By Pastor Dave Farmer
Summary
The Bible holds the record among books in every category where records are kept. It certainly should be in the "Guinness Book Of World Records."
When the Bible is compared to other literary works, God’s work in Revelation and Inspiration set it apart. In the work of Revelation God speaks and gives us His truth. He selects the human authors and commands them to record His Words. In Inspiration, the truth of God is received from God and written down. God, the Holy Spirit, works supernaturally to cause the divine message to be recorded accurately and free from error. The result of this process is that we now have in our possession the only divinely inspired and authorized message from God to man – the Bible.
We believe this extraordinary Book, this inspired Revelation from God, has the power to seize hold of the human heart, awaking and fulfilling our need to know God, and can turn us to Him for salvation. It not only leads us to salvation but it is powerful enough to shape and change our lives into a likeness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We will learn more about this concept when we study the Purpose of the Scriptures. Paul explains this to Timothy:
[15] and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
[16] All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; (2 Timothy 3:15, 16)
It is no wonder the Bible holds the record among books in every category where records are kept.
The translation of the Bible into languages other than the original language is a WITNESS TO ITS UNIQUENESS.
Very few works of literature ever get into more than one language. The very best are translated into as many as three. The Bible is the overwhelming winner. Nearly one thousand languages have been reduced to writing and have the Scriptures in part or as a whole. The work still goes on.
Our good friends Dan and Lucy Brubaker are with Wycliffe Bible Translators. They have given themselves to the task of translation among the tribes of Mali, West Africa. They have completed the New Testament in the Minyanka language and are working on the Old Testament. So this process continues. The Bible holds this record because Christians like Dan and Lucy have heard the Macedonian Call and said, "Lord, Here am I, I will go!" Has anyone heard lately of Oxford or Cambridge sending out English teachers into the heart of Africa to expose these people to William Shakespeare? I wonder why?
Christians who are devoted to the Bible are scoffed at and ridiculed, "You believe the Bible?" How often I have heard that. Does their faith have any rational or reasonable ground? Are they all just crazy? Examine the evidence! If the Bible is just an ordinary book, why is it so popular? Why does it hold "first place" among literary works in every category in which records are kept? What explanation do we place on the many that are willing to face hazards of every kind, placing their lives in jeopardy every hour, so that others may have the wonderful words of life in their own language? This is very strange! Or is it supernatural?
The Word of God is unique, having a power to pierce, penetrate, and grip the heart. As the Scripture testifies of itself, "The Word of God is alive and powerful . . .” (Hebrews 4: 12). It has crossed cultural boundaries so that every nation, kindred, and tongue have the Bible. But the greatest proof of the supernatural character of the Bible is its endurance.
The indestructibility of the Bible is a WITNESS TO ITS UNIQUENESS
For all flesh is as grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower fades, BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD endures forever. (1 Peter 1:24, 25)
It has survived through time.
The Bible, like all ancient books, must run the risk of time. Dr. Ramm writes "Its enemies are decay, neglect, fire, mold, storms, etc." He continues, “In view of all this the survival of the Bible from antiquity with such a remarkable attestation is amazing. In reference to the Old Testament, we know that the Jews preserved it as no other manuscript has ever been preserved. With their massora (parva, magna, and finalis) they kept tabs on every letter, syllable, word, and paragraph. They had special classes of men within their culture whose sole duty was to preserve and transmit these documents with practically perfect fidelity - scribes, lawyers, massoretes. Whoever counted the letters and syllables and words of Plato or Aristotle? Cicero or Seneca? 1
Regarding the New Testament, there are about thirteen thousand manuscripts, complete and incomplete, in Greek and other languages, which have survived from antiquity. No other work from classical antiquity has such attestation. We are informed by no less an authority on ancient manuscripts than Sir Francis Kenyon, Bible archeologist “that of the plays of Aeschylus there are 50 copies; of the works of Sophocles, 100 copies; of the Greek Anthology, one copy; and of Catallus, three independent manuscripts. The earliest manuscript of Sophocles is 1400 years after his death; and the same holds for Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Thucydides. For Euripedes it is 1600 years, 1300 for Plato, 1200 for Demosthenes, 900 for Horace, 700 for Terrence, 500 for Livy, 1000 for Lucretius, and 1600 for Catallus. The New Testament has an attestation of more than 4,000 Greek manuscripts, coming from the second (John Rylands fragment of John) and third century (Chester Beatty Papyri) and fourth century (Codexes Vaticanus and Sinaiticus). The Bible has survived the ravages of time and has more numeral and textural attestations than any book of antiquity. “ 2
It has survived unparalleled persecution and criticism.
