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Explore the timeless relevance of the Word of God, as we examine its scarcity in ancient times and its role in shaping human history. Dive into the biblical perspective that highlights the significance of keeping scripture close as life’s guiding force. Throughout this episode, we ponder the strength and resilience of those who dared to hold onto faith against great odds. Through compelling narratives and historical insights, discover why the Bible continues to be a beacon of light in a world fraught with complexities.
SPEAKER 01 :
In 1 Samuel 3 and verse 1, the beginning of Samuel’s ministry, for at the time his ministry to the Lord was pretty simple. He was a child. His job was to fetch and carry for Eli and the others who were around there. It says that the word of Jehovah was precious in those days. There was no open vision. The word of God was precious. Now, you have to understand that at this point in time, there was no Bible, as you and I know it. There were the five books of Moses, but they were not readily available to people. They were in the tabernacle. In fact, the originals of all that were really in and with the Ark, although I’m sure documents or scrolls other than those were available, but Apart from the existence of the five books of Moses and perhaps a little written history here and there of man’s encounters with God, there was nothing there that you could call holy writ or the scriptures or a Bible such as you are familiar with having the Bible. The fact is that the word of God is truly rare. It is unusual for God Almighty to deign to talk to man. The occasions when he does so are few and far between, and the number of words that he uses in the process of communicating with man are few and very carefully chosen. If the word of God is water, the history of man is like a vast desert with a spring here and there. And you would think that being the case, that we would all find ourselves clustered around that spring all the time. that we would live next to that spring, that we would be desperate to be close to it. In fact, man, for some strange reason, wants to scatter himself across the sand and not really be close to it. But the truth is, the Word of God is precious. And yet to us, it is almost common, ordinary. And certainly I can feel safe in saying that you and I take it for granted. Hebrews 1.1 says this, God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, and by whom also he made the worlds. At various times, under unusual circumstances, a man here, a man there, a time here and a time there, God spoke in time past to the prophets. Sometimes it was in a vision. Sometimes it was a voice in the night. Sometimes it was an encounter with God alongside the road. And sometimes it was when God came to him. And he sat down, prepared a meal for God, sat and ate with him, and then as he walked along the way, God decided to reveal something to one of his servants that he wanted him on that occasion to know. So from time to time, God has spoken. And then in the last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. And in your New Testament, you have a large collection of words of God. It’s kind of convenient in a way, the red letter Bibles, they’re not really necessary at all, but they are kind of convenient as you page through to find the words of Jesus out of the narrative that follows. For indeed, the narratives that surround the words of Jesus are what Paul, or I’m sorry, what James, I’ll get it right in a moment, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had to say. And that part that is in red is what Jesus himself had to say. But the writer of Hebrews in the second chapter, after having made the point of the scarcity of the words of God, and how God in time past spoke to the fathers by the prophets in very indifficult ways, but in these last days has spoken by his son, he then says in chapter 2, Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. Now that seems to suggest that there’s a danger in taking these words for granted. To give the more earnest heed to the things that you have heard. What do you mean, give the more earnest heed? Well, there you sit with your Bible open in front of you. And in this Bible are the words of God. And he is suggesting that you ought to give not merely heed, but earnest heed. How do you do that? Well, it seems that you would do it by spending as much time as you could manage immersed in the pages of your Bible, working your way from verse to verse, pausing to think about what you read, pausing to find ways to apply them in your life and how they might work in your life. We ought to give them more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed to us by them that heard him? Now when you consider that the word of God is rare, that it is precious, that we should give earnest heed to it, And that if in old times the transgressions of it were punished, shouldn’t we then, he says, give the more earnest heed to these things, lest we should let them get away? And how can we expect to escape if we neglect this tremendous salvation that was given to us? And so I would conclude that one of the great… Great dangers we have is neglect, and the great danger is a neglect of the Word of God. Not so much the active disregard, not so much the opposition to the Word of God, for which of us is going to ever fall into that frame of mind? But neglect, oh yeah, that is one of the easiest and most dangerous things for us. But you notice, in spite of that, at the feast this year, and I was kind of stunned