That is an excellent question. I have been confronted by many who challenge me with a similar view. They say, “There are so many Bibles today that have been written by men and they are all different, so how can you say that any of them is truly the Word of God?” The first thing I do is quote two passages that prove that God is the Author of the Bible and that He used men to write down His truth in what we call the Holy Scriptures. The first passage is 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” The second passage is 2 Peter 1:20-21, “Know this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” After quoting these passages, I tell them that these verses speak of the ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS that were written by the inspired writers of the Holy Scriptures. In time men began to make COPIES of those manuscripts and at some point, the original manuscripts disappeared and then men began to “make copies of the copies” that had been written. One of the main reasons for these copies was to make a complete copy of the Bible in one’s own language. We call these TRANSLATIONS of the Bible. In this long and tedious process, mistakes were sometimes made by the translators. Some of these mistakes were simply “copy errors” (putting down the wrong word(s) or mistakenly omitting or adding words). In other cases, the translator may have, in an attempt to translate it into his native tongue, used words that didn’t convey the original meaning. Let me say clearly and emphatically that there is no such thing as a PERFECT MANUSCRIPT or a PERFECT TRANSLATION. The only “perfect manuscripts” would be the actual ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS that were written by the inspired writers spoken of in 2 Peter 1:21.

Does this mean we can’t trust any of the various translations of the Bible? No, for God has taken great care to ensure that His truth has not been compromised. In other words, the differences in translations are relatively minor and they do not compromise the vital truths of Christianity. Truths such as the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, the atoning sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, His glorious resurrection and ascension back to heaven, salvation through faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross, the Second Coming of Christ, and the eternal state in either heaven or hell, are all kept intact in every translation of the Holy Scriptures. I caution people not to use a “PARAPHRASE of the Bible” where the writer uses his own words to convey what he believes a verse or passage of Scripture is saying. A true translation of the Bible is where the translator seeks to communicate “word for word” from the manuscript he is using into his own native language. It should also be noted that the reason we see various differences in translations in the same language is because of the “manuscripts that were used in making the translation.” For example, the King James Version translators used the “Textus Receptus” manuscripts while the Revised Standard Version translators used the “Hebrew Masoretic Text (for the Old Testament)” and the “Nestle-Aland Greek Text (for the New Testament”).

In closing, I want to reemphasize that God did not allow any major doctrine to be compromised in the making of these various translations. When we are confronted and challenged by those who reject the Bible as the Word of God because of the many translations we need to stand firm for the truth that we have in the Holy Scriptures. Jesus said in His prayer to the Father in John 17:17, “Thy Word is truth.” We too should echo those same words as we study our Bible and then “contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).  (DO)  (638.3)