Bibliology | Preservation of Scripture, Pt. 4 (03/04/2001) | NOTE: Poor audio quality

Preservation Promises of the Word of God

Okay, let's read one in Psalm 1, a couple of verses there in Psalm 12, verses 6 and 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 and forever. Let's use that to review the seven things that we've learned that the Bible says about the Word of God with regard to the fact that it's preserved.

We know that it's inspired. We know that the original autographs, as the scholars call them, are inspired. They were God-breathed. As Paul wrote the original letter to the Romans, it was breathed into his heart by Almighty God.

And he penned exactly what the eternal Word was supposed to say. And that's what inspiration is all about. We believe in verbal plenary inspiration, which means that we believe that every word is important and that all of the words are inspired or God-breathed.

Now, we have to take that, though, from the original autographs to the Bible sitting on our laps this morning because we don't have the originals anymore. I don't know if any scholar worldwide in any generation has ever said they thought they had a copy of the original.

And so what we have is we have God's preserved Word. And so that's what we've been studying the last Sunday or so, is the preservation of the Word of God. Now, there are seven things that the Bible promises, and this is reviewed, so I'll just give you the points and the verses.

You can look them up later if you missed this. First, it says that the Word of God is secure eternally. That's in Psalm 119, verse 152. It starts from the beginning of time and goes out beyond that into a place where there is no time, and that's where it came from.

And then it comes down through time, and it's perfectly protected and goes out the other end of time into eternity future. So it is eternally secure. It is an eternal book. Secondly, it is a book that has been settled by the counsel of God.

You find that also in the same verse. Thirdly, it is a book that has been established or established. In other words, it is in the best state. It's not a book that has to be continually fixed or a book that has to be corrected.

It's in the best state, and it's preserved in the best state. You find that in Psalm 119, verse 89. And you have to do some word studies to find these colors and meanings of these words in the Hebrew.

The fourth thing is, it's not only secure, it's not only settled, it's not only established, but it is sure. Matthew 24, 35, Jesus said, My words shall not pass away. He didn't say, My word. He said, My words.

It shows that the individual words are important. They are also pure. You find that in 1 Peter 1, 23. It's the incorruptible Word of God. And then it's also protected and also preserved. And you find that in the verses we just read, Psalm 12, verse 6 and 7.

So seven promises from God about His Word. He not only gave it to us as His inspired perfect Word of God, but He has preserved it throughout time and on into eternity. Now think about Amos 8 and verse 12.

Why This Study Matters in the Last Days

I want us to think about this this morning as we go into new material. I've debated in my heart about whether or not to present all of this material, or how much of this material to present to you, or how much detail to go in, or rather just kind of show you the forest, or whether we want to get in and examine some of the trees and so forth.

And I've prayed about it, and what I believe is that we need to go into detail. I don't think a lot of you are going to like that. I think it's kind of like taking medicine that your mom gives you. You'd rather eat the mashed potatoes, and maybe even the steak.

You might rather have the meat. But the fact is, sometimes we need some medicine. And the reason I say that I believe we need this, not so much that we need it right now, this minute, not so much that we might need it next week, but in Amos chapter 8 and verse 12, it says, and they shall, that's future tense obviously, they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and they shall not find it.

That's why I think we need to be exposed to this material. We could easily come into a day in our lifetime, even before the rapture, when the governments of this world begin to form a one-world government, and they would like also to form a one-world religion.

That religion will not be one that will accept your beliefs. It will not accept the fundamentalist Bible-believing Christian beliefs. Nor will it accept the preserved word of God. This one-world government and one-world religion will use something that they call a Bible, but it will have many, many, quote, corrections in it.

How many of you have ever read much out of the Jehovah's Witnesses? Have you read some of the key verses like John 1, 1, and some of those interesting verses? Yes, and it also calls him, rather than God, it calls him Agod.

The word is Agod, rather than God. And so that is, and yet that is one of the modern translations of the Bible, and there are others that have equally disturbing, quote, corrections. My fear is not so much this.