by this. I don’t get to hear very many sermons, or sermonettes for that matter. Most of the time I’m up here speaking, and when there’s a sermonette going on, I’m there getting ready for the sermon. And so a lot of times I don’t listen to sermonettes. But for some reason this year I did a lot at the feast, and I noticed on two separate sermonettes and one sermon at the feast this year, I heard in those sermonettes and sermons, on three different occasions, statements made that were diametrically the opposite of what the Bible said. Now, the individual was not engaged in actual heresy. He was not charging off down the wrong road on purpose. He just didn’t know. He did not realize that what he was saying was exactly the opposite of a phrase. On one occasion, I forget, I was sitting there listening to him make the statement, and I heard it. And I just flipped my Bible open real quickly because I knew right where it was going to, put my finger on it and looked at Allie, and she looked at me and looked at the page, and her mouth kind of dropped open. Of course, she was aware already herself that it wasn’t right because she does know her Bible pretty well. And the realization of this really was disturbing to me in a way. It was not intentional heresy. They just didn’t know. But in all fairness, there is a lot to know. if you think about it. Here’s a book, you know, there’s a lot of stuff in here. It goes on and on and on and on for a while. So the fact that someone should not have something quite right in it, that’s not going to be too surprising. The Bible is a heavy work, and knowing it is a work of a lifetime. But the thing is that in this book, we find the testimony of God, the testimony of Yehovah, the words of God, by which we are to live. The question for you is, is it precious to you or is it common? Is it precious or is it common? Now, the 119th Psalm is one of my favorites. It’s a very, very powerful testimony to the word of God in a man’s life. I spent in the correspondence course lesson on the lessons on the law quite a lot of time in the 119th Psalm. I think we had the people who studied that correspondence course read the entire Psalm and answer questions on it because it is so important. But I want to go through parts of it with you today to kind of underline for you the fact of what a precious resource this is and what it means to you and why it is so important to you. He says, starts off saying, “…Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord.” Now there is a set of words in here that are called the testimony of God. By the way, the Ark, which we generally refer to as the Ark of the Covenant, is generally, and I think early and a little more often, called the Ark of the Testament. And that the Ten Commandments are the testimony of God. It is what He comes to testify to us. So that the Ten Commandments, the Ten Words, are given as the testimony of God. So when you hear someone speaking of God’s testimonies, the chances are what he’s referring to are those Ten Commandments. He said, “…Blessed are they that keep His testimonies, and that seek Him with a whole heart.” There is a fundamental, basic way of living that is encompassed in the Ten Commandments that we are expected to live by. Now, one of the most important things you will ever understand in your life is that the Ten Commandments are not given to you arbitrarily by God, who could just as easily have said thou shalt commit adultery as thou shalt not commit adultery. The fact of the matter is he said thou shalt not commit adultery because committing adultery is going to hurt you and hurt your family, hurt your loved ones, hurt the other people that you don’t even know about and have profound effects on society and even ultimately upon civilization. So that thou shalt not commit adultery is given for your sake, not God’s. And it doesn’t require God to lift a finger. to cause something bad to happen to you as a result of your doing it. He cares enough for us to testify to us that if you commit adultery, you’re going to destroy your life. If you lie, you’re going to wreck your reputation. If you set up an idol, you’re going to lose track of who God is, and that’s really going to mess up your life. If you covet things that don’t belong to you, you’re going to wind up making bad decisions, pursuing things you have no business pursuing, and hurt yourself, hurt your neighbor, hurt your wife, hurt your children. I testify to you this day, if you do these things, you’re going to perish. That’s a testimony, isn’t it? And so it isn’t because God wants to hit you if you break his law. What he is telling you is you’re going to hurt yourself if you do break this law. He may chastise you like a loving parent will chastise a child for running into the street because the ultimate penalty of running into the street is too severe. to allow the child to learn by experience why the child should not run into the street. He goes on to say, “‘Blessed are they who keep his testimonies and seek him with the whole heart. They do no iniquity. They walk in his ways. You have commanded us to keep your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep your statutes. I wish that somehow it was just the way I automatically was, that I really would be directed to keep your statutes. I fear I don’t always.'” Then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all your commandments. I will praise you with uprightness of heart when I shall have learned of your righteous judgments. I will keep your statutes. Just don’t forsake me, God. Please, don’t forsake me. