The
Preserved Word of God
By Chris Long (clong@integrityonline18.com)
I. What Preservations Means
Is the book which we know as the Bible, truly
God's word? Has the Bible been kept pure
and complete from the time it was written until
the present day? A natural question for any
Bible-believing Christian to ask is whether
the very book which tells him of His Lord and
Savior contains the precise words which God
intended for him to have. We live in an age
which is dominated by evolutionary theory and
humanistic thought. In our present day, it
is hard to know what is actually true. Has
the Bible been passed down to us through the
centuries without error? Is it still
preserved? If you ask the typical Bible-believer
whether he believes in the Biblical doctrine of
preservation, the answer will almost certainly be
"yes." Any theologian who truly
believes the Bible will aver that the word of God
has been preserved. However, in today's
spiritually tepid, compromising environment it is
wise to get a clear definition of terms from
those who claim to hold to a particular doctrine.
What exactly do scholars mean by "preservation?"
They might mean that the Bible has been preserved
in a general sense. That the sixty-six
books we now possess are those God intended for
us to have; that the ideas and thoughts of God
have been preserved, and perhaps even that every
word of God is preserved for us -- somewhere.
Many of these same scholars will frequently make
the claim that the Bible was inspired in the
original autographs and subsequently "preserved"
to some degree, to our present day. After
all, what good is it to have a perfect, inerrant,
inspired word of God, if it has not been
preserved to the present day? What does the
Bible have to say about its own preservation?
Does God value His word enough to preserve it?
II. How much does God value His Word?
That God places supreme importance upon His
written word is abundantly clear. The Lord
has revealed this to man by His praise of His
word, and by His condemnation of those who would
tamper with it. The exaltation of God's
word is a theme which runs throughout the Bible.
In the 119th Psalm, God's servant,
David, continually exalted the Scriptures.
He wrote of his "delight" in His
testimonies, and implored the Lord to teach him
"the way of thy statutes." In the
third chapter of 2 Thessalonians, the Bible
reads: ".that the word of the Lord
may have free course, and be glorified."
God's words are to be praised, and revered.
The Lord highly esteems His word, elevating its
importance even above that of His name.
First, consider the following verse:
"If thou wilt not observe to do all the
words of this law that are written in this book,
that thou mayest fear this glorious and
fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD; Then
the LORD will make thy plagues wonderful, and the
plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of
long continuance, and sore sicknesses." (Deuteronomy
28:58-59)
God's name is glorious and fearful. The
penalty for not fearing God's name makes it
obvious that He does not take disrespect for His
name lightly. In light of the value the
LORD places on His name, consider the
following:
"I will worship toward thy holy temple,
and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness
and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy
word above all thy name." (Ps
138:2)
The Lord also informed us of His view of
His word by giving us three grave warnings to
those who would corrupt the Scriptures. God
warned against adding to His word:
"Every word of God is pure: he is a
shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words, lest he
reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." (Proverbs
30:5-6)
Note that He also warned would-be correctors
that they were not to subtract from His
word.
"Ye shall not add unto the word
which I command you, neither shall ye diminish
ought from it, that ye may keep the
commandments of the LORD your God which I command
you." (Deuteronomy 4:2)
God gave us the words that He wanted us to
have, and we dare not alter them. If we are
to keep His commandments, we certainly need to
know precisely what they are. Hence,
the Lord provided ample warnings to us, so that
we might not be tempted to change His words.
Lest anyone be confused about the utter
foolishness of tampering with the holy word of
God, the Lord provided a fearsome final reminder
in the last verses of His inspired word:
"For I testify unto every man that
heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If
any man shall add unto these things, God shall
add unto him the plagues that are written in this
book: And if any man shall take away from the
words of the book of this prophecy, God shall
take away his part out of the book of life, and
out of the holy city, and from the things which
are written in this book." (Rev. 22:18-19)
How can anyone read the preceding without
recognizing the immense importance the LORD has
placed on His word? God promised to
severely punish anyone who adds to His word.
Worse, He promised to expunge those who would
take away from His words, from the book of life!
In this light, should we not highly value the
Holy word of the living God?
III. Satan's strategies against preservation
God in His omniscience knew that His word
would be attacked. Since the day Satan was
cast from Heaven, he has been working furiously
to sabotage the word of God. Satan's very
first attack as recorded in Genesis was on
God's spoken word.
"Now the serpent was more subtil than any
beast of the field which the LORD God had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said,
Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"
(Genesis 3:1)
The serpent's technique was not to engage in a
full-fledged frontal attack of outright denial,
but rather to undermine the absolute
authority of God's word. Satan is subtle.
This is precisely what modernists and atheists
are doing when they spiritualize Scripture.
