The Indestructability of the Bible

The Indestructability of the Bible

DOWN through the centuries enemy after enemy has come forth to war against the Book of God. It has been gloriously triumphant over everyone, therefore, we believe it to be God’s Word.

Judaism.

Throughout the Old Testament period the Book of the Lord suffered in the hands of its friends. Many times the Old Testament was openly attacked and often it was neglected. King Jehoiakim had part of Jeremiah’s prophecy cut in pieces and cast into the fire. (Jeremiah 36.) Antiochus IV, in 100 B.C., gathered all the Testaments he could find and burned them. He put to death all who retained a copy. (1 Macc. 1:27-28.)

After the New Testament was written, Judaism fought a fierce battle with Christianity. The early disciples were Jews and it was difficult to get them to realize that the gospel must go to all nations. Paul rebuked the Christians for going back under the yoke of bondage; he withstood Peter and Barnabas. The church always had a tendency to Judaize.

Judaism was not only a force inside the church but a formidable enemy outside. Stephen and James, the brother of the Lord, were killed; Peter was imprisoned. Slaughter and threatening were breathed out against the disciples of the Lord and they were bound and cast into prison. Saul of Tarsus helped in the persecution but after his conversion he himself was stoned, starved, hated, persecuted, hunted, betrayed, imprisoned and beaten with thirty-nine stripes on five different occasions.

Forty years after the crucifixion of the Messiah, Judaism itself was destroyed. The saber has long been rusty in its heart, its adherents are scattered throughout the world and are themselves the victims of cruel persecutions.

Heathenism.

PRIESTS.

Heathenism was once a powerful force in the world. Hallowed by tradition and ennobled by patriotism; beautified by architecture and literature, it gripped the fancy of the nations. Heathenism became a religion for the people wherever it spread. "It adjusted itself to the beautiful in Greece, to the mysterious in Egypt, to the warlike in Rome, to the luxury of the East and did it as easily and naturally as the limpid waters of the sea adjust themselves to cliff and crag and sandy beach."

Rome became the center of heathenism. Hundreds of temples and chapels were in the city. Nearly every prominent man in Rome was a heathen priest or officeholder. To attack heathenism at Rome meant to strike at the tap root of it. Paul, the mighty soldier of the cross, went to Rome. He went not riding in a chariot with flaming steeds and captives chained to the wheels but as an old man suffering with disease and stricken with poverty. He was a prisoner chained to a rough, Roman soldier. But he conquered! Heathenism, the imperial mistress of the world, fell! From the time Paul entered Rome, the heathen temples began to close and today the glory of heathenism has departed. Heathen priests no longer control the world and grip the fancy of the nations.

PHILOSOPHERS. The Roman sword captured Greece but the Grecian philosophers captured the minds of borne. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus divided among themselves the intellectual realms of Rome. "Whoever pretended to learning or virtue was their disciple; the greatest magistrates, generals, kings ranged themselves under their disciples, were trained up in their schools and professed the opinions they taught." (Lyttelton.) "From the Portico the Roman civilians learned to live, to reason and to die." (Gibbon.) The philosophical culture of the world arrayed itself against the Bible and attempted by argument and ridicule to refute it. Pliny, the Governor; Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor; Tacitus, the historian and dozens of others wrote argument, ridicule, sneer and merciless attack against the Bible. They tried to tell men that life is futile, that the problem of whence came man and whither he goes cannot be solved. But man had enough woes of his own without borrowing from these heathen philosophers. Their works were ably refuted by Christians living at the time and today their glory has departed. The Bible is absolute master of the field. It tells man of trouble, sin, sickness and sorrow but it reminds him that he has a glorious origin and that when all the battles have been fought and all the victories won he will not slumber in the cold embrace of death but that he has a glorious destiny. Every system of ancient philosophy is dead; the Bible lives!

