The Preservation Of Truth

3. The Preservation of Truth

Introduction

Are there words in the Bible you don’t like?

Is it what you don’t understand in the Bible that bothers you, or what you do understand?

Does what the words mean trouble us, or what the words say?

The Preservation of Truth; incredible in a time when the vast majority of the secular world has wished away the truth, a topic we will come to when we speak on The Protest Of Truth in the fifth message on this series, but in a time when the world has wished truth away, so too has the Christian world largely denied its preservation.

They speak of the Bible as having all the value in the world and that it is indeed a “Holy Bible”, yet they also seem pleased to question its inerrancy and infallibility. Beloved, it cannot be a HOLY Bible if it has errors in it, it must be pure. And if God has preserved his words, it must remain pure.

So has God preserved his words and to what extent are we to expect those words preserved?

Psalm 12:6-7

⁶ The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. ⁷ Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

The Words, not The Message

First of all, I would like you to notice that it is the words that are promised to be preserved, not the message.

⁶ The words of the LORD are pure words:

….not the “thoughts” of the Lord, not the “ideas” of the Lord, but the “Words” of the Lord that are pure words.

                     It was a man by the name of Eugene Nida who developed a translation philosophy that gave license for vain men to sell multitudes of different versions of the Bible. That translation philosophy was called “Dynamic Equivalency”.

Eugene Nida was an adjunct professor at the Jesuit Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, he also happened to be a founding member of Wycliffe Bible Translators and Executive Translations Secretary of the American Bible Society.^[1] Here we begin to see where modern Bible translations have their ‘cross-over’ link with Roman Catholicism, here is where we obtain a glimpse of “The Counter Reformation” instituted by the Popish church not long after the reformation began. 

What we have in our hands in the KJV is a translation that employs the standard method of any translation, called “Formal Equivalency”. Formal Equivalency simply means that the words are translated formally, or as a word for word translation generally. This is not a perfect expression as the words in one language will often have a different word order, or contain elements not directly transposed into another language with a single word, but you get the idea.

The method invented by Eugene Nida is called “Dynamic Equivalency”, it moves but stays the same. Formal Equivalency always remains the same, it is equivalent, it stands still. While Formal Equivalency is a word for word translation, Dynamic Equivalency is a thought for word translation. 

A word for word translation obviously has limits as to how many words fit the defined boundaries of the word being translated, but a Thought for Word translation has NO SUCH LIMITS! Whatever a “translator” might like to think is the message a word carries, that will be its definition and translation.

Many modern versions of the Bible therefore are more like a commentary in the same book, they aim to tell you more what God was meaning by his words, than his words.

Which did God promise to preserve, his thoughts or his words?

⁶ The words of the LORD are pure words:

Who’s words, are they?

Answer: The Lords Words

When we use Dynamic Equivalency for our translation method, i.e. a “thought for word” translation, whose words are they?

Answer: Mans words

By their very method of translation books such as;

• The Revised Standard Version
• The New Revised Standard Version
• The New American Bible
• New International Version
• Todays new International Version
• New Living Translation
• Good News Translation
• Contemporary English Version
• Living Bible
• The Message etc

All of these are Dynamic Equivalence Translations and by their very own method of translation are MANS WORDS and not Gods words.

It is the ‘Words of the LORD” that are pure words, so clearly none of these can ever claim to be pure words, for they are not the Lords words but mans.

And the Devil would say, “Thank you Eugene Nida, with one simple idea you have turned the hearts of multitudes away from the word of God, and made a fortune for those who make merchandise of God’s words with feigned words”. (2 Pet 2:3)

The Present Not The Past

⁶ The words of the LORD are pure words:

Here now we have the tense of a word that we believe is inspired also. “The words of the LORD are pure words”, not “was”.

2 Timothy 3:16 

¹⁶ All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 

The claim is often found in either the constitution of Churches or in their respective statement of faith that goes something like this;

“We believe the Bible, in the original manuscripts, are without error…”

What does that statement imply?

Here is one that I got from one Fundamental Christian church;

“We believe the Bible in its original documents is the inspired Word of God”^[2]

Immediately, and without needing to go anywhere else, we find a factual fault in that text that claims to be the statement of faith of this Church, can anyone see it?

That Church has been there for many decades, yet they do not seem to see the evident contradiction in THE FIRST LINE of their statement of faith! God had not preserved the “Original Documents”, so the present tense signified with the word ‘is’, cannot apply to a document that is no longer. 

The Bible says “The words of the LORD are pure words” and “All scripture IS given by inspiration of God”, but the statement of faith given by those who state they believe the Bible was without error in the originals, denies the present tense of the words that prove preservation.

In short, they have altered “the words of the Lord ARE pure words”, to “The words of the Lord WERE pure words”. They have changed, “All scripture IS given by inspiration of God” to “All scripture WAS given by inspiration of God”.

If you don’t think this matters, turn in your Bibles to;

Mark 12:19–27 

¹⁹ Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. ²⁰ Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. ²¹ And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. ²² And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. ²³ In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. ²⁴ And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? ²⁵ For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven. 

²⁶ And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? ²⁷ He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err. 

