April 24, 2025 • 7 mins
Preserved, for us in our language. But is the Bible you hold, whether in English, French, Russian, or Mandorin, really the Word of God? Is the only true version of God's Word the ones in their original language?
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and
our series on the New TestamentFramework.
Today a smaller, bite-sizedpiece from the larger lesson.
We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's the doctrine of preservation and this is coming
out of the fact that, again,malachi, the Italian prophet, is
the seal of the prophets andyou therefore have a period of
God being silent for 400 years.
During that time they'remeticulously, scrupulously
copying texts over in Babylon,jerusalem, qumran, probably
(00:33):
other places.
These become families ofmanuscripts.
You also have a translation inGreek right about 250 or so
years before Christ, called theSeptuagint.
By the time you get Jesus andthe apostles, obviously they're
quoting the Old Testament a lot.
I always say how could youpossibly understand the New
(00:54):
Testament if you don't alreadyunderstand the Old Testament?
Because they keep appealing tothe Old Testament, the Old
Testament, the Old Testament.
They just keep going back to it, but they quote from various
manuscripts, differentmanuscripts that sometimes
differ in small ways with oneanother, and yet they refer to
them all as the Word of God.
Which shows you the doctrine ofpreservation that while there
(01:18):
are these minor differences,they're so minor that there's
nothing of substance there inthe differences.
It's just close enough.
So two points that we canderive about the doctrine of
preservation.
Well, it's several, but firstof all, one thing I would say
about it is that in the doctrineof preservation.
God did not intend to keep itexact like perfectly exact.
(01:45):
Let me explain this just from avery easy to see idea.
If God wanted to keep itperfectly intact, it would have
to be in the original languageright of Hebrew or Aramaic in
the Old Testament and it couldnot, for example, have vowel
(02:05):
pointings which were added byHebrew scribes for pronunciation
purposes.
Like those could not be therebecause that would not be a
perfect, exact replica of theoriginal right.
So just from that vantage point, in the doctrine of
preservation God was not tryingto keep it exactly, you know,
(02:28):
letter for letter, withoutanything at all added even to
help pronounce it.
Okay, that was not God's pointin preservation.
If there's not a doctrine ofpreservation that is set up the
way it is, the Word of God couldnever be taken into another
language and still be called theWord of God.
(02:49):
This would not be the Word ofGod.
It would emphatically not be,because it's in English.
But the doctrine ofpreservation, as it's presented
in Scripture, set it up in a waywhere you can have His Word in
any language.
Now how can that be?
(03:11):
I mean, if it originally camein Hebrew, aramaic and Greek,
how can the word of God be inEnglish, russian, moldovian,
chinese dialects.
How Well.
First of all, the presuppositionbehind it all is that God is
the author of human language.
There was this article I readyears ago by Dr Arthur Cussons,
(03:36):
called who Taught Adam to Speak,and it works off the premise of
if you have a baby, the baby isborn, the baby doesn't know how
to speak.
The baby knows how to cry, goto the bathroom, okay, and drink
milk.
That's basically all the babyknows how to do.
But in the first two to threeyears of life, the baby learns
to speak and everybody goes, wow, this is, this, is, this is
(03:59):
actually.
They don't go wow, they go yeah, yeah, he knows how to say no.
Now he knows how to say mommy,daddy, da, da, da, da, and it's
almost viewed as something likeeh, who cares?
But as one expert in the Englishlanguage said, by the time a
child is three years old,they've already accomplished the
greatest intellectual feat theywill ever accomplish in their
(04:20):
life, and that's learning alanguage without having known
one previously.
That is your greatestintellectual achievement.
You'll never go beyond that.
I won't either.
You can't, because every otherlanguage we learn after that we
learn having already known aprevious language.
But here you're going from nolanguage to language.
(04:40):
How does that happen?
By listening right.
Take a baby, set it in anyculture.
You can be born in America andsent to China, and if you're sat
down in a Chinese family, youwill learn to speak Chinese.
So it's an imprinting process.
The question then becomes howdid the first human speak?
(05:03):
How did they learn to speak ifthere's no previous speaker?
Well, the answer to who thentaught Adam to speak?
Was God.
God taught Adam to speak, wasGod.
God taught Adam to speak.
And from there, you know, thepeoples that came from them
(05:25):
learned to speak the samelanguage until the Tower of
Babel.
So the first presupposition ofhow the Bible can come in any
language is that God is theauthor of human language.
He started the naming processin Genesis.
He named the sky, he named theearth, he names these things,
and then he says okay, adam,what would you like to call this
animal?
And he gets to give it a name.
(05:46):
But God started the naming game.
The second presupposition forhow the Bible can be God's word
in any language in the world isthe Tower of Babel, because that
chapter begins by saying atthat time, everyone in the earth
spoke the same language.
There was one language, butthen by the end of that, about
nine verses later, you have 70different languages and the
(06:11):
people couldn't communicate withone another, so they had to
stop building this monstrosityof a tower right.
Who was the author of those 70languages?
God.
And these become the twolanguage presuppositions for
understanding that the Bible,ultimately, would be translated
(06:33):
into other languages and itwould be still the Word of God.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with
Jeremy Thomas.
If you would like to see thevisuals that went along with
today's sermon, you can findthose on Rumble and on YouTube
under Spokane Bible Church.
That is where Jeremy is thepastor and teacher.
We hope you found today'slesson productive and useful in
(06:59):
growing closer to God andwalking more obediently with Him
.
