“For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89).

There are yet quite a number of unsettled controversies among Bible scholars as to the original text of certain passages in both Old and New Testaments. In fact, a frequent objection raised to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is that, since all the original “autographs” have been lost, we can never really be sure of any passage.

It is interesting to speculate on what happened to those manuscripts directly inspired by God and penned by Moses, John, Paul, and the others. It is strange that they all simply disappeared, with not a hint as to their history. If they had been preserved in a church or monastery somewhere, they would soon have become idolatrous objects of worship, so it is probably best they are gone.

But where did they go? The famous “ark of the covenant” similarly vanished at the time of the Babylonian invasion, and many fruitless searches have been conducted for it even in modern times. In this case, however, we do have a remarkable revelation. “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in His temple the ark of His testament” (Revelation 11:19). Evidently, the ark has been translated into heaven! We must realize that heaven is a real place in this eternal physical cosmos. Enoch and Elijah were translated there in their earthly bodies, and Christ is there in His physical resurrection body.

If, perhaps, angels somehow carried the original manuscripts of God’s word to heaven after enough copies had been made to assure its faithful transmission on Earth, placing them there in the ark, like the tablets of the law when it was still on the earth, this would surely give added meaning to our wonderful text verse: “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven!” HMM