The entire doctrine of the resurrection, the entire doctrine of life after death, the entire reality that man endures forever, even after death takes his present life, is defended by Jesus due simply to the PRESENT TENSE OF THE VERB “I am”;

, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? ²⁷ He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.

You simply cannot have a statement of faith that so evidently contradicts what God says about his own words, and you certainly cannot regard a Churches statement of faith that contradicts itself.

Beloved, let’s begin to take Gods words seriously. It is his WORDS he promised to preserve, not the original documents.

The Words NOT the Document

Psalm 12:6-7

⁶ The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. ⁷ Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

God had never promised to preserve the original documents. In fact, God does not even regard the original documents. It is his words that he promised to preserve not the parchments and vellum on which the words were inked. No, not even the stone tablets. Let’s consider the first example;

Moses and the Tables of stone

Exodus 31:18 

¹⁸ And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God. 

That is the last verse of chapter 31, now chapter 32 tells us of the idolatry of the people below the mountain, to whom the ‘tables of stone’ which have containing the ORIGINAL TEN COMMANDMENTS, pertain.

Exodus 32:7 

⁷ And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: 

Exodus 32:15–19 

¹⁵ And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written. ¹⁶ And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables. ¹⁷ And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. ¹⁸ And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise ofthem that sing do I hear. ¹⁹ And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 

Beloved, this was the end of the original ten commandments given to bless the people in all their days. A just set of laws which would become the emulation of all nations. Now they lay in ruin, broken in pieces at the base of the mount.

For three and a half thousand years the people of Israel have desired to live in accord with these very same ten commandments to which none other man than Moses had ever laid eyes on the originals.

I want you to consider something for a moment. Consider the response of God, or for that matter, the lack thereof. This original document, of greater value than any single document the world has ever seen, Moses literally cast them out of his hands to break them, but God did not say “Moses, Moses what have you done, that was the only copy I had”!

What are we now to say that no one in history is able to compare any copy of the original Ten Commandments with ‘The Original’ that ONLY Moses had seen?

Yes beloved, God gave another copy, but it was just that, a copy. 

Does God care for the document or the words on the document?

Consider another example;

The Pen Knife and The Fire

Jeremiah 36:20–24 

²⁰ And they went in to the king into the court, but they laid up the roll in the chamber of Elishama the scribe, and told all the words in the ears of the king. ²¹ So the king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll: and he took it out of Elishama the scribe’s chamber. And Jehudi read it in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the princes which stood beside the king. ²² Now the king sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. ²³ And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth. ²⁴ Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words. 

There we have it, the originals now burnt in the fire, what are we now to do? How is the author to recover that which was destroyed?

Jeremiah 36:27–28 

²⁷ Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, after that the king had burned the roll, and the words which Baruch wrote at the mouth of Jeremiah, saying, ²⁸ Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned. 

Jeremiah 36:32 

³² Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words. 

Does God care for the Document or the words in the document?

Did God promise to preserve the original documents or the words on the original documents?

The Book and The River

Jeremiah 51:60–64 

⁶⁰ So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written against Babylon. ⁶¹ And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to Babylon, and shalt see, and shalt read all these words; ⁶² Then shalt thou say, O LORD, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever. ⁶³ And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates: ⁶⁴ And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah. 

Beloved, how is it that the ORIGINAL of Chapter 51 was cast into the river Euphrates over 2,500 years ago, yet we have a copy of it in our hands today?

Does God care for the original documents or the words on them?

Not The Words, But What They Say

Psalm 12:6-7

⁶ The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. ⁷ Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

It is truly not the words that bother people, but what the words say that convicts their hearts. They desire to deny the words because the words convict the heart of sin.

King Jehoiakim did not cut up the Originals of the word of God because he did not like the ink on the parchment, he burned the words in the fire because the words testified to him that he was evil and his nation was set to be judged.

There are those who hold that originally inspired texts of both Old and New Testaments are preserved in faithful copies and now available in the Masoretic Hebrew Text and the received text in the Greek language, known as The Textus Receptus. This seems on the surface to be a reasonable and SAFE position, but is there an underlying motive?

It is of interest that the passion with which many deny a translation into their own language to be just as authoritative is beyond moderation. Beloved, they literally HATE the notion that God may indeed have also preserved his words perfectly in a translation, and they hate it, not because of the words, but because of what the words say.

Let me explain.

In the first sermon in the series I had already alluded to the fact that we can indeed have Perfect Equivalence in Translation between languages.

That the idea that you cannot perfectly translate words and meanings is a myth represented today in almost every language app you can download on your phones.  

Yes, there are some words that do not have an equivalent word in other languages, and there are some words that simply can’t be perfectly translated, there are hundreds of thousands of unique words in foreign languages, over a million unique words in the English, yet the unique word vocabulary of the Bible is only 12,858 words, out of a pool of over 1 Million unique words. 

God did not need every word in a given language to communicate his words, he simply employed that which would communicate all that was necessary to the common people, who heard him gladly (Mrk 12:37).