Now, there would be those who would tell you, well, any of the versions you find today will have 90 of God's Word in it. Well, that's true. And they'll tell you that every Bible you pick up will have all of the major doctrines in there where you can find them.

That is equally true. And so I would rather have someone read a living Bible than read no Bible at all. So I am not one of these divisive King James-only people, never have been. In fact, there have been times, one thing that's led to most of my study in this was years ago.

We had one of those kind of people in the church, and he was running off some of our new Christians because they didn't have the right Bible. That's not a Bible. Well, they didn't know how to handle that.

So that's not what this is all about. But my fear and my belief is this, that when we come into the last days, that the spirit of Antichrist will be in the world, and the Antichrist himself will appear on the scene.

I believe he'll quote some scriptures. Would you tend to think that might be the case? He always has. And I think he would love to be able to pick up a Bible and read a verse right out of it and then prove a point.

And in my view, the most likely verses he will choose will be those that have been corrected. So I'm not worried about the 90%. I know that every Bible that any of us have has all the doctrines in it, has maybe 95%.

Actually, 90 is a pretty good figure according to my studies. It's about 90 of the Word of God there. But my fear is what is going to be, who is it that wants to use the perversions? Who is it that wants to use the part that has been changed?

And it makes sense to me that that's going to be for coming days. I believe this prophecy in Amos 8 .12 is a direct word about what we're talking about today. They're going to go sea to sea, north to east, seeking to and fro for the Word of God and they will not be able to find it.

Do you think that means there won't be some books that are found that are still sold in the bookstores called the Bible? Well, it could mean that there won't be. But it may not mean that. It may mean there are Bibles everywhere.

It's just you don't know which one's right anymore. You don't know which one where there is a difference. You don't know which one is the authoritative Bible. And so that's why I believe this study is very, very important.

And even though some of it will seem like medicine in the sense that it's not a sermon that you're going to go out this week and apply. I know that. I know that it's not. But it may well be a sermon that you or your children or your grandchildren apply someday off out there when people are telling them verses that they know in their heart are not really what God said.

So for that reason, I feel compelled to go on with this material. And forgive me if it seems that we're really not only looking at the trees but the leaves and the roots and the bark and getting a little bit too detailed.

I'll try not to do too much of that. But I do want to get through the material. We basically have covered the seven promises in detail. Two different sermons we've preached on the seven promises. And I did that to set the foundation because without the foundation of the knowledge that God has in the word, as you begin to look at manuscript evidence, you can be frightened by it.

You can be fearful because it is not an exact science. One of the problems that men have had, and even I believe good men, they've tried to approach this in the way that you would scientifically study manuscript evidence for something like homework or some of Shakespeare's works.

Or some of the Greek works where you would use scientific literary methods to piece together what the original really said. And they've tried to use those methods with the Bible and they don't work. And we'll demonstrate why they don't work.

And they're not entirely honest as you read the books. In fact, neither side of the issue is entirely honest, I'd have to say. The King James only people have written many, many books. I love their books because the kernel of truth they have, I believe, is the direction I go.

But they're not always entirely truthful because they don't always give all the information. And they might lead you to believe that there are manuscripts out there where they all identically match and they support the King James Bible and what we call the received text 100%.

And I'm going to tell you this morning, it is not a clear science. It cannot be approached totally scientifically. You know what's good about that? It's that God's the one who made it that way. Don't you think if God had wanted to give us the originals and preserve them on the earth, he could have done so?

Don't you think if he had wanted there to be a clear, an absolutely clear, where every word is identical in a line all the way back to the originals that you can trace that? There's not a scholar alive that's ever been able to do that yet.

So, where does it bring us? It brings us back to faith. It brings us back to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It brings us to the very fact that the very men that do these studies, the only ones that are going to go down the right trail are the ones that are led by the Holy Spirit.

And the troubling thing is as we read history, we see about half of these scholars are lost people. They're very good scientists, very good literary scientists. But they're lost. So, how do they even come close to knowing which line of manuscripts to follow?