"Did God really say that? How do you
know?" Most Christians have heard such
things many times. These attacks on God's
revelation most certainly did not end in the
Garden of Eden. They have continued
unabated. In the New Testament, we see another
example of Satan's tactics; that of changing God's
word. Immediately following Jesus' forty-day
fast, Satan engaged him in a dialogue. Each
time Satan tried to tempt Jesus Christ, the Lord
answered him by quoting His own words.
The Lord Jesus Christ said:
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4)
In the next two verses Satan quoted Scripture
to Jesus, boldly altering His words by omitting a
key phrase.
"Then the devil taketh him up into the
holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the
temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the
Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written,
He shall give his angels charge concerning thee:
and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest
at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone."
(Matt 4:5-6)
In this example Satan omitted the phrase,
"to keep thee in all thy ways,"
demonstrating that the devil is so audacious that
he dares to subtract from God's word when face to
face with their author! This, right after
being informed that man lives by "every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."!
If Satan is so bold as to lie to God incarnate,
how much more when faced with the likes of
fallible men? Another of Satan's strategies
has been to obscure God's words by hiding them in
a morass of manuscripts and Bible versions.
He has used this approach for thousands of years,
but during the last century, it has become far
more prevalent.
As has been stated previously, the Devil
attacks the Lord's words by using one of his most
potent weapons - doubt. He didn't start off
by brazenly denying God's words, but rather by
attempting to undermine Eve's confidence in them.
Only when doubt had set in did he deny God's
words to Adam and Eve. His methods are much
the same today. The multiplicity of Bible
versions that we see today, all claiming to be
"translated from the oldest and best
manuscripts," are just another of Satan's
schemes for undermining the authority of God's
word. Satan knows that God promised to
preserve his word, so he tries to obfuscate it by
surrounding it with a dizzying number of varying
translations. This can lead to nothing but
confusion, and we know that God is not the author
of confusion. (I Corinthians 14:33) Those
who peddle modern translations will insist that their
Bible is the most accurate translation of the
Greek texts, or most closely represents the
"original autographs." They will
smugly boast of how the latest discoveries of the
"oldest" and "best"
manuscripts give their version added clarity and
credibility. They will vainly tout the
great scholars found on their translating
committees. But how are we to know who to
trust? To whom do we turn when we need to
know which Bible to rely on? Which one is
truly preserved? Perhaps it would be wise
to examine what the Lord has to say on the matter.
IV. God's strategies for preservation
The Bible has much to say on the extent and
mode of it's own preservation. The following
brief outline provides a clear overview of three
important aspects of preservation.
GOD'S REVELATION HAS BEEN PRESERVED FOR ALL
TIME.
- 1 Peter 1:23 "Being born again,
not of corruptible seed, but of
incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth
and abideth forever."
- Psalm 12:6-7 "The words of the
Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a
furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt
preserve them from this generation
forever."
- Ps. 111:7-8 "The works of his
hands are verity and judgment; all his
commandments are sure. They stand fast
for ever and ever, and are done in
truth and uprightness."
- Is. 40:8 "The grass withereth,
the flower fadeth: but the word of our
God shall stand for ever."
- Ps. 117:2 "... the truth of the
Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the
Lord."
- Ps. 119:152 "Concerning thy
testimonies, I have known of old that thou
hast founded them for ever."
- Ps 119:160 "Thy word is true
from the beginning: and every one of thy
righteous judgments endureth for ever."
Just as the doctrine of inspiration is
considered to be foundational to our
understanding of the Bible, so should be the
doctrine of preservation. They are
inextricably linked. An inspired Bible that
was not preserved would be little more than a
tainted book of history and moral lessons.
Indeed, this is exactly what the Bible represents
in the minds of the men in our day. The
Bible's authority is only as great as our
confidence in its reliability. A Bible
which was delivered to us inspired, and then was
allowed to leaven with the accumulated errors of
thousands of years, would hardly point to an all-powerful,
all-wise Creator. It would be difficult to
entrust our salvation in Jesus Christ to the very
same God who could not keep His word. In
fact, if God's word has not been perfectly
preserved as He has told us, how can we be
certain about the security of our salvation?
Thankfully, we don't need to concern ourselves
with such things, because just as God promised
us that no one could "pluck" His
believers out of His hand, He promised that He
would keep His words pure forever.
THE INDIVIDUAL WORDS HAVE BEEN PRESERVED.
- Matthew 24:35 "Heaven and
earth shall pass away, but my words
shall not pass away."
- Psalm 12:6-7 "The words
of the Lord are pure words: as silver
tried in a furnace of earth, purified
seven times. Thou shalt keep
them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve
them from this generation forever."
- 1 Peter 1:23 "Being born again,
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
by the word of God which liveth and
abideth forever."
