Updated and enlarged December 2, 2004 (first published as “Preservation Is Missing in Standard Works on Textual Criticism,” March 30, 1999) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –

The doctrine of biblical preservation lies at the very heart of the Bible text-version debate. The Bible cannot be treated as any other book. It is God’s supernaturally given Word. God gave it and God has promised to preserve it. The underlying thesis, though, of modern textual criticism is that the Bible became corrupted through the centuries and it is the task of textual criticism to restore it in its original purity. Prominent textual critic Constantine Tischendorf looked upon his task as “the struggle to regain the original form of the New Testament” (Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, p. 126). His error, like that of the other founders of textual criticism, was in failing to recognize God’s promise of preservation. Had he believed the Bible’s own testimony, he would have known by faith that the New Testament did not need to be recovered because it was not lost! Had he believed in divine preservation, he would not have conceived the strange notion that the pure Scriptures would be found in a waste basket in a remote monastery or in the dark recesses of the Vatican library.

I have studied many books describing modern textual criticism. MOST OF THEM DO NOT EVEN MENTION DIVINE PRESERVATION! The following are some of the books on textual criticism in my library. These are some of the most influential works on textual criticism from the past 100 years:

The New Testament in the Original Greek (Introduction) by Westcott and Hort (1881)
A History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament by Marvin Vincent (1899)
The Text of the New Testament by Kirsopp Lake (1900, 1949)
Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament by Eberhard Nestle (1901)
The Canon and Text of the New Testament by Casper Rene Gregory (1907)
History of the New Testament Criticism by F.C. Conybeare (1910)
The Text and Canon of the New Testament by Alexander Souter (1912)
An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament by A.T. Robertson (1925)
The Text of the Greek Bible by F.G. Kenyon (1936, 1975)
New Testament Manuscript Studies by Merrill Parvis and Allen Wikgren (1950)
The Text of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger (1968)
The Text of the New Testament by Kurt and Barbara Aland (1981)

These are all standard works on textual criticism and they focus strictly upon man and his puny efforts concerning the Bible. They treat the Bible basically as just another book that has passed through time. In fact, that is one of the principles of modern textual criticism. Karl Lachmann, one of the founders of modern textual criticism, was a professor of Classical and German Philology in Berlin. Lachmann was not a theologian, but a philologist “who had distinguished himself by critical editions of Latin and German classics” (Marvin Vincent, A History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 1899, p. 110). Lachmann applied to the New Testament the same rules that he used in editing texts of the Greek classics. Like Richard Bentley before him, Lachmann was not studying the history of the New Testament as the supernaturally-inspired and divinely preserved Word of God but merely as another book. Westcott and Hort following in this train. They said: “The principles of criticism explained in the foregoing section hold good for all ancient texts preserved in a plurality of documents. In dealing with the text of the New Testament no new principle whatever is needed or legitimate” (Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, vol. 2, Introduction and Appendix, 1881).

Even if one or two of the influential names in modern textual criticism do happen to mention preservation in passing, they certainly do not found their textual theories upon the principle that the Bible is supernaturally given and preserved.

Another of the foundational principles of modern textual criticism is that the purest text of the New Testament was discarded in the 4th century and replaced with a text that was the product of a Recension or editing process that occurred in Syria. This was Hort’s Lucian Recension theory. He claimed that Lucian or some other ecclesiastical leader in the 4th century oversaw an official editing process that created a new text that was a conflation of two other existing texts. This new conflated text, which was a corruption of the apostolic text, became the standard or traditional text of the New Testament and was used in some form by most churches for the next 1,500 years, until the correct text was “recovered” through modern textual criticism in the 19th century. Though many textual critics have rejected Hort’s Lucian Recension, they still hold to some type of Recension theory, claiming that the Recension was not necessarily official or localized but that it was a general process that occur

Regardless of how the Recension theory is defined, it remains a foundational theory of modern textual criticism and it flies in the face of divine preservation. If the pure text of the New Testament was discarded and largely unused by the churches for three-fourths of church history, hidden away in such places as the pope’s library and a strange monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, that is a very bizarre type of preservation!

FUNDAMENTAL BAPTISTS ALSO DENYING AND QUESTIONING BIBLICAL PRESERVATION

Fundamentalists and independent Baptists are also beginning to deny or question biblical preservation. A couple of years ago a student left Heritage Baptist University in Greenwood, Indiana, and attended another school in Winona Lake, Indiana. Within months, he wrote he wrote a paper as a seminary project, mentioning Heritage and his Greek teacher there, John Krinke, as taking a fideistic position rather than a “reasonable, rational position” (or words to that effect). Fideistic means faith! He is saying that it is wrong to approach the Bible strictly from a position of faith.

That is what the theological modernist has been saying for two centuries. We must not merely accept what the Bible says about itself, he claims; we must submit the Bible’s testimony to the “facts” of science and history, etc.

Textual criticism teaches the same thing in principle. It tells us that we must not base our view of the Bible merely upon the promises of preservation; we must also look at “the facts of history.”

Yet God says “without faith it is impossible to please him” and “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” The modernist thinks that the “facts of science” conflict with the Bible record, but in reality it is his biased interpretation of the facts that creates the conflict. The textual critic, likewise, thinks that the facts of history conflict with a Scripture-taught received text view, but in reality it is his biased reading of history that creates the conflict.

Consider three examples of fundamental Baptist professors who are denying and questioning Bible preservation.

W. EDWARD GLENNY, former professor at Central Baptist Seminary, Minneapolis, Minnesota, denied preservation in an article that appeared in The Bible Version Debate: The Perspective of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (1997). The article is titled “The Preservation of Scripture.” Consider the following plain statements:

“The doctrine of the preservation of Scripture was first included in a church creed in 1647. As we have argued above IT IS NOT A DOCTRINE THAT IS EXPLICITLY TAUGHT IN SCRIPTURE, nor is it the belief that God has perfectly and miraculously preserved every word of the original autographs in one manuscript or text--type. It is a belief that God has providentially preserved His Word in and through all the extant manuscripts, versions and other copies of Scripture. … not only does no verse in Scripture explain how God will preserve His Word, but THERE IS NO STATEMENT IN SCRIPTURE FROM WHICH ONE CAN ESTABLISH THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRESERVATION OF THE TEXT OF SCRIPTURE. … it is also obvious from the evidence of history that GOD HAS NOT MIRACULOUSLY AND PERFECTLY PRESERVED HIS WORD IN ANY ONE MANUSCRIPT OR GROUP OF MANUSCRIPTS, OR IN ALL THE MANUSCRIPTS” (Glenny, The Bible Version Debate, pp. 93,95,99).