So, these are some of the problems we'll come into. This morning what I want to do is ask the question, what evidence do we have? As we trace the manuscripts, what evidence do we have? And we're predominantly going to speak of the New Testament.

Because the Old Testament Masoretic Text is a whole different story. Fortunately, it's an easier thing to discuss. It's a more clear-cut thing. The old Jewish priestly line that was given to guard the Old Testament Word of God, there are stories about them where those scribes were so brilliant and so amazing and so dedicated to their work that they could take the Old Testament, stick a pin through it, and tell you the Word from the beginning.

And things like that. They could tell you what the exact middle letter in the entire Old Testament was supposed to be. By the time they got there, they finished the back of it, what's the right one, and you made a mistake.

They burned the whole book. It may have taken ten years to copy. So, the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament is not so much in question as the New Testament. So, we're predominantly discussing the manuscript evidence for the New Testament in this study.

The Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament

So, what evidence do we have? First of all, let's just go through and kind of look at the forest and see what some of the parts of it are. We won't get too detailed today. First of all, we have what are called the unseals, and that's spelled U-N-C-I-A-L-S.

And basically what that means is these are old copies of the New Testament or portions of it that were in all caps. When they copied them, they copied them in all capital letters. The interesting thing about the unseals is that they are some of the oldest existing manuscripts that we have.

And there are about 140 copies of all or part of the New Testament. There are about 70 that are fairly new that you won't find in a lot of the books you would study. We studied back in the 80s when I really studied this in detail.

So, I'm really having to start over in some ways and restudy because there's so much new information. There are approximately 70 new ones that a man named Alan, A-L-A-N-D, has discussed in some of his books.

And these date generally from the 4th to the 10th century. Some date a little bit earlier than that. They're usually listed by the scholars by the letters A through Z, although J, R, and Z are not used.

But they use the capital letters. Some of them that are fragments are given numbers like 046, 047, 048, etc. It goes as high as 0250. These are ways of listing unsealed fragments. And what's interesting is most of the fragments agree with the received text.

Now, when we talk about the received text, that's the Greek manuscript that the English King James Version comes from, but it's also Martin Luther's German Bible. There's a very good Spanish version that comes from the received text, although I believe the one I'm thinking of probably actually is not a true translation because it came from the English to the Spanish.

But it does have as a basis the received text. The received text is what for at least 1 ,850 years was considered to be the genuine line of manuscripts for the New Testament by the Protestant Church. And only when Westcott and Ford and a few men right before them began to do their studies, we call that critical analysis of manuscripts where they used the scientific methods and so forth, only then was this brought into question.

But what's interesting is that most of the fragments agree with the received text, so you don't find them often cited in some of the more modern works. In fact, a lot of times when the most ancient manuscripts agree with the received text that your King James Bible came from, they are not mentioned in the works of some of these scholars because they were in fact prejudiced against the received text.

Many of them were. In fact, most of them were. Now, most of the new versions that you have, in fact I could comfortably say all of the new versions that you have with the possible exception of the New King James, comes from a different line of Greek manuscripts than the received text.

And it differs with the received text in literally thousands of places. And so that's where we have to start to take a look. But let me continue with the discussion of the essentials. First of all, I want to name a couple of the important ones for you.

The first one, and this is in order of importance probably, is called the Vaticanus, and that's spelled V-A-T-I-C-A-N-U-S. V-A-T-I-C-A-N-U-S. They give it the letter capital B. So as you study and read some of these books, when you see B mentioned, it's the Vaticanus.

It is the predominant ancient manuscript that is used by Westcott and Hort, two gentlemen who I don't believe were saved at all, Roman Catholics, and they were the unsaved variety. They were merry worshippers.

They were into witchcraft and so forth. But they are the gentlemen who founded the modern Greek text that all of the new versions in English are translated from, interestingly enough. And their baby in their entire studies is the Vaticanus.

That is their favorite text. They call it the neutral text. It's not neutral, but that's what they called it, and so they use their own definitions. And we'll talk more about this, obviously, in the future, but I want you to be familiar with this word.