This aspect of God's preservation of Scripture
is just as crucial as the first. So that we
could not mistake His intentions, the Lord
spelled out to what degree He would keep the
Scriptures pure. He promised us that He
would preserve even the very words.
We don't have to wonder whether God merely
preserved his thoughts, or his ideas. We
know that the very means by which we communicate
to each other - words - are crucially important
to God. As we read earlier, we live by
"every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God."
Our Savior tells us that we require not only
physical food, but spiritual food as well.
Does it seem reasonable that God would feed our souls
with anything less than the best? If every
word is important, does it not make sense that
God would preserve all of His words so
that we might nourished and strengthened?
What mother would feed her children tainted milk?
Really, it is irrelevant whether it "makes
sense" or seems reasonable. Our only
question ought to be, "What sayeth the Lord?"
The preceding verses show that God has told us
that His every word has been preserved.
HIS WORD HAS BEEN KEPT AVAILABLE TO EACH AND
EVERY GENERATION
- Psalm 33:11 "The counsel of
the Lord standeth forever, the thoughts
of his heart to all generations."
- Psalm 100:5 "For the Lord is
good; his mercy is everlasting; and his
truth endureth to all generations."
- Ps 119:89-90 "For ever, O LORD,
thy word is settled in heaven. Thy
faithfulness is unto all generations:
thou hast established the earth, and it
abideth."
- Isaiah 59:21 "As for me this
is my covenant with them, saith the Lord;
My spirit that is upon thee, and my words
which I have put in thy mouth, shall
not pass out of the thy mouth, nor out of
the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the
mouth of thy seed's seed saith the Lord,
from henceforth and forever."
God's word has been preserved for all time.
It has been preserved for every generation.
This is why the preceding verses provide such a
comfort to God's people. This element of
Bible preservation is critical. We know
that God's word has not been hidden or lost to
man, since it was first spoken and recorded in
God's written revelation. We can be assured
that we have not had to depend on the latest
discoveries of the oldest manuscripts, or on the
efforts of fallible man to uncover God's words.
God has preserved his words to all
generations, without fail!
V. What preservation is not
Those who advocate publishing new Bibles based
on the latest new academic theories or
archaeological finds have a peculiar view of the
Biblical doctrine of preservation. The
assumption appears to be that God's words have
been preserved somewhere in the morass of Greek
and Hebrew manuscripts, and that the "science"
of textual criticism is necessary to locate it.
It is almost as if God needs help! There is
nothing wrong with Bible honoring scholars
combing through ancients manuscripts, but ought
not their studies be guided with the
understanding that God has promised to preserve
His words to ALL generations? Is it
possible that some of these scholars have
forgotten God's promises, and have become a
little too enamored with their great learning?
It is these very same scholars to whom we are
entrusting the latest Bible versions.
Unfortunately, since the waning hours of the
nineteenth century there have been a growing
number of academics who favor the latest "advance"
in Biblical scholarship, commonly known as the
Critical Text. The Critical Texts puts a
great deal of weight on manuscripts which are
Alexandrian in origin. Chief of these are
the so-called Vaticanus and Sinaiticus texts.
These two texts are held to be extremely
trustworthy because of their great antiquity.
However, without even considering the content and
quality of these manuscripts, the Bible-believer
who accepts the "generational" aspect
of preservation should immediately be wary.
What does the Bible have to say about its own
preservation? Let's revisit a verse
referenced earlier:
"As for me this is my covenant with them,
saith the Lord; My spirit that is upon thee, and
my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall
not pass out of the thy mouth, nor out of the
mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy
seed's seed saith the Lord, from henceforth and
forever." (Isaiah 59:21)
In this light, it is hard to understand why
God would hide his word for hundreds of years in
an out-of-the-way monastery, or in the library of
the Vatican. Why would God, who promised to
preserve His word, hide it away for roughly 1500
hundred years? Why would the Lord use the
library of the apostate Roman Catholic Church,
responsible for the slaughter of millions of His
saints, to preserve his word? Does this
seem consistent with God's own stated methods of
preservation? Many very learned men will
claim that God chose to preserve His words in
precisely the manner outlined above. Their
claim appears to be that God intentionally hid
His words for hundreds of years in the "sands
of Egypt." This seems inconsistent
with His promises elsewhere in His word. In
the book of Deuteronomy, God promised not
to hide his words from the nation of Israel so
that they would be able to carry out his
commandments. He promised them that they
would have access to His word:
"For this commandment which I command
thee this day, it is not hidden from thee,
neither is it far off. It is not
in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go
up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that
we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it
beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who
shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto
us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the
word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in
thy heart, that thou mayest do it." (Deuteronomy
30:11-14)
Throughout the Scriptures, God has used
particular means to keep and convey His
revelation. In the time of the Old
Testament, the Hebrew scribes were entrusted with
the task. They used many elaborate methods
to ensure that the copies of Scriptures were
absolutely uncorrupted. Even with all their
care, some erroneous copies might have been made.
