THE FACTORY EDITION

By Steve Van Nattan

When I was growing up in Tanganyika in Africa, my Dad ran an auto repair shop for the missionary group we belonged to. During the 1950s and 60s, the car of choice in East Africa was the Volkswagen. Parts were available everywhere, and the VW could take the beating of washboard roads like no other car.

Well, this meant that we did a lot of VW overhauls, and we had to do transmission work as well. Any of you who have worked on the old VW beetle know that you must be very sure of yourself as you assemble a rebuilt VW engine or transmission, and you must follow the motor manual absolutely with NO deviation from the Wolfburg way of doing it.

My Dad was a fanatic for doing everything to absolute perfection. When we washed parts ready for assembly, we used gasoline as a final rinse, and then we laid the parts on hard lint free paper, and we covered the parts with lint free paper. When we assembled the engine, Dad insisted we have clean hands and wipe our hands with new rags. We oiled every part as we put it in, so that when the engine was first turned over, every part had oil already. We towed a car with a new engine in high gear for at least a mile before actually starting it, until it got oil pressure. If the oil pressure did not come up by towing it, we tore the engine down and started over.

My Dad would have never made a living doing this for profit, for no one would have wanted to pay for the time we spent on a job. I have always felt good about all those jobs, for we never had to be ashamed of our work.

Another thing my Dad was fanatical about was that he insisted on getting the factory edition of the motor manual. In the case of the VW, Dad traveled to Kenya and bought a whole set of the Wolfburg VW motor manuals. He paid a fortune for them.

When other local mechanics assembled VW engines, they did so mostly by intuition. These engines were howling in very short order. Other mechanics used after market manuals from the USA and England. Their work lasted longer, but the life of the engines they did was pretty short.

Dad and I would read the Wolfburg VW manual by the hour. It was heavy reading, and there were sections of the book we had to read several times in order to understand. We would cross reference back and forth to be sure we had all the data. But, once we mastered the manual, we put those VW engines together just like they were put together in the factory in Germany. We KNEW we were right because we had the personal instruction of the VW's original maker.

Now, some of you folks carry around a Bible with the equivalent of Matthew through Acts missing. That is how much the NIV takes out of the old King James Bible. Your NIV and RSV are so much easier to understand, right? But, you don't have the Bible the originator of Truth handed down long ago. You have an after market Bible, and it is not complete.

Now, I grant you, the KJV has passages that I have to read a couple of times more than you, and I have to read a lot more copy than you, but friend, when I finally figure out what my KJV means, I know I can act on that Bible, and I know that my actions would be exactly the same as the writer of that Bible, whether Paul, David, or God Himself.

You can blab and blab all you want about being "spirit filled" and "anointed," but you don't have a clue if you are right with God if you don't have the complete edition of His Factory Manual.

You better get the original manual from the manufacturer, friend-- The King James Bible.