Glenny has stated his position plainly. He boldly denies that the Bible promises the preservation of Scripture. He explains away every passage that has traditionally been cited in support of preservation, including Ps. 12:7; 105:8; 119:89, 152, 160; Isa. 40:8; Matt. 5:18; and Matt. 24:35. At the same time, he audaciously claims “a belief that God has providentially preserved His Word in and through all the extant manuscripts.” This is an impossible position. There can be no “belief” without a word from God. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom. 10:17; see also Hebrews 11). If God has not explicitly promised to keep His word, we cannot have any faith in the matter whatsoever. In that case, the fathers of modern textual criticism were correct in treating the Bible like any other book and applying their same theories of criticism to it as they would to the works of Homer or any other non-inspired writing.

Another example is SAMUEL SCHNAITER, who is on the Bible faculty at Bob Jones University. His 1980 Ph.D. dissertation was titled “The Relevancy of Textual Criticism to the Modern English Version Controversy for Fundamentalists.” Consider an excerpt:

“With regard to preservation, however, no Scripture explicitly declares anything of this sort of guidance to apply to the manuscript copyists as far as the precise wording of the text is concerned. Some have deduced such supernatural guidance from Scripture. They note passages that promise God’s Word shall never perish or be lost. However, such promises of preservation in view of the wording variations must apply only to the message of God’s Word, not its precise wording” (Schnaiter, Relevancy of Textual Criticism, 1980).

Schnaiter makes two bold claims: (1) He asserts that the Bible nowhere explicitly promises divine verbal preservation of the Scriptures. We reject this claim entirely, as we can read the Bible for ourselves and we know that it does make explicit promises of preservation. (2) Schnaiter asserts that if there has been divine preservation of the Scriptures (and he does not affirm plainly that he believes such preservation has occurred), it has not been of the actual words God gave to holy men of old but only of the general MESSAGE. Schnaiter believes in verbal inspiration of “the original manuscripts” but he does not believe that those words have been carefully preserved for us today.

The authors of the ancient confessions of faith would strongly disagree with this modern fundamentalist professor. Consider:

“The Old Testament in Hebrew . . . and the New Testament in Greek . . . being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1648).

This same blessed statement on preservation was affirmed by Baptists in the London Confession of 1677 and the Philadelphia of 1742. Men of God in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries believed in divine preservation AS IT APPLIED TO THE SCRIPTURES THEY POSSESSED IN THE MASORETIC HEBREW AND THE GREEK RECEIVED TEXT. Those scholarly fundamentalists today who are following textual criticism are abandoning the faith of their fathers, yet they mock and belittle the fundamentalists who are standing in the old paths in this issue as it was defined in the ancient confessions.

Another example of this is JAMES PRICE, a professor at Tennessee Temple University. Dr. Price worked on the Old Testament portion of the New King James Bible, but he does not believe the Received Text is the preserved Word of God. The publishers of the New King James Bible implied in their advertisements that they revered the King James Bible and its Received Text and thus aimed to continue its legacy, but the men who did the translation actually believe the KJV is a weak, corrupt translation and they are committed to the critical Greek text. In an e-mail to me dated April 30, 1996, Dr. Price said: “I am not a TR advocate. … I am not at war with the conservative modern versions.” In a more recent e-mail, Dr. Price stated that the Bible nowhere explicitly teaches that God will preserve the Scriptures.

“One may infer the doctrine of preservation from statements in the Bible, but the explicit term ‘preserve’ (or its derivatives) is never used in the KJV of the written word of God” (Price, e-mail, Dec. 20, 2000).

Whether or not the term “preserve” is in the Bible has no meaning for this debate. The question is, “Does the Bible teach that God will preserve the Scriptures?” When Price was challenged for stating that God did not promise to preserve the Scriptures, he replied, “I know the passages that infer preservation, and I believe the doctrine. I just don’t think that the Bible explicitly states how God preserved His word.” He is therefore not as bold as Glenny or Schnaiter, but he does most definitely cast doubt upon preservation by his claim that the Bible NOWHERE explicitly states or promises preservation.

If Price’s view is correct and preservation is only implied or hinted at, how can we believe it is true? He says there are inferences. Are those inferences authoritative so that a doctrine can be built on them? If not, they hold no meaning from a doctrinal perspective. If the “inferences” are clear enough to build a doctrine on, then what is Price getting at? Either God has promised to preserve the Scripture, or He has not. What is this strange, muddled, middle-of-the-road position? In fact, it is the attempt by a fundamentalist to hold to the Bible with one hand and modern textual criticism with the other. Dr. Price wants to believe in divine preservation in some manner while at the same time holding to the textual critic’s position that no witness to careful preservation of the text is evident in the “record.” These are contradictory positions and they cannot be held together for long. I predict that many of Price’s seminary students will be more consistent and will reject

When the New Evangelicals began associating with the modernists in the late 1940s, it took only ONE DECADE for New Evangelicals to be infiltrated by that same modernism and to adopt historical critical theories. Harold Lindsell, one of the founding fathers of New Evangelicalism, admitted this --

“I must regretfully conclude that the term evangelical has been so debased that it has lost its usefulness. ... Forty years ago the term evangelical represented those who were theologically orthodox and who held to biblical inerrancy as one of the distinctives. ... WITHIN A DECADE OR SO NEOEVANGELICALISM . . . WAS BEING ASSAULTED FROM WITHIN BY INCREASING SKEPTICISM WITH REGARD TO BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY OR INERRANCY” (Harold Lindsell, The Bible in the Balance, 1979, p. 319)

It is not surprising to see the more scholarly elements of the fundamental Baptist movement questioning preservation, because many of them are sitting at the feet of the textual critics mentioned above. Books by Bruce Metzger and Kurt Aland are readily available in the bookstores and classrooms of schools such as Bob Jones University, Tennessee Temple University, Central Baptist Seminary, and Detroit Baptist Seminary. Every one of the editors of the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament (Metzger, Aland, Black, Wikgren, Martini, Karavidopoulos) are proponents of the modernistic historical critical approach to the Bible, yet many fundamentalist seminaries have adopted this New Testament and the tainted, unbelieving theories underlying it.

