding my discussion with John Kirwin on May 30th, 2026. You can view the video here: https://www.youtube.com/live/RTuj2tUhNvU?si=Tyk1mSeIgKbToRwK

At around 13 minutes in, John and I talk about Matthew 7:1.

My point here is that in many of John’s videos, John usually starts with the King James Version of the Bible, saying there are no versions of the Bible that have the rendering, “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

In this podcast video from Nephilim Death squad’s channel, you can specifically hear John’s own words: https://youtu.be/Br284i7zuLs?si=7piB_FC3MFvqONvY&t=1636

At approximately 27 minutes and 16 seconds in, John starts to talk about how people incorrectly cite Matthew 7:1.

He starts by saying Matthew 7:1 is one of two examples he uses that are “King-James-only scriptures”, that Matthew 7:1 is “very familiar”, and that it’s “only in the King James Bible”.

He asks the hosts of the podcast to fill in the blank:

“Judge not [BLANK] ye be judged.”

The podcast hosts agree with answering the blank with “lest”.

First of all, there’s no way to possibly fill in this ‘blank’ with the KJV’s rendering, “Judge not that ye be not judged” because it would never fit the sentence structure. The better thing to do would be to say “Judge not…” and let people fill in the rest, which will most likely be “lest ye be judged” anyway.

John at 27:58 then proceeds to list off multiple Bible versions that do not have the ‘lest ye be judged’ rendering. But he starts with the 1611 KJV and then moves into the KJV updates, followed by more modern versions. He says “It isn’t in any modern version either.” And he is correct on this, from every translation I can see from the 1611 KJV moving to present day.

John says that “There has to be causation.”

At 28:51 John says about the ‘judge not lest ye be judged’ rendering: “Therefore, it had to get in there somehow. Now, the only possible explanation, which is so far-fetched and is so embarrassing that I still can’t believe it, but I’m here to tell you that I’ve had the intelligencia of the body of Christ be forced into this corner with me and they will tell me, “Well, I can explain this, John. I could clear this up. This is just because of misquotes from pop-culture. This is just because it’s in this movie line or it’s in this song and some guy 50 years ago said ‘judge not lest ye be judged’, and it went through the entire world like a telephone game. And I’m looking at him like, ‘you’re really gonna go with that?’ (laughs) I don’t care what misquote I see on Facebook. I know my Bible, sir. Don’t you? I mean, if you saw somebody on Facebook saying ‘there is no God’, would you suddenly become an atheist? No. It’s ridiculous. I cover that in a video ‘Refuting Misquotes’. Alright, so let me give you another one. This one is also as familiar as familiar as mom with apple pie.”

One of the hosts asks at 30 minutes in:

“What’s the original? What’s it supposed to be?”

John responds:

“Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s always said in this timeline, ‘judge not sss… judge not… so that you won’t be judged.’ Or ‘judge not that you won’t be judged.’ It doesn’t say ‘lest’. There is no thing that says ‘judge not lest ye be judged.’ It doesn’t exist. There’s one version that has a ‘lest’ in it, but it’s different. It says ‘judge not, that ye be not’… errr… ‘so that you won’t be judged’… or something like that. But that one doesn’t exist.”

My Answer

John is partly correct when he says that “Judge not lest ye be judged” isn’t in the KJV or any modern translation. The difficulty that I point out in our interview is that (when talking about Matthew 7:1 as a supernatural alteration) John tends to start with the KJV and move forward in time to modern translations.

If John had just moved back in the timeline a little bit, he would have found that the 1526 Tyndale New Testament did indeed have this rendering:

Source

The main difference here is that the letter ‘J’ was not yet fully implemented into the English alphabet. You can see that they spell ‘judge’ as ‘iudge’ with an ‘I’ instead of a ‘J’. This is because the letter ‘J’ was not always part of the English alphabet.

Even the 1611 KJV used the letter ‘I’ instead of ‘J’. The Big ‘I’ at the beginning of Matthew 7:1 here should be clear for everyone to see:

Source

The 1526 Tyndale was the first English Bible to be successfully mass-produced¹ and scattered throughout England and Scotland at that time.²

The literacy rate back then was incredibly low. Even in the year 1820, “only 1 in 10 people over the age of 15 could read.”

This left the reading of the scriptures a task of the leaders, the educated, who would read to others.

