This is a video from Igniter Media www.ignitermedia.com
The Bible is an essential tool in the Christian faith. It is here that we read about what God has done, is doing, and will do. It is here that we find the greatest love story, the greatest sacrifice, and the greatest call to action.
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.
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!”
“The Devil is not afraid of the Bible that has dust on it”
“Proper understanding of the Scriptures comes only through the Holy Spirit.”
Martin Luther
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
‘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
‘ 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
‘ Forget the modern British novelists and TV tie-ins; the Bible is the biggest selling book every year’.
The times
Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them.
A Bible in the hand is worth two in the bookcase.
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
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
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.
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.
One of the most dramatic examples of the Bible’s divine ability to transform men and women involved the famous mutiny on the “Bounty.” Following their rebellion against the notorious Captain Bligh, nine mutineers, along with the Tahatian men and women who accompanied them, found their way to Pitcairn Island, a tiny dot in the South Pacific only tow miles long and a mile wide. Ten years later, drink and fighting had left only one man alive–John Adans. Eleven women and 23 children made up the rest of the Island’s population. So far this is the familiar story made famous in the book and motion picture. But the rest of the story is even more remarkable. About this time, Adams came across the “Bounty’s” Bible in the bottom of an old chest. He began to read it, and the divine power of God’w Word reached into the heart of that hardened murderer on a tiny volcanic speck in the vast Pacific Ocean–and changed his life forever. The peace and love that Adams found in the Bible entirely replaced the old life of quarreling, brawling, and liquor. He began to teach the children from the Bible until every person on the island had experienced the same amazing change that he had found. Today, with a population of slightly less than 100, nearly every person on Pitcairn Island is a Christian.
From Signs of the Times, August, 1988, p. 5.
You can’t quote the Bible indiscriminately. I remember the story of two lawyers during a trial. One thought he would make a great impression on the jury by quoting from the Bible. So he said concerning his opponent’s client, “We have it on the highest authority that it has been said, ‘All that a man has will he give for his skin.'” But the other lawyer knew the Bible better. He said, “I am very much impressed by the fact that my distinguished colleague here regards as the highest authority the one who said,’All that a man has will he give for his skin.’ You will find that this saying come from the Book of Job, and the one who utters it is the devil. And that is whom he regards as the highest authority!”
Ray Stedman
One morning in the 1620s, in a little village church, a preacher named John Rogers was preaching on the subject of the Bible in the Christian’s life. He allowed himself some pulpit dramatics. First, he acted the part of God telling the congregation: “Well, I have trusted you so long with my Bible; you have slighted it; it lies in such and such houses all covered with dust andcobwebs; you care not to listen to it. Do you use my Bible so? Then you shall have my Bible no longer”. And he took the pulpit Bible away.
Then he knelt down and impersonated the people crying to God: “Lord, whatever thou dost to us, take not thy Bible from us; kill our children, burn our houses; destroy our goods but spare us thy Bible.”
Then he acted God again: “Say you so? Well, I will try you a while longer; and here is my Bible for you” (replacing it); “I will see how you will use it, whether you will love it more, observe it more, practice it more, live more according to it.”
At this the whole congregation dissolved in tears. What had happened? Rogers, under God, had touched a nerve, reminding them of their need to pay close attention to the Bible because reverence for God meant reverence for Scripture and serving God meant obeying Scripture.
Do we need to recapture some of the same attitude today? Surely disregarding the Bible is the greatest possible insult to its divine author.
Your Father Loves You by James Packer, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986, Page April 24
“Most people are troubled by those passages of Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I have always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those which I do understand.”
Mark Twain
“I felt rather like a electrician re-wiring an ancient house without being able to turn of the mains.”
J.B. Phillips writing about his experience when translating the new Testament.