It does not surprise me that Glenny, Price, and others who have adopted modern textual criticism are beginning to approach the Bible with the same naturalistic attitude as the fathers of this “science falsely so called.” Strangely, they are spending more time pointing out alleged errors in the Bible, claiming there are errors in all Bibles, and rebuking men who do not believe the KJV contains error than in defending the Bible from its enemies. I say strangely, because this is indeed a strange endeavor for men who allegedly believe in an infallible Bible. In fact, it is infallible to them only in theory. The Bible warns that evil communications corrupt good manners (1 Cor. 15:33), and this is exactly what has happened to Fundamentalists who are sitting at the feet of the textual critics. (Of course, they will not admit that they follow the textual critics, as they profess to be independent thinkers; but their views on Bible preservation sound suspiciously the same.)

CONTRAST THE FAITH OF KJV/ RECEIVED TEXT DEFENDERS

In great contrast to these works on modern textual criticism are the writings of defenders of the Received or Traditional Text. These men treat the Bible as God’s infallible Word and believe God has guarded the transmission of the Bible according to His EXPLICIT promises, and they make this faith a central part of their approach to the Bible text. These include Frederick Nolan, Solomon Malan, John William Burgon, Edward Miller, Herman Hoskier, Robert Lewis Dabney, Edward F. Hills, Terrance Brown, Jay Green, and Donald Waite. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with these men in every detail, one encounters in their writings an entirely different attitude toward the Bible. It is an attitude of reverence and faith that is missing from the books defending modern textual criticism and the modern Bible versions. As I began researching this subject in the early 1980s, the lack of trembling reverence toward the Bible and the lack of faith in divine preservation on the part of textual critics was one of the

“Hear the word of the LORD, YE THAT TREMBLE AT HIS WORD…” (Isaiah 66:5).

THE EXTENT OF PRESERVATION

The bottom line is that the same Bible that claims to be infallibly inspired also claims to be infallibly preserved. There is a supernatural aspect to the Bible on every hand. My faith in this is not based on common sense (though it is sensible to believe that if God gave infallible Scripture He would preserve it). My faith in this matter is based on the promises of a God that cannot lie.

Jack Moorman, in his excellent manual Forever Settled, states the matter plainly: “A far better principle is given in Rom. 14:23—’Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.’ If I cannot by faith take the Bible in my hand and say this is the preserved Word of God, then it is sin. If we do not approach the study of how we got our Bible from the standpoint of faith, then it is sin. If I cannot believe what God says about the preservation of His Word, then I cannot believe what He says about its inspiration either--all is sin.” (Moorman’s booklet Modern Versions the Dark Secret contains an excellent overview of the doctrine of preservation and the errors of the New International Version.)

Faith stands on the Word of God. Let us see exactly what the Bible says about this matter:

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 for ever.”

This passage summarizes the doctrine of Bible preservation. It promises that the pure words (not just thoughts or general teachings) of God will be kept for ever. Some do not agree that Psalm 12 should be included in a list of verses on Bible preservation. While the King James Version plainly allows verse 7 to refer to the preservation of God’s words, the modern versions translate verse 7 in such a way that it cannot possibly apply to Bible preservation. The NIV is representative: “And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. O Lord, you will keep us safe and protect us from such people forever.” The NIV translation of Psalm 12:7 can only refer to the preservation of people.

In a report on the history of the translation and interpretation of Psalm 12:6,7, Peter Van Kleeck, Senior Pastor of the Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, shows that the testimony is divided. Some interpreters have viewed Psalm 12:7 as applying to Bible preservation; others have viewed it as applying to the preservation of God’s people; others have viewed it as having a double application. Thus, Van Kleeck speaks of “the genius of ambiguity.” His report was completed in the process of pursuing an M.A.R. at Calvin Theological Seminary. I have published lengthy excerpts from this in the article “Psalm 12:7 and Bible Preservation” at the Way of Life web site under the Bible Version section of the End Times Apostasy Database. This is also available in the Fundamental Baptist CD-ROM Library.

Doug Kutilek exemplifies those among fundamental Baptists who deny that Psalm 12:7 is a promise of Bible preservation. In the early 1980s, Evangelist Robert L. Sumner printed Kutilek’s article on this in The Biblical Evangelist (at the time, Kutilek was a teacher at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri). After reading Kutilek’s article I wrote to Dr. Bruce Lackey and received the following excellent comments in February 1984:

I submit the following reasons for my not being moved away from my conviction that Psalm 12:6-7 does teach the preservation of Scripture.

1. His [Kutilek’s] admission that ‘there are occasional exceptions to the principle of agreement in the Hebrew Bible (see Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar 135 o)’ immediately shows that the preservation-interpretation is not automatically incorrect, grammatically, but is definitely possible. A somewhat similar situation exists in John 15:6, where ‘them’ is neuter plural in Greek, and ‘they are burned’ is a singular verb. Dana and Mantey, in A Manual Grammar of The Greek New Testament, on page 165, give the following statement: ‘A seeming exception to the above principle of syntax is the fact that a neuter plural subject regularly takes a singular verb (John 9:3).’ Therefore, it is unwise to prove or disprove a position using the argument of gender and number. Anyone who studies languages knows that there are exceptions.

2. The argument listing various verses in Psalms where ‘keep’ and ‘preserve’ speak of people is not very weighty. Psalm 12:6-7 might be the only place in the whole book which uses these words to refer to things [other than people], but that would not disqualify the situation. Psalm 110:4 is the only verse in the Old Testament that teaches the Melchisedical priesthood of the Lord Jesus, but Hebrews 4:7 does not hesitate to make much of it!

3. The argument from context does not hold water, either. He says, ‘The basic thrust of the message of Psalm 12 is clear: the psalmist bemoans the decimation of the upright and the growing strength of the wicked.’ Thus, he tries to show that verse 7, teaching preservation, would not fit. If this be true, neither would verse 6. Rather, the context is favorable to the preservation interpretation. God’s promise to save the poor and needy is given in verse 5; verses 6 and 7 are injected to show that His promise of verse 5 will never be broken.

