06.15. I Love My Bible
15. I LOVE MY BIBLE
I don’t know how others feel about it, but I love my Bible. Mother read to me from its sacred page, before I learned the letters of the alphabet. For sixty-one years it furnished the foundation for the home wherein I was born, and when I looked into the face of my dying mother for the last time, she placed her frail old arms about my neck and with a faith based upon the teaching of this Grand Old Book said, "Good-by, son, I’ll meet you in that better land where there’ll be no more sad partings."
Years ago I turned from my wicked life and anchoring my faith in the promises of this book, I accepted Christ as my Savior. For seventeen years I have been trying to walk in its light, listen to its voice and order my life according to its teaching. I am not tired of it yet, but expect to read it while my sight will permit, and if my vision fails I pray God will strengthen my hearing that I may listen while it is read to me. I want a copy placed under my pillow when I lie on my last bed of illness, I want someone to read to me from its blessed pages while I breathe my last, I want its promises quoted at my funeral, and you may call it what you please, but I hope someone will slip a copy of this Grand Old Book in my casket before they lower it into the grave, and I want every devil in hell, every infidel and skeptic on the earth and every demon in the universe to know that the body of this preacher is lying full length on the everlasting, unchangeable promises of the Word of God.
I want to serve notice on every greedy germ, and every hungry worm and microbe that if they ever destroy this body they will have first to crawl over the declaration of Job, "I know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth, and though the skin worms devour this body yet in my flesh shall I see God and my eyes shall behold for myself and not another." And I want to notify corruption that if it ever devours the body of this preacher it will have to do it in the clear light and knowledge of those scriptures which say, "That which was sown in weakness shall be raised in power, and that which was sown in dishonor shall be raised in glory and this natural body shall become a spiritual body, this mortal shall put on immortality and this corruption shall put on incorruption." In the day of the resurrection I expect to come forth from among the living or out from among the dead riding upon the promise of the Grand Old Book, "The dead in Christ shall risefirst and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
"What a treasure we have in this wonderful Book,
’Tis the Word of the Lord to our soul,
So secure that no critic can mine it away,
While the years of eternity roll."