But if we are permitted to lockup those words in a foreign language, where the words become nothing more than BABBLE to us, and we have the “Freedom” to speculate only on their translation, we are then free to remain without complete conviction of what THE WORDS ACTUALLY SAY! In other words, our opportunity to doubt the words superficially, liberates us against what they say, that our hearts might remain without conviction.

• Hell does not mean hell, it might mean grave or abode of the dead. 
• Fornication does not mean sex outside of marriage, it just means sexual immorality, which can mean whatever you feel like it means.

How often did Jesus hold the people accountable to know what his words said?

• Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures (Mt 22:29)
• Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures (Mrk 12:24)
• Did ye never read in the scriptures (Mt 21:42)
• Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life (Jn 5:39)
• O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken (Lk 24:25)

Each of these are Jesus own words holding the people accountable to know the scriptures which they all had in their very day. It was never the words that bothered the people, but what the words said that convicts their hearts. In denying that we have the words in a language we can understand, we then have motive to not do what he says. 

In 1838, Sarah Moore Grimke, in her book “Letters On The Equality of the Sexes”, one of the early feminist writers, makes a fascinating statement that both proves the majority of Christians once believed the King James Bible was the continuation of the inspired and preserved originals, but also that she had reason to hate it.

She wrote;

1838: “…I believe almost every thing that has been written on this subject [the sphere of the woman], has been the result of a misconception of the simple truths revealed in the Scriptures, in consequence of the false translation of many passages of Holy Writ. My mind is entirely delivered from the superstitious reverence which is attached to the English version of the Bible. King James’s translators certainly were not inspired. I therefore claim the original as my standard, believing that to have been inspired…”^[3]

Now why does she lay claim to the Originals when the Originals are no longer able to be referred to? In short, it is so she can deny what the words of the Bible say. 

By laying claim to the authority of a document that does not exist, she can deny the authority of one that does exist and take a false comfort in doing what she wants.

In 1895 Elizabeth Clay Stanton would publish The Woman’s Bible, with feminist notes, many of which mock biblical inspiration and called for women to abandon the Bible altogether. Found in the “Press Comments” in the introduction of the “Women’s Bible” is a fascinating statement by  The Chicago Post saying;

“The attack of the new woman on the King James Bible will be observed with interest where it does not alarm. But let “The Women’s Bibl”e and the truth prevail. It may be that Lot himself was turned into a pillar of salt”^[4]

An astounding testimony to the wilful distortion of that which is detested by those with motive.

Delete The Words

We are told, “Reality is a stubborn thing”. Does denying the truth, change what IS true?

Zechariah 1:5–6 

⁵ Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever? ⁶ But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the LORD of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.

This passage tells us that it was not the fathers that lived to convict the hearts of the people, it was not the prophets that lived forever, but the words and statutes commanded by God through those prophets and preserved to take hold and do that which the words would do in accordance with what was said.

Turn to Habakkuk 2

Habakkuk 2:1–4 

¹ I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. ² And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. ³ For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

Notice first that God intends to make his words plain, he makes his words SIMPLE enough that man may be warned, “that he man run that readeth it”. 

When people say they don’t like the Bible, or they don’t understand it, generally it is not what they don’t understand that they don’t like, but what they DO understand, and just like King Johoiakim, they cut out what they don’t like. BUT DOES THAT CHANGE ANYTHING IN REALITY?

In 1820, Thomas Jefferson did exactly that. The Jefferson Bible is a book compiled by Thomas Jefferson, the famous American philosopher and statesman and 3^rdAmerican President, where he literally cut out, with scissors, from six printed volumes of the KJV New Testament, to leave only that which he considered acceptable and of value.

BUT IT WILL BE THE WORDS HE DENIED THAT WILL JUDGE HIM.

John 12:48

He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

Remember, it is not what people don’t understand that upsets and convicts them, it is what they do understand that bothers them.

Modern translations slowly remove that which they find offensive and add that which they find palatable or acceptable. 

² Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

Deuteronomy 4:2

³ For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

Habakkuk 2:3

⁶ But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the LORD of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.

Zechariah 2:6

Men may very well choose to alter God’s words, they might cut it out like Jehoiakim and Jefferson, but it will remain true regardless. You can choose to ignore the Gospel, but nothing will alter its reality. If you are not born again today, if you are not saved from the penalty of your sin, death will seal your fate and hell will be your home.

Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. ³ For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

God’s love was made clear to you in the person of Jesus Christ, he it was who died for your sins that you might have forgiveness of sin and the gift of life, even eternal life.

Let me make it as plain as possible to you, 

1 John 5:12 

¹² He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. 

Nineteen preserved single-syllable words that make it plain upon tables.

Amen

^[1] Daniels, David W.. Why They Changed The Bible: One World Bible For One World Religion . Chick Publications, Inc.. 

^[2] https://rosecitybaptistchurch.com.au/about-us/

^[3] Faust, Joey. The Word: God Will Keep It! The 400 Year History of the King James Bible Only Movement . Fundamental Publishing. Kindle Edition.

^[4]https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Woman_s_Bible/Uz9spwsZuIoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+attack+of+the+new+woman+on+the+King+James+Bible+will+be+observed+with+interest+where+it+does+not+alarm&pg=RA1-PP6&printsec=frontcover