INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
As I sit here in my office writing these words, I have just come from watching the devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina in the Southern U. S. I lived in Louisiana for some time. I pastored a church there. My daughter was born there. It is heart wrenching to view these scenes and realize that the area will never again be home for some of these people.
Some have seen the devastation up close and personal and will not be emotionally able to return to the area. Others have had their financial and physical resources ripped from them by these winds of adversity. Too many others have departed from this present life due to the havoc of the event.
The scene reminds me that there are theologians, and Bible scholars, who would allege that this same sort of event has happened to the inspired Word of God through the storms of years and of man�s mishandling of the precious Message.
These who thus argue would tell us that only they have the ability to restore what God was unable to protect. They promise us that they will do as good a job as is humanly possible to restore as closely as they can the Words which God might have given us.
I would say that this is an absurd reasoning, except that it is not absurd. It is natural man speaking at his best with a lack of faith in the Lord of Glory.
I do not want the best humanity has to offer. That cannot be a certain salve for my soul. I want the best that God has to offer. The glorious thing is, this is exactly what He wants for me as well!
What is absurd is to argue that God would have taken the time to produce His Word but then either lacked the power or inclination to preserve that Word. Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible) sums up the case with these words: �If God has not preserved His words as He said that He would (Psalm 12:5, 7), then He has done something which He has never done before. He has wasted His time!�
Gipp also notes, just a few pages earlier, �A God who would bind Himself to us so inescapably [as to inspire a written word from Himself] must love us and truly desire for us to have His words and to be sure of them.�
When Ethan, my son, was very young - probably no more than five or six years old, he decided that he would like to grow a sunflower. He called his sunflower, if memory serves correctly, �Smiley.� He began his little project with one sunflower seed in some soil in a Styrofoam cup. When the flower grew enough the be noticeably different from the weeds and grass outside, he transplanted it. He prepared a hole in the ground and inserted his small plant. He patted the soil back in around this plant with his hands. He watered the plant when the rain strayed from our area for too long. He hovered about the plant, protecting it when I mowed the lawn. He shooed away dogs and cats that he felt might hamper his plants health. He even fed his plant some fertilizer we bought for him.
His reward was a nearly seven foot tall sunflower with a �face� of about one foot across.
Why does anyone think that God would do anything less with the Words He gave to His created world?
God didn�t give His Word to the world simply because He needed something to do one afternoon. God gave His Word because we needed to hear the Message that He had for us. The words are important because without the words the Message would be unclear.
It is not enough for us to argue that only the �general message� has been preserved in the differing manuscripts. The �general message� is a thing that is subject to the interpretation of man. We need to know what it was that God said, not what some person might think He might have said.
If the Message was important enough for God to give to mankind, and to do that by inspiration, then that Word was important enough for God to preserve. He gave us that Message out of His love to the creature, us. Do we really want to argue, of God, that this love was so futile, that the Message was unimportant enough, as to be allowed to lie unprotected in the winds and rain of time and sinful mankind?
Some will, of course, argue that only the original writings were inspired. This argument is like saying that we know all about the men who built the Roman roadways because some of these roadways have survived.
We do not! I don�t know how many men worked on these roads. I don�t know if these were married men, with their wives and children in tow. I don�t know if these men who worked on these roads were overseen by harsh soldiers or resourceful foremen. I don�t know what were the thoughts and dreams of these builders.
If only the original manuscripts bore the stamp of inspiration, and these are now decayed and lost to humanity, then we do not know - of a certainty - what were the Words which God wanted for us to have. In this place I must agree with Reid (Is the Bible our Final Authority), who said, �The idea of defending the error-free status of lost autographs rings hollow.�
In understanding the beauty and grandeur of the works of Shakespear it is not important that we know we have exact copies of his plays. It is not important to know, of a certainty, that he wrote alone or with a collaborator. It is not important to know whether the writings of Shakespear were true history or simple conjecture.
But, then again, the eternal destiny of my immortal soul does not depend on the works of William Shakespear.
The same can never be said about the Word of God. Trusting the Word of God is not a game or a pastime, it is an eternally relevant necessity that the Words which were transmitted to the human writers by the inspiration of God are the very Words, Jot and Tittle, that He intended for us to receive. To receive anything else is to put our soul�s destiny in jeopardy!
It is testament to the Love and Care of God that He has preserved His Word for us unto this day. To say that this is not so is to argue that the Love and Care of God was deemed, by Him, to be more important to a people of an earlier age.
