Page 44 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible Student Textbook

Psalm 119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth
forever.

Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is pure.

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

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.

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.

Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

Luke 16:17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.

John 10:35 The scripture cannot be broken.

1 Peter 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which
liveth and abideth forever..

1 Peter 1:25 But the word of the Lord endureth forever.

Obviously, God promised that He would preserve His Word for all generations! Forever is exactly that.
His Word will be preserved forever!

In short, how did God preserve the Bible for us today?

The doctrine of preservation in regard to Scripture means that the Lord has kept His Word intact as to its
original meaning. Preservation simply means that we can trust the Scriptures because God has
sovereignly overseen the process of transmission over the centuries.

However, we do not have any of the original manuscripts or autographs that were penned by the
Biblical authors. We thousands of copies of the autographs which were meticulously copied over the
centuries and along the way, a few differences have appeared in various families of manuscripts. The
differences are minor things like spelling variations but on occasion we have sections that have been
added and sections omitted.

You ask, isn’t that a problem? No, not really. Since we have so many texts to look at over the more than
3700 years of copies, we can ascertain when an addition or a subtraction occurred by comparing
manuscripts. Of course, we have many more copies of New Testament books than Old Testament
books. Finding the Dead Sea Scrolls really solidified the reliability of the manuscripts we do have from
the Old Testament.

Since God is the author of all the Scriptures, God promised that His Word would be preserved
throughout the ages. Consider these passages of Scripture:

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