It was found in the Vatican library in the year 1481. So for 1481 years, it was hidden in a dusty corner of the Vatican library, and that's where it was found. No Protestant scholar has ever seen it. All that they have been allowed to examine are photographs of it.

Only Catholics have ever seen this book, and yet all of the modern versions that we're throwing around in our churches today come predominantly from this manuscript. And even where a majority of text would say another word or another phrase, and even where more ancient fragments would say a different word or phrase that would match the King James Version, they throw that out and go to the Vaticanus and choose that word almost all the time.

Now this, and so that's one of the reasons that it was preserved as long as it was. It was not on the cheaper paper or papyrus that we read about, but it was on this nice cheap skin. And the interesting thing about it, these are some of the quotes that the modern scholars say about this document, and these are direct quotes.

The most perfect document. You'll see this in some of your footnotes in your own, even if you have a King James Bible. Sometimes Mr. Schofield or somebody who studies Bibles, they'll say the most ancient manuscripts do not contain this.

They're referring to primarily the Vaticanus. We're going to demonstrate throughout this study that it's not even true anymore. In fact, there have been some papyrus finds lately that are far more ancient than the Vaticanus that match the King James Version, which is impossible according to Westcott and Hort's theory.

So their theory has pretty much been buried, but it's just like so many other things. If you went to high school right now and you studied chemistry, the textbooks have information that we already know are not right.

Is that true, Bill? If you studied chemistry, especially probably physics, the same way. They're teaching you information that was probably prevalent. Today, if you study manuscript evidence, or if you just read the footnotes mainly in your Bibles, the ones that say the most ancient manuscripts don't say this, that is at least 20-year-old information.

So don't let it make you doubt what your Bible says for one minute. Now, remarkably pure is another quote about the Vaticanus. Remarkably pure. Now keep these in mind. I'm going to show you some facts about it in just a moment.

Beautifully preserved. It's on the belly. It's just beautifully preserved. Let me ask you this. If it were your Bible, let me show you my Bible. Your Bible, and it looks like this. Or you regrettably had to finally go buy the new one, and you don't like the new one because it doesn't have all your marks in it.

Right? So wouldn't you agree with me that it makes sense that, born again, Bible-believing, soul-winning, testifying Christians wear out their Bibles? Now there are some who stop at this logic, but to me it just seems so obvious that it's true.

Why is it that this Vaticanus was not even used by the Roman Catholics for 1481 years? Do you suppose it's because the earlier scholars had rejected it as incorrect? And it was in beautiful condition.

Next quote is, it's highly legible. Highly legible. Hadn't been thumbed around very much for all those years. Yet, with this most perfect, remarkably pure, beautifully preserved, highly legible document that is behind all of our modern translations, the following are missing from this perfect Bellium document.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, all the way through Genesis 46, verse 28. The entire introduction of sin and the fall of man is missing. Did you know if you can destroy that, that you don't need Jesus? You certainly don't need the blood of Christ.

All you need is Him as an example to be a good person. From this most perfect, remarkably pure, beautifully preserved, highly legible book, the entire of Psalm 106 through the book of Psalm 138. I'm talking about chapters.

That many of the chapters are missing. The heart of the Bible, the middle of the Bible is gone. All of the pastoral epistles, which is 1st and 2nd Timothy in particular, that teaches about deacons, that teaches about how to run a church.

Pastoral epistles means it teaches the pastor how the church ought to operate. They're not in this. Isn't that interesting because here we have a Roman Catholic document. They don't run the church the way Protestants do.

They don't run the church by the Bible. They have their own hierarchy and their own tradition that the church runs by. So this is missing. Hebrews chapter 9, verse 15 to the end of Hebrews is missing.

Guess what that portion of Hebrews talks about? The precious blood of Jesus who has removed the sin of the world. The precious blood of Jesus, which is the perfect sacrifice, the fact that he is the high priest who has entered in how many times?