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? You know, I’ve come to the place where I’d like to clean up my life. Where do I start? His answer is simple, by taking heed thereto according to your word. The word of God is precious. It is the way whereby a man, a young man, a young woman, anyone, can begin to straighten up and fly right, can put their life back on the right track again. How can I, if I don’t like the way my life is, if my life is a mess, if I want to get it right, if I want to clean up my act, what do I do? You pay attention to what you are doing according to the word of God. Now, but the word of God is precious. It’s rare. And it requires study and it requires pursuit. You’ve got to apply yourself to it because if you don’t know the word of God, how can you live by the word of God? And how can you straighten out your life? But again, it’s the work of a lifetime. It is not simple. It is not easy. It isn’t going to sit there on your shelf and work its way into you. It’s not going to be right there under your elbow when you’re praying and work its way into your mind. It’s not going to work that way. You have got to work to put God’s word into your mind and your heart. With my whole heart have I sought you. Oh, don’t let me wonder from your commandments. Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. Now, I don’t know about you. I can’t speak for anyone except myself. But I can tell you this, that over the years, the growing awareness of the Bible, the memorization, if you will, of certain scriptures, committing them to memory so that I could quote them and quote where they came from, But again, the repetitious use of the scriptures in sermons or in study or in song, because in fact sometimes I have a hard time finding a given scripture in my concordance because it is memorized in my mind in song. I remember it from something that I sang in a hymn, something that I sang in a chorale. And so I go looking for the words. The words are there, but they are in the King James Version in different words, and I can’t find it. But I know it. I have actually been able to memorize large portions of Scripture simply because I have sung the songs so many times. And it’s true of many of you, too, that you have sung these words, and they’re in your head. And even though you might have trouble knowing where they are, you know they’re in there because you have sung them. I think it is so important that as children are growing up, that a part of our education of children is the memorization of scriptures, not just of any and all scriptures, but of certain segments of scriptures, and not just a verse here and a verse there, sometimes whole chapters. For one thing, it’s a very good exercise for the mind, but apart from that, thy word have I hid in my heart. that I may not sin against you means a deliberate act to place God’s Word into the consciousness in such a way that you can call it up from memory. You don’t have to go get the Bible off the shelf. You don’t have to punch up and wait for your computer to boot up and click on the online Bible and do your searches to go find the Scripture. You know it’s there. And the words of it come to mind because you have memorized them. And you can sit and recite them for someone. It’s amazing how often the Bible will intrude into your consciousness when you are contemplating doing something wrong. But it will never happen if you have not put it in there. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips I have declared all the judgments of your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches. I will meditate in your precepts. I’ll think about them. I’ll put my feet up and stare into space and I’ll work this idea through my mind so that I can understand it. I will have respect to your ways. Now that’s an interesting thought. It’s one thing to fear God and to obey him or not do something wrong because you’re afraid God will get you. It’s another thing to respect God in the realization that he said don’t do that. And because I respect him, I know that there’s a reason why he said don’t do that. And to do something because you respect God is I think every bit as important as not doing something because you fear God. I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. Deal bountifully with your servant that I may live and keep your word. Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. I am a stranger in the earth. Oh, don’t hide your commandments from me. They’re precious. I want them. Later in verse 24, he says, Your testimonies are my delight and my counselors. It’s where I go for advice. I really have been dismayed, frankly, at times, to see the extent to which people are able to mess up their lives because they either do not know or they know and do not apply some of the simplest statements of Scripture that you will ever find. All human weakness comes upon all of us, and all of us face challenges, and all of us make mistakes, and all of us, you know, commit sin. