By David Daniels

It has gotten so weird in the last 150 years that in order to say that you believe in the Bible, you have to say, "I believe in the verbal, plenary, infallible, inerrancy of the original autographs."

But what in the world is an "original autograph?" Well, if you take notes in church, that is your original autograph. That's your first copy, the one you write with your own hands.

So we ask: "Did God ever write anything down?" Yes, of course. On Mount Sinai, God gave Moses tables of stone "written by the finger of God." Now that is a real "original autograph!" What happened to those tables?

When Moses went down and saw the people sinning, he was so angry that he threw the tables down and broke them. He became the first person to break all Ten Commandments at once!

God made him cut out stones for a second set and God gave him His Words a second time. Now, was that second set of tablets inspired? Was it the words of God? Yes! But it wasn't the original autograph. It was a copy.

When Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, he included the Ten Commandments. Was that the original copy? No, it was a third copy. God knew that Moses was going to break the first set, the first thing God ever wrote that man had seen in all of creation.

God does not care about original autographs.

Later Jeremiah's scroll of prophecy was cut up by King Jehoiakim and burned in his fireplace. The next one Jeremiah dictated ended up in the Euphrates river! (See Jeremiah 36 and 51.) The earliest one he kept was the third copy. Did God care about these "original autographs?"

So, what is God saying in Psalms 12:6-7? Did He really preserve His words "from this generation for ever"? Is Jesus right that "my words shall not pass away" (Matt 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33)?

If God's inspired words were only in the "original autographs," then we do not have the real words of God, so He didn't keep His promise.

But God keeps His promises. So where can we look for the real words of God? All we have are copies and translations of copies. How can we know which copies are God's preserved words for us?

Gleason L. Archer was an important author to me when I was in Bible College. He gave good reasons for my faith. But, look at what Archer said about the Bible:

"But what about the text of the Bible as we now possess it?... It would take nothing short of a miracle to insure the inerrancy of a copy of an original manuscript."

Well, God is a God of miracles! The second copy was like the first; the third copy was like the second, and the 826th copy was like the 825th. Because, God is a God who keeps His words. But He doesn't care about the original copy.

But God does care about two things: accurate copies and accurate translations. And we can look through history at thousands of copies and translations to see how consistently God transmitted His words by faithful believers. Careful research proves we have God's miraculously preserved words in English in the Authorized King James Version.

Do you want a hundred Bibles made by men, or the Bible that God Himself kept His word to preserve? We expect perversions from man's work, but with God's preserved words in the King James Bible, we can always say with confidence, "Thus saith the Lord!"