4. In the last paragraph, he [Kutilek] says that those who apply these verses ‘to any doctrine of Bible preservation’ are guilty of handling ‘the Word of God deceitfully and dishonestly, something unworthy of any child of God.’ But earlier, he admitted that such illustrious interpreters as John Wesley, Henry Martyn, G. Campbell Morgan, and Kidner, agreed with the preservation interpretation. Sounds like a mouse attacking elephants! They might have been wrong on some points, but they were certainly not deceitful and dishonest.

Some other verses which teach that God would preserve His Words for all generations are Psalm 33:11; 119:152,160; Isa. 59:21; Mat. 24:35; and I Pet. 1:25. Also, a comparison of Mat. 28:20 and John 14:23 shows that Christ’s promise of His continual presence with us is fulfilled as we keep His words; thus His words must be available to believers ‘alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen’ (Letter from Bruce Lackey, Feb. 1984).

Bruce Lackey, who died in 1988, was the Dean of the Bible School at Tennessee Temple when I attended there in the 1970s. He was a man of God and a true scholar. He studied his Greek New Testament every day. He was a diligent and careful researcher; but he was also a Bible believer. His doctrine was always based on the Scriptures, not on human logic. He was not afraid of rejecting popular scholarly positions if they were contrary to the Word of God.

A recent issue of the Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary Journal contained an article on “The Preservation of Scripture” by Academic Dean William Combs. While gently rejecting the view of some fundamental Baptists, such as the aforementioned Edward Glenny (former professor at Central Baptist Seminary), who say the Bible nowhere promises the preservation of Scripture, Combs himself doesn’t go much farther, claiming that the Bible does not tell us in what manner or how purely the Scriptures will be preserved. It is apparent that the man has spent far too much time reading the unbelieving works of modern textual critics, such as Bruce Metzger. If a child of God follows Combs’ advice about the Bible, he would be forced to master many ancient languages as well as the “science” of textual criticism in order to sift through the entire documentary evidence in an attempt to somehow reconstruct the “original autographs.” This is a task that 99.9% of born again Christians are not equipped to do, even assuming that modern textual criticism is a

Dr. Thomas Stouse, Emmanuel Baptist Theological Seminary (296 New Britain Ave., Newington, CT 06111), has produced an excellent critique of Combs’ article. Following is the section of Dr. Strouse’s critique that refutes Combs’ position on Psalm 12:6,7 --

“Combs assures the reader that the original words are pure and inerrant words, but does not know how purely they are preserved (p. 15). Of course the retort is that if the pure originals are not preserved purely, then how can they be preserved at all. Is one to understand that God has promised to preserve His pure originals impurely? Combs does concede that these verses ‘might be a general promise of preservation.’ Next, Combs argues that the grammar of vv. 6-7 is against the word preservation interpretation. Instead, the gender differences between the masculine plural pronominal suffix ‘them’ and its antecedent feminine plural ‘words’ forces one to look for another antecedent which is masculine plural (i.e., ‘poor’ and ‘needy’ in v. 5).

“However two important grammatical points overturn his argument. First, the rule of proximity requires ‘words’ to be the natural, contextual antecedent for ‘them.’ Second, it is not uncommon, especially in the Psalter, for feminine plural noun synonyms for the ‘words’ of the Lord to be the antecedent for masculine plural pronouns/pronominal suffixes, which seem to ‘masculinize’ the verbal extension of the patriarchal God of the Old Testament. Several examples of this supposed gender difficulty occur in Psm. 119. In verse 111, the feminine plural ‘testimonies’ is the antecedent for the masculine plural pronoun ‘they.’ Again, in three passages the feminine plural synonyms for ‘words’ have masculine plural pronominal suffixes (vv. 129, 152, 167). These examples include Psm. 119:152 (‘Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou has founded them for ever’), which Combs affirms to be ‘a fairly direct promise of preservation’ of the written form of the Torah (p. 18). As the KJV/TR bibliologists have argued all along, both the context and the grammar (proximity rule and accepted gender discordance) of Psm. 12:6-7 demand the teaching of the preservation of the Lord’s pure words for every generation.

“Next, Combs quotes the NIV rendering ‘you will keep us safe and protect us…’ to argue for the preservation of saints interpretation. However, the NIV’s translation of ‘us’ for ‘them’ is based on inferior Hebrew texts influenced by Greek. Furthermore, the context of the whole Psalm argues forcefully for the preservation of the words of God which are the antidote for the words of men in every generation.

“Combs and his ilk do not have a convincing grammatical, biblical or theological argument for the ‘preservation of saints’ interpretation in Psm. 12:6-7. The proper, contextual exegesis of this passage teaches that the Lord has preserved the pure originals intact for every generation” (Dr. Thomas Strouse, “Article Review,” April 2001).

Don’t allow the textual critics to rob you of the blessed promise of preservation in Psalm 12:7.

PSALM 33:11 -- “The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.”

Psalm 33:11 says God’s thoughts would not be lost but rather would stand to all generations, and we know from passages such as 1 Corinthians 2:12-13 that these divine thoughts have been expressed through divinely-chosen words. “Which things also we speak, NOT IN THE WORDS which man’s wisdom teacheth, BUT WHICH the Holy Ghost teacheth...” The promise in Psalm 33, therefore, is also a promise of the verbal preservation of Scripture.

Psalm 100:5 -- “For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”
Psalm 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.”
Psalm 117:2 -- “For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.”

These verses promise that the truth of God will stand forever and endure to all generations. This could mean that sound doctrine in general will be preserved, as those who take a naturalistic view of preservation contend, but comparing Scripture with Scripture we know that this cannot be the true interpretation. We know that God’s truth is not expressed to man merely in general doctrinal terms, but in divinely selected words. God has not merely given man a pattern of truth; He has given the very form of truth in the Scriptures. It is this verbally inspired truth that the Old Testament is promising will be preserved. Psalm 100:5 connects Bible preservation with God’s goodness and mercy. It is because God loves man that He has given His Book. Psalm 100:5 reminds us that the same love that motivated God to inspire the Scriptures motivates Him to keep them.

PSALM 119:89 -- “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.”
PSALM 119:152 -- “Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever.”
PSALM 119:160 -- “Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.”

The combined testimony of these three Scriptures is very important, teaching that God’s Word is settled both in Heaven and on earth.

