Question: How did God preserve
His words to this day?
Answer: God preserved copies of His words down through time,
using four main languages He chose for that purpose.
All through history, God made several choices as to the
languages in which He would communicate His message.
Choice 1: Hebrew
From at least as far back as Abraham (around 2000 BC)
to the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem in 70
AD, God chose the Semitic languages, especially Hebrew,
to communicate to His chosen people. God gave His law
in Hebrew to teach men that they were sinners, and in
need of a Saviour.
Choice 2: Greek
But in the first century AD, God made a second choice. The main language of the world for three centuries had been Greek. God used that language to give the New Testament for the world to read. And it spread like wildfire.
In the first century AD, God made a second choice. The
main language of the world for three centuries had been
Greek. God used that language to give the New Testament
for the world to read. And it spread like wildfire.
The devil recognized the huge potential of God’s Word
in a “world” language, so he moved quickly to counter
it. He prepared a fake “Bible” in Alexandria, Egypt.
The Old Testament portion is commonly called the
“Septuagint”1 and the New Testament portion is called
the “Alexandrian text.” This corruption was a “Greek”
Bible, but with the poison of the Apocrypha mixed in,
made to look like real scripture. The Alexandrian “Bible”
also perverted the New Testament2, taking out many of
God’s words and substituting man’s ideas. This laid the
groundwork for Satan’s plan to spread religious lies, and
subvert the true faith.
Choice 3: Old Latin
From about 120 AD until the 1500s, God used a third
language to communicate His truths, in addition to
Hebrew and Greek. While the first copies of the New
Testament in Greek were being made and passed around,
God directed other Christians to translate His preserved
words into Old Latin. This language was being spoken
more and more in Europe, and became an “international”
language as Greek had been. The Old Latin Bible was
known as the “Vulgate,” which means “common Bible.”
Once again, God’s words were spreading, and many
Europeans began translating these Old Latin scriptures
into their own languages.3
The devil responded by preparing a counterfeit
“Vulgate” in Rome. By the 300s, the Roman religion
claimed to be true Christianity, and a new “Bible” was
made from the perverted Alexandrian writings. It included
the Apocryphal books that the early church had rejected.
But to make it convincing, they also put in some scriptures
that were like the preserved Old Latin Bible as well. There
were now two Latin “Vulgates,” dramatically different
from one another. The true Christians knew the difference
between the true and the false “Vulgates.”4
The devil knew what he had to do next. He had to
destroy the true Latin Vulgate, and the people who held it
so dearly. The Roman Catholic armies hunted down and
martyred those who were caught possessing the true Latin
Vulgate. But they were never able to completely replace
the true Latin Vulgate with the corrupted Roman Catholic
Latin Vulgate. God was preserving His words.
Choice 4: English
Around 700-800 AD, English, a new “world” language
began to develop. God began laying the groundwork
to use this language to trigger a massive missionary
movement. In the 1500s William Tyndale worked to
translate the Bible from the accurate Greek and Hebrew
manuscripts that God had so carefully preserved. English-speaking
people after him continued the effort to translate
and perfect a Bible that matched the ancient scriptures.5
One of the best of these is the Geneva Bible.
English was a language in the midst of change. But by
1604 God used King James I6 of England to commission
a group of learned men7 to accumulate scriptures
in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English as well as other
languages. Their assignment was to translate8 God’s
words into the most accurate English possible. In early
1611 they published the Authorized Version, also known
as the King James Bible. From the day it was published,
the King James Bible circulated around the world, and
missionaries translated Bibles from this precious book.9
The devil pulled out all the stops on this one. By the
1800s he had inspired a whole movement to discredit
and destroy the King James Bible. Today, we have a
multitude of translations that change, remove and add to
God’s preserved words. But God has always kept the true
scriptures in the hands of his people.
In making the four choices of language as described
above, God was not trying to indicate that any single
language was more expressive or better than another.
Rather, He chose these languages because they suited His
purpose at a particular time in history to carry out His
plan. The choices were God’s. Outside of Israel, Hebrew
was never a universal language. Ancient Greek is no
longer a universal language, nor is Latin. But by guiding
the production of a perfect Bible in English, God kept
His promise. For our time, in a language read around the
world, God preserved His words.
Footnotes
1 The Septuagint as we have it is actually a blend of a
Greek Old Testament, intermixed with the Apocrypha,
plus a perverted New Testament text in one huge volume.
See Did the Catholic Church Give Us the Bible? (2005),
pp. 31-39 & 46. Available from Chick Publications.
2 See page 131, “Is the Lord’s Prayer in Your Bible?”