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And if any man says he has no sin, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him. I know all about those scriptures. But when you have, and when you know you have sinned, what does the Bible say to you about what you should do? And which way you should go. And how you cleanse your life. And how you clean up your way. Of course you go to Christ. Of course you seek his shed blood. But is there nothing more to do? Where do you go from there? How do you live your life? How do you make decisions relative? And to realize that so many times. God’s law, God’s word is not the place we go for advice as to how we go about conducting business, how we go about conducting our relationship with other people. And as a result of it, oh, we can create more messes and more problems than one would even want to talk about. I would like to recommend that psalm to you, that you would study it yourself and spend a lot of time with it because it is so valuable. Later in verse 97, he says, Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. I love your law. Now, there was a time in my life when I don’t know that I could have said I love God’s law because really for me it was more of a burden. It was something I was a bit afraid of. But it was not for very long that I was in that frame of mind because somewhere along the line I began to realize that the law was a form of revelation higher than I had really previously understood. that the law was a revelatory device. It wasn’t chains and shackles and a burden and a yoke to put on my shoulders. It was something that opened up life and was liberating because it began to tell me the right things to do. And I came to the place to where I could honestly sing that psalm we had in our old hymnal, Oh, how love I thy law, it is ever with me. Because I did come to love the law, and I love it to this day. I love to study it, although certain aspects of it make me afraid, but it is not the law that I fear. It’s what I have done that I fear. The law is what shows me how to get away from some of the things that I have done and not make the same mistakes over again. And the grace of God through Jesus Christ tells me that that grace of God is there that I may be forgiven. I don’t have to go out and pay the penalty for my own sin that has been paid for me. You through your commandments have made me wiser than my enemies because my enemies are ever with me. or because the commandments are ever with me. It doesn’t exactly say. Your commandments have made me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I think it’s the commandments. They’re with me all the time. And it makes me wiser than my enemies. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. What does that mean? It means because I spend time thinking about your commandments and how they affect my life. Some time spent in working away You’re working your way through these things is so critical. I understand more than the ancients because I keep your precepts. I have refrained my feet from every evil way that I might keep your word. I have not departed from your judgments for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste. Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts, I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every false way. Sweeter than honey. The word of the Lord is precious like a spring in the desert. Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. It is not a yoke of bondage. It isn’t shackles and chains. It’s not somebody standing there with a whip to hit me if I do something wrong. I am in a dark and dangerous world. There are more ways to go wrong than there are to go right. There are more ways to get hurt than there are ways to get help. And when you’re wandering around the dark, there are things to bang your head on, things to stumble on, things to run into, and things to get hurt by. The law is a light in a dark place. It’s a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I don’t have to run into things because I have the law of God. It is that precious word that God has given us, that helps us to know the difference between right and wrong, and helps us to know how we can proceed in this dark and dangerous world that we work in. Down in the 169th verse of this psalm, long, long psalm, he says, Let my cry come near before you, O Lord, give me understanding according to your word. Let my supplication come before me, deliver me according to your word. My lips shall utter praise when you have taught me your statutes. That’s the result. It is thanksgiving. Do you realize that I’ve been praising God from the time we started in this sermon? I don’t think I said praise the Lord one time. But I’ve been praising him for his law. Because I keep telling us it’s a light in a dark place. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s sweet to the taste. My tongue shall speak of your word, for all your commandments are righteousness. You want to know what’s righteous and what’s righteousness? It’s God’s commandments, simply. Let your hand help me, for I have chosen your precepts. I have longed for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. Let my soul live, and it shall praise you. Let your judgments help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Boy, ain’t it the truth. I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I don’t forget your commandments. The word of God is precious. And I fear, lest among us it should become common, that it should be taken for granted, that you should take your book and toss it up on the shelf when you get home and not pick it up again until next week, and take it down when you come to church. For that’s the kind of an attitude I think we would show if the word of God is common. ordinary, and nothing special to us. Through Isaiah, the 66th chapter, God says something I think very important. Do you want to know who God looks to? Do you want to know who the person is that God will pay attention to, upon whom his attention is focused? Isaiah 66.1, Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne. The earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you