Category Archives: Bible

Pope Francis: The Bible is a Dangerous Book

Here is the Prologue written by Pope Francis to the new Youth Bible published 2015.
My dear young friends:

If you could see my Bible, you would not be particularly impressed. What—that’s the Pope’s Bible? Such an old, worn-out book!

You could buy me a new one for $1,000, but I would not want it. I love my old Bible, which has accompanied me half my life. It has been with me in my times of joy and times of tears. It is my most precious treasure. I live out of it, and I wouldn’t give anything in the world for it.
I really like this new Youth Bible. It’s so colorful, so rich in testimonies: testimonies of the saints, testimonies of young people. It is so inviting that when you start to read at the beginning, you can’t stop until the last page.

And then …? And then it disappears on a shelf, collecting dust. Your children find it one day and bring it to the flea market.

It must not come to that.

I’ll tell you something: There are more persecuted Christians in the world today than in the early days of the Church. And why are they persecuted? They are persecuted because they wear a cross and bear witness to Jesus. They are convicted because they own a Bible. The Bible is therefore a highly dangerous book—so dangerous that you are treated in some countries as if you were hiding hand grenades in your closet.

It was a non-Christian, Mahatma Gandhi, who once said: “You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”

So what do you have in your hands? A piece of literature? Some nice old stories? Then you would have to say to the many Christians who go to prison or are tortured because they own a Bible: “How foolish you are; it’s just a piece of literature!”

No. By the word of God has Light come into the world, and it will never go out. In Evangelii Gaudium (175) I said, “We do not blindly seek God, or wait for him to speak to us first, for ‘God has already spoken, and there is nothing further that we need to know, which has not been revealed to us.’ Let us receive the sublime treasure of the revealed word.”

So you have something divine in your hands: a book like fire! A book through which God speaks. So notice: The Bible is not meant to be placed on a shelf, but to be in your hands, to read often—every day, both on your own and together with others. You do sports together or go shopping together. Why not read the Bible together as well—two, three, or four of you? In nature, in the woods, on the beach, at night in the glow of a few candles … you will have a great experience!

Or are you afraid of making a fool of yourself in front of others?

Read with attention! Do not stay on the surface as if reading a comic book! Never just skim the Word of God! Ask yourself: “What does this say to my heart? Does God speak through these words to me? Has he touched me in the depths of my longing? What should I do?” Only in this way can the force of the Word of God unfold. Only in this way can it change our lives, making them great and beautiful.

I want to tell you how I read my old Bible. Often I read a little and then put it away and contemplate the Lord. Not that I see the Lord, but he looks at me. He’s there. I let myself look at him. And I feel—this is not sentimentality—I feel deeply the things that the Lord tells me. Sometimes he does not speak. I then feel nothing, only emptiness, emptiness, emptiness…. But I remain patiently, and so I wait, reading and praying. I pray sitting, because it hurts me to kneel. Sometimes I even fall asleep while praying. But it does not matter. I’m like a son with the father, and that is what’s important.

Would you like to make me happy? Read the Bible!

I Believe

A video from Igniter Media www.ignitermedia.com

The Bible is not just a story. It is THE Story. It is OUR Story. In it, we find the greatest Hero providing the greatest hope and demanding the greatest response. Original Recording by Cary Pierce. Lyrics by Wes King and Rich Mullins.

Hallelujah! God is great

A boy was sitting on a park bench with one hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!” he yelled without worrying whether anyone heard him or not.

Shortly after, along came a man who had recently completed some studies at a local university. Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.

“Hey” asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, “Don’t you have any idea what God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle.”

The enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy and began to try to open his eyes to the “realities” of the miracles of the Bible. “That can all be very easily explained. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for the Israelites to wade across.”

The boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young person to the finer points of scientific insight, turned to go. Scarcely had he taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise louder than before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.

“Wow!” exclaimed the boy happily, “God is greater than I thought! Not only did He lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, He topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in 10 inches of water!”

God’s Rule Book

The Bible is God’s rule book. It tells us what is’ in’ and what is’ out’. He tells us what we can do and what we must not to. In even we play it within the rules there is freedom and Joy. When we break the rules, people get hurt. God did not say,’ do not murder,’ in order to ruin our enjoyment of life. He did not say,’ do not commit adultery,’ because he is a spoil sport. He did not want people to get hurt. When people leave their wives or husbands and children to commit adultery, lives get messed up.

Nicky Gumble – Questions of Life – P8

High Explosive

‘The Bible is a high explosive. But it works in strange ways and no living man can tell all know how that book, in its journey through the world, has startled the individual soul in 10,000 different places into a new life, a New World, a new belief, a new conception, a new faith.’

Stanley Baldwin May 1928

Best Seller

‘ As usual the top seller by several miles was the Bible. If cumulative sales of the Bible were frankly reflected in the best seller lists, it would be a rare a week when anything else would achieve a look in the. It is wonderful, weird, or just plain baffling in this increasingly godless age — when the range of books available grows wider with each passing a year — that this one book should go on selling hand over fist, month in, month out. It is estimated that nearly 1,250,000 Bibles and Testament is are sold in the UK each year.’

The Times

Beheaded For The Bible

In 1915, A Russian Armenian was reading his Bible when he was beheaded. I saw the Bible–large, thick, and well used. Inside was a reddish stain that permeated most of the book. The stain was the blood of this man, one of more than a million casualties of a religious and ethnic holocaust. About 70 years later a large shipment of bibles entered Romania from the West, and Ceausescu’s (dictator of Romania) lieutenants confiscated them, shredded them, and turned them into pulp. Then they had the pulp reconstituted into toilet paper and sold to the West.

Robert A Seiple, president, World Vision, June-July, 1990

David Livingstone

It is said that when the famous missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, started his trek across Africa he had 73 books in 3 packs, weighing 180 pounds. After the party had gone 300 miles, Livingstone was obliged to throw away some of the books because of the fatigue of those carrying his baggage. As he continued on his journey his library grew less and less, until he had but one book left–his Bible.

Today in the Word, April, 1989, p. 28

Diocletian

In the year A.D. 303, the roman Emperor Diocletian issued a decree which he hoped would extinguish the spreading flames of Christianity. One of his primary objectives was the seizure and destruction of the Christian Scriptures. Later that year, officials enforced the decree in North Africa. One of the targets was Felix, Bishop of Tibjuca, a village near Carthage. The mayor of the town ordered Felix to hand over his Scriptures. Though some judges were willing to accept scraps of parchment, Felix refused to surrender the Word of God at the insistence of mere men. Resolutely, he resisted compromise. Roman authorities finally shipped Felix to Italy where he paid for his stubbornness with his life. On August 30, as the record puts it, “with pious obstinacy,” he laid down his life rather than surrender his Gospels.

Christian Theology in Plain Language, p. 41.

Braille Bible

A man in Kansas City was severely injured in an explosion. Evangelist Robert L. Sumner tells about him in his book THE WONDERS OF THE WORD OF GOD. The victim’s face was badly disfigured, and he lost his eyesight as well as both hands. He was just a new Christian, and one of his greatest disappointments was that he could no longer read the Bible. Then he heard about a lady in England who read braille with her lips. Hoping to do the same, he sent for some books of the Bible in braille. Much to his dismay, however, he discovered that the nerve endings in his lips had been destroyed by the explosion. One day, as he brought one of the braille pages to his lips, his tongue happened to touch a few of the raised characters and he could feel them. Like a flash he thought, I can read the Bible using my tongue. At the time Robert Sumner wrote his book, the man had “read” through the entire Bible four times.