The Church View:

In the Catholic Church the version used is the Douay-Rheims Bible consisting of
73 books. In the Protestant church only the 66 books approved by the Archbishop of
Canterbury in 1885, which today is known as the Authorized King James Bible, are used.
No other books, neither the Apocrypha, which was included in the original King James
Bible, nor the 22 books mentioned or quoted in the King James Bible, are considered
inspired.

The Bible View:

There was no specific list or accounting of all the books that made up the Bible
until the commission of the first Bible by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century
AD. The books that make up the Authorized King James Bible were chosen by men, not
divine forces. The language of the King James Bible is obscure and limited.

Human history has allowed precious few ancient religious writings to survive the
onslaught of the more aggressive and powerful religious forces, which seek only to gain
territory and wealth. Genocide and cultural eradication always go hand in hand with
missionary zeal. In many cases every trace of the conquered society's religious writings,
practices, icons, and even buildings were destroyed, in the name of conversion from
worship of gods considered evil, and religious customs labeled as heresies. What
generally results from past crusades is the conqueror's religion replacing or
predominantly blending with the conquered culture's former religious practice, making
the its religion almost unrecognizable. Christianity falls into the latter category, having
been the victim of the Roman Empire, under the Emperor Constantine, who blended the
Christian Church with the institutionalized "pagan" practices of Rome and eliminated any
semblance of either the Jewish religious influence or the first church Jesus established
during his ministry.

The First Reformation

After solidifying his position to gain complete control of the western portion of the
empire in 312, the Emperor Constantine instituted the Edict of Milan, a "Magna Carta of
religious liberty," which eventually changed the Empire’s religion and put Christianity on
an equal footing with paganism. Almost overnight the position of the Christian Church
was reversed from persecuted to legal and accepted. Constantine began to rely on the
church for support, and it on him for protection. The Church and the Empire formed an
alliance, which remains to this day. Very rapidly, the laws and policies of the Empire and
the doctrine of the Church became one with Constantine as the interpreter of both law
and policy. This was accomplished by eliminating hundreds of books thought to be
against "Church" doctrine and watering down what remained by blending Christian
beliefs and practice with long established Roman sanctioned pagan worship.
Constantine believed that the Church and the State should be as close as possible.
Constantine tolerated pagan practices, keeping pagan gods on coins and retaining his
pagan high priest title "Pontifex Maximus" in order to maintain popularity with his
former subjects. In 330 he began an assault on paganism but used a clever method of
persuasion to force people to follow the laws by combining pagan worship with
Christianity. He made December 25th, the birthday of the pagan Unconquered Sun god,
the official holiday now celebrated as the birthday of Jesus. He also replaced the weekly
day of worship by making rest on Saturday unlawful and forcing the new religion to
honor the first, not the seventh day, as a day of rest. As a way of defining his concept of
the new universal religion he simply classified everything "Jewish" to be an abomination.
Considering almost every aspect of the Bible is "Jewish" by association, every doctrinal
biblical principle was changed or eliminated. After 337 Constantine increased his purging
of the more obvious aspects of paganism.
Through a series of Universal Councils, he and his successors completely altered
doctrine without regard to biblical edict, set up a church hierarchy of his own design, and
established a set of beliefs and practices, which are the basis for all mainstream Bible-
based churches. The separation of the Protestants and the Roman Church caused a
physical split but the beliefs and practices established by Constantine remained almost
identical. Very little has changed since the 4th century Councils changed the face of
Christianity. An effective practice instituted was the purging of any book in the formerly
accepted biblical works, over 80% of the total, that church leaders felt did not fit within
their new concept of Christianity. The doctrines and practices remaining in the surviving
books were effectively eradicated by simply changing them by replacing clear scripture
with Church-sanctioned doctrine.

Forbidden Not Lost

Constantine began what was to become a centuries long effort to eliminate any book
in the original Bible that was considered unacceptable to the new doctrine of the church.
At that time, it is believed there were up to 600 books, which comprised the work we
now know as the Bible. Through a series of decisions made by the early church
leadership, all but 80 of those books, known as the King James Translation of 1611, were
purged from the work, with a further reduction by the Protestant Reformation bringing
the number to 66 in the "Authorized" King James Bible.
What we now have in Bible-based religion, whether labeled as "Catholic", or
Protesting Catholic, known as “Protestant", is unrecognizable form either the Hebrew
religion, now known as the Jewish religion, or the church established at Jerusalem by the
Apostles and disciples of Jesus. The practices of this first church are not practiced by any
major religion and they are almost unknown, despite being clearly outlined in the existing
New Testament. In its place are doctrines and practices first established in the first "true"
Reformation of Christianity begun by Constantine.
There is much controversy over how many books the Bible should actually contain but
considering the depth and scope of those few works remaining in the "accepted" Bible,
we see but a fragment of incredible wisdom and history. A study of the Lost Books of the
Bible is incomplete without a clear understanding that this is not a matter of simple loss,
but a campaign by the Roman Catholic Church to purge books variously classified as
heretical, dangerous, and corruptive. To the public they are “lost”; to the Church they are
“forbidden”. Although the exact number of books purged is known only to the Church,
and not shared knowledge, some can be determined by the discovery of their presence in
the church prior to the reformation resulting in what became known as the Roman
"Universal" Church.
 One of the more obvious forms of discovery comes from the surviving books
themselves, which sight works not present in the existing collection. Also many do not
know that the Apocryphal books were actually included in the King James translation
until they were officially purged by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885. Other
writings also connect many books to the first church. Whatever the number before the
purge by the formation of Catholicism by Constantine; even one lost book is a great loss
indeed.
We claim no expertise concerning the authenticity of any the lost books and leave this
judgment to the reader. We do, however, strongly reject the self-proclaimed authority of
any dogmatically motivated and church-controlled mortals who think themselves
qualified to make such decisions. One of the most logical and realistic concepts in the
Bible is the caution that one should prove all things. We believe that proving the veracity
of a given thing is an individual responsibility, which must not, and should not be the
duty of those who think themselves better judges.