From the Shepherd's Heart...Friday, November 3, 2017

This Lord's Day we will continue our series through the beginning chapters of the Bible and Genesis as we are still in Genesis 3 looking at "The Beginning of Temptation on the Earth."  Previously we have looked at Satan and sin, this Sunday we will look at the Scriptures.

Let me share some insight into the Bible we hold in our hand and the confidence we have of it being the "true Word of God."

1.  Today, there are 5,686 ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts.

2.  Only 7 ancient copies of Plato survive, 49 of Aristotle, 8 of Herodotus, 9 of Euripides, etc.  All of these are copies which were translated at least 1,000 years after the original.

3.  Portions of the gospels go back to the first century and a fragment of the Book of John was written about 29 years after the original.  None of the secular books cam make such a claim.

4.  Besides Greek copies, there are some 19,000 ancient New Testament transcripts in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic and Aramaic languages.

5.  This support-base of 24, 000 historic New Testament manuscripts gives scholars opportunity to compare them for accuracy.

6.  These books are about 99.5% textually pure.  No other ancient writing has such a record.  Not only so, but these copies are better preserved than any other document from the past.

Keep in mind that when the original documents were written there were numerous people still alive who had heard Jesus personally and would have protested loudly had the writing been inaccurate.  No such complaints exist.  None of Plato or Aristotle's hearers were present to edit the copies we now accept as valid.

And I shared this past Sunday, let us be reminded of those men who literally gave their lives for the sake of the Word of God being translated into the command man's language.  One such was William Tyndale who translated the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew into the English language.  It was October 6, 1536 when this happened:

"Then he was bound to the beam, and both an iron chain and a rope were put around his neck. Gunpowder was added to the brush and logs. At the signal of a local official, the executioner, standing behind Tyndale, quickly tightened the noose, strangling him. Then an official took up a lighted torch and handed it to the executioner, who set the wood ablaze."

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."  Matthew 24: 35

So, let's devote ourselves afresh to:
*  Our personal devotion to the Word of God (I Peter 2:2)
*  Our church's devotion to the Word of God (Acts 2:42)
*  The Pastor's devotion to the Word of God (II Timothy 4: 2)