“Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy Name” (Psalm 138:2).
This remarkable statement shows the wonderful position the Bible has in the mind of God. God’s Word is the declaration of God Himself, and that is above His name, His renown. We can have no knowledge of God apart from revelation, and for this we must have God’s Word either spoken or written.
In the Old Testament times God spoke; when the Lord Jesus was here upon earth God spoke. Now we have the whole revealed will of God in the Scriptures. It is remarkable that the word, Bible, means in the original THE book, as if there were not another book in the world, just as the word, Scriptures, means THE writings, as if they were the only writings in the world. How is it that the Bible thus in its very titles arrogates claims to itself as the only source of divine information? Surely it is that the Book fills the place it claims. A cursory examination will serve to prove this statement.
“The One who made me made this Book,” said a Chinese translator of the Scriptures.
Impressed into this service by the missionaries, the dark heathen was so struck by the intimate knowledge the Bible had of men, their thoughts and feelings, that he came to the conclusion that the One who made him made the Bible. How true this is.
“The Bible is a bad immoral book,” the infidel says. How is it then that good people are the ones who study the Bible? If the Bible were a bad book, bad people would read it with avidity; if it were immoral, immoral people would gloat over its contents. But is this so? We know that it is not. You know that if a man or woman is really living according to the Bible, you will find that person truthful, virtuous, honest, kind, gracious, in every way to be trusted. Would a bad book accomplish this?
The Bible is the only book written by Easterns that has influenced Westerns to any appreciable extent. Where one Western has read the Koran, the bible of the Mohammedans, or the sacred books of the Buddhists and Brahmins, millions have read the Bible. How is this? We answer because it is God’s book, and though He employed Easterns to write it, it contains a UNIVERSAL message. That is why it is so well known in Western lands.
The Bible is a LIVING Book. This is proved by two things. Most books have their vogue, and after an edition or two pass out of print. The majority of books are found only in the language in which they are written, and none other. The Bible was completed over eighteen centuries ago, and is as vigorous today as it ever was. It has been translated into something like seven hundred languages. Why? Because it has a living message of a universal nature. The Bible today is far and away the world’s best seller, though it goes against the natural man and is resented by him.
It is also proved to be living by the way it changes lives. No other book in the world does that. An infidel lecturer challenged a Christian to a debate on the truth of Christianity. The Christian accepted the challenge on one condition. He would bring on the platform one hundred persons, who would testify to the way that the gospel had changed their lives, drunkards saved from intemperance, thieves saved from their sin; lives changed, and changed for the better. The infidel lecturer was to bring on to the platform one hundred persons, whose lives had been changed for the better through embracing the negations of infidelity. The challenge was not accepted. The reason was obvious. The Bible is indeed a living Book.
The Bible’s influence is uplifting. It inculcates care for the weak, the suffering, the ignorant. This was grasped by a little chap, who was erecting a Christian village amongst the heathen with his box of bricks. The father suggested that he should build a heathen village. The little lad was silent for a while, then, taking away what he had erected for a mission station, he said, rather sadly, “We shall not want that, nor the hospital, nor the school.” Does not this let the light into matters? The place where the gospel would be preached, the place where the sick would be cared for, the place where the ignorant would be educated, so that they might read the Word of God, were not required. Nor was there anything to answer to these things in the heathen religion for the heathen temples, gorgeous as they are, are places of vile sin and dark superstition. “The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty” (Ps. 74:20). What a glorious day will that be when “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14).
We are told that the heathen religions of India, China, Japan, Mexico, etc. have much in common with the Bible as to details. We are told there were virgin births, sacrificial deaths, and the like, before ever the Bible story was known, that the heathen have stories about our first parents, about the flood, etc. We are not surprised at this. As to stories of our first parents and the flood, seeing those were events in the early history of the world, we should expect that the account of them would be handed down from earliest times. We should be surprised if it were not so. Nor are we surprised at the garbled way they come down to us, as they are only the traditions of men. The reason why they have come to us in the Bible so vividly, so full of detail in their verisimilitude, in so great contrast to the stories of the heathen, where fable is plainly mixed up with fact, is because the account the Bible gives is God-inspired. And as to the virgin births and sacrificial deaths before the Bible story came, we know that the devil is a great imitator, and doubtless originated these things so as to bring into discredit the gospel story. They were foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures, and Satan could anticipate them for his own evil ends.
But one word clears the mind. If the heathen stories and the Bible have, as infidels aver, a common origin, how is it that the followers of heathen teaching are sunk in a state of wickedness, misery and superstition. Look at the condition of heathen lands and then at what prevails, where Christ is really owned. Look at lands where they are throwing off the little Christianity that they had, as for instance Russia. As irreligion gets a foothold among the masses so we get a growth of sin, immorality, violence, wickedness of all sorts. Indeed infidels like Huxley, though disbelieving in the Bible, have urged Bible instruction in the schools, recognizing the good results that the fear of God has upon the rising generation. The Bible is the only book that gives that.
The Bible is the only book that reveals the beginning and the end of things. It is the only book that tells us what sin is, that gives us a standard, and the only book that explains what death is and what comes after death. The Christian Scientist tells us that death does not exist. Yet Christian Scientists are like other people. Not even their leader, Mrs. Eddy, who invented this harebrained travesty of religion, developed the imagination that kept her from death. The Spiritists say that death is a new birth. The man in the street says that it is the debt of nature. The Bible solemnly tells us that it is “THE WAGES OF SIN” (Rom. 6:23).
The Bible is the only book that gives us a remedy for sin. It sets before us a blessed Saviour, who died a redemptive death upon the cross for our salvation. The Bible tells us how a sinner through repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ can come assuredly into the blessing of the knowledge of sins forgiven and salvation and eternal life.
There never has been a disputed point where the Scriptures and the scientist have been at variance, and where fresh discoveries have been made through unearthing the archives of history, etc., but in every case without exception the Bible has been vindicated. The higher critics at one time averred that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch, as writing, they said, was completely unknown in those days. Those who believed, in spite of their assertion to the contrary, that Moses did write the Pentateuch were voted as back numbers, they were not scholars, they were literalists, obscurantists, etc. Then came the discovery of tablets in their thousands at Tel-el-Amarna, where writing was seen to be in full vogue in the very time of Abraham, long before the day of Moses. The critics were completely routed, but did not learn their lesson, and are dogmatic about their negations till some fresh proof of their folly comes along.
The fulfilled prophecies of the Bible lift the book into a category by itself. Its teaching, its moral sublimity, the wonderful character of the Lord Jesus, so unlike every other man, the way it satisfies the spiritual desires of the heart, the way it enables the believer to welcome and rejoice in death when it is the Lord’s time for the end to come, all show what the Bible is. It is indeed a Book of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
The study of the Bible affords the best proof of its origin, its authority, its power, to give life and to bless the believing sinner. “The entrance of Thy Words gives light” (Ps. 119:130). Study it! Study it! STUDY IT!!!