Again quoting Dr. Ramm: “It has been banned, burned, and outlawed from the days of the Roman emperors to present-day Communist-dominated countries. But here again, all efforts to stamp out the Bible have been unsuccessful. No other book has been so persecuted; no other book has been so victorious over its persecutions. It is the martyr among books, and always rises from the pool of its own blood to live on.”
“From Astruc till today has been one series of attacks on the Bible that for vigor, intensity, and attention to microscopic detail, has been unparalleled in the known history of literature. These attacks came from scholars of many countries but mostly from Germany, Holland, France, England, and America. The attacks have been made by men of great learning and exceptional mental vigor. The attack in some instances has been made with fantastic regard for minute details. The attacks have been publicized abroad in a never-ending stream of periodicals, journals, pamphlets, monographs, books, and encyclopedias. The larger universities of the world and hundreds of theological seminaries have taken up the cause of radical criticism. A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put.”
“No other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles letters of classical or modem times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible! With such venom and skepticism! With such thoroughness and erudition! Upon very chapter, line, and tenet! Considering the thorough learning of the critics and the ferocity and precision of the attacks, we would expect the Bible to have been permanently entombed in some Christian genizah.
But such is hardly the case. The Bible is still loved by millions, read by millions, and studied by millions. No doubt a terrible amount of damage has been done by radical criticism, and millions have lost faith in the veracity and authority of the Bible, as tragically witnessed by the decay of church attendance, the spiritual enervation of our western culture, and the cancerous secularism of America, England, and continental Europe. But even so, radical criticism has not put the Bible out of circulation. Indeed, the Bible's survival is a miracle. But we should not be surprised. The Bible says, "that it is eternal, that the heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord will endure forever" (Matthew 5: 18).
In A.D. 303 Emperor Diocletian, by royal edict, demanded that every Bible be burned. He had killed so many Christians and destroyed so many Bibles that he printed a coin “The Christian religion is destroyed, and the worship of the gods is restored” 3 He like the flower faded. He like the grass withered, but the Word of the Lord endured. Several years after his death in A.D. 313 the new emperor, Constantine proclaimed Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. The Bible was cherished and preserved.
Another outstanding writer commenting on this, Dr. Arthur Pink says, “When we bear in mind that fact that the Bible has been the special object of never-ending persecution the WONDER of the Bible's survival is changed into a MIRACLE. For two thousand years, man's hatred of the Bible has been persistent, determined, relentless, and murderous. The very fact that the Bible has been so singled out for such relentless persecution causes us to wonder at such a phenomenon.” 4
In 1778, Voltaire, a French philosopher predicted that in one hundred years Christianity would be extinct. He like the flower faded. He like the grass withered and instead twenty-five years after his death, the British and Foreign Bible Society was founded, and the very presses that printed Voltaire's critical literature against Christianity began to print the Word of the Lord that endures forever. 5
ENDNOTES
1 Ramm, Bernard. Protestant Christian Evidences. 10th ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1967.
2 Ramm, pp. 228,229
3 Thiessen, Henry C. Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology. 9th Ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968. p. 84.
4 Pink, Arthur W. The Divine Inspiration of the Bible. Swengel, PA: Bible Truth Depot, 1917, pp. 113,114.
5 op. cit. Thiessen, p. 85.