The evidence that this particular rendering stuck with people is so incredibly strong, even John has a hard time speaking aloud the current rendering of the KJV. He stutters and tries to get the words out, and understandably so. But the fact of the matter is John has been looking at this passage a great deal, and still can’t say the KJV’s current rendering correctly. Try saying them out loud yourself:

1526 Tyndale: “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

KJV: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

The Tyndale flows off the tongue. It’s much easier to say, and as a result it is easier to quickly remember. I initially thought this was an alliteration, but a more precise term would be a euphony, mixed together with a truncation, phonological economy, and syntactic streamlining.

I will show in a future article that these aspects of speech, and not only word-for-word repetition, play a large part in our ability to memorize any text.

Main Point:

Even if John disagrees that the Tyndale could “overwrite the minds” of people studying their KJV, as he might say, John is still incorrect to say that there is no version of the Bible that says ‘judge not lest ye be judged’. It’s present in the 1526 Tyndale. The fact that this was the first mass-produced English Bible, and that its rendering of Matthew 7:1 is easier to remember because it flows off the tongue easier, as mentioned above, it’s easy to see how this particular rendering is the way most people remember it. We would need to see if people who don’t use the KJV still remember Matthew 7:1 this way, which would demonstrate that people remember the wording of the phrase they’ve heard over what was written in their Bibles.

In John’s National Pastor Survey, the question of which Bible translation people use is never asked of those taking the survey.³

We don’t know if these participants ever tried to memorize Matthew 7:1 directly from their Bibles, nor do we know if they ever used the KJV as their primary Bible.

Source

The fact that 73.3% of the 30 participants answered ‘lest’ to this passage doesn’t prove that this verse must have been supernaturally altered. In the first choice, John has capitalized ‘That’, which is inconsistent with the rest of the choices, making it not preferable. It also cannot grammatically fit the question. If someone did choose the first answer, it would say:

“Judge not That ye be not judged ye be judged.”

This is a perfect example of priming survey participants towards a desired answer. An objective study would better ask:

Fill in the blank: “Judge not…” followed by the answers, with consistency in capitalized words across these available choices.

Update: John has recently said that he’s changed this in his quiz, but it appears that he’s still using the findings of this previously made survey.

Even if people continue to choose ‘lest’ (which they definitely will), all this proves is that people have remembered this particular rendition. It would be a major leap to say this rendition did indeed have its origin in the KJV Bible. John has not argued for this outside of trying to show the fact that no Bible translation has ever said this.

My Prediction

There are a few ways that John could get out of this predicament:

1. He says he was mistaken, and ‘lest ye be judged’ does indeed have its origins in the 1526 Tyndale NT.
2. He moves the goalposts and says none of my points above answer how he and many others specifically remember their KJV once saying ‘lest’ in this passage. John would need to demonstrate that people who remember this passage as ‘lest ye be judged’ are quoting it from a memory that has its origins in looking directly at the KJV text rather than hearing this phrase repeatedly.
3. He could try to find a quote from his own writings, where he might specifically say the 1526 Tyndale doesn’t say ‘lest ye be judged’, which his book never says, and he hasn’t demonstrated.
4. He can try to find a quote in his book mentioning the 1526 Tyndale by name, which he does only once.⁴ He could then take this single mention and try to say that ‘there’s little to no chance he could have missed this.’ Since he has already stated that there is no version of the Bible anywhere that says ‘lest ye be judged’, he can take the easiest route out of this situation and say the 1526 Tyndale NT must have been supernaturally altered, which would be yet another unfalsifiable claim.

Kirwin, The Mandela Effect, p. 169

I hope that John simply says he was mistaken about this, but I wanted to get this article posted to make sure people know how easily predictable this supernatural changes view can be.

I admitted I was wrong about my initial interpretation of Job 21:24 to John and all his viewers in a comment on our livestream interview. I was indeed wrong about my interpretation about that passage, yet I had a very high confidence in myself. Nobody pointed out my error. I found it myself. I would like to hear John say he was wrong. He doesn’t have to give up his entire view at this point. I just want to hear him say he was mistaken about Matthew 7:1 not being in any Bible.

I can get things wrong. I make mistakes. I try to own them when I discover I was wrong.