"It is true that a little philosophy inclines a man’s mind to Atheism; But depth in Philosophy brings men’s minds about to Religion: For while the mind of man looks upon Second Causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and goes no farther: But when it beholds the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." (Bacon, Essay XVI.)

EMPERORS. The kings and emperors of the world brought their combined influence and power to bear upon the Bible that they might destroy it and banish Christianity from the earth. Heathen priest and philosopher had failed to kill Christianity but, ah, wait for the power of persecution.

Claudius, A.D. 41-54, banished many Christians from Rome; Nero, in A.D. 64, sewed Christians in the skins of wild animals and had them torn to pieces by dogs, he crucified many, some he tied to high posts, their bodies covered with pitch, and set fire to them to light the streets while his friends drove merrily by; Domitian, 81-96, killed many Christians and even exiled his wife for becoming one.

Under Trajan, 98-117, Bishop Simeon was crucified at Jerusalem and Ignatius of Antioch was killed. Under Marcus Aurelius, Polycarp was burned to death for not denying the Lord whom he had served for eighty-six years. At Lyons, France, Bishop Pothinus, more than ninety years old, died in a loathsome prison from the effects of abuse. Many others were tortured and killed there.

Septimius Severus, 193-211, had Leonidas, father of Origen, beheaded at Alexandria. Ptaminea and her mother, Marcella, were slowly dipped in seething oil. The story is the same under Decius and Gallus, 251-253, and Valerianus, 253-260. The latter made a specialty of killing preachers. At Carthage, Cyprian and Laurentius were commanded to bring forth the treasures of the church. They brought the poor, the infirm, and the orphans and were roasted alive for this affront to their ruler.

Diocletian, 284-305, had a Christian wife and daughter, yet he persecuted Christians. All churches were destroyed, meetings forbidden and the Emperor made a hobby of burning Bibles and killing their owners. Christians were accused of starting a fire in the Emperor’s palace and all over the empire were tortured. Galerius continued this persecution in 305. Christianity grew! Finally, the emperor issued an edict in 311 tolerating Christianity and asking the Christians to pray for him.

Maximus renewed the persecution of Christians. He burned their buildings and killed their leaders. He published the Acta Pilati, a book slandering the sufferings of Christ and introduced it as a textbook in the schools that the minds of the young might be poisoned When Licinius courted the favor of the pagans, his rival, Constantine, declared himself a Christian and took down the eagle to put up the cross. He declared himself in favor of Christianity because it had already conquered his people.

It seems that with all this persecution, Christianity would have perished but it did not. God watched over it. Fifty days after the crucifixion of Christ, twelve unlettered men stood in the city of Jerusalem and with power from on high unfurled the blood-stained banner of Christ. Three thousand souls were added to the church that day. The number of the disciples "grew and multiplied". When the disciples were scattered abroad "they went everywhere preaching the word". Within five years there were churches throughout Palestine. Within eight years both Jews and Gentiles were Christians. Within forty years the gospel had been preached in every known nation. The world had been turned upside down. Throughout Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, the Isles of the Aegean and the sea coast of Africa there were thousands of Christians. No wonder, then, that Constantine declared himself in favor of Christianity!

Julian the Apostate, Constantine’s nephew, renounced Christianity in 351 when he was twenty years old and ten years later openly championed heathenism. He ruled for a year and a half and wrote a Refutation of the Christian Religion in which he collected the arguments of the infidels who had lived before him. In attacking the New Testament he bears valuable testimony for it. In a war with the Persians, he died June 25, 363. His dying words were, "O Galilean, Thou hast conquered!"

Heresy. The Bible has been betrayed in every generation by those who were supposed to be its friends. The Manichees, the Gnostics, the Donatists and others attacked the Bible. Arius, an elder at Alexandria, declared that Christ was not the true God. He led many Christians away from the truth. There have ever been apostate leaders and apostate sects but the church has lived and the truth has prevailed.

Barbarism.

