To continue the debate on the subject of the preservation of God's Holy Bible. As a fundamental, Bible-believing Christian, I believe in the verbal-plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. By this, I mean that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, while preserving the individual styles of the writers guides them even in the choice of words so that what they wrote was all that God wanted written and was and is completely true and without error. (II Timothy 3:16-17; II Peter 1:20-21) Verbal refers to the depth while plenary refers to the extent.
By extent, I mean God's revelation is done, finished, and has been recorded. There is no new revelation today and no new scripture today. When I refer to verbal, I mean that the very choice of words was not left up to the Scripture writers, but was of God's own choosing. For instance, I refer you to John 8:57-58. In verse 57, the Jews, probably Sadducees, said, "Thou are not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" Abraham lived 1,800-2,000 years before Christ. In verse 58, Jesus answers them with "Before Abraham was, I am." The normal way to make that statement would have been "Before Abraham was, I was".
The grammatical rule in nearly any language is that one is to keep the verbs in the same tense in the same sentence. Jesus purposely departed from normal grammar to assert His Deity referring back to Exodus 3:14 where God answered Moses, "I am that I am has sent thee." Although those Jews did not accept or believe His assertion, they understood it completely. This is evidenced in the very next verse when they took up stones to cast at Him. They considered it to be blasphemy for Jesus to claim he is God.
Now, why would God let such an important and intense verse up to man to preserve or fail to preserve? The King James Version-1611 preserves the inspired original words in their integrity, even to the tense of the verbs. It is a wonderful truth that when I preach, I can hold my King James Bible in my hand and say with complete confidence, "Thus saith the LORD! Without a doubt, the KJV-1611 is the preserved, inspired Word of God for the English-speaking people. I will have more to say on that subject for other languages in my next blogs.
Respectfully submitted,
Chaplain Daryl E. Sell
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