I don’t really know what John will decide to do with all of this, but my gut tells me he will probably say the 1526 Tyndale was altered, moving yet further down this rabbit hole of unfalsifiable claims.

Self-destructive Worldviews

Ultimately, if the devil has the power to manipulate all physical evidence, then as another commentator on the livestream video states, our memories could also be manipulated. Even if one could find a Bible verse saying that the devil didn’t have the power to manipulate our memories, how would we know that verse was ever a promise God gave anyone? The devil could have already altered that verse, along with all the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible. Once we had our first English Bible translations, they would be translated from supernaturally altered manuscripts. It wouldn’t matter how much we memorized from a KJV Bible 40+ years ago, because there’s no way to know whether any verse has been supernaturally altered. Therefore, nobody in this movement has the ability to appeal to any verse in the Bible as authoritative. No verse can be used as a prophecy in support of their views, because they could have been altered. No verse can be used with any hope that God had part in any of it. Appealing to “residual evidence” would be meaningless, because there would be no amount of evidence that’s reliable. None of our senses would be reliable to any degree, because the devil could manipulate everything we see, hear, smell, taste and touch.

Ultimately, listening to and reading the proponents of this supernatural Bible changes worldview is meaningless, because there would be no way to tell which words in any of their books, online articles, podcasts or videos were given themselves rather than the devil’s. Maybe the devil manipulated the words on the pages of John’s books by the time I got to reading them myself. I would never be able to ask John along with the majority of his audience if my understanding of his books is correct, because the devil could have manipulated their understanding of my question, along with any answer I hear in response back from them.

If someone were to write a book about how words are meaningless, would you take them seriously? If they really believed that words were meaningless, wouldn’t that mean they believed the words in their own book were also meaningless by their own standard?

Even if that person believed that only some words were meaningless, but had no standard of knowing which specific words had meaning and which ones didn’t, we would still have the same problem.

People in this supernatural Bible changes worldview cannot live consistently with their own view.

Check out the flowchart again:

If the supernatural Bible changes view were true, there would be no way to know it was true.

The people in this movement have created a situation for themselves where they never have to concede defeat on an evidential level, because they can just jump to unfalsifiable claims. On a logical level, however, this entire worldview is self defeating, and as a result we don’t need to take anything that John says or any other supernatural Bible change proponent/Mandelite seriously.

No national or international pastor survey would matter anymore, because the devil may have manipulate the answers given.

No mathematical probabilities from peer-reviewed studies would matter, because the devil may have manipulated the laws of mathematics.

If the devil can alter the time-space-continuum, then there’s nothing anyone in this movement could ever say to justify anything.

Attempting to change the definition of how we know anything at all to a gut feeling rather than a justified, true belief is pointless, because if the SBC view is true, there’s no way to know whether or not the devil could manipulate our feelings as well.

What about 2 Thess. 2:9?

I would recommend reading this excellent article from United Bible Society. Here’s a quote from this article:

It is also possible to translate “power in the highest degree,” leaving the false miracles and wonders to be understood as examples of this power. However, all kinds of fits in better with every kind of wicked deceit in verse 10, so “all kinds of power” is perhaps to be preferred. It may be necessary to translate as “he will demonstrate all kinds of power,” or “he will show that he has all kinds of power,” and then to bring in the false miracles in an added phrase, for example, “by causing people to see false miracles.”⁵

Even the NET Bible translates this passage in the following way:

2 Now regarding the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to be with him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, ² not to be easily shaken from your composure or disturbed by any kind of spirit or message or letter allegedly from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. ³ Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not arrive until the rebellion comes and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. ⁴ He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, and as a result he takes his seat in God’s temple, displaying himself as God. ⁵ Surely you recall that I used to tell you these things while I was still with you. ⁶ And so you know what holds him back, so that he will be revealed in his own time. ⁷ For the hidden power of lawlessness is already at work. However, the one who holds him back will do so until he is taken out of the way, ⁸ and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy by the breath of his mouth and wipe out by the manifestation of his arrival. ⁹ The arrival of the lawless one will be by Satan’s working with all kinds of miracles and signs and false wonders, ¹⁰ and with every kind of evil deception directed against those who are perishing, because they found no place in their hearts for the truth so as to be saved. ¹¹ Consequently God sends on them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false. ¹² And so all of them who have not believed the truth but have delighted in evil will be condemned.⁶

Notice that verses 10-12 specifically say that these different kinds of deceptions are directed at those who are perishing. It’s not describing a power of Satan so large in scope that he could also alter Bibles across the whole timeline. That idea is nowhere found in this text. You can’t deceive a rock. You can only deceive people. If we are to test all things and hold fast to that which is good (1 Thess. 5:21), we would need an objective standard to judge.

