God failed beforehand?!

From an article in last month's issue of Christianity Today magazine about a new Dead Sea Scroll exhibit at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.:

"In your Bible, 1 Samuel 17:4 probably says Goliath was 'six cubits and a span,' or perhaps nine and a half feet. That’s based on the Masoretic Hebrew text. The Septuagint (an early Greek translation) and the ancient historian Josephus both say four cubits and a span. A cubit is about 18 inches, and a span is about 8.75 inches.

"People were smaller in those days, so six and a half feet could still be a giant. In fact, the Dead Sea Scrolls version of 1 Samuel says four cubits and a span. 'That’s the sort of thing that the Dead Sea Scrolls can do,' says Christopher Rollston, chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at George Washington University. 'They provide us with some early textual material that will often refine the readings that we have in Masoretic texts.'

"Most modern Bibles still haven’t reverted to the earlier version of 1 Samuel 17:4, much to Rollston’s disappointment. But at least some provide a footnote. 'If someone has a Bible translation that doesn’t reference Dead Sea Scroll readings, which are the earliest and often the best readings of the Bible that we have, that’s probably not a good translation to use if one wants to study the text in great depth,' he concluded."

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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? asks Columbus, Ohio preacher David Reid.

"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."