But, we might ask, �Which age? Which people?� Over many centuries, over forty men, many who not only had never met, but who did not understand that some of the others even existed, were used of God to pen His message to us.
To which of these did His Love and Care extend? Was it to Moses? Maybe Amos was the recipient of that support. David, now there was a man who must have been the one who felt the Love and Care of God as he penned so many of the Psalms. But, Moses, he never saw those Psalms. Did not Moses have the Love and Care of God upon his life? Come to think of it, I don�t really believe that even David had the exact �proof draft� as written by Moses.
And, what of the writers of the New Testament? After all, none of them ever saw an �original manuscript!�, excepting of course those inspired words of God which they wrote down. If these manuscripts of the old covenant were subject to addition, deletion, and miscopy by the scribes, as we are assured is the situation by those who only argue for an �error free original autograph,� how could these New Testament writers have had the Love and Care of God upon their own lives?
The fact is that the original autograph copies were extremely important. But, they are no more so than are faithful copies which flow from the preserving power of the Lord of the Universe. Remember that even the �original manuscripts� were mere copies of the Word of the Lord. These human authors were but penmen who wrote the Words of God even as did all the copyist�s down through the ages.
The �original manuscript� writers were true to their God, and true to their mission. But they were not a special breed of humanity. They were men such as ourselves. They may have been closer in their walk with God than are most of us. But, they were still men such as ourselves.
It was not the men which were of importance; it was the supernatural action of God upon these men as He inspired the Words, which He wanted written to the community of humanity, which bore the importance. It is not a long walk of faith to simply accept that the same Supernatural God Who inspired would be able to supernaturally preserve His Own Word through other human penmen and copyists.
Those human penmen and copyists were not important in themselves. But, the Words which they copied were certainly considered important by God.
***9 September 2005
(INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION) (Continued)
In Jeremiah 36:27-32, we are given an interesting insight into the care of God over His Message to mankind. Baruch, a scribe, had written down the words which God had given to Jeremiah. Inspiration, we are reminded, lies in the words rather than in the person who holds the pen and makes the actual inscriptions upon the parchment.
The important part, however, here is that Jehoiakim, the king at Jerusalem, burned this scroll of prophecy. God called this, �iniquity,� (verse 31) which deserved punishment.
The result, here, is that God told Jeremiah to prepare another copy of the prophecy. This carried the same weight of inspiration as did the original. But, remember, this was not the �original autograph.� It was a copy.
When we only allow for inspiration to reside upon the �original autograph,� we limit the ability and power of God in our minds. We limit His ability to maintain His Message and we limit his power to protect His Message. The fire of Jehoiakim did not destroy the Message of God. That Message was settled in Heaven.
It might be noted that (verse 32) there were even more words added to that Message. But, each of those words came from God, not from Jeremiah.
Hills, (Believing Bible Study) has noted that:
�Some would argue that God providentially guided Westcott and Hort to �restore� the pure text. The obvious question is simple: Why did God allow His true text to be hidden from the world for one thousand years, becoming more corrupted with each copyist?�
There are those who would argue that the situation with Westcott and Hort was similar to that with Jeremiah. There are two glaring dissimilarities between the two occurrences.
First of all, Jeremiah immediately restored the text to its purity. He did this under the hand of God. Whereas the Westcott and Hort group used a committee to examine many various readings of Scripture, they were not the original penmen of that Scripture. They were attempting to �restore� what they believed had been lost, through the apparent inattention of God, for well over one thousand years.
Jeremiah had immediately restored the text with his heart in faith to the God of that text. The Westcott and Hort team were, one thousand years after the fact, attempting to �restore� what they believed God had neither the inclination nor ability to preserve.
The points up the second difference between the Jeremiah restoration and the Westcott and Hort �restoration.� Jeremiah used the direct influence of the preserving power of God to effect his restoration. Westcott and Hort relied upon the best reasoning and instincts of man to change what they did not believe God had been able to preserve, in such a way that they seemed to have felt that they were the overseers of what He �probably� had �meant� to say.
Do you see the difference? Jeremiah acted from faith. Westcott and Hort acted from pride and arrogance. These two, and their committee, honestly believed that they were able to restore, to a degree, what God had allowed to fall into decay and ruin.
What kind of a God of Majesty did the revision committee of Westcott and Hort imagine in their hearts?