Because I don’t believe in the SBC view, I can go back and test myself to the written scriptures. English Bible translations don’t have to be infallible. We can go off the evidence of what the text actually says. Listen to this debate with James White’s closing statement around 2:19:40, and listen to him describe Bart Ehrman’s understanding that the textual variants found within the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts don’t change the core beliefs of the Christian faith.

Conclusion

Looking at the logical flowchart, we are left with a few options. People holding to the SBC view who want to continue believing it will need to reject all trust in our minds and reality itself. There would no longer be a basis for trusting anything. Or we can reject the SBC view.

I would urge anyone in this movement, along with anyone seriously considering this movement, to hear what I’ve written in this article.

I would recommend people go listen to teachers like Dr. Walter Martin and his hermeneutics series, which can be heard on YouTube.

Anyone who is questioning the beliefs of this movement and who desires to get out of it can contact me, and I will gladly make time to talk with you.

You are all in my prayers.

1. “It was in Worms, in 1526, that the complete text of the New Testament was printed, the first New Testament in English to be mass produced using the printing press rather than being laboriously hand written.”
   https://tyndale.org/william-tyndale-menu/m-translations-and-writings ↩︎
2. “It was smuggled into England and Scotland, where it was very popular, amidst growing anti-Lutheranism. By 1534, it is calculated that over 30 000 copies were circulating in England (The New Testament, Introduction, 9). Forty-one editions were published between 1525 and 1566, of which only three copies survived into the 21st century (The New Testament, Introduction, 9–10).”
   https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7649/23214 ↩︎
3. https://alteredbible.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/National-Pastor-Poll-Results-2-14-26.pdf ↩︎
4. John Kirwin, The Mandela Effect Supernatural Bible Changes And The Doctrine Of The Preservation Of Scripture (n.p.: Independently published, 2024). p 169. ↩︎
5. https://tips.translation.bible/story/translation-commentary-on-2-thessalonians-29/ ↩︎
6. Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible, Second Edition (Denmark: Thomas Nelson, 2019), 2 Th 2:1–12. ↩︎

Table of Contents:

Summary: The article debunks the “The Supernatural Bible Changes” claim that the KJV Bible is supernaturally changing due to demonic forces and quantum tech, showing through proper exegesis that Amos 8:11 prophesies a temporary famine of hearing God’s word as judgment on ancient Israel, not a global alteration of physical Bibles today.

What’s this about?

There is a group of people online who believe that the Bible—specifically the King James Version—has been changing supernaturally over the years.  They wouldn’t necessarily say the KJV Bible has been tampered with by editors or those in control of the printing press.  Instead, they are blaming the supernatural realm.  This group of people believes that some evil entity, possibly the devil himself, is responsible for these changes.  Not only do they claim these changes affect every digital source online, but even the physical Bibles on our shelves are changing.  The ink has literally shifted on the pages, no longer reading the same way it once did.

What’s the evidence?

The evidence for this incredible claim is based on what they think the text should have said, because they feel they have remembered it differently. This phenomenon connects to what they describe as the Mandela effect.  The difficulty here is that it’s actually a reverse-Mandela effect, since it places the fault on physical reality rather than on our fallible, forgetful memories.  The whole point of the Mandela effect is that people can collectively misremember things due to misinformation spreading.  But in this case, the Bible is blamed for not agreeing with what these people think it should read.  I will attempt to go through many of these claims and respond accordingly.  To make it easier on myself, I will refer to this group of people using the acronym they use: TSBC.

Some of the main differences between the TSBC view and what the Bible says:

TSBC	Bible
The devil alters all Bibles	Hearts deceive (Jer. 17:9)Test all things (1 John 4:1)
Proof: “I remember it differently”	Proof: Context, written word, Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:19-21, 2 Tim. 3:16)
Outcome: Fear, isolation.	Outcome: Faith, community (Heb. 10:24-25)

Amos 8:11 – Lying Signs and Wonders?