The Word of God was settled in the eternal plan of God. The Bible is a supernatural book from beginning to end. God foreknew the languages of Scripture and “worked providentially to develop the Hebrew and Greek tongues into fit vehicles for the conveyanceof His saving message.” Hence “in the writing of the Scriptures the Holy Spirit did not have to struggle, as modernists insist, with the limitations of human language” (Edward Hills, The King James Version Defended, p. 90). The Scripture, written in providentially-developed human language, is perfectly capable of imparting the “deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). God foreknew the individual words of Scripture. Each word in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek was weighed and selected in the eternal council of the Almighty. God foreknew the times. “When God designed the holy Scriptures in eternity, He had the whole sweep of human history in view. Hence the Scriptures are forever relevant” (Hills, p. 90).

When God gave the Scriptures, He intended to guard and preserve them; they are “founded forever” (v. 152). All of the demons in Satan’s army and all of the heretics of all ages and all of the unbelief of man cannot thwart even one of God’s testimonies.

Note that the Psalmist says that God’s people have always had a confidence in the divine preservation of Scripture (v. 152).

The Psalmist promises that God will preserve both His Word and His words (v. 160). The first part of the verse refers to the Word of God as a whole, whereas the second part refers to the small parts of God’s Word, the individual judgments, the books, chapters, verses, and words.

PROVERBS 30:5-6 -- “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.”

Here both the inspiration and preservation of God’s Word are in view. Verse 5 refers to the infallible verbal inspiration. Verse 6 refers to preservation by assuming that God’s words will always be available. Otherwise, how would it be possible for men to tamper with them?

Verse 6 also teaches that men are allowed certain freedom to exercise their wills and to attack God’s Word. Because of this, history holds many examples of how heretics have made changes in the Scriptures. This occurred widely in the 2nd to the 4th centuries and it is still occurring today. In recent decades skeptics have tampered with the Greek New Testament, the Hebrew Old Testament, and with the translations therefrom.

Yet in spite of man’s wicked efforts, God has jealously guarded His Word. He judges those who tamper with it (“lest he reprove thee”) and grants wisdom to His people to reject the corruptions so that eventually the pure Word of God wins out. We see this throughout the church age. Because of the widespread attacks by heretics in the 2nd to the 4th centuries, many Greek manuscripts and translations were corrupted. But as time passed, these were rejected by Christians in general and the pure Word of God won out and was found in the majority of Greek and Latin manuscripts and translations. “Thus during the 4th and 5th centuries among the Syriac-speaking Christians of the East, the Greek-speaking Christians of the Byzantine empire, and the Latin-speaking Christians of the West the same tendency was at work, namely, a God-guided trend away from the false Western and Alexandrian texts and toward the True Traditional Text” (Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th edition, p. 188; emphasis added). Thus, corrupt manuscripts such as the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus were literally put on a shelf and were not used. Yea, it is to this very factor that they owe their preservation.

In this passage, as in Psalm 12:6-7, God associates the protection and preservation of His people with that of His Word. There is an intimate connection here, because the method by which God has preserved the Scripture is its usage among the saints. Those who are begotten of the Word (1 Pet. 1:23) and live by the Word (Matt. 4:4) love and guard the Word even unto death, and this is exactly what we see in church history. For example, in Britain during the days when Rome ruled, the Scripture was preserved at great cost by the Lollards and other “dissidents” who cherished the Wycliffe Bible and later the Tyndale Bible unto death.

ISAIAH 40:8 -- “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.”

Flowers are intricate and beautiful, but they soon fade away. Not so the Word of God. While it is more intricate and beautiful than any flower, it does not wither or fade; it stands forever, for the very reason that it is God’s very Word and He is so jealous over it.

The context of Isaiah 40:8 is the coming of Christ and the establishment of His kingdom. In this context, Isaiah promises that nothing shall fail of divine prophecy; not only will the prophecies stand by being fulfilled but also they will stand by the very jots and tittles of the prophecies being preserved. We live 2,700 years after Isaiah wrote. We live down toward the end of the church age, near the time of Christ’s return. And we can testify that the Word of God still stands, that all of the inscripturated divine prophecies are perfectly intact in the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek Received New Testament and in the accurate translations thereof such as the King James Bible, and they patiently await fulfillment.

ISAIAH 55:11 -- “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

Here we are reminded that God does not merely send out His word and then leave it to man to determine what happens. He does not launch His word upon human history and stand back to see what will come of it. He is intimately involved every step of the way.

This has a direct application to the preservation of Scripture. The word that has gone forth from God’s mouth is found in the 66 books of the Old and New Testament Scriptures and in the individual words thereof.

Though God allows men to reject His word and even attack it, as heretics have done through the centuries, and though these attacks have produced corruption and spiritual confusion, it is impossible that man can either destroy or stop God’s Word.

The grand purpose of God’s word is the revelation of Jesus Christ (Lk. 24:44), the salvation of souls (Lk. 19:10), in this present age the worldwide preaching of the gospel and the establishment of strong New Testament churches (Mat. 28:18-20), and eventually the setting up of Christ’s kingdom on earth for a thousand years followed by the New Heaven and the New Earth (Rev. 20-22). All of this will be accomplished and the Scriptures that describe this plan cannot be destroyed.

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 depart out of 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 for ever.”

Isaiah adds his “amen” to the doctrine of preservation. According to Isaiah 59:21, it is the very words of God which will be preserved. Note that the preservation of God’s Word is connected with its usage among believing people. The Scriptures will be preserved by use, not by disuse.

JEREMIAH 26:2 -- “Thus saith the LORD; Stand in the court of the LORD'S house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the LORD'S house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:”

God’s instructions to the prophet Jeremiah tell us how important the WORDS of the Scripture are. God’s message to mankind is not given in general ideas but in the very words. The Scripture is verbally inspired. All of the words are important and each and every word is important.

Note how zealous God’s people are to be for each one of God’s words.

With this in mind, consider how lightly the modern version defenders dismiss thousands of words that are omitted and changed in the critical Greek text. Even if only one word were omitted or changed, that one word should be the cause of great alarm and outrage. An example is the one word “God,” which is removed from 1 Timothy 3:16.

MATTHEW 4:4 -- “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

This verse is a powerful witness to the divine preservation of Scripture. In defeating the Devil, the Lord Jesus quoted Deut. 8:3 to teach that the Word of God is part of man's necessary sustenance.

The phrase “it is written” is in the perfect tense, “meaning it has been written in the past and stands written now, preserved until the present time” (D.A. Waite). Thus Jesus taught that the Scripture is living and abiding.