Attila, the Hun; Genseric, the Vandal; Alaric, the Goth and the hordes with them surged over civilization and it seemed that the Bible would perish. Gibbon says, "The progress of Christianity has been marked by two glorious and decisive victories, over the learned and luxurious civilization of the Roman Empire and over the warlike barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who subverted the empire and embraced the religion of the Romans." (Vol. 3, p. 158.)

Mohammedanism. As a religion Mohammedanism is a gigantic plagiarism. It is a combination of heathenism, Judaism and Christianity with but little of the latter. It is Judaism adapted to Arabia, recognizing Jesus and Mahomet as prophets. The Koran is in no way comparable to the Bible but as a military theocracy the Crescent has always warred against the Cross. In 732 the Crescent was carried in battle to within a few miles of Paris and was beaten back by Charles Martel in the battle of Tours. Again and again the soldiers of Mohammedanism have tried to destroy all Bibles and kill all Christians. Today Mohammedanism is a force to be reckoned with but when the last chapter of history has been written, who can doubt but that Christianity will prevail? The Papacy. At no time has the Bible been in greater danger than when the Popes of Rome held world-wide power Instead of spreading the Bible they suppressed it.

Pope Innocent III, in 1199, had the French Bibles burned at Metz and forbade the people to have more. The Council of Tarragona, in Spain, under Pope Gregory IX in 1234, ordered the people to bring in their Bibles so they might be burned. Ferdinand and Isabella, 1474-1516, forbade the people to have Bibles. Wyclif was condemned for heresy by the Synod of Oxford in 1383 because he translated the Bible. Clarks IV issued an edict against German Bibles in 1369. Pope Julius III was advised in 1553 by a number of bishops to permit the least possible reading of the Bible in order that the Papacy might be strengthened. Cardinal Paul Vergerius later reported this when he became a Protestant.

Ten thousand Bibles were burned at Graez in Steiermark on August 8, 1600 by order of Ferdinand II, who had been emperor. The Jesuits boasted of burning 60,000 Bibles in a single year--1637--in Bohemia. Pope Clement II, in 1713, condemned Bible reading on the part of Christians. Pope Pius VI did likewise. Pope Pius VII called the Bible societies a pest in 1816. Pope Gregory XVI, on May 6, 1844, said those favoring Bible societies were guilty of the greatest crime before God and the church. The Popes repeatedly condemned all reading of scriptures except in the Latin language and discouraged that. In the fifteenth century, priests became atheists and scoffed at the doctrines of the Bible; scholars filled their writings with blasphemy; immorality was abundant; Leo X jested with his secretary about the profitableness of the fable of Christ. Many church leaders denied the immortality of the soul. But from the midst of darkness and degradation the power of God rescued the Bible and the Beacon Light shines on. In 1939 the Bible was translated into its thousandth language and already one of the Bible societies is putting it into fifteen more. Five hundred years ago the body of Wycliffe was dug up, burned and his ashes thrown into the brook Swift all because he had once translated the Bible. Tonstal, Bishop of London, had thousands of copies of Tyndale’s English New Testament bought and burned at the cross of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Tyndale used the money to print more and the Bishop decided that burning the Bible was only advertising it. Bishop Nikke wrote, "It passeth my power or that of any spiritual man to hinder it now, and if this continues much longer, it will undo us all." Yea, verily!

Modern Infidelity.