Image from: https://thesupernaturalbiblechanges.com/lying-signs-and-wonders

TSBC Claim: TSBCs claim that Amos 8:11 is a prophecy of these supernatural Bible changes.  In the image above, the TSBC website claims the following:

“Bibles are supernaturally changing.  It’s the strong delusion.  CERN, DWAVE computing, and Quantum Computers are causing this through black magic.”¹

The article begins by quoting the verse:

“The days cometh sayeth the Lord, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”

– Amos 8:11 (KJV)

Rather than give an exegesis of this passage, the article jumps right into claiming that the “scriptures have turned to be blasphemous and wicked.”²  Instead of walking through Amos step by step and using basic hermeneutics, the TSBC view assumes the passage agrees with them.

TSBC takes the portion of the verse that says there would be a famine of hearing the words of the Lord, and forces this through their interpretive lens.  In their mind, this could only mean that the literal words in our Bibles would disappear from existence or change.  The site mentions that this is a “simple explanation”³, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  They have now made their memory the final rule of measure. They’ve become an exclusive club, where only they can reveal what God actually said in the Bible. From their own words:

“The only way they (those experiencing this famine) will hear the truth now is if people like us share this with them.”⁴  (Parentheticals mine)

Reading Amos 8:11 in context:

Having attended Moody Bible Institute and a Calvary Chapel, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of reading large sections of the Bible.  As Greg Koukl says, “never read a Bible verse.”⁵  We should be careful not to read a single verse out of context and then make interpretations and applications from it.

I would recommend reading the entirety of Amos, but if you don’t have that much time, at least read through Amos 7:1-9:15. This larger section gives a clearer view of the story.  After reading it, continue to the outline below:

Outline of Amos 7:1-9:15

Introduction and Historical Context:

• Amos is part of the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament.
• It tells the story of Amos, a shepherd from Judah, who delivers messages from God against the northern kingdom of Israel around 760–750 BC, during the reign of King Jeroboam II, who was both rich and corrupt.

1. Themes of Judgment (Amos 7:1–9; 8:1–3)
   • Amos addresses widespread injustices in the land: the exploitation of the poor, and idolatry during Israel’s economic boom and superficial religiosity.
   • He does this by using vivid visions—like devouring locusts, consuming fire, a measuring plummet, and a basket of ripe summer fruit—to represent impending judgment and the “end” for a people who have broken God’s covenant.
2. Conflict with Amaziah (Amos 7:10–17)
   • A dramatic fight with Amaziah, Bethel’s priest, who accuses Amos of treason, leads to a personal curse and a reaffirmation of Amos’s divine calling.
3. Apocalyptic Judgment (Amos 8:4–14; 9:1–10)
   • The text builds to apocalyptic images of unavoidable destruction, a famine for God’s word, and cosmic upheaval.
4. Hopeful Restoration (Amos 9:11–15)
   • Amos ends with a hopeful messianic promise of Israel’s restoration under a renewed Davidic kingdom, showing that God is in charge of both punishment and redemption.

Walking Through Amos 8

Now that we have a larger context for where Amos 8:11 sits in the book of Amos as a whole, let’s dig deeper into chapter 8 by itself.  I’m using the Lexham English Bible:

Amos 8:1-14 (LEB)

A Basket of Ripe Fruit

My Lord Yahweh showed me this, and there was a basket of summer fruit.

Chapter 8 begins by summing up the previous vision as something shown to Amos, and now we’re moving on to a different vision, one of summer fruit.

² And he said, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” And Yahweh said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel. I will not pass by them again!”

Verse 2 has Yahweh telling Amos that Israel is coming to its end.  The wording for ‘not pass by’ is similar to ‘not pass over’ or ‘not leave unpunished.’  God has had enough of Israel’s sin.

³ “And the songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,” ⌊declares⌋ my Lord Yahweh. “The corpses are numerous; he throws them in every place. Be quiet!” ⁴ Hear this, those who trample on the poor and who annihilate the afflicted of the land, ⁵ saying, “When will the new moon be over, so that we can sell grain? And the Sabbath, so that we can open the grain bins, that we can make the ephah small and make the shekel large, and can practice deceit with a set of scales of deceit?  ⁶ ⌊That we can⌋ buy the powerless with silver and the poor for the sake of a pair of sandals, and we can sell the waste of the grain?” 

