By David Daniels

Answer: Down through history, God chose several languages to communicate His message.

Choice 1: Hebrew
From at least as far back as Abraham (around 2000 BC) to the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, God chose the Semitic languages, especially Hebrew, to teach men that they were sinners, and in need of a Saviour.

Choice 2: Greek
But in the first century AD, God made a second choice. The main language of the world for three centuries had been Greek. God used that language to give the New Testament for the world to read. And it spread like wildfire.

The devil recognized the huge potential of God's Word in a "world" language, so he moved quickly to counter it. He prepared a fake "Bible" in Alexandria, Egypt. The Old Testament portion is called the "Septuagint" and the New Testament portion is called the "Alexandrian text." This corruption was a "Greek" Bible, but with the poison of the Apocrypha mixed in, made to look like real scripture. The Alexandrian "Bible" also perverted the New Testament, taking out many of God's words and substituting man's ideas. This laid the groundwork for Satan's plan to spread religious lies, and subvert the true faith.

Choice 3: Old Latin
While the first copies of the New Testament in Greek were being made and passed around, God directed other Christians to translate His preserved words into Old Latin, another "international" language used primarily in Europe. The Old Latin Bible was known as the "Vulgate"

The devil responded by preparing a counterfeit "Vulgate" in Rome. It included the Apocryphal books and the Alexandrian perversions. There were now two Latin "Vulgates," dramatically different from one another. The true Christians knew the difference between the true and the false "Vulgates." But they paid dearly as the Roman Catholic armies hunted down and martyred those who were caught with the true Vulgate. But God continued to preserve His words.

Choice 4: English
In the 1500s William Tyndale worked to translate the Bible from the accurate Greek and Hebrew manuscripts into a new "world" language. English-speaking people after him continued the effort to translate and perfect a Bible that matched the ancient scriptures. One of the best of these is the Geneva Bible.

By 1604 God used King James I of England to commission a group of learned men to accumulate scriptures in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English as well as other languages. Their assignment was to translate God's words into the most accurate English possible. In early 1611 they published the Authorized Version, also known as the King James Bible. From the day it was published, the King James Bible circulated around the world, and missionaries translated Bibles from this precious book.

The devil pulled out all the stops on this one. By the 1800s he had inspired a whole movement to discredit and destroy the King James Bible. Today, we have a multitude of translations that change, remove and add to God's preserved words. But God has always kept the true scriptures in the hands of his people.

God chose each of these languages because they suited his purpose at a particular time in history to carry out His plan.

The choices were God's. Outside of Israel, Hebrew was never a universal language. Ancient Greek is no longer a universal language, nor is Latin. But for our time, in a language read around the world, God preserved His Words in the King James Bible and kept His promise in Psalms 12:6-7.