That same question must be asked of those who envision a �restored� word to replace the preserved Word of the Reformation in this day!
Gipp, (An Understandable History of the Bible) asks this question, �...what if God gave those precious words only to those early writers, then lost them in history, ... where few could visit them and none could trust them?�
That is a reasonable question. Can we really trust the Words of Life if they may well be simply the words of lie. These words of Scripture are either God�s Words, or they are not. If they are not then we are perfectly right to consider that they might not be the original words of the writers. But, why would we care? We don�t question the words of others from antiquity.
The reason we do not seriously question the words of others from antiquity is that they are acknowledged as the words of man. The eternal destiny of our immortal souls does not ride upon the fidelity of the message of those words.
But, if those words of Scripture are the Words of God... Do not we consider God powerful enough to keep preserved His Own Words to us? That is such an important question that the destiny of your soul rides upon the answer to it.
Not your answer. But, the true answer.
It God has not chosen, or lacked the ability, to preserve the Message which He gave to humankind it would call into question the wisdom of God. If we believe that God took the time to inspire a Word which He must have known would perish, why? What would have been His purpose? Without preservation there is no adequate reason to explain why God had thus inspired the record.
This attitude, that God either could not or did not preserve His Word is to call into question the Power of God. If He is unable to protect His Own Message from the onslaughts of men down through the ages of time, how could He possibly be powerful enough to hold the soul of any of that same race of humans down through the ageless ages of eternity?
If we do not accept that God has preserved His Word, then we call into question His goodness. What sort of grace and love is shown by a God Who would allow His revelation, which had to be important to the creature or He�d not have given it, to be seen by only a few and to deny that same revelation to others He had called, such as the reformers, and preachers of, what they believed to be, the Gospel Message for over one thousand years?
Of course, the bottom line, the important part of this discussion centers on �What saith the Scriptures.� Next week we will begin a several week discussion of the Biblical passages that pertain to the preservation of the Word.
One last question, Is there really any purpose in looking at the Scriptural passages about preservation if we do not have a preserved Word?
We do have a preserved Word. As we will see, God promised this. And, God ain�t lied, yet. ...and He never will!
***
16 September 2005
INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
When we speak of the Preserved Word of God we do not speak of the original autographs. That should be quite obvious. God preserved His Word. He did not preserve the ink and fabric of the original scrolls.
In the tenth chapter of Acts we see a record of the vision of Peter. Peter saw, in his vision, the feast of food which was considered as �unclean� to his religious background. God told Peter that this was not �unclean,� because, �What God hath cleansed, that call not thou unclean.� (Acts 8:15)
This was all part of the mechanism whereby God used Peter to open the Gospel message to the Gentiles.
Earlier in the chapter you will find that God was already working on the heart of Cornelius. God sent an angel to Cornelius to instruct him in that Gospel message. The angels told Cornelius to send for Peter for an explanation of the Gospel message.
At first glance, to the casual reader, this just fits in with the flow of the story. But, consider this point carefully. Did not the angel understand the Gospel message? Could not he have conveyed this truth of salvation to the household of Cornelius? Angels, after all, are throughout Scripture seen to be the bearers of the message of God. If this was so at the birth of Jesus, for instance, why was it not so with the eternally important transmission of the Gospel message? It seems somehow out of place that this �message bearer of God� would call for the intervention of a human as a necessary part of the giving of that message.
That just didn�t seem to be a Scriptural method of transmission for the message of God.
But, search out the Great Commission verses of the Gospels. The responsibility for the transmission of the good news that Jesus died in time so that we might live in eternity, was given to the Christian community. The individual Christians, that includes each of us, are to be the emissaries of God in this important project of spreading the Gospel message.
The message, itself, is supernatural. The energizing factor behind the transmission of the message is the Holy Spirit - again supernatural. But, the �nuts and bolts� of the furthering of that message among mankind down through the ages belongs to humans who have been cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb.
So also is the transmission of the written Word of God. The message, in Its inception and production, is supernatural. The energizing factor behind the transmission and preservation of that message is the Holy Spirit of God working His Own preserving power. That is supernatural. But, the �nuts and bolts� of the preservation and transmission of that Word has been assigned to humans who make up the various true churches of Jesus Christ.
That is one of the reasons why we find the true, preserved, Word of God honored among the Bible believing members of the Bible believing churches down through the centuries.