MATTHEW 5:18 -- “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

The Lord Jesus was certain about the preservation of God's Word. Even the smallest details will be preserved. This can only be accomplished by God's intervention in the transmission of the Bible through the centuries.

He is particularly referring to the Old Testament Hebrew text. It is the Hebrew language that has jots and tittles. There is a great attack upon the Masoretic Hebrew text today. Its enemies exalt the Greek Septuagint over the Hebrew in many places, but Jesus' words are clear.

MATTHEW 24:35 – “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”

This is an amazing promise and it holds important doctrine about the inspiration and preservation of Scripture. Jesus promised that His words would not pass away; thus He is promising that His words will be enscripturated and preserved.

The doctrine of inspiration and preservation and intimately associated throughout Scripture. The association is not merely logical; it is scriptural.

Christ's promise applies first to the four Gospels. It teaches us that the Gospels are supernatural. The human authors did not have to fumble around in a naturalistic manner as most books on the history of the Bible presume, borrowing from one another and other documents, imperfectly and inaccurately describing things. The entire foundation of the modern field of "form criticism" of the Gospels is vain and heretical. It is vain because it is impossible at that point in history to know how the Gospels were written, and it is heretical because God's Word informs us that the writing of the Gospels was supernatural.

Christ's promise applies not only to the four Gospels but also to all of the words of the New Testament as given by the Spirit of Christ (1 Pet. 1:11). Some Bibles are "red letter editions" because they print the spoken words of Christ in the Gospels in red. Scripturally speaking, the entire Bible is "red letter"!

MATTHEW 28:18-20 – “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
1 TIMOTHY 6:13 – “That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
2 TIMOTHY 2:2 -- “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”

These passages describe the process of preservation. Evangelicals and fundamentalists who defend textual criticism claim that while the Bible contains a general promise of preservation (if not directly, at least by implication, they say), it does not describe the means of preservation. This is not true.

God preserves His Word among the churches as it is being obeyed. In the Old Testament it was the Jewish priests who preserved God’s Word. In the New Testament it is the churches that keep God’s Word as they carry out the Great Commission.

Thus the Scriptures have been preserved in the church age not by exalted scholars but by humble believers.

Jesus does not foresee that His Words will need to be recovered; rather, He describes a process of continual preservation that will continue until the end of the age. The Lord Jesus assumes that the Word of God will be available from generation to generation through the church age. Otherwise, it would not be possible for succeeding generations to teach the “all things” of the New Testament faith.

The Scriptures are not preserved by being hidden away (such as in a remote monastery in the Sinai desert or the Vatican Library) but by being used. Dr. Stewart Custer of Bob Jones University says, “God has preserved His word in the sands of Egypt” (stated during a debate in Marquette Manor Baptist Church, Chicago, 1984). He is referring to the view held by modern textual critics that the pure New Testament manuscripts were replaced in the 4th century by corrupt ones and were not “recovered” until the 19th century when the handful of Egyptian or Alexandrian manuscripts were given prominence, but this flies in the face of the Scriptures’ own testimony. “God did not preserve His Word in the sands of Egypt, or on a shelf in the Vatican library, or in a wastepaper bin in a Catholic monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. God did not preserve His Word in the ‘disusing’ but in the ‘using.’ He did not preserve the Word by it being stored away or buried, but rather throughForever Settled, 1985, p. 90).

The witness of the Latin manuscripts and other versions have significance in determining the text of Scripture, because these were even more commonly used by the churches through the Dark Ages than the Greek. This is why the Reformation editors looked to the Latin as an important secondary witness after the Greek. Thus in a few places there is more testimony to the preserved text in the Latin than the Greek (i.e., Acts 8:37; 1 John 5:7). Edward F. Hills observed, “...it was not trickery that was responsible for the inclusion of the Johannine Comma in the Textus Receptus [referring to the claim that a Greek manuscript was fabricated by Erasmus’ contemporaries to support this verse], but the usage of the Latin speaking Church.” This is the chief reason that we reject the Majority Text or Byzantine Text position that is promoted today by men such as Zane Hodges, Wilbur Pickering, and William Pierpont. We cannot ignore the Latin and concern ourselves strictly with finding a majority of the Greek.

The purest Bible manuscripts and translations have literally been used up in the process of time so that they have had to be replaced with new copies. This is why ancient manuscripts that are in mint condition such as the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus are deeply suspect. They weren’t used! The majority of ancient uncials extant are mere fragments because they were worn out and come down to us only in pieces. We see this process continuing today. Though I have only been saved 31 years, I have worn out Bibles and replaced them with new ones. Ancient manuscripts would ordinarily have worn out even more quickly than modern Bibles, because they were used not only for reading and study but also for copying.

The churches are to hold to apostolic teaching (and Scripture) in every detail and they also are to pass “the same” along from generation to generation (2 Tim. 2:2). The words “the same” describe the process of the preservation of enscripturated apostolic teaching.

God’s people and the churches are to be zealous for the details of the Scripture, the “spots” (1 Tim. 6:13-14). The laxical attitude that characterizes the textual criticism position that the omission of thousands of words is of little significance is not Scriptural.

“Faithful men” are a key to Bible preservation, because it is only such men who will care enough to guard the Word and will have the spiritual discernment necessary for the task.

God preserves His Word by His own power (Mat. 19:20). Christ explains how the preservation of Scripture can be possible in light of human frailty and the vicious and unceasing assault of the devil. It is possible because of God’s active role in preserving it, “lo, I am with you alway...” God has used men in the process of preservation, but it is God Himself who has preserved the Scripture. Modern textual critics focus almost exclusively upon man’s role in the transmission of the text, but the Bible believer traces the hand of God.

This process has continued down to the end of the church age (Mat. 28:20).

It was in operation through the Dark Ages of Rome’s rule. (The terms “Dark Ages” or “Middle Ages” generally refer to the roughly 1,000 years from the 5th century breakup of the Roman Empire by the Goths, Lombards, and others, to the Renaissance of the 15th century; the term “Dark Ages” is fitting for the entire period of the rule of Europe by the Roman Catholic Church.) This is why we know that the preserved Word of God is found in the majority of Greek and Latin manuscripts and translations thereof that were in common use among the churches during those centuries.

