God failed beforehand?!

Outtake from David Reid (Columbus Bible Church) at the summer Bible conference:

Matthew 24:35: [35] Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

I Peter 1:23: [23] Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

"So is there ever a point in time when God's Word does not abide? No, there never is because it 'abideth forever.'

[25] But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

"You know good and well that's quoted in Matthew 4:4 and Luke 4 as well. Jesus Christ says, 'It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'

"Think with me just for a minute about this. If man needs every word, then what must be available to him? Every word. Doesn't it just logically follow that's the essence of what that is saying? 

"What this means is that God promised to preserve His Word and make it continually available. There are no gaps.

"Now think through this with me. God both inspired His Word and preserved His Word. If God promised to preserve His Word and it had to be continually available, then those simple principles mean that all new sources of information cannot be true.

"People get all excited about Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus. Well, Codex Vaticanus is first listed in the Vatican library in 1475, but it's not publicly available until much later. Sinaiticus was first discovered in 1844. The modern critical text of Westcott and Hort was 1871. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1946.

"If any of those sources of information actually represent a more accurate text, if they're actually that, then that means what you have before was inferior and what it means is the Word wasn't preserved!

"What if you lived before the Dead Sea Scrolls and they were actually the most accurate? That means you didn't have them! Doesn't that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that that which is new cannot be better?!

"If you're saying that a modern discovered manuscript, or a modern version is more accurate because of that new information, then you must say that what existed before was inaccurate and inadequate and therefore God promised to preserve His Word and have it 'abideth and endureth forever' was simply false!

"Do you see how you're stuck? That simple principle means any 'new and better and greatly improved' thing cannot be true! Isn't that logically the case? It naturally follows from that.

"The very nature of preservation means that supposed new and better evidence cannot be so because it means that God would have been failing beforehand."