That is also why the false churches tend to promote a false word of God down through the centuries. These false churches may have many of the outward trappings of the true churches. These false churches will also, generally, have much added to, and left out of, the true Gospel message in such a way as to obscure that message. It is also true that the bible�s of these false churches will appear to be true, at first glance. But, a further look at these pseudo scriptures will find them to be rife with deletion and addition. Many will be led astray by the wiles of the tempter.
The bottom line, on Scriptural transmission, is quite simple: If it is of God, it is perfect and does not need change. If it is of man it will change with the tides of time.
In which place do you look to find the true Message of God? Do you look in a �restored� text that man has had to rescue from the inattention of God, or do you look in the text which has been transmitted through the ages, protected by the power of God and carried forth by the true Churches of the God of eternity?
Fuller (Counterfeit or Genuine) reminds us:
�The doctrine of preservation does not guarantee the preservation of the autographs, for they perished within a few years after their writing. Neither does it guarantee the accuracy of the copies, because errant men copied them. It does guarantee, however, that the complete contents of the Scriptures have been preserved, not in any one manuscript, but somewhere within the manuscript tradition.�
That is why we go to the Traditional Text to find the Words which God gave to mankind. That is why we reject the newer texts, although sometimes from very old manuscripts, as inferior. The preserved Word of God is that which has been available down through the ages. It was not lost for a thousand years only to be rediscovered by men who doubted the ability of God the oversee His Own Words.
Read in the fourth chapter of Matthew, Jesus is here recorded as being tempted by Satan. What was the response of Jesus to each of these temptations? In verse four Jesus says, �...It is written....� In verse seven Jesus says, �...It is written....� In verse ten Jesus says, �...it is written....�
In each temptation Jesus responded with the Scripture. Could He have done this had the Scripture been flawed? Not likely!
If the Scripture had been as haphazardly preserved as we are told today, Jesus would have said, �It is written.� The easy answer of Satan would have been, �I know that your translation says that. But, the oldest and best manuscripts say....�
In the Temptation accounts Jesus argues with Satan from the Scriptures. Had there been any mixture of error in those Scriptures, Satan would have gleefully pointed it out!
One of the principles of the Temptation account is that God has preserved His Scripture. It is not possible, if one is to be honest in his assessment of the facts, for anyone to read this account and argue that God did not choose to preserve His Scriptures. God does not change! If that was His Will in the time which Jesus walked physically upon this earth, then that is still His Will!
Although the dispensations may change, the principles of God do not change. Sin is always sin. Grace is always grace. And, preservation is always preservation. To argue that God has not chosen to preserve His Words is to argue that God has changed His principles. That is to postulate a God Who is a fickle and vacillating Being Whom we cannot trust because He might just change His mind tomorrow.
What kind of faith can be built upon this shallow and shifting foundation? Quite simply, the only sort of faith we could build upon this postulate is that of the relativistic culture of our day. �If it feels good, do it,� then becomes our doxology. One man�s faith, or lack of faith, is as good as another man�s religious tradition. Jesus might not be the only way of salvation because we just don�t know which side of the bed God got up on this day.
That is not only a foolish doctrine, that is a doctrine without a Scripture. If we don�t have a certain, preserved Scripture, then we have no Scripture. All we have left on which to base our faith is our own personal feelings and experience.
That, my friends, is not Christianity. It is humanism. That is not fundamentalism. That is religious liberalism at its height. Man, each individual man, becomes the final arbitrator of what is proper and what is not. Again, this is not Biblical Christianity. This is religious anarchy.
We have seen a two-sided, but combined, change brought about by the lack of faith in an established Scripture. This has affected our society as well as our religious view. Our society had been founded upon Biblio centric values. When the underpinning of truth in a revealed and certain Scripture was swept away with the rationalism of the oldest and best revisions, our cultural base was set for a free fall.
On the religious side of the issue, we have witnessed a great weakening of the faith of the fathers. We have great ministries which center on survey�s of what man wants rather than on what God has commanded. The fires of the church cook-outs have replaced the fire of the Holy Ghost upon the hearts and minds of men and women.
When not consigned to the scrap heap of political activism, the church is viewed as a social club. Our purpose as churches is described to us as a social institution, responsible for civic charity. We have forgotten our mission to build up the saved and win the lost. We have done so because we have lost our faith in the settled Word of God.
