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Bible

Bible

The Bible

Isaiah 30:8; John 1:1; John 1:14; Hebrews 4:12-13

Our Bible is not an amulet, a magical charm, but a book to be read, marked, inwardly digested, and translated into life.

—The late Professor J. Philip Hyatt, Vanderbilt Divinity School

If I read this book [Bible], I cannot read that book.

—John Ruskin

The Bible

We search the world for truth. We cull

The good, the true, the beautiful,

From graven stone and written scroll,

And all old lower-fields of the soul;

And, weary seekers of the best,

We come back laden from our quest,

To find that all the sages said

Is in the Book our mothers read.

—John Greenleaf Whittier

An Authentic Portrait

In front of old Trinity Church in Boston stands a statue of Phillips Brooks, its great preacher. Behind the figure of the New England minister and bishop, Christ is portrayed standing with his hand on Brooks' shoulder. The story is told of a working woman who paused to gaze upon the figures and asked, "Who is that standing back of Dr. Brooks?" A stranger replied, "That is Christ." The dear soul replied, "It doesn't look like Him."

The only authentic picture we have of Christ is in the Bible, and we miss the whole point of it when we try to make the Bible an ethical scrapbook or a handy, do-it-yourself manual. It is the revelation of Christ.

Difficult Passages

A man once complained to Mark Twain that the Bible was all jumbled up, inconsistent, and filled with passages he could not understand. The humorist replied, "I have more difficulty with the passages I do understand than with the passages I do not understand."

Distributing Bibles

The well-known organization, the Gideons, was founded by three traveling salesmen. Over a twenty-year period, they distributed one-million Bibles! Now it is claimed they distribute a million copies of the Bible every seventeen days!

Don't Lose the Bible in Church!

During the reign of King Josiah, who lived seven centuries before Christ, the law had become hopelessly mixed up with common opinions. Idolatry was flourishing; contempt for theology was common. There was little or no resistance to moral erosion. Josiah, who was made king at age eight, was worried. He desired to be a good king and he was. He wanted to lead his people out of darkness. He turned to the Temple for help. The results were disappointing. The Word of the Lord could not be found! A renovating program on the Temple was started. At last the high priest, Hilkiah, said to Shaphan, his secretary, "I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord" (2 Kings 22:8).

God's Word

And so, I thought, the anvil of God's Word

For ages the skeptics' blows have beat upon,

But though the noise of falling blows was heard

The anvil is unchanged; the hammers gone.

—John Clifford

The Enduring Word

Scholars generally agree the Bible was written over a span of about twelve-hundred years. We do not have a single book in the handwriting of the original author, but only copies of copies of copies. This by no means lessens its authenticity; it testifies to its indestructibility.

Here It Is!

In his book, Is God in There?, Dr. Charles Leber shares a moving experience from a youth meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His interpreter was an American Christian, a college president, and a splendid student of the Portuguese language. During the course of his prepared address Dr. Leber spontaneously interjected, "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord."

The interpreter hesitated and Leber slowly repeated the sentence. Finally, the interpreter quietly said, "I'm sorry, friend, I've forgotten how to translate that" and turning to the audience asked, "Does anyone here know enough English and Portuguese to translate what the speaker just said?" No one responded.

Dr. Leber whispered, "Skip it, skip it. Let's go on"

As they came down from the rostrum, an enthusiastic boy about twelve years of age pushed through the crowd and joyously exclaimed, "Here it is, mister! Here it is, mister!" The lad had found the sixth verse of the fourth chapter of Zechariah. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord"

This is the parable of our day. It symbolizes our despair and our hope. When we are able to find and translate God's Word into life, then and only then do we know the Bible.

Holding Up the Bible

A critic of Billy Graham once said: "All he does is to hold up the Bible and shout!" This comment, of course, is capable of more than one interpretation. Positively speaking, however, what more could an evangelist, indeed any Christian, do than hold up the eternal principles and teachings of the Bible, especially the life of the One who fulfilled it?

Like a Mighty Army Moves ...

There were fourteen generations between Abraham and David; fourteen more between David and the deportation of the Jews to Babylon; and still another fourteen generations before the appearance of the Messiah, but something highly significant was quietly going on in the bloodstream of history.

Looking for Loopholes

Just before W. C. Fields's death, a friend visited his hospital room. The great American comedian was doing something out of character—thumbing through a Bible. "What are you doing, Bill?" asked the caller. Fields thoughtfully replied, "I'm looking for loopholes."

Read Before Acting

When The Bible House was dedicated in Canberra, Australia, the prime minister, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, shared an interesting experience. He said that while reading law with an eminent constitutional lawyer, whenever a question involving the Constitution of the Commonwealth came up, the seasoned barrister would say, "Now, Menzies, the first thing we ought to do before we become too involved in the decisions given by the courts is to read the Constitution again." The men would sit down and read the legal instrument from beginning to end, saturating themselves in the letter as well as in the spirit of the law before attempting to concentrate on the forthcoming case. To Menzies it illustrated an old Latin maxim: "Melius est petere fontes quam sectare rivulos." (''It is better to seek the fountainhead than to divide up the little streams. ")

Read with Diligence

What Francis Bacon, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, said about reading in general applies with peculiar relevancy to the Bible: "Some books," he maintained, "are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested"; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. The Bible belongs in the last group.

Some Comments

To me the gospel is just one great figure standing with outstretched arms.

—Phillips Brooks

There is only one Book.

—Sir Walter Scott

Bible stories are like empty cups for people to fill with their own experiences and drink from them over and over again.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Still the Best-Seller

Even though over one-thousand new books are published every day—not counting pamphlets, booklets, and government reports—the Bible remains the world's best-seller. It has been translated into more languages and dialects than any other book. Yet, the Bible is not read as often or with as much understanding as its wide circulation might suggest.

Their Rhetoric

Delete the influence of the Bible from the writings of Blake, Thoreau, Emerson, T. S. Eliot, and Winston Churchill, and their contributions would be different. The addresses of Lincoln, the measured prose of Washington, and the inspired speeches of Patrick Henry had their roots in the Bible.

To Start Something

We need to go back to the Bible, we who have not read a word of it for many years. We need to buy a modern printing and translation and read the old, old Word as if it were intended only for ourselves. We are not to be surprised if it does not put an end to all our problems; for the Bible was not intended to finish anything but to start something.

What If Napoleon?

It is claimed that once Napoleon Bonaparte toyed with the idea of becoming a book merchant. Such a probability stirs the imagination. What if Napoleon had devoted himself to selling books—including the Bible—instead of waging war!

Where It Begins

"The Story of the New Testament," says Dr. M. Jack Suggs in The Layman Reads His Bible, "begins with a Man who wrote no part of it but was responsible for all of it."

Wycliffe's Royalty

John Wycliffe and his colleagues, using the text of Jerome, produced the first complete translation of the Bible in 1382. Wycliffe's translation was a lasting contribution to Christendom. His reward for sharing the Scripture? Critics dug up and burned his bones.

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