And it is easier for Heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail. Luke 16:17
The newspaper I was working many years ago for had the contract to print up voters lists for an upcoming provincial election. One of those lists was for a coastal region of the province where most of the people were French speaking, and many of the people were fishermen. The lists were printed in both English and French, and included each voter’s occupation and name. In French, the word for fisherman is pêcheur. However, the person who was creating the list used the wrong word, pécheur which means sinner. The error was not caught until after the lists were printed. It was just an accent on one letter different, but the printed lists had to be destroyed, because of the difference one accent made; nobody wanted to be called a sinner instead of a fisherman. That reminds me of the way in which the ancient Jewish scribes wrote the Scriptures. If even one letter was written wrong, the entire page had to be discarded. In fact, even if one tittle was wrong, it was discarded. A tittle is smaller even than an accent on a French word, seemingly insignificant but capable of completely changing the meaning of a word. Our text declares that a tittle, written in the Scriptures, is of eternal consequence.
When holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21), they were expressing the very thoughts and intentions of God. They were not creating anything; they were merely putting onto papyrus or parchment that which has existed forever. The Scriptures are as eternal as God, as unchangeable as God, as true and faithful as God. When we can grasp this truth concerning the Word of God, we can understand how the passing away of Heaven and earth is more likely than the failure of even the slightest shade of meaning of the smallest of the letters of one of the words in the Scriptures. This makes it very important for us to make sure that we do not alter the Word of God that we have received.
As I have been recently researching the background to the manuscripts from which our Bible is printed, I have been amazed at the care that was taken by the scribes as they created copies of the Law and the Prophets. I have also been amazed at the care used among early Christians as they wrote copies of the Gospels, epistles, and other books of the New Testament. Among thousands of manuscripts and pieces of manuscripts that make up the Majority Text, or Textus Receptus, there are only miniscule discrepancies from one document to another. None of these have the slightest impact on any doctrinal issue. How different the many alterations and deletions made in the manuscripts that make up the Minority Text from which most modern-language Bibles are created! Unlike the consistent Majority Text manuscripts, the Minority Text manuscripts do not even agree with each other. Somebody has been either very careless or very devious.
The Word of God will endure forever. The changes that men try to make to it will not. – Jim MacIntosh