"The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." 1 Peter 1:24-26

A number of years ago, a visitor at an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls remarked, "Just to look at it makes chills run down my spine. This Bible through the ages still says the same thing."

Found in 1947 in several caves near the Dead Sea in Qumran, the Dead Sea

Scrolls include over six hundred scrolls and thousands of fragments. They contain portions or entire sections of every Old Testament book except Esther.

The discovery, which was made accidentally by a young boy herding sheep, revealed the oldest copies of the Hebrew Scriptures hitherto known to be in existence. For those who read them first, it must have indeed been stirring, to see the remarkable precision between the scrolls of Qumran and the text of their own Bibles.

The preservation of the Scriptures throughout the centuries gives evidence of their value and of God’s protective hand over his Word. Before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1438, there were only 30,000 books throughout all of Europe. Nearly all of these works were Bibles or biblical commentary recorded meticulously at the hands of monks with pen and ink. Even a small book took months to complete, and a book the size of the Bible required several years to produce. Fittingly, the first book printed on Gutenberg's press, completed in 1455, was the Bible itself.

Today the Bible remains the most printed and bestselling book of all time, and the Scriptures we hold in our hands speak the very same message penned in the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. We can be confident that it is the message of our God.

Centuries after Isaiah spoke this truth, it was quoted again by the apostle Peter: "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." 1 Peter 1:24-26. God’s voice is indeed still among us, speaking to all who will hear.