"And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
The above version of Acts 7:59, exclusively from the King James Version, is an atrocious example of Trinitarians dishonestly mistranslating verses. The word "God" does not even appear in the original Greek text written by Luke but was inserted by KJV translators. There are no known manuscripts with such a reading. If the context of this passage clearly implied that Stephen was actually calling upon "God," the problem would be far less serious. The Greek literally says, "and they stoned Stephen, calling upon and saying, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.'" This passage simply says that Stephen called upon his Lord Jesus to receive his Spirit and he gave up his spirit to Jesus. God had made Jesus the Lord of all heaven and earth upon his resurrection from the dead and subjected all things to him (Mt 28:18; Acts 2:36; Hebrews 2:5-9). It is rather obvious that the text intends to say, they stoned Stephen who was calling upon Jesus to receive his spirit. The text says absolutely nothing about Stephen calling upon God. In fact, Stephen sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God. God is obviously someone else.
It is disturbing that many Trinitarians have the nerve to whine and complain, and rant and rave, about the Jehovah's Witnesses doing this type of thing in their New World Translation and then turn right around and hypocritically approve of the very same type of thing in the KJV translation. If you have a KJV translation, the word "God" should be in italics (or brackets) and the KJV translators do inform their readers that words in italics (or brackets) were not present in the original Greek manuscripts. However, the Jehovah's Witnesses make their readers equally aware but for some reason Trinitarian apologists don't seem to think the Witnesses have been granted the same approval for such insertions as the KJV Trinitarians have been granted. It is blatantly misleading to add this word here, especially in view of the fact that many readers may overlook the italics convention, or do not even know about it, or blindly trust the translators to be giving them good information. The fact that this word is there in print, without any merit whatsoever, confuses and misleads the reader. It is an appalling example of adding to the Bible where it is obviously unwarranted and a device implemented only to promote a Trinitarian agenda. One truly wonders how anyone who approves of such things can suppose they are doing God a favor by distorting the very words he inspired and thereby misprepresent Him and so such things in His name.
A similar stunt has been pulled at 1 John 3:16 in the KJV:
Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
The words "of God" were inserted into the text. Now notice that they have it saying that it is God who lays down his life. What I find so interesting about this is the same kind of tampering done by the Gnostics and these men are so self righteous that they think it is okay for themselves to do the very same thing. Hypocrisy. The text actually reads:
Hereby we pereceive love, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
If you check several other translations the problem here will be made quite clear.
Last Revision/Update: March 23, 2016