Modern infidelity is simply the same old foe--unbelief--which has always warred against Christianity. Is it not interesting that Christianity and the Bible have been "destroyed" countless times and yet the process must be repeated every generation? In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Bible light was all but extinguished and the nations of Europe walked by what they called "reason". And are these pages from history a sample of the much boasted "improvement" which infidels want to give the world? In Prussia, Frederick II made his royal court a cesspool of infidelity and broadcasted it over the land. In England, Blackbourne, Archbishop of York, told Queen Caroline he had been talking to Walpole about the new mistress "and was glad to find Her Majesty was such a sensible woman as to like her husband should divert himself." Cave says, "I beheld religion laid waste and Christianity ready to draw its last breath, stifled and oppressed with the vice and impiety of a debauched and profligate age." In Russia, Catherine II was indeed "That foul woman of the North. The lustful murderess of her wedded Lord." In France the kings let adulteresses influence the nation more than the profoundest scholars and wisest statesmen. The reign of terror came with Robespierre and Paine. The Christian religion was abolished by law and a harlot was proclaimed the Goddess of Reason. In 1793 the French passed a law legislating God out of existence but in 1794 they found it necessary to recall Him. Robespierre cried, "If God did not exist, ’twere well to invent Him."

Modern infidels have tried hard to bury the Bible but it will not stay buried. Voltaire, the French skeptic, (1694-1778), said, "In less than a hundred years the Bible will be discarded and Christianity swept from the earth." Time has proved him to be a false prophet. His writings have a modest circulation. His old printing press has been used to print Bibles and his house has been used as a depot by an international Bible society.

Thomas Paine, a Quaker preacher and a firm believer in God and the Bible while in America as shown by his own writings, went to France in 1787 and became an infidel. He wrote a book, The Age of Reason, which he said would destroy the Bible and Christianity. If it had any effect on either it was never noticed. Paine died in 1809 and the Bible which he fought goes marching triumphantly on. In America in 1885 Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll prophesied that in a quarter of a century no more churches would be built. He traveled over the country and lectured on "The Mistakes of Moses" but it would be far more interesting to hear Moses speak on "The Mistakes of Colonel Ingersoll". His career in the army would shame a coward. His morals may be compared to those of the French infidels whom he imitated. His speeches were taken from their books. Ingersoll was challenged to debate all over the country by dozens of reputable Christians and Jews but always refused.

It Lives!

Christians believe the Bible is God’s Word because it cannot be destroyed. Evil men have hated it from the beginning. Every doctrine in it has been hated and every verse has been attacked. Any human product would have perished long ago under such a withering attack, but the Bible lives and has a greater hold on humanity than ever before. Forty million copies are printed annually--forty thousand times as many copies of the Bible are circulated as any other book. When the Revised Version appeared on May 1, 1881, over a million copies were sold that day.

Every few years somebody demolishes the Bible, proves it "false" and completely "explodes it". Yet, the pieces come together and are stronger than ever. The Bible is like the Irishman’s fence. He had put up the fence many times only to see it torn down. Finally, he built a fence of cement and stone, three feet high and four feet wide. When asked the reason for this strange fence, he said, "I built it three feet high, and four feet wide so it will be higher when it is turned over." Let the skeptics attack the blessed old Book. It will be higher when they finish! Aye, let them criticize. Christians are indebted to the attacks of skeptics for these attacks have called forth an ever-increasing number of arguments in favor of the Bible. Yes, indeed, "the more the truth is rubbed the brighter it will shine". The Bible is like the anvil which wears out many hammers and remains unblemished.

"Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime;
When looking in, I saw upon the floor,
Old hammers worn with beating years of time.

"’How many anvils have you had,’ said I,
’To wear and batter all these hammers so?
’Just one,’ said he; then said with twinkling eye,
’The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.’

"And so, I thought, the anvil of God’s word
For ages skeptics’ blows have beat upon;
Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The anvil is unharmed--the hammers gone!"

Into every country of the world believers are going with the Word of God. Its blessed influence is gaining strength and power and when the last battle has been fought and the last victory has been won; when the last attack has been made and the last drop of martyr’s blood has been shed; when the last song has been sung and the last prayer has been prayed, the earth will melt with fervent heat and the skies shall be rolled up as a scroll but Christians will stand before the Lord, the Righteous Judge, and see opened their Book which guided their weary feet and brought them at last safely home. "Even so, come Lord Jesus." Amen!