REVELATION, INSPIRATION and PRESERVATION of the BIBLE

A. REVELATION
God is so much greater than us that it is impossible for us to find out 
anything about Him without His co-operation. However, He has chosen to 
reveal Himself to us, and He does this in a variety of ways:
	1. Through nature - there are patterns and beauty in nature which can 
give some idea of that God is like, though these are only dim reflections 
of what they once were.
	2. Through human relationships - the love we have for our families and 
friends is similar to the love which God has for us.
	3. Through personal experience - there are some people who have had 
direct encounters with God, the bible mentions Enoch, Noah and Abraham, for 
example. This has also happened in modern times though only in some special 
cases.
	4. Through the Holy Spirit - even in places where the Gospel has not yet 
reached, men still have some understanding of a God. Perhaps God will 
reveal Himself more and more through the Holy Spirit as time goes on.
	5. Through the bible - this is perhaps the most important means by which 
God has revealed Himself. The bible is an account of God's dealings with 
man throughout history; just how it came about we will see in this next 
section.

B. INSPIRATION
The bible is not just a history book recording various events where God did 
things for His people. Neither is it a telegram from heaven, containing 
words actually written down by God. In fact it is a combination of both 
these things; Peter sums it up in 2 Peter 1:21 - "For prophecy never had 
its origin in the will of man, but men spoke as they were carried along by 
the Holy Spirit." (see also 2 Timothy 3:16)
So in the bible we see a combination of God's words and of man's words, but 
the overall message is from God - He supervised the writing of the 
scriptures and no doubt had a hand in making sure that this message has 
become available to us.

C. PRESERVATION
Many people think that the bible as we now have it, could not possibly be 
the same as it was when the books were first written. This is because in 
the olden days when printing wasn't invented, books were copied by hand. 
Some people think that this must have led to many copying errors in the 
bible, but we can have confidence in what it says for at least two reasons: 
	1. The Jews who copied out the books of the Old Testament were very 
careful - they would check each copy by counting up the number of words in 
the original and comparing that number with the number of words in the 
copy. The numbers had to be exactly the same before they would accept the 
copy.
 	2. For the New Testament, copies were made just as carefully, but as 
well as that, we actually have manuscripts which were written fairly close 
to the time of the New Testament - complete copies of the New Testament are 
still around which were written in 325 A.D., and we have fragments dating 
back to the early second century which may be the first copies of the 
original!

There are a number of versions of the bible around today. In deciding which 
one to use we have to take a number of things into account:
	1. Which manuscript is it translated from? (The earlier the better)
	2. Who did the translating? (A group of translators is better than one)
	3. How easy is it to read? (The King James Version is a pretty accurate 
translation, but if you don't like reading it then it's better to get a 
more modern one)