However, we know God preserved His words in spite
of fallible men! In the New Testament, the
Lord told us that He would preserve His word
through men of faith. He promised that when
the Holy Spirit came, that His believers would be
led to truth:
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come,
he will guide you into all truth: (John 16:13)
God has always used His people to keep
His word, not apostate religion!
The Biblical doctrine of preservation should
be founded on faith, not reason. "Without
faith it is impossible to please him."
Is the Lord pleased when we say that we believe
that God's precious word was preserved, and yet
the "oldest and most reliable"
manuscripts were not available to us until the
nineteenth century? Do we really believe
that His word was preserved unto ALL GENERATIONS?
Did God forget his promises? Has not the
Lord given us precedents which show that He keeps
and protects His word? When Moses threw
down the tables of God inscribed with His ten
commandments, did He wait hundreds of years
before restoring them? No! He quickly
restored and preserved His word, by creating new
tablets, identical to the first . In the
book of Jeremiah, God's inspired word was cast
into a fireplace and burned. What was God's
response? He had Baruch write down the
words of the former scroll as Jeremiah dictated
them. He even added new words! God
preserves His word! His word is available
to ALL generations. Just as we accept many
Biblical doctrines hard to understand, through
faith, so we ought to believe God when He says He
will keep His word.
VI. Is a preserved Bible worth fighting for?
In the last few decades, there has been a
growing cry against the onslaught of modern
Bibles which are trying to supplant the time-honored
word of God to the English-speaking world - the
King James Bible. Many godly men are
valiantly trying to hold back the rising tide of
apostasy and unbelief which depend, in part, on
diluting the authority of the words of God.
It is no wonder that so many are waking up to
this threat and defending what they see as an
attack on their written authority. Should
we as Christians defend ourselves and our Bible
against those who wish to undermine our authority?
Does it matter whether some of those who
undermine God's words are doing so with good
intent? No! We should defend His word
regardless of who opposes us. Who is the
Lord more pleased with? The common man who
unflinchingly trusts in his King James Bible and
the text upon which it is based; who hangs his
salvation, the welfare of his family; even his entire
existence on each and every word revealed to
us by the Lord? Or is He more pleased with the
highly-educated man who turns to scholarship when
he must know what God really said? Who has
the greater faith? Why is it that the one
who upholds the King James Bible, and the
underlying Received Text as THE preserved word of
God is frowned upon? Why is it that so many
will loudly proclaim the importance of the
doctrine of the blood atonement, the deity of
Christ, even godly music, and yet will call any
man who claims that the King James Version of the
Bible should be preferred above all others ,
"unscripturally divisive?" Why?
God told us in no uncertain terms that his word
is to be revered. In the book of Galatians,
we see just one of the Lord's many warnings
concerning those who would try to pervert the
doctrines in His word.
"But though we, or an angel from heaven,
preach any other gospel unto you than that which
we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."
(Gal 1:8)
Those are mighty strong words! The Lord
does not take perversion of His doctrines lightly!
Especially one so fundamental as the gospel of
Jesus Christ - the Living Word. Why
should it be any different when the doctrine
which is being minimized or undermined is the
doctrine of the preservation of God's written
Word? Everything that we know of God
and His Son has been revealed to man by his written
word! It is crucial that we know that we
have God's preserved words. God's very last
warning to us in the last chapter of the
Revelation reads:
"For I testify unto every man that
heareth the words of the prophecy of this book,
If any man shall add unto these things, God
shall add unto him the plagues that are written
in this book: And if any man shall take
away from the words of the book of this prophecy,
God shall take away his part out of the book
of life, and out of the holy city, and from the
things which are written in this book."
(Rev 22:18-19)
God gave a similarly sobering warning to those
who would tamper with His words. Why
would anyone object to those who believe that God's
words were perfectly preserved, and ought not be
changed? Just as we defend the doctrine of
inspiration, should we not also defend its
companion doctrine of preservation? Why
would any Bible-believing Christian object to a
militant, yet charitable defense of the King
James Bible, and it's underlying Greek texts?
Why are there so few who are willing to take a
stand on this issue? God's word says that
His revelation to man was preserved for all time,
to each and every generation, and in every single
word. God said that He preserved His word,
and that settles it. May the Lord Jesus
Christ give us the faith to believe it.
"Thy word is true from the
beginning: and every one of thy righteous
judgments endureth for ever." Ps. 119:160
"For ever, O Lord, thy
word is settled in heaven." Ps. 119:89
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