One of the key reasons God separated out the nation Israel was so He’d have a vehicle through which to communicate and preserve His Word.

“The idea was to have a certain class of people charged with the job of collecting together, collating, and laying out and copying the Word of God,” says Jordan. “Of course, God is the one who takes the initiative in this preservation process. It’s not something He leaves for man to do because man wants to do it. It’s His design, purpose and program.”

God, for example, gave Moses the Ten Commandments, and when Moses destroyed them, God took the initiative to rewrite them and make another copy, so to speak.

From Deut. 31, we know Moses was instructed by God to take the initial section of his writings and put them in the Ark of the Covenant for safekeeping. Moses’ text-in-progress was committed to priests from the tribe of Levi, who were singled out by God for the responsibility of keeping the Book.

“God told Moses to put it in the ark and then He raised up a whole tribe of people to take care of the ark and the Book in it—copying, preserving and teaching it to the nation,” says Jordan.

*****

The purpose of the Jewish priesthood was to teach the people doctrine out of the Word of God as they had the sacrifices, etc. From II Chronicles 15:3, we’re told the priesthood became corrupt and “for a long season Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law.”

Jordan explains, “What happened is the priests forgot the doctrine but kept the ritual. Now, where’ve you ever seen that before? Most every Sunday, if you go to the wrong place.”

Malachi 2:7-9 demonstrates the priesthood’s failure to do what God told them to do in teaching the Word: “For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.
[8] But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.
[9] Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.”

Jordan says, “From this passage you see the function of the priest and what he’s supposed to be about. It says ‘the priest’s lips should keep knowledge.’ If you wanted knowledge from God, and you wanted to know what God’s Word said, that priest of God was to preserve it and have it ready for you when you needed it.

“That guy’s job was to always have and maintain the Word and make it available for the people at all times. They’re to be able to come to him and get it. And, my friend, that isn’t just coming and getting and saying, ‘What he’d say?’ and have him say it to you.

“We’ve looked at too many passages by now that you should know those people had copies of the Bible for themselves and there were copies of the Old Testament all over the world out there.”

*****

Another passage on the corruption of the priesthood is in Micah 3:11-12: “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.
[12] Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.”

Jordan explains, “See, the priests had gotten off the track and weren’t doing what they should have been doing. They ‘teach for hire,’ and the prophets ‘divine for money,’ but they say (piously), ‘Is not the Lord among us?’

“Blame it on the Lord, see: ‘We’re doing it for money, and position, and fame and reputation, and yet we’re always real pious to say, Is not the Lord among us?’ Nuts!

“These guys are thinking, ‘None evil can come upon us,’ but God’s going to destroy ’em. What the priests had done—they had become a part of Satan’s policy of evil against the Word of god. You see it in operation there when you see the judges of the people doing it for money; the priests teaching for money and the preachers preaching for money, not for the Lord.

“Do you remember that scribe over in Jeremiah 36:12 who’s actually got a special chamber all to himself in the king’s palace? Well, what’s the man of God doing in the king’s palace?! That fellow belonged down in the temple. He was supposed to be writing out and copying that Book, and taking care of that thing, teaching it. What in the world’s he doing in a king’s palace? Money.

“Later in the chapter, we see that the king begins to cut up the Word of God with his pen knife and destroys it. The king’s destroying the Word of God and yet he’s got a scribe living in his house with a special room for himself! Now that’s the policy of evil, and what you’re gonna find when you go out and study about the corruptions of the Word of God on the market today, more often than not, the origin—not always the people involved; a lot of times people don’t know any different . . .”

*****

Jordan continues, “I have to confess to you, there was a time when I didn’t know anything about these things. I was told by people who I thought knew what the truth was . . . I was told a certain Bible was right, and I went around telling people it was right but came to find out later I was wrong.

“I used to tell people the American Standard Version was the best one on the market. Why’d I say that? My uncle went to New Orleans Baptist theological seminary and you ought to know what’s best if you’ve been to seminary, shouldn’t you? I mean, certainly they know in the cemetery, uh, I mean, seminary.

“I remember I argued with a guy once, ‘But you don’t understand. You’ve never been to school. Your problem is you need more education. My Uncle Jim said because they told him in school . . . and Dr. Roy Beeman says . . . Old Dr. Beeman knows it and he says the ASV is the way to go.’ I (reasoned), ‘I gotta believe that, don’t I?’

“Well, some dear little old saint of God sat down with me one day, and instead of kicking me in the shins and telling me I was a reprobate and a heretic, you know what she did? She cried big old tears, and she said, ‘But if you would just read this little (article).’ I said, ‘I don’t want to read that nonsense! That crazy nut; he just hasn’t studied anything!’

