Late summer and early fall are times families spend their Saturdays canning fruits and vegetables for the coming year. Through a process of cleaning, sterilizing, and cooking the goods canned are insured to be safe and enjoyable when later needed.

In a similar way God has preserved his word so the Scriptures we read are safe and enjoyable, whenever we read them. One difference between preserved vegetables and the preserved Word of God is that the vegetable undergoes a certain amount of change in texture and taste in the preserving process, whereas the books of the Bible are essentially the same sense they were originally written.

How can this be? Consider what holds the universe together. Hebrews 1:3 tells us Jesus sustains all things by his word. The word sustains means to carry or to bear. Colossians 1:17 says that in Jesus all things hold together. As Jesus carries the universe holding it all together, so God preserves the original books of the Bible making them available to us today.

One way God used to preserve his word was through the painstaking manner in which it was copied. Before the age of the printing press each copy was made by hand, checked, and double-checked by people trained to look for the smallest error. Since erasers had not yet been invented, whenever a mistake was found standard procedure was to throw out the entire copy. Today copies are printed on high-speed presses, whereas then the Scriptures were methodically copied and even translated from one language to another, word-by-word, and sometimes letter-by-letter just to protect its ancient sayings.

Such a preservation is important because it allows us to trust that the Bible we read is indeed God’s Word. When we read words such as believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, we can be confident that these words mean the same thing today as when they were first written.