John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Verse number 14 adds, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

            So many times, Christians grow up in church hearing that this is the Word of God, they grow up hearing that Jesus is the only way to Heaven, they grow up hearing that God is real and that He exists, and they believe it. But many times some fall short to give an answer to a questioning and unsaved soul, or questioning person, or an agnostic, or an atheist. It says in 1 Peter 3:15, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts,” (which means to separate Him in your heart) “and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” So, we are commanded by God always to have an answer as to why we believe the things that we do.

            Now, let us consider the supremacy or the fact that we have the very words of God that we hold in our hands.

            Someone came up to me and said, “Preacher, do you believe that someone could be saved and not believe the Word of God?”

I said, “I think it would be very, very hard.”

You say, “Well, why?”

The whole premise of salvation is the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus. Why do we believe the death, the burial, and the resurrection? Take the authority of the Word of God out of that equation. Things become folklore. Take the authority of the Word of God out of the subject of salvation and it becomes a fable that’s been passed generation from generation. So, I think it would be very, very hard.

I remember that, before I got saved, I had no knowledge that Jesus had died on the cross, even historically. I had no idea, nothing! I’d never heard anything concerning that. But when I picked up the Bible and started to read it, after a series of events, for some reason, I can’t tell you why, but I never questioned that this was the Word of God. I believe very well that that could have been the Spirit drawing me right there.

I picked it up and I said, “I don’t understand it.” I started reading a couple of Psalms, and then went to Revelation. I did not understand anything, to be honest with you. Only thing I did understand was that a lot of bad things were gonna happen and I didn’t want to be a part of them. And so I again went into the Word of God. Unsaved as a goose, not knowing anything, not understanding anything, barely able to read and write, probably on the level of a second or third grade education. But I believed the Word of God, and through that God drew me. And I stand here today because of the Word of God. And that is why we do not let people tamper with it. That is why we do not let people transliterate it and try to put their own little spin on it because It is very precious. And it is very important that we have the very Word of God.

As we read in our Scripture, John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Verse number two, “The same was in the beginning with God.” Verse number 14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

And so, the living Word of God, Jesus Christ Himself, came to earth, walked with the disciples, preached salvation, preached unto the Jews, died on the cross, rose again the third day from the tomb, and went to be with the Father in Heaven. However, just because Jesus went to heaven, He said, “I will not leave you comfortless,” (John 14:18). He said, “I am going to send the Holy Spirit of God, and He will not speak of Himself. He’ll speak of those things which He has heard. He will speak of the Truth, and He will show you things to come.” 

He is saying, “I’m going to go to be with the Father.” The Word became flesh, and we beheld His glory with the glory of God. He did not leave in that God preserved His Word through the Hebrew Old Testament and, likewise, the Greek New Testament for you and me. And let me say this, that this Book that I hold right here today, it does not contain the Word of God, it is the very words of God! And that is important. Most people today, if you ask them, “Is this the Word of God or does this contain the Word of God?” They will almost hands down, a lot of people will say, “Well, it contains the Word of God. That’s not exactly what He said. That’s a summary or a general meaning of what He said.”

And that’s very dangerous. Remember how Satan tempted Eve: “Hath God said …?” He wanted to transliterate and translate what God had already said, and this got us the whole world full of sinners, and millions that perish and will perish and go to a Christless eternity, a place that Jesus called Hell because of the changing of the Word of God. You see, the Word of God is the Christian charter. It is the born-again person’s basic instruction manual. It is the theologian’s textbook. It is the scientist’s answer to the creation.

The Gideon Bible says it pretty good in the preface:

The Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, and the doom of sinners and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its stories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you; food to support you, and comfort that cheers you. It is the traveler’s map, the pilgrim’s staff, the pilot’s compass, the soldier’s sword, and the Christian’s charter. Here is Paradise restored, Heaven opened, and the gates of Hell disclosed. Christ is its grand subject and our good Design, and the glory of God is its end. It should fill your memory, rule your heart, and guide your feet. Read it slowly, frequently, and prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure. And in it revolves the highest responsibility, will reward the greatest labor, and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.

I like that! And thus, today I set out to prove why we believe that to be true, and that we have the very words of God. Note the miraculous logic of the Bible, the miraculous logic of the Bible.            You witness to somebody about the supremacy of God, the solitude of Christ, and the validity of the Word of God. They will ask, “But why do you believe that God stuff? What about the Torah? What about Confucius? What about Nostradamus? What about all these other books … Plato?”