“And she’d just cry, and finally she provoked me into reading the thing. And you know what I found out? I found out, ‘Hey, who I thought that (educated man of God) was over there didn’t make any difference.’

“I began to see some distinct differences between what I was saying was the best and the (King James Version). And when I laid those differences out side-by-side, I knew in my heart which one was right and which one was wrong.

“You didn’t have to give me a lot of theological jargon. I tried to explain some of that stuff away but you know you can only get so far with that. Your conscience won’t let you go but so far in trying to explain stuff away.

“What I’m saying to you, folks, the motive of the guy telling you the wrong thing isn’t always . . . somewhere along the line people get duped. But when you go back into the history and find the real roots for the error that’s being taught, what do you find? Money and gain and status; that kind of thing. Pride. That’s where you go back to.

“Now, that doesn’t mean everybody you meet who’s got the wrong kind of bible in their hand is proud and out for money. Don’t put that kind of nonsense in your mind. But it means the system and the doctrine they’re propagating has that, and you love them enough to tell them the truth in love and try to reach them with it . . .

“But, you know, folks, back behind that evil . . . What happens is an unsuspecting person gets in it and then he begins to get the gain. And the more gain he gets out of that system—then when he sees the truth it’s a matter of giving up the gain.

“When you’re poor as Job’s turkey and you don’t have a ministry, that’s one thing; you can be real brave. But when you’ve got your life invested in something; you know, a pension plan and an insurance policy . . .”

*****

Alongside Satan’s policy of evil to corrupt the Word of God runs God’s policy of preserving His word through faithful scribes and priests.

Hezekiah was a godly king with faithful who wrote portions of the Word of God and was responsible in large measure for much of the collecting together of it.

We know from Isaiah 36:22 and Isaiah 37:1 that it was during the reign of Hezekiah that Isaiah the prophet prophesied.

“Isaiah, along with a great number of other godly men, was in a situation where much of the Word of God was being produced, and so there’s a great host of interest,” says Jordan. “From Proverbs 25:1, you see Hezekiah has these men functioning in their job of copying and laying out and collecting together the Scripture. Hezekiah has a guild of scribes; godly, faithful men recognized by the crown who want see the Word prosper and flourish. My point is there’s a faithful group of people even when the priesthood is apostate.”

*****

David, for example, had his very own scribe and II Samuel 8 refers to the official governmental position of the scribe. I Kings 4 lists the scribes (plural) David’s boy Solomon had when he set up his reign. Jordan reasons, “They had the AUTHORIZED version, put it like that.”

By contrast, Jeremiah 8 reports, “How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.”

Jordan explains, “Jeremiah prophesies before the Babylonian captivity hits and what he’s saying is, ‘You folks claim to be wise, and you claim to know the Word of God, but if you’re so smart, and you know so much about the Bible, why don’t you know judgment’s coming? I mean, even the birds know the times, and the season’s change, and what’s going to go on, and when it’s time to do this or that. If you guys are so cotton-pickin’ smart, well, why don’t you know the wrath of God’s fixin’ to fall on Israel? Why are you standing up saying, Peace and safety; nothing’s gonna happen’?

“Well, if they’d known Deuteronomy 28-32, along in there, about all those curses, and the things that are going to happen to the nation Israel, they’d have known God Almighty was fixin’ to clean their plow to a fair thee well! But they didn’t.

“Notice he talks about the ‘pen of the scribe.’ You know what he’s talking about? That’d be copies. They’ve got copies of the law but they’re not heeding them. They reject them. Verse 9 says ‘they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?’ Now, there’s a good verse to learn! They’ve rejected the Word, and, buddy, they don’t have any wisdom!”

*****

The great example of the scribe in the Bible is in the book of Ezra. As Ezra 7:6 reports, “This Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given: and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the LORD his God upon him.”

Jordan explains, “Ezra returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity and was ‘a ready scribe in the law of Moses,’ meaning he was an expert instructor in the Word of God. He’s down in Babylon 70 years but Ezra’s got that Word—those birds took it down there with them!”

From Daniel 9, it’s clear Daniel learned from the Old Testament books he possessed the length of the captivity. Jordan says, “Daniel had the books of Chronicles and Jeremiah there anyway, and Ezra comes back to Jerusalem as an expert instructor and teacher; he’d had the Book over there to study.

“It’s an article of faith to believe that what God sets up He’s powerful enough to see executed. The design is the same in New Testament—God preserves His Word by a multiplicity of copies from a class of people designated to do that. In other words, the Bible’s going to be preserved by the dynamic of people handling the thing; not in one copy sitting on a bookshelf somewhere for 500 or 1,000 years.”