Preservation of Scripture

Write this for a memorial in a book, the first command to commit God's word to writing. Preservation begins with a book, not with memory.

The tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables. The very first Scripture was written by God's own hand; the text is His, not man's invention.

When Moses broke the first tables, God said, I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first. Men may shatter the copy; God restores His words unchanged.

Ye shall not add unto the word, neither shall ye diminish from it. God fences His text on both sides, nothing in and nothing out, because the words are exactly as He gave them.

Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD. Every word, not the gist, is the life of God's people, which is why every word had to be kept.

What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it. The same guard set in chapter four is laid down again; twice Moses seals the words against every hand that would add to them or take from them.

Moses finished writing the words of this law in a book and had it laid beside the ark for a witness. From the first, God's revelation was committed to writing and deliberately preserved.

The book of the law was found in the house of the LORD after generations of neglect. God preserved His text through Judah's darkest apostasy, and it surfaced intact to reform a nation.

They read in the book of the law distinctly, and gave the sense. The preserved text, read plainly, still spoke; the word survived the exile and was understood by the people.

The words of the LORD are pure, tried in a furnace seven times, and in the same breath God pledges to keep them and preserve them from this generation for ever. Inspiration and preservation stand together: He purified the words, and He guards them.

The law of the LORD is perfect; the testimony of the LORD is sure. A perfect, sure word is one that God has kept perfect and sure.

He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. God has set His word to survive a thousand generations by His own remembrance.

All his commandments are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth. The commandments are established to stand permanently, which is the very definition of a preserved word.

For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven. The word is not at the mercy of the manuscripts on earth; it is fixed and standing in heaven, and from that settled original it comes down to us preserved.

Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever. God laid the foundation of His testimonies to last for ever; they cannot be lost.

Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. True at the source and enduring to the end, inspiration and preservation in a single verse.

Every word of God is pure; add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee. Every word is tried and pure, and to tamper with the text is to invite God's rebuke.

Write it in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever. God commands the word written precisely so that it will last into every future age.

Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail. God guarantees the completeness of His book; not one of its words comes up missing.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand for ever. Everything human decays; the word alone outlasts it, and Peter lifts this very verse to name the gospel we now hold.

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void. A word that cannot fail its purpose is a word God will not let be lost along the way.

My words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, from henceforth and for ever. God pledges His words to every generation of His people without a gap.

For I will hasten my word to perform it, or as the margin has it, I watch over my word to do it. The God who watches over His word to fulfill it watches over it to preserve it.

Jehoiakim cut the scroll with a penknife and burned it, but God said, Take thee again another roll, and write all the former words. Kings may burn the page; they cannot burn the word, and it came back whole.

Baruch wrote all the words of the book which Jehoiakim had burned, and there were added many like words. The burned text was restored in full; destruction of a copy is not loss of the word.

Daniel understood by books the number of the years whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah. Decades and an exile later, Jeremiah's prophecy was still in hand, preserved and precise enough to reckon the years.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Christ rests life itself on every word, and answers the tempter by the written text: it is written.

Till heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall pass from the law. Christ stakes preservation down to the smallest letter and the smallest stroke of a letter; the very shape of the written text is under God's guard.

Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham. Christ hangs the resurrection on the present tense of a single verb in a preserved text.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. The most permanent things we know, sky and ground, are less durable than the words of Christ.

Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. Mark preserves the Lord's pledge word for word alongside Matthew; the promise itself was kept.

It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. Luke records the same pledge as Matthew; the smallest stroke of the text cannot fall.

All things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. The whole preserved Old Testament stood ready and accurate for Christ to fulfill.

The scripture cannot be broken. Christ's own verdict on the text: it cannot be loosed, set aside, or annulled, and an unbreakable Scripture is a preserved Scripture.

The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. A word that will judge at the last day must still be standing at the last day.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. If the word simply is truth, then God guards it as He guards truth itself.

Unto them were committed the oracles of God. God entrusted His very words to Israel for safekeeping, and 'oracles' means the words themselves, not merely their message.

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning. The old writings were kept expressly for readers ages later, for us, which is preservation stated as purpose.

Not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. Verbal inspiration in Paul's own words; the Spirit gave the very words, and the very words are what God preserves.

We are not as many, which corrupt the word of God. From the first there were those who would water down the text, and the faithful are marked by handling it pure.

He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Paul's whole argument turns on a single word standing in the singular, proof that God preserves His text down to grammatical number.

Ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God. What the apostles delivered was received as God's own word, and God keeps His own word.

I suffer trouble, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound. Men may chain the preacher; the word runs free and cannot be imprisoned or suppressed.

From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation. Timothy held the same Scriptures Moses and David wrote, preserved intact across a thousand years and more.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, God-breathed, every part of it. Preservation rests here: what God breathed out, He would not let perish.

Born again by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever; and this incorruptible word 'is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.' Peter draws a straight line from Isaiah's enduring word to the very Scripture in the reader's hands.

We have also a more sure word of prophecy, for holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The origin of Scripture is the Spirit moving men, and that divine origin is the guarantee of its keeping.

Paul's epistles, which they that are unlearned wrest, as they do also the other scriptures. Peter already ranks Paul's letters as Scripture; the New Testament recognized its own text as it was being written.

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. This platform keeps the received reading of the heavenly witnesses as it stands in the King James text, a guarded testimony to the Trinity.

If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues; and if any man shall take away, God shall take away his part. The canon closes with the same guard it opened with: hands off the text, on pain of God Himself.