Once. And yet, all of the Catholic sacraments speak to you of the Lord's Supper and there will be heat in his body. There will be heat in the blood. It will return to the real blood and real body. And he has to die every time they keep the Lord's Supper so that you can get saved from the things you did after the last Lord's Supper because he has to die many, many times.

Hebrews chapter 6 tells us that's impossible. But Hebrews chapter 9 through 15 where it talks about Jesus, our high priest, and the beautiful blood of his offering, all of that is omitted from this perfectly pure, remarkably preserved, legible document.

It's not the kind of document that parts of it rotted, folks. These were left out of it. Why? So the very fact that the scholars who are on what I call the other camp remark about how perfect it is and will rely upon it, that very perfection to me is what speaks of the fact that it's corrupt.

Because it is so perfect, there's no reason for these passages to be missing. Now, the entire book of Revelation is missing. It does not have the book of Revelation. Westcott and Forth, Rebok, and Nestle's text, of which our modern versions come from, are all from the Vatican speech document.

No Protestant Bible scholar has ever seen it. They rely upon it. It differs from the received text that your King James Bible is translated from in 5 ,788 places at least. In the New Testament, in fact, Nestle's Greek text, that comes predominantly from the Vaticanus, differs from the received text in 36 ,191 places in the New Testament alone.

So depending on which modern version you are looking at, you're going to have between 5 ,788 changes to 36 ,000 changes in the New Testament alone, based predominantly upon this Vaticanus. Now, we're running out of time this morning.

Questions for Further Study on Inspiration, Preservation, and Counterfeits

The second most important one is called the Sinaticus. We'll get to that a little bit next time. But let me just stop right here and end this morning with these questions. Now, I do think if you go back to last time's message, where we went in detail on the scriptures behind the seven promises of God, remember those?

What I would like for you to do is a little exercise. I get more like Brother Otis every day. But as a little exercise, I'm going to ask you these questions, and I want you to try to take those verses and see if you can give me answers for these questions, or at least do it for yourselves.

The first question I would ask is this, did God author and inspire the Bible? Now, those verses don't come from the Seventh Day Study. That comes from other verses that we've studied before. We talked about inspiration.

So go back to that one and see if you can support or answer that question. Did God author and inspire the Bible? Second question, would God inspire a text in Luke? Now, these are logical questions, obviously, but I want you to support them with some of the scriptures we've already studied.

Would God inspire a text in Luke? The third question is this, if God would inspire it, would he preserve it? It's kind of the positive. If God would inspire it, would he preserve it for every generation?

Fourth question, would he preserve it through men who did not believe that he inspired it? Now, think about that one, because all the modern translations are based upon the answer to this question, one way or the other.

Would God preserve it, if we agree he preserved it, and you can show scriptures whether he did or not. If he would preserve it, would he preserve it through men who did not believe that he inspired it?

Number five, would there be any counterfeits of the preserved text circulating around the world? There's a lot of historical information about that, but I want the scripture about it. Would there be any counterfeits of the preserved text circulating around the world?

And I'll give you a little corollary question. I didn't put it in my notes, but I want you to think about it. If you find that there might be counterfeits, how early do you think you would find them? Would you have to wait until 1500?

Would you have to wait for the Roman Catholics to pervert it, say around 700, 800 AD? How far back would it go? All right. The fifth one, what kind of men would these preserved texts come from? I'm sorry, these perverted texts come from, the counterfeits.

If there are counterfeits, what kind of men would these counterfeits come from? I said it wrong. Diane, I think it's the sixth. The seventh one is this. How could you tell the difference? If there are some counterfeits, how could you tell the difference?

And I'm saying do it. Number eight, does God bear witness to a preserved text? Or must you go to seminary to find it? Okay. Let's just stop there for this morning. It gives you some food for thought, but it will get you thinking along the right lines, I believe, so that someday, if you had to do it yourself, you could bear it out.

You would begin to know the right procedure for bearing out what is the Word of God. We'll continue with this, so let's stand and have prayer together. Brother Roger, would you ask the Lord to dismiss us and bless our meal?