This process was in operation during the Protestant era when the Reformation editors and translators put the Scriptures into print. They understood that the preserved New Testament was found largely in the Greek Byzantine text that had come down to the Reformation from Antioch in the early centuries of the church age and secondarily in the Latin that was even more widely used than Greek during the Dark Ages. In a few instances, such as the Trinitarian statement of 1 John 5:7, the Word of God was preserved more in Latin and in versions. But always it was preserved in the common usage among the churches.

This process was in operation in the 19th century, when the Scripture continued to be preserved in the Bible-believing churches that resisted the tide of skepticism coming from Germany. Modern textual criticism never became widely popular in believing churches in that century.

This process is still in operation today. By the late 20th century, the tide of end time apostasy was so powerful that the corrupt critical Greek text and the translations thereof had become the majority, but Bible believing churches continue, in the midst of this apostasy, to love, preach, and defend the preserved Scripture. Most staunch fundamentalist English churches today continue to love the King James Bible.

Acts 20:29-30 -- “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”
2 Corinthians 11:3-4 -- “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.”
2 Peter 2:1-2 -- “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.”
1 John 2:18 -- “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.”
1 John 4:1-2 -- “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:”

These passages touch on the doctrine of Bible preservation in that we are informed that false teachers will infiltrate the churches with damnable heresies.

A “damnable heresy” (2 Pet. 2:1) is one that brings eternal damnation to the soul, a heresy that a saved person cannot believe. Damnable heresies pertain especially to the Person of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Gospel (2 Cor. 11:3-4).

Many will follow these heresies (2 Pet. 2:2).

This tells us that we can expect much confusion in the record of the transmission of the Bible through the centuries, that the record will contain the doctrinal corruptions introduced by heretics as well as the truth.

1 Corinthians 2:12-16 -- “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
1 John 2:27 -- “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”

These verses teach us that the Scriptures have been preserved among believers that have the Spirit.

This is how the Scriptures were both recognized (canonization) and preserved.

This is why the issue of spiritual regeneracy cannot be overlooked in regard to Bible textual editors and translators. God has used unregenerate men, as He did Cyrus in preserving His people (2 Chron. 36:22) and Balaam in preaching His Word (Num. 23:5), but that is not the ordinary way that He has worked in the preservation of Scripture. It is an extreme exception to find a Balaam preaching the pure Word of God.

These verses also teach that it is the Spirit of God Himself who preserves the Scriptures.

1 John 2:27 is in the context of the apostle’s warning about heretics and antichrists that had already infiltrated the churches of God in his day. How could the truth be preserved in the midst of such fierce demonic assaults? The answer is not found in the arm of flesh but in the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent Spirit of God that indwells true believers. Thus it is by the Spirit of God that the pure Scripture has been preserved through the dark hours of this age. Man could not keep the Scriptures. The soundest of churches are but weak and undependable flesh apart from the Spirit of God. For long periods in church history, believers have been extremely few and weak, scattered, discouraged, grasping desperately to a few scrapes of Scripture in the face of the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of apostasy and brutal inquisition. Any evangelism or Bible translation work was done in these times under conditions of extreme difficulty. Entire groups of believing Christians were wiped off of the face of the earth,

The weakness of man has not prevented the Scriptures from being preserved, for though man has a part in its preservation, the job does not lie on man’s shoulders. For “when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him” (Isaiah 59:17).

When considering the Bible text issue we must not focus on man but on God.

Matthew 11:25 -- “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.”
1 Corinthians 1:26-29 -- “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.”

These verses have a bearing on the doctrine of Bible preservation, because they tell us that the truth will be found among the ordinary Spirit-regenerated believers rather than among the scholars of this world.

Thus I am not surprised that very few scholars understand biblical truth, and I am not surprised that those who approach the Bible text-version issue on the basis of inspiration and preservation are in the extreme minority.

2 Timothy 3:13 -- “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”
Luke 18:8 -- “I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”
Matthew 7:14 -- “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
Luke 12:32 -- “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

These verses have a direct bearing on the doctrine of Bible preservation, because they teach important truths about the course of the church age.

The church age in general is characterized by increasing apostasy (2 Tim. 3:13).

The very end of the age will be characterized by a great scarcity of faith and truth (Lk. 18:8).

Truth is not in the majority in this age. Jesus said “few” find the truth (Mat. 7:14) and He called His flock “little” (Lk. 12:32). Though God preserves His Word, and as we will see in Matthew 28:20 and 2 Timothy 2:2 He preserves it among the churches, this does not mean that it will be found in the world at large or even among churches in general.

These truths relate to the issue of Bible preservation in many ways.

The preserved Scripture is often found in small pockets. This is what we see in the Dark Ages. The purest Scripture was not found in the Latin Vulgate; it was found in the Greek Byzantine text that was kept within the ever-narrowing borders of the Byzantine Empire. It was also preserved more in translations such as the Syriac Peshitta than in the Latin Vulgate. In our day, at the beginning of the 21st century, we see this truth in play as the corrupt critical Greek text and its translations have become the majority. This should not confuse a Bible believer, because Jesus taught us that we should expect the truth to be in the minority.

The record of the Bible throughout the church age will be a mixture of truth and error. The Bible is preserved in the midst of the enemy’s attacks and in spite of these attacks, not from the enemy’s attacks.

This is exactly what we see. The true apostolic churches multiplied greatly in the early centuries, but heretical and spiritually compromised churches increased even more quickly, and by the middle of the first millennium, the heretical churches out numbered sound churches and eventually persecuted and dominated them. For a thousand years sound New Testament churches were bitterly persecuted and were forced to hide and to conduct their work in great fear and uncertainty. The dominant “church” of the Dark and Middle Ages, headquartered in Rome, was filled with gross heresies such as the worship of Mary. Thus we can expect to find a lot of confusion in the record of the Bible as it passes from century to century down through the church age, and this is exactly what we see. Many manuscripts are grossly corrupt, the product of bold heretical attacks, with gross omissions such as the ending of Mark’s Gospel. Others are largely pure but contain a few corruptions that slipped in because of the difficu

A purification process occurred in the 16th century as the Scriptures came out of the Dark Ages into the era of printing and the Protestant Reformation resulted in great loss of power for the Catholic Church. At that time believers and their resources multiplied and they had a better opportunity to “dust off” the New Testament Scriptures, correcting the few impurities that had crept in on the Greek and Latin side and to print the pure Scriptures. This began an era that lasted for 400 years, and it was a divine and merciful interlude to the age-long growth of apostasy. (We are not saying that apostasy did not increase during the 16th to the 19th centuries, but we are saying that it was not allowed to dominate the sound churches as it had during the previous era.) During this era, the pure Scriptures again went to the ends of the earth, as it did during the first centuries. The Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek Received New Testament and the translations thereof had no serious competition i