build unto me, and where is the place of my rest? Do you think you’re going to build me a house? Do you think you’re going to make a place where I can lie down and rest, do you? Look, all these things have my hand made, and all these things have been, saith the Lord. But to this man will I look. I’m not going to look to the man that builds a house or builds me a temple or does any of those things. I will look to this person, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word. There’s more than one way of trembling, you know. You can tremble out of fear or you can tremble with excitement. But the realization of a person who, when he takes God’s word in his hands… or when he hears the word of God falling upon his ears being read, realizes what a priceless, precious thing this is, and who trembles before God’s word, realizing it’s life, it’s light, it’s knowledge, it’s wisdom. It can keep me out of trouble. It can make me healthy, wealthy, and wise. It is that thing that we hope for so very much. I have gone astray. I need God to pull me back. The truth is, you will never really come to know the book unless it is precious to you. Now, I’ve got three of these. Actually, two of them just like this. And I’ve got a third one that I had before I had either of my Oxford-wide margins. And this is probably the cleaner of the ones that I have. But in the early days of involvement with the church and through subsequent periods of time, and I do not tell you this as a self-aggrandizing thing, but as a man who is to stand before you and teach or be a minister, I have an obligation to set an example. And so I want you to know something, that there are many of us who in the years gone by, the Bible has been a very precious thing to us, and we have spent many, many hours in this book And if you begin to page through some of the men who have been in the ministry a long time, their Bibles, you’ll find pages that are marked quite a lot. You’ll find marginal notes all over the place. You know, in the Psalms, I used to, many years ago, as a part of my prayer life, I would go to a place, get on my knees, and pray for a while until I ran out of words, which sometimes didn’t take very long at all, but because I had kind of set a discipline upon myself of keeping a certain amount of time. I would then stop and start reading through the Psalms, making the Psalm my prayer, and I would put a mark at each Psalm as I passed it. I have got, at this point in the Psalms, five marks on all, you know, which suggests that I have gone through this passage, not just this Psalm, I mean the entire book of Psalms, five times in this Bible alone. I really commend that to you. I may recommend that to you. that you find time to open your Bible on your knees before God, that you read your Bible before God, and you talk to God about the things that are in it. I have marks. I underline things. I mark things. I put cross-references in it. I had a lot of fun. Funny word for it, isn’t it? I had a lot of joy in working my way through these three Bibles at one time or another and sometimes copying notes out of one into the other because the system of marking was all a part of the applying of myself to the Word of God and applying myself to it in such a way that hopefully, in the process of time, I could find my way back to this place, I’d see my note, and I’d remember what it was that I had had to say. Now, the old Bibles have become so familiar to me that I can pick up one or the other, and even though they’re not marked the same, I’m still at home in this book. Now, this didn’t happen in the first six months of my involvement with the Bible. I’ve been at this now for 35 years and longer. In fact, my education in the Bible goes back to when I was a boy. I was a boy in a Baptist church. I would go to church on Sunday evening. And we had this little thing that we had to fill out, and we were always trying to get 100 every time because you got 10 points for each of the things that you did. And one of the points was that you went to Sunday school that morning. You had to check that in and so forth. And one of them was that you had done your daily Bible readings. Now, the Baptist Church at that time published a, I think it was in the quarterly or the training and quarterly or the Sunday school, I don’t know which one it was, there was a daily Bible reading. And the idea was you would go look that up, and you would read that daily Bible reading every day. And then when you came to church on Sunday evening, you could tick that off. And so consequently, you had read your daily Bible reading for the day. And that’s where an enormous amount of the groundwork that I have in the Bible was laid. It was laid when I was 6, 7, 8, 9 years old. It started early. When I was able to read the Bible, that’s when my education in the Bible started. Now, when are your kids going to start? Because knowing this book, knowing what this book says is life. It’s salvation. It’s salvation here and now, and it’s salvation in the world to come. I don’t have much doubt, frankly, that the groundwork that was laid for me in the Bible before I ever heard about the Sabbath, the Holy Days, or any of these things, was an important part of my growing knowledge about God. And I have said before, and I will stand on it, that the Jesus Christ that I knew when I was a Baptist is not a different person from the Jesus Christ I know now. It was the same person. I worshipped him in vain. I mean, after all, somebody’s got to. Otherwise, you know, Jesus’ words that you worshipped me in vain don’t