On the social side, our view of the Scripture as a document which has changed over time, has seeped into the culture at large. The old concept of right and wrong, good and bad, is now seen as oppressive and outmoded. �Right and wrong,� we are told - and we seem to all too often agree with the assessment! - �Is dependant upon the situation. What might be right for you may be wrong for someone else.� The only constant, it seems, is that each person be allowed to do what he desires.
In truth, the bigger voting block has sway and the individual, in our individualistic society, is forced into a herd mentality of the diversity of individualism - as long as they all conform to the relativistic morality.
If you don�t believe that this is true, try preaching Bible morality. Words like, �bigot,� �sexist,� homophobia,� and �reactionary,� will be used to stone your moral values as though you were Stephen before the religious rulers.
This issue of the preservation of Scripture is not an academic discipline. It is the basis of our entire faith in this life and hope of heaven in the next.
I promised verses about preservation this week but I�ve pretty well run out of time. I have looked at one passage and what it has to say about the principle of preservation. Next week, I promise - Lord willing, to begin with a look at some of the verses which deal with preservation.
***
23 September 2005
INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
We�ve spent quite a bit of time in the past few weeks talking about the theory and reasonableness of the doctrine of the preservation of the Scripture. That can be a good thing. But, like the car commercial running on T. V. right now, we�ve left the most important part out. �What saith the Scriptures?�
No matter how reasonable a doctrine may seem to be, if it is not backed by Scripture it is �the doctrine of devils.� (see I Timothy 4:1)
Before I begin to look at the Scripture, I would like to say that if the Scripture does, indeed - as I have said, teach a doctrine of the preservation of the Scripture, then those who postulate that God has somehow lost control of - or has just refused to preserve those Scriptures, are teaching the doctrines of devils. It doesn�t matter how many �Rev.�s,� or �Professor�s� are before their names, or how many �Ph.D.�s,� �D.D.�s,� or even �Fiddle D.D.�s� come after their name, if they teach a doctrine that is not in accordance with the Word of God, then they are teaching the doctrines of devils.
There may be no maliciousness in the intent of their teaching. They may even be trying to honor God, as they understand Him to be, in their pronouncements. But, the fact remains that when they disagree with the Word of God they are teaching the doctrine of devils.
The same goes for any of us, in any of our religious pronouncements, when we stray from the Word of God!
The first verse I want to look at is really an entire chapter. Psalm 12, is our first focus.
�1. Help; LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. 2. They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. 3. The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: 4. Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? 5. For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. 6. The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. 8. The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.�
It seems to me rather clear exactly what this passage is talking about. Verse six says, �The words of the LORD...,� are certain things. Verse seven continues, with no interruption between the two verses, �Thou shalt keep them...�
To be completely honest, most of the commentaries I consulted will ascribe these verses (6 & 7) to refer to the people. I just can�t see this. It does violence to the clear words of Scripture. Although the nation to whom the prophecy was given does still exist, it is His Words - not the Godly persons of that day - which have abided, �...from this generation for ever.�
At the very least, this has to be a secondary application of this prophecy. I believe that the sequence of the words and phrases make this the primary application. If, as verse one plainly says, �...the godly man ceaseth...,� then if God had prophesied that the people would abide, He has prophesied that they would abide in error.
If, as the passage plainly implies, the Words of God, are promised to endure, they will endure under the protection of God.
I would like you to notice what the New International Version has done to verse seven: �O LORD, you will keep us safe and protect us from such people forever.� Compare this with, �Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation.� �Them� has been changed to �us.� This is the only way which this verse can be made to say what it has not said.
When you hear the old canard that the newer versions, from different base texts!, do not make any doctrinal changes, remember this verse.
The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible defines the word �Keep� as:
�...to hedge about (as with thorns), i.e. guard; gen. to protect, attend to, etc.: - beware, be circumspect, take heed (to self), keep (-er, self), mark, look narrowly, observe, preserve, regard, reserve, save (self,) sure (that lay) wait (for), watch (-man).�
All of these definitions give a picture of someone who has concern for that which he is guarding. None of these definitions would give us a picture of a God Who had inspired His Word and then sat back to see what might happen to It.
The word �keep,� in regards to the Words of God in Psalm 12 means that God would not willingly allow His Words to be lost to mankind for one thousand years, or for one single second! To say that these Words needed to be restored, at any point in history, is to argue, then, that man somehow wrestled them from the Hand of God.
That, is a doctrine of devils.