In light of Bible prophecy, we could not expect for this interlude to last indefinitely (Lk. 18:8), and it did not. In the 19th century apostasy began to blossom within Protestantism in even more damnable forms than it had assumed in the Dark Ages, by way of theological Modernism and Unitarianism. In the midst of the growth of this end-times apostasy the principles of modern textual criticism were devised from naturalistic disciplines; the much-blessed Greek Received Text was despised and replaced with the Alexandrian text that had been discarded 1,500 years earlier. On the side of the English language, the King James Bible became the target of destruction and beginning with the English Revision of 1881, version after version was put forth in an attempt to dethrone it. By the end of the 20th century, the Alexandrian Greek text and the modern English versions had become dominant.

Since the end of the church age will be characterized by a great scarcity of faith and truth, we can expect to find sound Bibles and sound churches in the extreme minority as the time of Christ’s return draws nearer, and this is exactly what we find today. Europe, for example, is a bastion of apostasy, and it is no surprise that the Bible light has almost gone out in that part of the world and the only Bibles generally available are weak dynamic equivalencies based on a corrupt Greek text.

This explains why only one man trained in textual criticism at the doctorate level in the last 75 years approached the Bible text subject by faith, and that was Edward F. Hills. I am not puzzled at this fact; it is actually a fulfillment of the Word of God.

1 Peter 1:23-25 -- “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.”

This is a clear promise that the Scriptures will be preserved. They will abide forever.

The Bible is incorruptible because it is living, and it is living because of the Spirit of God who breathed it out. The Spirit of God did not breathe out the Scriptures and them abandon them. The Spirit that quickens the Scriptures preserves them. The same is true in creation. “Thou, even thou, art LORD alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee” (Neh. 9:6). The Spirit of God did not abandon the world when He completed the creation. He jealously watches over the creation to preserve it and to accomplish the Divine purpose and even more does He watch over the Scriptures.

It is crucial that the Scriptures be pure because of their nature as the sole Revelation to man and as man’s only way to Heaven. It is not so necessary that the works of man be pure, because what man writes is not a matter of heaven or hell. But the Bible is the only Book in the world that contains the truth about God, life, and eternity. It is the only genuine Gospel of man’s salvation. We must have a pure Bible! Those who are unconcerned about the thousands of serious differences between the Received Greek text and the Critical Greek text, between the Masoretic Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint, between the old Reformation translations and the modern ones, have a strange attitude toward God’s Word.

Peter associates the inspiration of the Old Testament directly to that of the New (v. 25). As the New Covenant exceeds the old one in glory (2 Cor. 3:6-11), we can expect that the God who has promised to preserve the very jots and tittles of the Old will do no less with the New.

Revelation 22:18-19 -- “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.”

Capping off our brief survey of Scripture on the doctrine of biblical preservation is the testimony of Revelation 22:18-19. In the last chapter of this book, man is given a dire warning not to tamper with its contents. Obviously, this applies directly to Revelation, but it must apply equally to the entire Book of which Revelation forms the last chapter.

If mankind is forbidden to take away from or add to the contents of a Book, it must be obvious that God intends to preserve that Book in every detail.

Note that it is the WORDS that man is forbidden to tamper with, not merely the general doctrine or teaching. “For I testify unto every man that heareth the WORDS of the prophecy of this book ... if any man shall take away from the WORDS of the book of this prophecy...” If God forbids man to tamper with any of the WORDS of the Bible, it is obvious that He intends to preserve those words so they will be available to man. Otherwise, the warning of Revelation 22:18-19 is meaningless.

We see again that men will and can tamper with the Scriptures. The promise of divine preservation is not the promise that no Old or New Testament manuscripts and translations will be corrupted. It is the promise, rather, that in the midst of the devil’s attack, God will keep His Word pure and not allow it to be hopelessly corrupted.

Summary of the Doctrine of Bible Preservation

a. The doctrines of inspiration and preservation are intimately associated in the Scripture. The association is not merely logical; it is scriptural.

b. The divine preservation of Scripture is not merely implied in the Bible; it is explicitly promised.

c. God promises to preserve the words and details of Scripture as well as its teaching.

d. As the New Covenant exceeds the old one in glory (2 Cor. 3:6-11), we can expect that the God who has promised to preserve the very jots and tittles of the Old will do no less with the New.

e. The Bible is preserved in the midst of the enemy’s attacks and in spite of these attacks, not from the enemy’s attacks. God has allowed many heresies and corruptions to enter into the biblical record.

f. Though God allows men to reject His word and even attack it, it is impossible that man can either destroy or stop God’s Word.

g. God promises to give His people wisdom to reject the corruptions so that eventually the pure Word of God wins out.

h. The method by which God preserves the Scripture is its usage among the saints. God preserves His Word among His people as it is being obeyed. In the Old Testament it was the Jewish priests who preserved God’s Word. In the New Testament it is the churches that keep God’s Word as they carry out the Great Commission.

i. Though God preserves His Word, this does not mean that it will be found in the world at large or even among churches in general. Truth is not in the majority in this age. The preserved Scripture is often found in small pockets.

j. The church age is characterized by increasing apostasy, and the record of the Bible throughout the church age is a mixture of truth and error.

k. As the end of the church age will be characterized by a great scarcity of faith and truth, we can expect to find sound Bibles and sound churches in the extreme minority as the time of Christ’s return draws nearer.

l. It is by the Spirit of God that the pure Scripture has been preserved through the dark hours of this age.

I praise God that we are not left to drift upon the unsteady seas of modern critical scholarship. Because of faith in God’s promises to preserve His Word, I can reject the new texts and Bibles and cleave confidently to the faithful Received Text-based King James Version in English and to Received Text versions in other languages. “Can the matter be so simple?” you say. Why not? My friends, God has not allowed His Book to be lost or corrupted.

See also "The Problems with Bible Preservation" (March 30, 1999, Fundamental Baptist Information Service). (For a copy of the article, see the Way of Life web site under the "Bible Version" section of the End Times Apostasy Database. http://www.wayoflife.org)