I have never been to Disney World, so I do not have to worry about Plato, you know what I mean?

Yet they will continue, “But there are all these other ones out there that are supposed to be authoritative. How does the Bible compare? It is illogical that this is the very Word of God!”

Let us consider that the Bible is sixty-six different individual books written by different men on three different continents. Now, let us think about that principle right there, three different continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. Now think about what if The New York Times was writing on a subject over in Africa, and somebody in Africa was writing on that subject. Think about that. Think about the difference. Think about The New York Times if it was also in Europe. How many believe there would be a different swing? It would be a whole different context! We see it all the time. How much difference would there be? There would be a vast, huge difference. Now think about three different continents, the same subject, but still the perfect unity.

Now people are going to say, “But the people, they were converts!” But you look at the people even in Europe writing about Christ versus what people write in America. –And over a span of 1,500 years! Now you imagine someone writing 1,500 years ago on a subject versus somebody writing today, but we see still the perfect unity. The perfection of the Word of God remains true. In three different languages! Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew! I mean, just imagine translating! In translation, you always lose some things. But not when it comes to the Word of God. The Dead Sea Scrolls proved it. They said, “Hey, there are some problems with the Book of Isaiah.” And they scoffed and mocked at the book of Isaiah and then they finally found the Dead Sea Scrolls which verified that what we have today is the very same thing they had back then. See? It is logic that the Word of God is what it says it is.

It is like the old Spanish bank robber. He came up to Texas and robbed a bank and then he went back to Texas. They sent a bounty hunter to get the money and get the man. They went down, and Jose was the bank robber’s name. He was standing over behind a building and the bounty hunter came up and the bounty hunter had a translator with him, and he said, “Hey, you tell Jose if he doesn’t give that money back that I’m going to have to rough him up.”

And the translator said, “He says that if you don’t give that money back, that he’s going to rough you up.”

And Jose said, “Nope, I’m not giving the money back.”

And they went over it several times and the bounty hunter flexed up his muscles, and finally he said to the translator, “You tell Jose that if he doesn’t tell me where the money is, I’m gonna shoot him.” The bounty hunter pulled his gun out and cocked it back.

The translator said, “Jose, if you don’t tell him where the money is, he’s going to shoot you.”

Jose said to the translator, “You know what, tell him it’s over in the well.”

The translator looks at the bounty hunter and says, “He said, go ahead and shoot him.”

And you see, it is all about translation. And you have to be very careful about what people say is right and what is wrong. And that is the great thing, the logic proves the translation is true, the translation is right. It is written by forty authors, forty different people. And I thought of this last week, in that if you had forty different people writing about the same subject, from fishermen to lawyers, would it be without error? And the great thing of it is, the Word of God we hold logically is without error.

You look at Socrates and Plato and their translations … Now some people say, “The Word of God’s hard to understand. It’s full of contradictions.” You know what I always do? I say, “Here. Show me one.” I’ve never had anybody show me one, because they’ve heard that somewhere.

We should be prepared to back up the Bible with logic. Now it may be hard to understand, very well. The King James Version gets a lot of flak concerning this. Let me say this, you cannot translate, I don’t care how you do it, enough to make a natural man understand the Word of God. The Bible says very clearly that a natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them.

And so it may be hard to understand. That’s why you’ve gotta be saved. You’ve got to be walking in the Spirit of God to understand, but God promised in that “Forever, O Lord is thy word settled in heaven,” (Psalm 119:89). And the Word became flesh and Jesus promised to preserve His Word in the entirety. And I thank God that we don’t have a book that’s evolving. We’ve got a book where Jesus said, “I am the same yesterday, to day, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Likewise, we have a copy of the Word of God that’s just the same. But again, the logic of the Bible.

Another logic of the Bible is the truthfulness of the Bible. You say, “The truthfulness? What do you mean?” Well, think about it, the perfect unity of the Word of God. You know when you look at these 40 different authors that had written, I would have changed some of those stories. If I had been David, I would have ordered, “Don’t put that in there about Bathsheba.” You know, you read memoirs, and one of our presidents wrote a memoir, and it seems to me that if you’re going to write a book you should at least be able to tell what evil is.

But even the truthfulness, and even Abraham: “Well, let’s leave out my son, Ishmael. Make sure it doesn’t get passed down about me passing my wife off as my sister.” And that’s the great thing, all the details, even some details that may be to the chagrin of some of the characters that are there for our learning. And logic again, logic would prove that man didn’t have a part. Man would have changed it. “Don’t put anything in about adultery.” Adultery’s pretty prevalent there. “Don’t put in there about divorce, so I can do what I want to, the way I want to do it.”