Again, the Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible defines the word �preserve� as:
�...to guard, in a good sense (to protect, maintain, obey, etc.) Or a bad one (to conceal, etc.); besieged, hidden thing, Keep (-er, -ing), monument, observe, preserve (-r), subtle watcher (-man).�
I think it is safe to dispense with the definitions �bad sense.�
The obvious conclusion is that God preserved His Word; He protected His Word; He maintained His Word. He even �obeyed� His Word in the sense that He projected a fidelity to the words which allowed men down through the ages to access faithful copies and discover the Message which He gave to humanity.
This will have to be our stopping place for this week. I want to spend some time next week looking at Psalm 119:89.
Remember that we revere the Bible because it is the preserved Word of God. If that Bible be not preserved, then we have no knowledge of God, sin, salvation, or the purpose of life upon this earth. We, in such a case are left to our own intellect and devices to attempt to stand in the spiritual sense. We couldn�t even know, with any certainty, what (or if!) the spiritual might be in reality.
Our search for meaning, and for God, would then - of necessity - be centered upon an occult journey.
But, praise to the Lord of Glory, God has not left us to our own, and by extension Satan�s, devices in our spiritual journeys. God has given us an inspired, and preserved Word with which to inquire about that which we have need to know.
***
30 September 2005
INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
This week we will continue to look at Scriptural verses which teach the doctrine of the Preservation of the Scripture.
Today we will look at just one verse from the longest chapter in the Bible. Verse eighty-nine, of Psalm one-hundred-nineteen, says, �For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.�
There are those among us who would argue that this verse has no bearing upon the situation of the Scripture as it pertains to human history. They will say, �Of course God has preserved His Word in Heaven. But, it was lost among sinful mankind until pious persons like Westcott and Hort were able to reconstruct what He said.�
I see a couple of problems here. First, even Westcott and Hort did not purport to have reconstructed what God had said. They only claimed to be able to be closer to what the original writings might have said.
The basis of the study of Hort and Westcott, Nestle�, and all the rest of the Biblical reconstructionists, begins not in faith, but in doubt. That doubt is at the very foundation of their scholarship. They begin with the premise that God has not been able, or willing, to preserve His Word to mankind.
This mindset evidences a very low opinion of both God and His Word. It postulates a core belief that the words of God were not really very important. It postulates that the arbitrator of the Word of God is not the Power of God; it is the intellect of man. It is a picture of man deciding what he believes to have been the message of God.
In this situation the culture of the day is more important than the teaching of God. In this situation the belief system of man is more important than the Words of God. In this situation the fidelity of man is more important than the power of God. In this situation Satan is able to influence the very message of God, in the minds and pens of mortal mankind, into his own teaching.
To those who would argue with this assessment, remember that these are not �pious� men who are trusting God. These are not �men of faith.� These redactors are men who begin with the premise that God did not, or could not, protect His message. At their core they see the message as unimportant and the power of God as limited.
Can any good thing, to paraphrase Nathaniel in John 1:46, ever come out of unbelief and a lack of trust?
The second problem I have with that mindset is the contention that the Word of God would be held in Heaven and lost on earth. That the Word of God is settled in heaven is beyond question. But, how do we know that this is so? Is it not because the Bible tells us this is so? If we are convinced that the Word was not preserved unto this day, how do we know that this is true? How do we know that anything else the Scripture has to say is true if God has not preserved His Message to man?
Hebrews 11:1 tells us: �Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.�
In a very real sense, there is no faith in Heaven as we understand faith here on physical earth. In Heaven we will see the Savior. In Heaven we will see the fulfilled promises of God. It is on earth that we need to exercise faith.
It is also on earth that we have the most need to have a preserved Word of God. In Heaven is the abode of God. On earth we trust in that which we have not seen. We have this trust based on the Message that God has given to us. If that Word were only preserved in Heaven, we would have ripped from our hearts that which we trust upon to find peace in Heaven.
I don�t need a road map to get home from the grocery store I go to every week. I do need a map to go to a place where I have never been. Out in Arizona is a small town called �Oatman, Arizona.� I know it exists. Some of my ancestors founded the town. Some day I hope to travel there. But, I will need a map to be able to find the place. I know, only generally, where it is. If I just headed West to Arizona I might not be able to find the town. But, if I first find it on a map, I can follow the marked route to find the destination.
