A lasting love letter
Isaiah assures us that though the grass withers, the flower fades; the word of our God will stand for ever (40:8).
Psalm 119 is by far the longest chapter in the Bible. It has 176 verses, and no fewer than 170 of these verses mention the Word of God.
The theme of the writer is the theme of adoration and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His gift to us of His own Word.
In verse 89 we read these words; "For ever, O Lord, thy word is firmly fixed in the heavens."
What the Psalmist is saying is that God has fixed the contents and boundary of His Word for all time. It must never be altered or added to; and it will never be destroyed.
This statement has come true. Thousands of years ago there were 39 books in the Old Testament. Today there are still 39 books in the Old Testament.
By the end of the third Christian century there were 27 books accepted as being our New Testament. Today we have the same 27 books with exactly the same contents.
But how can we know that our Bible is the authentic and original Word of God? After all, it has come down to us from remote time. All kinds of things could have happened to it.
How do we know that God has preserved it for us, uncorrupted and unaltered, without addition or subtraction?
Over a vast period of time, until the invention of printing (1440-1450), every book of the Bible, and every copy of that book, had to be copied by hand. But those who did so were well aware of the extreme importance of their work. They worked with great care, and all their work was checked and rechecked.
The exactness of those who copied the books of the Old Testament was proved by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.
Among those scrolls there was a copy of Isaiah and a copy of Habakkuk. Up to that time the earliest coies of those books was dated about 900 AD. Here was a difference of possibly 1000 years of faithful copying by hand; but when the scholars concerned compared the Dead Sea Scroll copies of perhaps 125 BC with those dated at 900 AD they did not find any discrepancy worth noting.
With reference to the New Testament, it is estimated that there are about 4105 hand-written Greek manuscripts in existence, 8000 Latin manuscripts, and about 1000 manuscripts in other languages.
An immense amount of work has been done in comparing these manuscripts, and remarkably few differences have been found.
We believe that God miraculously preserved the transmission of the text of the Bible. He also miraculously preserved it from being destroyed.
Diocletian
One such attempt was made in 303 AD, when the emperor, Diocletian, gave the command that all copies of the New Testament were to be destroyed and all Christians who possessed such copies were to be imprisoned or put to death.
His orders were carried out with great cruelty and effectiveness. When no more scriptures could be found he erected a victory column inscribed with the words, "The name of 'Christian' is extinguished."
Ten years later a new emperor came to the throne, Constantine, a Christian. As for the scriptures, they were brought out of hiding everywhere, and copied with new zeal.
Truly, "the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."
The Inquisition
A second attempt to destroy the Word of God took place in the Middle Ages.
It was the policy of the Catholic Church of that time to deny access to the Bible. When John Wycliffe in England, in 1382, translated the New Testament from Latin into English so the common people could understand it, he was marked out for death and was spared only because of protection given by John of Gaunt.
When anyone was found with a copy of this book it was tied around his neck and he or she was burnt at the stake.
William Tyndale, 140 years later, translated his New Testament and paid the penalty. He was cruelly put to death in Vilvorde, near Brussels in 1536.
From the 13th Century, right through to the 16th Century, the Inquisition was responsible for countless people being martyred simply because they possessed copies of the Scriptures; and countless copies of the Scriptures were consigned to the flames.
Rationalism
A third attempt to destroy the Bible has been the attempts of Rationalists to destroy the credibility of its contents.
There has been a long line of Rationalists, some of them, sad to say, members of the Church, who have written books denying the authority of the Bible on the grounds that it is fraudulent.
They have claimed that it is full of fables and folklore. One such man was the atheist Voltaire, who was so confident that scholarship would destroy the Bible that he wrote in 1778, "One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth, except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity-seeker."
He was wrong.
It is now more than 200 years later, and the Bible is still the world's "best-seller"!
Communism
In recent times, during the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976), Red Guards searched for and destroyed every copy of the Bible they could discover.
It seemed that knowledge of the contents of the Bible would be erased from the minds of the Chinese people. Then, in 1978, the government policy changed and the government itself printed the first 80,000 Bibles for the Chinese Church. Today, once again, it is freely available.
God has preserved His Word in a miraculous way, and we should be profoundly thankful for those, who throughout the centuries, have been the means by which He has preserved it.
Tuesday
ACTS 2:22-36
"As you yourselves know" (v22).
Radical critics of the Gospels say they were composed long after the events and teaching records, and that much of it was invented by unknown authors.
In reply to this assertion, Professor F.F. Bruce wrote in his book, Are the New Testament Documents Reliable (p46): "It can have been by no means so easy, as some writers seem to think, to invent words and deeds of Jesus in those early years when so many of his disciples were about, who could remember what had and had not happened.
"And it was not only friendly eyewitnesses that the early believers had to reckon with; there were others less well disposed who were also conversant with the main facts of the ministry and death of Jesus.
"The disciples could not afford to risk inaccuracies . . . which would at once be exposed by those who would be only too glad to do so.
"One of the strong points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers; they not only said, 'We are witnesses of these things,' but also, 'as you yourselves know'."
Wednesday
2 TIMOTHY 3:10-17
"All Scripture is inspired by God" (v16).
