Bo​az Baptist Chronicles

A Brother asks…

“I have a friend that is agnostic. They want proof that the Bible has not been changed/altered by man after all these years.”

My answer…

Tell your friend that you, also, have a friend—another friend [me—this is a true story] who, after his mother died, copied all of her personal letters to him onto PDF formatting so he could save them onto his computer for easy access. He told me that he wanted to remember what she wrote to him, so he devised this plan.... He told me that, even though the original letters were very sentimental to him, since they were old and wearing away, he decided to throw them all out, but not before copying them onto his computer. The originals were destroyed but not the PDFs. According to my friend, the advantage to doing this is so, even though he could never get the originals back again, today, anytime he wants to read something that his mother wrote to him, with a good copy machine, he could reproduce as many letters as he wants or needs to—all, by the way, in his mom’s own handwriting.

...Then ask him/her...

“Now, ask yourself this question… ‘Which one did God write ...the originals or the copies?’”

“Through years of the originals and early writings (including copies) that were written on materials that could easily disintegrate through time and handling, God had to devise a plan to get His words to all generations, like He promised in those words [the very thing we are discussing]—the Bible. (Psalms 12:6-7) That plan called for, yea, necessitated the use of preservation.”

Inspiration without preservation does not work.

Pastor Bob