General Revelation has placed within our mortal hearts the truth of the place called �Heaven.� We know that it exits. But if we had to wait until we got there to find a road map... Well, we might not be able to make the trip. The preserved Scripture, which we have on this earth, is the map which God has preserved for us to find the way to make that trip.
From our human standpoint it is more important that the Word of God be preserved here, on this earth of history, than that it be preserved only in Heaven. The God of Love would not allow His Message of Love to be kept just out of our reach in the library of Heaven.
Finally, the Word of God was not preserved among sinful mankind only. The repositories in which He Word was transmitted from generation to generation were among His faithful churches of history. Yes, sinful man did corrupt some copies of the Word. It is from these that we find those variations which have been shoe-horned into the true record in the modern versions. It is this traditional text, God honored for hundreds of years, which has been shunted aside in the mind and teaching of scholars who would rather follow worldly advice than God honored principle.
The Criswell Study Bible tells us, rightly, that, �This verse avows the immutability of God�s word; it shall stand forever...� This is correct. Forever does not have gaps where God decided that maybe He would just let the Word slip away for a while. God is eternal. His Word is a Living Word that is eternal in the same sense. God exists, and works upon this earth, during this time of physical history. The prophecies of Scripture prove this true. So, also, does His Word. Again, the fulfilled prophecies of that Scripture prove this is true.
Spurgeon said it well (Spurgeon�s Devotional Bible), �Other things are fleeting and changeable, thy promise is fixed and sure; and this is our soul�s stay in time of trouble. What should we do if this promise could fail?� What, indeed! Without the immutability (unchangeableness) of the Scripture, we have nothing upon which to base our faith. Even the entrance of the Holy Spirit into our lives to guide us is based upon our obedience to this Scripture. Our obedience to this Scripture is based upon our trust that It is true. If the Scripture is changeable, It is not true! It might have been in the past, or in the future. But, not in both - and all - time spans can It be true! Simple mathematics: If the Bible was true, and changed, It is not now true. If It is now true, after change, then It was not true in the past.
Speaking of Special Revelation (that of the Scripture) as opposed to General Revelation (that of nature), the Concordia Self-Study Bible notes:
�Here God�s word by which he created, maintains, and governs all things ... Stands firm in the heavens. The secure order of the word, by which He upholds and governs all things, is enduring and trustworthy... And that is the large truth that confirms the godly man�s confidence in the trustworthiness of God�s word...�
The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible defines �settled� as:
�...a prim. root; to station, in various applications (lit. or fig.); - appointed, deputy, erect, establish, X Huzzah (by mistake for prop. name), lay, officer, pillar, present, rear up, set (over, up), settle, sharpen, stablish, (make to) stand (-ing, still up, upright), best state.�
Notice those applications. The Word of God is something that He has set up, constructed if you will. By inspiration God has built a habitation for His Message to mankind. If Satan were to assail a construction of God, do you believe that God would call out for mankind to come and save His construction? Does God really need our help? Would God have allowed His edifice of Love to humanity to be torn down by the terrorist attack of Satan? NO! For God to have cared enough about His Message to man, to have inspired that Message, means that God considered that Message to contain vital information for the creature.
For God to have sent His Son into human history, as a sacrifice in the place of the creature, means that He has a love for mankind. He would not have allowed His special creation of Love, His Word, to fall into disrepair when that Message was so desperately needed to make effectual use of the sacrifice of His Own Son. To do otherwise would have been to be untrue to His Love and His Son.
God has promised that His Word would stand �forever.� Again, the Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible defines �forever� as:
�...concealed, i.e. the vanishing point; gen. time out of mind (past or fut.), i.e. (Practically) eternity; freq. adv. (espec. with prep. pref.) alway (-s), ancient (time), any more, continuance, eternal (for [n-]) ever (-lasting, -more, of old), lasting, long (time), (of) old (time), perpetual, at any time, (beginning of the) world (+ without end).�
In other words, forever means just what the English speaker would believe that it would mean. �Forever.�
We�ve all heard someone say, �What part of, �No,� did you not understand?� Well, what part of, �Forever,� did those who argue for a lost, and then restored (mostly) Scripture not understand?
If this verse means anything, it means that we do not have a Scripture which was lost to mankind for one thousand years and then, mostly, restored by men who lacked faith in the power of God.
Just remember, when the margins of your copies of the Bible say that �the oldest and best manuscripts do not agree,� that means that those �oldest and best� are wrong. If they disagree with the preserved word then those spurious words have not been �forever.