But God said, “No, you’re not in there, I am.” The logic of the truthfulness of the Bible, the truthfulness of the stories that are there. The truthfulness that God passed His Word on entirely in perfection.

Then you go back to the factual history. You’ve got the truthfulness, the perfect unity of the Bible, and plus you’ve got the factual history. The prophecies fulfilled, 333 of them at least fulfilled in Christ alone, not counting all the others. You go into the Piggly Wiggly or someplace and you see these little books of the sayings of Nostradamus. Go through and pinpoint how many of them ever came true. People just buy them by the droves. They don’t count those to be true. How many scoffers mocked the Word of God when all the prophecies that God has fulfilled came true. For one, we’ve seen it in our time as God promised in the book of Daniel that the nation of Israel would be restored. A hundred years ago you would have said to yourself, “That would never happen!” But we’ve seen it fulfilled right in our lifetime.

No one can dispute that, that God said it would happen, and they all said it couldn’t happen. But God said it would, and it did. The factual prophecies of the Word of God that have been proven to be true, philosophies that were not altered cannot be altered because it’s God’s Word. If it is, God says He’ll add unto the plagues to them who would try to do just that. The prophecies in the Bible prove its authority by fact; logic is proven.

Likewise, another fact is the archaeological digs. There has never ever been, as far as I know, and I’ve put a lot of study into this … They’re always talking about Egypt and all these archaeological digs and the way this society lived, especially on National Geographic, “It is so when they say it is so,” but you haven’t ever heard of an archaeological dig that’s ever disproved the history of the Bible. There aren’t any. It’s just like Sodom and Gomorrah never existed. Guess what they found too long ago? The remains of Sodom and Gomorrah. Every single one of the archaeological digs that you see on the National Geographic and all those different things have proven and reiterated that the Word of God is true.

Now just think about these two points, the prophecies and the history. You ask a Muslim, “Why do you believe the Koran is the Word of God? Where are your prophecies? Why do you believe that the Koran is the Word of God? Why do you believe the writings of Confucius are real? Why do you believe that these are the very communication and requirements from God? Why do you believe it?”

They can’t prove it by history, just like the evolutionists can’t prove God didn’t exist by history and creation. Where is even the correct history in any of these books? Very few. They don’t have it.

Ours can be proven by the prophecies. Ours can be proven by the history and through the archaeological digs. Very easily done!

And thirdly, through science. Now this is always a gimmick because we’ve got a lot of liberals out there that say, “Science and the Bible, that’s religion, but it doesn’t work …”

You think about it. For instance, I’m gonna give you just a few. For instance, the vast number of stars is one. As the word of God says, “So many as the stars of the skies in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable” (Hebrews 11:12). You look out on any given night and you see stars, but not as many as the sands of the sea.

For instance, that the earth was round. Now there was a pretty little church that tried to say that the earth was flat, but they should have read  the Word of God. Isaiah 40:22 says, “He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.” Let me read that again, Isaiah 40:22, “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.” Now how could some little fisherman or some guy sitting in the middle of the sheep-desert, how did they know it was round? Would we even know it without some space craft or some sort of big telescope? Again, it proves the Word of God. The Koran says that it’s flat. So, you take which one you want to believe.

History proves it, archaeology proves it, and also there is life in the blood. Now who would have ever have known that? As the Scripture says, “The life of the flesh is in the blood, (Leviticus 17:11).

Gravity! Job 26:7 says, “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth up nothing.” Now, some would have looked at that back in the Old Testament and said, “What in the world are they talking about? Hangeth the earth upon nothing?” It’s because it’s God’s Word. Archaeology proves it, prophecies prove it, and science proves that it is the very Word of God. And logic proves the unity of the Word of God, written as I said, 1,500 years, 40 different authors, 3 different continents. Facts prove it, science proves it, archaeology proves it, prophecies prove it, and lastly this morning is that preservation proves it.

As I said in the very beginning of my message, we have the very words of God. And God promised this in Psalm 119. He promises to preserve His Word to be a communication, that after he would leave that He would send the Spirit of truth to teach us all things whatsoever he heard. He preserved the Word of God for us. He preserved the Word of God in the unity of the gospels, and how we see the works of the gospels, the harmony of the gospels, and the words of the Lord Jesus Christ that were passed onto us.

