“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” (Psalm 12:6,7).
The preservation of the divinely given words of Scripture is incomparably superior to that of all other ancient writings. God has not allowed any of His words to “pass away,” for Jesus said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). They are, in fact, “for ever settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89).
Although all the original “autographs” of Moses, Paul, and the other human writers have long vanished from the earth (perhaps they have even been translated to heaven, with the ark of the covenant—note Revelation 11:19), God saw to it that dedicated Hebrew scribes and Christian scholars meticulously copied and recopied the writings through the centuries, so that we still have God’s word to guide us today. Although there are variant readings in different manuscripts, the original words are there somewhere. Very few real questions remain about any of these, so we have the original Greek and Hebrew words to a high degree of accuracy.
Furthermore, the fires of: (1) anti-Christian persecution; (2) caviling humanistic philosophies; (3) literary criticism; (4) scientific skepticism; (5) pagan pantheism; (6) cultic distortions; and (7) apathetic indifference, have again and again sought to destroy God’s word, but all have failed. Not only is it the best seller of all time, but also translated into more languages than any other writings.
No matter what forces are directed against it, it always emerges brighter and surer than ever! Even this present generation will fail in all modern attempts to defeat the holy Scriptures, for God will “preserve them from this generation for ever.” HMM