mean anything. I worshipped him in vain, but it was him and not somebody else. And I had some things I had to learn, but the Bible… And the learning of the Bible was an important part of my growing up experience. I think that the earliest children should be read from the Bible when they are before they can read. And when they can read, they should be taught to read the Bible. Because it is the heart and core and the basis, the foundation of our faith and of everything that it comes to mean. If the Bible is common to you, you will not have the heart to pursue it. You just won’t have the heart. And you won’t do it. It is really, too, a shame to take that book for granted when such a high price has been paid to put it in your hands. Do you know the name of the English king who first ordered that the English Bible be made available in every church for the common man? Do you know which king that was? Now, if you think it was King James, you’re wrong. It was, of all people, Henry VIII. Old Henry. who wanted another wife. Not just one other wife, but he was going to have to have several other wives before he got through with it. In 1538, and this is a mere 21 years after Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door in the cathedral, he ordered that, quote, one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English be placed in every church in England. This Bible was to be, quote, in some convenient place, whereas your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and read it. And he also said in that decree, Now the 1611 King James Bible was nearly 100 years away. when King Henry VIII made this proclamation. Now, before you start patting Henry on the head or back about having done this particular thing, you have to realize that he was in the process of making a major break with Rome. It was all a part of breaking the authority of the Pope, that the Bible was the authority, not the Pope. And a lot of it was because he was lusting after Anne Boleyn and wanted a divorce and so forth. All that story has been told many times. Also… Henry, it was a political thing on his part. There was still on his part and that of church leaders, even of the new Church of England of which he was nominally the head, a lot of concern about the old average layperson ordinary people like you and I who were the dumb brutish class. really knowing that much about reading this passage, all this stuff. Once they got beyond the initial stage of making the break with Rome, at that point, all those people like you reading the Bible became rather uncomfortable for them. Now, this was a moment upon which history turned, because the Bible replaced the Pope as the final religious authority. And for the next three centuries, the English Bible was the most powerful single influence on the English culture. and the culture of the English people and their history for 300 years. You think about that. That Bible that you hold in your lap, the most powerful cultural influence on England for about the next 300 years. Now, if you have ever wondered at the source of the greatness of the British Empire, you’re actually holding it in your lap, in your Bible, because of what was taught, what was believed, and the foundations that took place. For generations, the Bible was the only book in many English households. They had no other. Guess what the consequence of that was? It was the most read book of all. It was read, and it was re-read, and it was read again. And the words, Barbara Tuckman put it this way, she said the words, the images, and the characters were as familiar as bread in the English household. No other book. So it was read over and over and over again. This Bible, according to Henry, had it placed in every church, and so what they did, they would put it in the pulpit, and they would chain it there. They chained it there because somebody would steal it. A Bible is a very valuable piece of work. They were expensive. They were few. The movable type had not come along to really make the Bible. I mean, it had come along, but it had not really yet become a factor in mass production of the English Bible. In fact, even these early translations of the Bible, some of the earliest ones were not even done from Hebrew and Greek, but were done for the Latin Vulgate. There were bits and pieces of an English Bible done many, many years before that. But at this point in time, what is called the Great Bible was actually placed in English churches all over the place. St. Paul’s Cathedral had a Bible chained to each of six pillars in the church, you know, six of them, so that people could walk up to them and read. A lot of people, though, of course, couldn’t read, and a lot of people couldn’t even get next to the Bibles. And so it was very popular for people who had a good voice that you could hear them read and read well to step up to the Bible, and they would read from the Scriptures, and people would gather around and listen to them. Some of them were more popular than others. But the problem is that as these scenes of people gathering around and hearing the Bible read and becoming very excited about the whole thing, church leaders and the political leaders began to get very worried about all this. They really didn’t want the Bible to read them, the rabble to read them. And so one of the more popular readers at this time, just as an example, I forget his name, I think it was Parsons or something like that, was arrested because he would gather up 100 people, standing around open mouth listening to him read, and I gather he’d only read, he preached