Yahweh is warning of the upcoming judgment against Israel. God describes what will take place toward the people of Israel during that time of punishment. Yahweh points out that even in the midst of Israel’s punishment, they will want to go back to selling food using deceitful weights and measures.

⁷ Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob, “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds!  ⁸ On account of this, will not the land tremble and will not every living thing in it mourn? And all of it will rise like the Nile and it will be tossed about and subside like the Nile of Egypt.

Yahweh swears that He will never forget Israel’s sin.  And because He will never forget, the land will tremble and living things mourn.  This speaks to the surety of the consequences to come upon them.  There’s a lot of poetic language used here, paralleling Israel’s demise with the Nile River.  It’s interesting to note that the Nile River flooded annually at this time. T. J. Betts puts it nicely in his commentary on Amos:

“The idea of a destructive earthquake must have been terrifying to Israel.  Amos said God’s judgment will be likened to a devastating earthquake resulting in the mourning of all of Israel.
Another phenomenon well known in that part of the world was the annual flooding of the Nile River that began in June and did not completely recede until around October. The farmers planted their seeds in the muddy soil during October or November and harvested their crops from January to March. There were times the Nile’s flooding was very destructive. Just as the flooding of the Nile lasted for several months, the analogy may point to Israel’s cataclysm lasting for an extended period of time. Israel will be lifted up, shaken, and then brought down. Like the swift-moving destructive swell of a churning river that has surged over its banks, Israel’s judgment will come swiftly, with lasting and detrimental results.”⁶

Let’s continue to the passage:

⁹ And then in that day,” ⌊declares⌋ my Lord Yahweh, “I will make the sun go down at noon and I will darken the land on a day of light.  ¹⁰ And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all of your songs into lament, and I will put sackcloth on all loins and baldness on every head. And I will make it like the mourning for an only child, and its end like a bitter day.  ¹¹ Look, the days are coming,” ⌊declares⌋ my Lord Yahweh, “when I will send a famine in the land, not a famine for bread and not a thirst for water, but ⌊of hearing⌋ the words of Yahweh!  ¹² And they will wander from sea to sea and from the north and to the east. They will roam about to seek the word of Yahweh, but they will not find it!  ¹³ In that day the beautiful young women and the young men will faint because of thirst.  ¹⁴ These are those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, ‘By the life of your gods, O Dan,’ and ‘By the life of the way of Beersheba,’ they will fall and they will not rise again.”

We can see here that Yahweh’s warning of destruction is against Israel as a people, and not to the entire world as a whole.  God is speaking against Israel’s sins, not someone else’s.  Amos’ ministry was to Israel, not to our modern-day United States.  This passage says that God would send a famine to the land.  Which land?  The land of Israel.  This famine would not be of food and drink, but of hearing the words of Yahweh.  This passage says that the Israelites who have been in sin for so long are finally receiving their punishment.  They have not wanted to listen to the word of Yahweh.

Responding to TSBC

TSBC claims that the famine in Amos 8:11 refers to a modern-day phenomenon affecting the whole world, not just Israel.  To view this passage as referring to our modern Bibles changing worldwide, TSBC would need to demonstrate this from the text of Amos 8.  But Amos 8 is within the context of ancient Israel, specifically its northern kingdom.  How does TSBC explain that this is about everyone in the entire world today?  That’s the trouble.  They don’t explain anything.  TSBC’s interpretation is an example of eisegesis (reading into the Bible what you want it to say).  What I have done here is called exegesis (reading out of the Bible what it actually says).

Possible TSBC response:  TSBC might respond by saying that verse 12 has people wandering about seeking the word of God, and they can’t find it, meaning it must be a physical written word that’s being referred to here.

My response:  Although verse 12 could convey at face value the idea that looking for something necessitates a physical location, that would still need to be shown from the text.  The removal of hearing the word of Yahweh in the times of Amos could be fulfilled by taking away Yahweh’s mouthpiece: his prophets.  This could also be fulfilled by Yahweh simply ceasing to communicate with his prophets.  And yet all of this was still just for a time, during the time of punishment towards Israel. There is also a significant difference between no longer hearing the word of God and His written word disappearing physically from the world.  The Israelites searching for the word of God in Amos 8:12 are further described in verse 14 as swearing “by the guilt of Samaria” and by Dan’s “gods”.  Do we really think these Israelites truly desired to hear the word of Yahweh when they swore by other gods?

