Defending the Word of God: A task that never ends.

It was just two weeks ago that I wrote about a syndicated article in the paper in which a Mormon and a Unitarian both challenged the Orthodox understanding of the Bible that the Church has held throughout its history.  For the Mormon, the challenge came in the form of believing in an Open Canon, i.e. that new revelation beyond that of the Apostles was possible.  For the Unitarian, the challenge came via disbelief in the accuracy of the Bible that we have today and ultimately doubt as to the divine origin of the original anyway.
In a recent letter to the editor, a local resident made an accusation about why he believes America is in moral decay, a position all too readily assumed by many Christians, regardless of the actual evidence, a reflection of a deep seated pessimism about the future.  The comment in question was the worst sort of guilt-by-association and causation fallacy (that because A precedes B, A must be the cause of B).  The writer was listing the signs of the "downfall" of America and claimed that this trend began in earnest in the 1970's with the legalization of abortion and the publication of the NIV Bible.  It should go without saying that one of those two things is a moral evil and truly a sign of trouble in society (although certainly not a harbinger of the end, the society into which the Gospel began its mission of transformation was well known for its infanticide, not to mention rampant slavery).  To equate the two, as if there is some sort of connection between them (other than happening in the same decade) is of course nonsense, but in this case it is part and parcel with the type of "argumentation" often put forth by those who see the world through a KJV Only set of glasses.
If I believed, for a second, that the only true Christians were those attending independent, fundamentalist, KJV Only churches in America, I'd be a pessimist about the future too.  If the Gospel were failing in our world that badly, if only .001% of the world's population were being saved by the power of the cross and the empty grave, where would hope come from?
Thankfully, the truth is far different.  The work of the Gospel, through the universal Church of Jesus Christ, is being carried out all over the world, in hundreds of languages (thanks to the tireless efforts of Bible translation teams from organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators).  His Church is making tremendous progress throughout Africa, and is growing rapidly in Southeast Asia.  Nobody knows what the future holds for any nation, America included, but the Church of Jesus Christ is not whimpering in a corner, huddling with a few link-minded individuals, it is out there in the world today, reclaiming lost souls for the kingdom, and doing it using a variety of the many wonderful translations of the Bible that we have today.
The task of defending the Word of God never ends.