Being Your Authentic Self

Today we hear a lot about being your authentic self, especially in relation to the LGBTQ community.  To be authentic is to be true, genuine, or real.   

(Genesis 1:1)"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (ESV) 

God is the Creator and everything else is the creation.  God is God and we are not.  Therefore God is the ultimate authority in all matters, including what is actually authentic.  

(Genesis 1:27)"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (ESV) 

God created man in his own image, therefore we are to be God's representatives on earth.  God created humans as male and female.  You are who God created you to be and you have no authority to change that.  A man is a man and a woman is a woman.  

(Genesis 2:24)"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." (ESV) 

Sexual relations are to take place between a man and a woman who are married.  People of the same sex cannot be married.  

Those in the LGBTQ community are actually being inauthentic because they are not being true to the way God created them.  They are in rebellion against God's creative design and have embraced falsehood instead of truth.    

Why Is John 5:4 Missing From My Bible?

 (John 5:3b-4)"waiting for the moving of the water.  For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had." (NKJV) 

Many modern translations do not include the end of John 5:3 and all of John 5:4.  This verse is included in the KJV and the NKJV, while the LSB and NASB 1995 include it but put it in brackets.  Most translations such as the ESV, NIV, and CSB do not include it in the text, instead they have it in a footnote.  So what is going on here?  

The New Testament was originally written in Greek.  The KJV and NKJV use a Greek text known as the Textus Receptus (received text).  The Textus Receptus is mainly based on late Greek manuscripts and sometimes on the Latin Vulgate.  

On the other hand most modern translations are based on what is called the critical text.  It takes into account earlier Greek manuscripts which were not available to the King James translators in 1611.  

The earliest Greek manuscript to contain John 5:4 is Codex Alexandrinus (5th century).  The earlier Greek manuscripts do not include this verse.  They include P66 (around A.D. 175), P75 (around A.D. 200), Codex Sinaiticus (4th century), and Codex Vaticanus (4th century).  

It seems that John 5:4 may have been an explanatory note added by a scribe, that was later included in the text of the manuscripts by a copyist who mistakenly thought it belonged there.