If you found this podcast to beuseful and helpful, then please
consider rating us in yourfavorite podcast app, and until
next time, we hope you have ablessed and wonderful day.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and
our series on the New TestamentFramework.
Today a smaller, bite-sizedpiece from the larger lesson.
We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's the doctrine of preservation and this is coming
out of the fact that, again,malachi, the Italian prophet, is
the seal of the prophets andyou therefore have a period of
God being silent for 400 years.
During that time they'remeticulously, scrupulously
copying texts over in Babylon,jerusalem, qumran, probably
(00:33):
other places.
These become families ofmanuscripts.
You also have a translation inGreek right about 250 or so
years before Christ, called theSeptuagint.
By the time you get Jesus andthe apostles, obviously they're
quoting the Old Testament a lot.
I always say how could youpossibly understand the New
(00:54):
Testament if you don't alreadyunderstand the Old Testament?
Because they keep appealing tothe Old Testament, the Old
Testament, the Old Testament.
They just keep going back to it, but they quote from various
manuscripts, differentmanuscripts that sometimes
differ in small ways with oneanother, and yet they refer to
them all as the Word of God.
Which shows you the doctrine ofpreservation that while there
(01:18):
are these minor differences,they're so minor that there's
nothing of substance there inthe differences.
It's just close enough.
So two points that we canderive about the doctrine of
preservation.
Well, it's several, but firstof all, one thing I would say
about it is that in the doctrineof preservation.
God did not intend to keep itexact like perfectly exact.
(01:45):
Let me explain this just from avery easy to see idea.
If God wanted to keep itperfectly intact, it would have
to be in the original languageright of Hebrew or Aramaic in
the Old Testament and it couldnot, for example, have vowel
(02:05):
pointings which were added byHebrew scribes for pronunciation
purposes.
Like those could not be therebecause that would not be a
perfect, exact replica of theoriginal right.
So just from that vantage point, in the doctrine of
preservation God was not tryingto keep it exactly, you know,
(02:28):
letter for letter, withoutanything at all added even to
help pronounce it.
Okay, that was not God's pointin preservation.
If there's not a doctrine ofpreservation that is set up the
way it is, the Word of God couldnever be taken into another
language and still be called theWord of God.
(02:49):
This would not be the Word ofGod.
It would emphatically not be,because it's in English.
But the doctrine ofpreservation, as it's presented
in Scripture, set it up in a waywhere you can have His Word in
any language.
Now how can that be?
(03:11):
I mean, if it originally camein Hebrew, aramaic and Greek,
how can the word of God be inEnglish, russian, moldovian,
chinese dialects.
How Well.
First of all, the presuppositionbehind it all is that God is
the author of human language.
There was this article I readyears ago by Dr Arthur Cussons,
(03:36):
called who Taught Adam to Speak,and it works off the premise of
if you have a baby, the baby isborn, the baby doesn't know how
to speak.
The baby knows how to cry, goto the bathroom, okay, and drink
milk.
That's basically all the babyknows how to do.
But in the first two to threeyears of life, the baby learns
to speak and everybody goes, wow, this is, this, is, this is
(03:59):
actually.
They don't go wow, they go yeah, yeah, he knows how to say no.
Now he knows how to say mommy,daddy, da, da, da, da, and it's
almost viewed as something likeeh, who cares?
But as one expert in the Englishlanguage said, by the time a
child is three years old,they've already accomplished the
greatest intellectual feat theywill ever accomplish in their
(04:20):
life, and that's learning alanguage without having known
one previously.
That is your greatestintellectual achievement.
You'll never go beyond that.
I won't either.
You can't, because every otherlanguage we learn after that we
learn having already known aprevious language.
But here you're going from nolanguage to language.
(04:40):
How does that happen?
By listening right.
Take a baby, set it in anyculture.
You can be born in America andsent to China, and if you're sat
down in a Chinese family, youwill learn to speak Chinese.
So it's an imprinting process.
The question then becomes howdid the first human speak?
(05:03):
How did they learn to speak ifthere's no previous speaker?
Well, the answer to who thentaught Adam to speak?
Was God.
God taught Adam to speak, wasGod.
God taught Adam to speak.
And from there, you know, thepeoples that came from them
(05:25):
learned to speak the samelanguage until the Tower of
Babel.
So the first presupposition ofhow the Bible can come in any
language is that God is theauthor of human language.
He started the naming processin Genesis.
He named the sky, he named theearth, he names these things,
and then he says okay, adam,what would you like to call this
animal?
And he gets to give it a name.
(05:46):
But God started the naming game.
The second presupposition forhow the Bible can be God's word
in any language in the world isthe Tower of Babel, because that
chapter begins by saying atthat time, everyone in the earth
spoke the same language.
There was one language, butthen by the end of that, about
nine verses later, you have 70different languages and the
(06:11):
people couldn't communicate withone another, so they had to
stop building this monstrosityof a tower right.
Who was the author of those 70languages?
God.
And these become the twolanguage presuppositions for
understanding that the Bible,ultimately, would be translated
(06:33):
into other languages and itwould be still the Word of God.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with
Jeremy Thomas.
If you would like to see thevisuals that went along with
today's sermon, you can findthose on Rumble and on YouTube
under Spokane Bible Church.
That is where Jeremy is thepastor and teacher.
We hope you found today'slesson productive and useful in
(06:59):
growing closer to God andwalking more obediently with Him
.
If you found this podcast to beuseful and helpful, then please
consider rating us in yourfavorite podcast app, and until
next time, we hope you have ablessed and wonderful day.
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