06.09. It Is An Indestructible Book

9. IT IS AN INDESTRUCTIBLE BOOK Men not only hate this book but they have tried for centuries to destroy it.

They have tried to dispose of it by tearing it up. And they have lifted words out of the sentence, lines out of the verses, verses out of the chapter, chapters out of the book and books out of the Bible. They have ripped it and torn it, hacked it, mutilated and chopped it to pieces, and with what result? Do you remember the stories we used to hear when we were children, of the joint snake, which you might find and break into as many pieces as you liked and before the sun went down every joint would crawl back to its place and the snake would crawl away alive? I cannot vouch for the joint snake, I have never seen one, and I have never seen anyone that had seen one, but oh! I can tell you about the Bible. No matter how they may tear it and cut it, no matter how they may mutilate and abuse it, before the sun goes down every word is back in the sentence, the sentence is back in the verse, every verse is back in the chapter, every chapter is back in the book and every book is back in the Bible and in spite of the skeptics and destructive critics of the world we have a whole Bible carrying its message of hope and salvation to the uttermost part of the earth. It is an indestructible book.

You have heard the story of the man who seeing a great many worn and broken hammers around the blacksmith’s door said,

"How many anvils have you used
To wear these hammers so?
Only one, said the blacksmith,
For the anvil wears the hammers out you know." So we say with the poet of the old Presbyterian hymn book, "Hammer away ye hostile bands,
Your hammers break, God’s anvil stands."

Men have endeavored to turn attention from the Bible by writing a better book. I know a man now who spends hours alone in his private study, where he says he is writing a better book than the Bible. Years ago a man said, "Within an hundred years the Bible will be a back number." But before the century had passed away his books had become back numbers and the very printing establishment that had published his book, was publishing Bibles. Bob Ingersol at a cost of $17, 000. 00 wrote and published a work on the mistakes of Moses, but people have ceased to read it and publishers have ceased to print it and you can buy his writings today for a song, while the Bible which contains an account of the mistakes of Bob Ingersol is in greater demand than ever before in the history of the world.

"Dying men write dying books, men die and so do their books,
but the living God has written a living book, God is not dead, neither is His book."

Men have thought to destroy the Bible by burning it. But the task would be too great. Some one has called attention to the fact that to burn all the Bibles a man would have to be a world traveler, he would have to go among the head hunters of Africa and the cannibals of the South Sea islands, he would have to make his way far into the interior where the foot of white man never trod, for there are Bibles there, brought from some mission station by a half naked savage, and they often find them worshipping the book, though they know not the God of the Book.

He would also have to be worth many millions of dollars, for there are millions of Bibles in the world, and at the least they would cost him on an average of no less than a dollar apiece, and I know some dear old people who do not own a foot of land, not a home in which to live, and who exist on the plainest fare, and yet they have an old three dollar Bible which they would not sell for the wealth of the world if they thought it was wanted to burn. There are some Bibles, thank God, that are not for sale. But if he gathered them all and built his fire, would the Bible be destroyed? No, he would have to gather all the books, newspapers and magazines containing quotations from the Word of God, and that would destroy ninety per cent of the world’s great libraries. He would then have to go to the world’s great art galleries and destroy the great paintings and hunt up the reproductions scattered over the earth. Would that destroy the Bible? No! He would have to go to the cemeteries and remove the inscriptions from the majority of tombstones in civilization. Would it then be gone? No! Before you destroy this Bible you will have to break the arm of every Christian that is able to write and clip the tongue of every saint that is able to talk, and by that time some old sinner would become so indignant that he would get him a pen and try to write a new Bible from the Scriptures his mother taught him when a child. It is an indestructible book. But there is a better reason for our knowing that it is indestructible. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away." When He made that statement, humanly speaking He was a Galilean peasant, He stood on a hillside in Judea, Greece had just passed through the twilight of her golden age, Rome was towering on the other hand as mighty in war as Greece had ever been in art, at his feet lay Jerusalem with her mighty temple which was forty and six years in building, Jesus virtually said, all these shall pass away but my word shall not pass away. He made that statement when speeches were neither printed nor reported, nineteen hundred years have rolled away, and what has been the result? Where is Greece with her art? Gone! Where is Rome with her seven hills? Gone! Where is Jerusalem with her great temple? Struggling to rise again to fulfill another prophecy. While the Word of God is being sought after in greater quantities today than ever before. It is an indestructible book. Don’t worry about their taking away our Bible for every day the task becomes greater. It has not been off the press for more than four hundred and sixty years, they are printing more than ten thousand copies every hour, one million copies were recently shipped to Japan alone andthere are more than thirty million copies of the Bible or portions of it sold every year and the printing presses are straining their bolts day and night to supply the great demand for the Word of God. And those who laugh at it and try to destroy it, would no doubt be delighted if they could produce as good a seller. It is the best book in the world and the best seller among the books of earth.

Book of our fathers, living still,
In spite of critic’s knife and sword;
O how our hearts beat high with joy
When e’er we read His glorious Word.
Book of our fathers Holy Book,
We will be true to thee till death.