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The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 439
Notable members of the SFPR included:
Lord Alfred Balfour (former Prime Minister of Great Britain and one of the founding
fathers of the League of Nations);
Charles Darwin (father of Evolutionary Theory);
Bishop B.F. Westcott;
Bishop E.W. Benson; and
Fenton John Anthony Hort.
1406
Frequent visitors of the SFPR included: Charles William a medium who was hired to
attend the meetings and Madam Blavatsky (the mother of the New Age movement) when she
was in town. SFPR member Arthur Sedgwick Meyer is quoted as saying: “homosexuality is not
rare among us.”
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A godly man, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, attended one of the SFPR’s meetings at the
invitation of Westcott and Hort. In a letter he stated that he observed a table lifting off the floor
and stated that it was the work of the devil.
1408
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was the original Chairman of the Translating Committee for
the Revision Committee. Bishop Wilberforce was very highly regarded. So Westcott and Hort
and others behind the revision used Bishop Wilberforce’s influence to get permission to revise
the language of the King James Version of the Bible.
Within a week Bishop Wilberforce became disillusioned. In a letter to another Bishop he
stated: “what be done in this miserable business?” By the end of the second week Bishop
Wilberforce had discovered the true intentions of Westcott and Hort and resigned. In a letter to a
fellow Bishop he exclaimed: “They are not going to update the Bible, they are going to change
the Bible.”
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Hort’s Letters
From The Life And Letters Of Fenton John Anthony Hort, published by his son Arthur
Hort, we learn that changing the Bible is exactly what Hort had in mind. We also learn that this
scheme was many years in the making. In a letter to Reverend John Ellerton on April 19, 1853 he
writes the following regarding revision of the Bible:
One result of our talk I may as well tell you. He (Westcott) and I are going
to edit a Greek text of the New Testament some two or three years hence, if
possible. Lachmann and Tischendorf will supply rich materials, but not nearly
enough; and we hope to do a good deal with Oriental versions. Our object is to
supply clergymen generally, schools, etc., with a portable Greek text which
shall not be disfigured with Byzantine corruptions.
1410
Hort did not believe that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection atoned for our sins. In a letter
to Westcott on October 15, 1960 he wrote: “Certainly nothing can be more unscriptural than the
modern limiting of Christ's bearing our sins and sufferings to His death; but indeed that is only
one aspect of an almost universal heresy.” On November 12, 1871 Hort wrote the following to
the Bishop of Ely: “So also the uniqueness of the great Sacrifice seems to me not to consist in
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