Other Commentary Insights

Another note on Amos 8:11-12 from JoAnna M. Hoyt’s commentary. I’ve underlined relevant sections for emphasis:

8:11 This verse introduces the third part of the judgment oracle. It begins similarly to the second part: הִנֵּה יָמִים בָּאִים, “Look, days are coming.” The ptc.  plus the deictic particle (הִנֵּה, “look!”) indicates that the coming day is imminent.  The truth of this is affirmed as a declaration of Yahweh.  This judgment veers from the physical ramifications of judgment to the spiritual.  The famine that Yahweh is sending is not a famine of food or water but of Yahweh’s word. Israel has gone through periods of “drought” from Yahweh’s word (cf. 1 Sam 3:1; 2 Chr 15:3). But the description of the magnitude of this famine goes beyond anything Israel had experienced in their past.
The description of this famine can be understood two ways. The verb שָׁמַע is typically understood as referring to “hearing” Yahweh’s words. But Andersen (824) interprets it as “obeying.” Depending on the context, this word can mean either obeying (cf. Jer 35:14) or simply hearing (cf. Gen 3:8; 24:30; Num 14:15). The following verse describes people as seeking (בָקַשׁ) the word of Yahweh. That the people are seeking Yahweh’s word implies that they are willing to obey but do not hear it. For this reason, it is preferable to translate this as “hearing” the word of Yahweh. This idea of a famine of Yahweh’s words is not unique to Amos (cf. Ezek 7:26; Mic 3:6).
8:12 The absence of Yahweh’s word is so severe that the people will desperately seek it.  Continuing the famine imagery, the people are depicted as though they are stranded in a desert desperately seeking water.  They וְנָעוּ, “stagger,” from sea to sea. The two seas referenced are the Mediterranean Sea on their west and the Red Sea to their south. Then they stagger from north to east. All four points on the compass are covered as they stagger about. They will go everywhere seeking but not finding.
The Mosaic covenant specifically states that the people will find Yahweh if they seek him. “But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul” (Deut 4:29 nasb). This promise is reiterated elsewhere in the OT (cf. Jer 29:13). In light of that, this statement that they will not be able to find the word of Yahweh is disheartening. The context of this verse in Amos is key to understanding this apparent discrepancy. This lack of finding is only specified as occurring in the days of judgment (vv. 11a, 13a). As part of the judgment there will be a period of time during which Yahweh’s word will be silent. He will not speak to the people.  This does not preclude the hope that still remains when people return to him. But those whom he is accusing in this oracle are not people who have sought him.⁷

Amos 8:11 echoes similarities to 2 Timothy 4:

³ For there will be a time when they will not put up with sound teaching, but in accordance with their own desires, they will accumulate for themselves teachers, ⌊because they have an insatiable curiosity⌋, ⁴ and they will turn away from the hearing of the truth, but will turn to myths.  ⁵ But you, be self-controlled in all things, bear hardship patiently, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Conclusion

We see here that a time will come when people will no longer want to hear the truth and will turn to myths.  In context, this is a better example of how difficult it can be to talk with someone involved in a mindset like TSBC, because no amount of evidence or proper hermeneutics may change their mind.  TSBCs need to start doing adequate exegesis and stop reading individual passages out of context.  God will ultimately hold them accountable for the people they deceive.  Stop believing lies, and start thinking with a renewed mind. This is a movement that needs to be repented from, not defended.

Reading recommendation:
“Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible” by James Sire

Sources:

1. https://thesupernaturalbiblechanges.com/lying-signs-and-wonders, accessed October 26, 2025. Backup via Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250804091903/https://thesupernaturalbiblechanges.com/lying-signs-and-wonders ↩︎
2. Ibid ↩︎
3. Ibid ↩︎
4. Ibid ↩︎
5. https://www.str.org/w/never-read-a-bible-verse, accessed October 26, 2025 ↩︎
6. T. J. Betts, Amos: An Ordinary Man with an Extraordinary Message, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2011), 165. ↩︎
7. JoAnna M. Hoyt, Amos, Jonah, & Micah, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), 297–298. ↩︎

All Scripture references are quoted from the Lexham English Bible (LEB) unless noted otherwise.