2 Peter 1:21 says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Very early on there was really no doubt that we had the Word of God. Today people have come and tried to transliterate it and say that other books, such as the book of Thomas and The Apocrypha are legitimate. But these books very clearly do not match up with the Scriptures that we have today. In the Word of God it says in the last days scoffers will come. They’ll want to change even the glory of God. They’ll want to change who God is. And that’s the way they do it, just like Satan did it way back when. “Hath God really said this?” Hath God really said this is why we should take a stand on these issues today? Did God really say this is what He meant about homosexuality, and about marriage, and about all these different quaint issues out there today?

Well, God said it. That settles it for me because the Word of God is true. And see, that’s what makes us different in among other churches that do not believe the Word of God. If you believe the Word of God, then you’re accountable to the Word of God. And God has preserved it for you and me and that’s why we reverence the Word of God. We don’t worship this book I hold up. We worship what God has said to you and me.

Now, with that, as we talk about the preservation of the Word of God, sometimes the scoffers come and say, “Well, you don’t have the originals!” And that’s a good point. Why don’t we have the originals? If someone spits on a tablecloth and it comes out looking like a Jesus, then they worship it, don’t they? And I believe that God didn’t give us the originals because then we’d worship the actual paper rather than the words that are written on it. If someone wrecks a car and the oil spills in the middle of Chicago and it looks like some sort of a Virgin Mary, people worship it. Then people come from all over the country to see this little grease puddle laying there.

God wants us to worship Him like He said to the lady at the well, worship Him how? In spirit and in truth. But what we do have is called the Texas Receptus. The Texas Receptus, the preserved Word of God in the Greek and Hebrew forms in the fact that what happened was that in the early New Testament church, you had the Victory Baptist Church, you had the Temple Baptist Church, and all these different churches like in Kenosha. And Paul wrote unto the churches of Kenosha, let’s say, and I would have a copy and someone else in our church would copy it word for word, and we’d send it over to Temple Baptist Church. And what happened is that we’d have 2,700 of them, I believe, reproduced documents. We’d have 15 copies of the book of Mark, maybe 50 copies of the book of Matthew. And maybe some of them don’t have the full book, but they have half the book. You have this conglomerate of 2,700 copies of the original that agree in their entirety.

I don’t know about you, but you look at the Plato or Socrates, you may have one or two copies, and those two copies don’t agree at all. Completely different words. But to have 2,700! Because of the facts, because of the logic of the Bible, and the preservation of the Word of God we can believe. No other book compares to the Word of God, preserved in the Texas Receptus Greek text, and then translated for you and me, the Word of God in the King James Bible.

Now that, today, has become a big debate. I don’t think that it deserves to be a big debate. I’ll just be honest with you. When you look at the Texas Receptus and where all the other translations come from, we stand on the King James Version of the Bible here. That’s the only thing I preach from. It’s the only thing I will preach from because I believe that it’s the literal Word of God translated for the English-speaking people.

Now commentators and other versions of the Bible can comment on the Word of God, but when you read the Word of God, no amount of work has gone in to make sure that the very Word of God is the King James Version. No amount of work. When they translated from the Texas Receptus, word for word, three Greek scholars had to agree on the exact meaning from the Greek and from the Hebrew of what needed to be in the English language. Now, that’s a very tough process.

We talked about Jose just a minute ago. And what happens is that as you translate you have to understand, in the Greek language, for instance the word “love.” Agape love is a deep motherly-type love. Now with the Greek, there is just agape, one word. But with the English language, we have to have “motherly love.” You had to have two words to make the statement of one Greek word. So there’s a language barrier, but it can be done. One thing about the King James Version, one thing you’ll notice is that you have italics. Italics are given in the King James Bible saying, “We had to add these words to clarify what was being said in the Greek. You look for those in other translations, they just put them in there and say, “Well, that’s what God said,” whereas King James clearly identifies what was the original. Thousands of less words in the Greek than what would be in the English language. That’s what the King James was given for, a very literal translation. For the purpose of the very Word of God, the words of Christ.

Now today there are some 2,000 translations out there. And there are more every single year coming out. But they are based on what is known as the Codes Venecannus and the Synecannus, a text that was found, just a couple of complete New Testaments, and a partial of the Old Testament were found in a monastery in the trash can. They came by and looked, and there they were. Picked them up, was getting ready to throw them away and said, “Let’s look at these ... Well, these are Greek copies of the originals!” And what they said was, “These were older. So since these were older and closer to the originals, they must be better.”

But they’re not. Older doesn’t mean that they’re better.