The word used here for "inspired" is literally, "God-breathed". This is why we call the Bible the "Word of God"; it was breathed out by Him and His breathing out took written form.
We believe the Bible is infallible and inerrant, as it was originally given, simply because it has come from God, and God is infallible and inerrant.
As Peter put it, "No prophecy ever came by the impulse of men, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Pet 1:21).
Without exception Jesus and His disciples accepted the authority of the Old Testament because behind the words of the Old Testament stood the authority of God. What God has said must come to pass.
Jesus said, "The scripture cannot be broken" (Jn 10:35), and "everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Lk 24:44).
The disciples also declared, with one voice that what the Scripture said, God said.
Thursday
ACTS 17:10-15
"With all eagerness examining the Scriptures daily" (v11).
The Jews in Berea "were more noble than those in Thessalonica."
This means they were of higher birth, and therefore, no doubt, better educated.
It is the wise and thoughtful person who wants to search the Scriptures to find out what God has to say to us. And when we do discover God's requirements and will for us, it is the wise and thoughtful person who obeys.
The authority of the Bible is well stated by Dr H. Lindsell in his book, The Battle for the Bible (p39):
"The Bible is authoritative. By this I mean that we are able to believe what it teaches and to practise what it commands.
"It is the Christian's only rule of faith and life, and all the opinions of men and women are to be tested against it.
"The authority of the Bible for man is viable only if the Bible itself it true. Destroy the trustworthiness of the Bible, and its authority goes with it."
Only churches which accept the authority of the Bible can survive.
Friday
PSALM 119:1-8
"I will observe thy statutes" (v8).
This is an acrostic psalm, with each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet introducing eight verses which praise and magnify the Word of God, and God, who gave us His Word.
In this passage we have six Hebrew words decribing God's Word.
"The law of the Lord" (v1) can mean the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, but it can also embrace the whole Bible.
"Testimonies" (v2) is a word that emphasises the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible. "Precepts" (v4) refers to the detailed instructions we have in the Bible for daily living.
"Statutes", which is ancient times were often engraved on a stele and erected in a public place, like the Hammurabi Stele in Babylon, refers to the immutable and unalterable nature of Holy Scripture.
"Commandments" (v6) is a word from the courts, and stresses that obedience is essential. "Ordinances" (v7) means that the commandments of the Bible are fair and equitable for all.
Saturday
PSALM 119:9-16
"How can a young man keep his way pure?" (v9).
It seems that the psalmist himself is the young man in question, and that he has learnt through personal experience that purity of life is possible only by strict obedience to the commandments of Scripture. (See Prov 9:13-18).
The whole object of receiving the Bible as the written Word of God is that by obeying it we may be able to say, "With my whole heart I seek thee" (v10). Through knowing the Scriptures we come to know God.
When reading our Bible it is very important that we do not treat it as merely a book full of interesting information. It is, in fact, God's love, letter addressed to us personally. Therefore we should be able to respond with the words, "I have laid up thy word in my heart" (v11).
Sunday
PSALM 119:17-24
"Take away from me their scorn and contempt" (v22).
Because he was devoted to God, and to His Word, the psalmist suffered the derision of those "who wander from thy commandments" (v21).
So he asked God to "take away from me their scorn and contempt." Later on he said, "The wicked lie in wait to destroy me" (v95) and "the godless besmear me with lies" (v69).
All though history the godless have persecuted the godly. As Paul said, "All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Tim 3:12).
What is new in our generation is that Bible-believers who hold firmly to an inerrant and infallible Bible are often persecuted by those who say they are Christians, and yet do not hold such views.
In a "liberal" seminary a student labelled with the derisory word "fundamentalist" can be forced to leave. In a "liberal" church a minister who holds to the fundamentals of the faith can be thought to be out of touch with "modern scholarship" which has reinterpreted these fundamentals.
Whatever form the persecution may take the answer is to take refuge in God, and say, with the psalmist, "Thy testimonies are my delight, they are my counsellors" (v24).
Monday
PSALM 119:25-32
"Revive me according to thy word!" (v25).
When the psalmist wrote, "My soul cleaves to the dust" (v25) he meant that he knew what it was to be in the depths of despondency. See Job 2:8.
When we are in a state of spiritual depression one answer is to search the Scriptures and cling to the promises of God, especially those promises that teach us to trust and not be afraid.
"Let thy steadfast love be ready to comfort me according to thy promise to thy servant" (v76).
We are also in a very great need of God's help in our times of sorrow.
Sometimes we know what it means to say, "My soul melts away with sorrow" (v28). How right it is for the psalmist to pray, and for us to pray, "Strengthen me according do thy word!" (v28).
It is the Word of God that comforts us. "This is my comfort in my affliction that thy promise gives me life" (v50).
Our Lord taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation" (Mt 6:13) because he knew how weak we are in times of trial.
The clue to victory over the world, the flesh and the devil is to pray, with the psalmist, "I cleave to thy testimonies, O Lord; let me not be put to shame" (v31).
Your feedback is
important
to us.
Direct your email to Across Pacific Magazine
to Across
Home Page.......