So as they looked at them and got them together, two guys by the name of Westcott and Hort came together. And they made what is known as the Westcott and Hort translation, or not translation, but the Greek text. And the problem with the Westcott and Hort versus the Texus Receptus is that these are based on just a couple of documents here, whereas ours is based on 2,700 that agree in perfect unity. And what happened was when Westcott and Hort did their Greek text and their Hebrew text, they left out or added 10,000 words.

Now let me say that again, 10,000 Greek words were either omitted or admitted into the text. Now, very clearly, which words are the words of God? Which one’s the standard? You know, a person that doesn’t believe we have the very Word of God will say, “Where is it?” Where the Westcott and Hort does not agree or is missing, then they default to the Texus Receptus. Whereas the King James, based on 2,700 is based on very, very few.

So, another point of logic is the preservation of the Word of God. God preserved His Word in the Texus Receptus and was translated for you and me that we may know that we have the very words of God. And actually, it was 9,770 Greek words omitted or admitted with Westcott/Hort. When you look at their doctrine, and I don’t have time to go through it, I’m not trying to put them down, but they were not conservative in their theology. They were liberal in their theology. And just like I said with old Jose, you can add what you want to add in the places where you want to have it.

Now someone’s gonna say, “Well, but Pastor Beaver, you believe the King James Version of the Bible, but what about the people in Africa?” I’m not in Africa, I’m in America. I’m in America, I preach and teach to those who speak English. And so I’m not as concerned about that.

Now, with the Word of God, I believe you go back to the original text, which would be the Texus Receptus, which is the proven, accurate text.

So, we have the preservation of the Word of God which proves a good reason for faith. Show me any other book in history that measures up to the grandeur of the Word of God. A book that was written, primarily the New Testament at least, 2,000 years ago or so, that still changes millions of people’s lives and millions of people live by every breath and every word of the Word of God. Show me another book. There is no other book that can even compare to the grandeur. Still with all the Oprah best-seller lists, nothing compares to the sale and distribution of the Word of God.

Likewise, logic, the truthfulness, the unity, the facts, the prophecies, the science ... No other book could ever even come close to the grandeur of the facts and logic and the preservation of the Word of God.

So there’s some bullets for your spiritual gun to be able to stand for the Word of God. But what does that mean for where we live? What does that mean for you and me? Well, if we have the Word of God factually, logically, preserved in the Word of God the very words of God, then what are we doing with it? Is it authoritative in our life? How many believe the Word of God here? Say amen!

What are you doing with it? “But be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22). And I paraphrased that. If we know the Word of God, believe the Word of God, and know it is the Word of God by faith, do we live by it?

If you’ve never been saved, the grand subject of the whole unity of the Bible is that of salvation. That you’re lost and you need Christ and you need to be saved, but have you been? Have you trusted Him in your heart? Do you know for sure that Jesus is your Savior? If you don’t, the Bible says, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23). That means everybody. It doesn’t mean “some.” That word “all” is in the Greek. It means that ALL have sinned. That means every single person that is born of woman is a sinner. And it says, “As many as believed, to them he gave power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12). Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death…” That word “death” is there, separation from God… “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 10:9 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Not “possibly.” Not if you “feel like it,” but thou shalt be saved.

Have you been saved? You believe the Word of God factually, logically, and preserved for us? What have you done with it?

Now Christian, how about you? You believe the Word of God, you believe it to be true. Do you rule your life according to it? Do you rule your life by the fact that this is the Word of God and God says so? Not about how I feel about it, not how I interpret it, but what God says?

Not too long ago somebody said, “Well, Pastor Beaver I feel that you try to tell people what the will of God is for their life.”  I tell you about what God says about the will of God for your life. The particular person who said that wanted to do something against God’s Word, and they wanted me to reinterpret the Word of God to fit their situation, and I’ll never do it. And you should fire me if I do.

The Word of God is true, and “let God be true, and every man a liar,” (Romans 3:4). Are you living your life accordingly? Christian, governing, is it your compass for life? Or is it something you picked up … a person on TV … Dr. Phil? I heard him say something about Christians. I wanted to hear what he had to say. He said, “Emergency room Christians. A guy’s sitting there bleeding now, and you ask him if he’s a Christian. He says, ‘Well, I am today!’ So many times.”

I thought that was pretty funny! So many times that’s the way Christians are: “I believe the Word of God when it suits me. When I need it.”

But as the song says, “I need You every hour.” I don’t like that song. I need You every second, and I need the Word of God to govern and rule my life.