a little bit. They arrested this fellow. Remember, you’re not supposed to discourage any man from reading it. They arrested this fellow, stuck him in chains, slapped him down in some slimy dungeon somewhere and forgot about him for about 10 days, and when he went back, he was dead. That’s what happened to people who really were involved in reading the Bible to other people in that time. The Word of God, though, was precious. They could not stuff it out. People were smuggling English language copies of the Bible in in bales of hay. Bits and pieces and scraps of it were being sold for a few pennies here and there, wherever people could find it. They were doing everything in their power to try to get this Bible out to the people because they realized that as the people got the Bible in their hand, they would be liberated from the religious authority that they had become used to basically regulating their lives. In the Catholic resurgence under Queen Mary a few years after this, In one year alone, 67 Protestants were burned in one year in an attempt to suppress the reading of the Bible and the distribution of the Bible. And yet, in spite of that, people wanted it so bad, it was so precious, that they would risk life, limb, torture, and everything else to hear, to read, to possess the Bible. I think you probably have heard of many of the persecutions against people who tried to preserve the Bible. What you may not have realized is that most of those were against the distribution of the English Bible, the one that you have there, or an earlier version of the one that you have there. And they happened not in the years before Constantine, but in the 15th and 16th centuries. sobering to realize how close that was. Tyndale had to do his translation while in Cologne, in Germany, because he was exiled from England. And finally, once the Protestant Reformation really took hold in England, he was arrested and burned in Germany for having been part of the Protestant Reformation in England. And actually the translator of the pestilent English Bible, which was so much a problem. What you take for granted is precious information. beyond your comprehension. And men have thought it so and have paid a terrible price for it down through history. In Isaiah 55, Isaiah 55 and verse 6 is a strong word from the prophet about God’s word. He said, Seek the Lord while he may be found, verse 6. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. And let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. All right, then if I’m going to understand God’s thoughts, then I am surely going to have to apply myself to understanding them, else they will go right by me. Long for as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and doesn’t go back up, it just comes down and waters the earth and makes it bring forth and bud that it may give forth seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper in the thing where unto I said, you know, I believe there is a tendency on our part to place way too much emphasis on the person who reads the scripture to you and preaches to you from the scripture. Way too important. That it is the word of God that is precious and not the words that come from me or some other preacher that might come along. Because when the preacher is seen to have feet of clay, the word that he has spoken becomes suspect. And I think back to a man that is familiar, I think, to all of you people, named Herbert W. Armstrong, who was a powerful influence on my life. In the years subsequent, years after my departure from the Worldwide Church of God and somewhat after his death even, there had been an effort on many parts to undermine Herbert Armstrong’s authority, to minimize the man, to emphasize his shortcomings, his problems, his sins, and so forth, all of which is… is to me almost irrelevant. The most important contribution that Herbert W. Armstrong made to my life was to make me hear the Word of God. And in a way, to make me hear it anew because he read it very well. The style, you know, in which you read the Word of God is sometimes important. But listen to this prophecy in Jeremiah 23 in verse 21. Jeremiah 23 is kind of an odd scripture for me to quote in this context because it’s about false prophets. And I’m not even saying one thing or the other about Herbert Armstrong as a false prophet, true prophet, or anything else. I don’t think that Herbert Armstrong is very relevant except for the fact that he made us hear God’s Word. And you’ll see what I mean as I read through this little passage of Scripture. God says of a certain category of prophet, I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, but they prophesied. Well, they ought to have kept their mouth shut. Perhaps. But he says, but if they, prophets I have not sent, prophets I have not spoken to, if they had stood in my counsel and had caused my people to hear my words, then even they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings. My word, God says, will not return to me void. If I’ve got one thing to offer as a preacher teacher, it’s the word of God. Bible. Beyond that, I don’t have much, really. I can read it fairly well. I got a fairly good voice. I can interpret the scriptures fairly well and put emphasis in the right places for you. But if there’s anything that’s going to touch your life, anything that’s going to change your life, it’s not me. It’s the Word of God that’s going to do it. For many of those of us in those days, the word of Jehovah became precious, you know, back when we were listening to Herbert Armstrong the first time. One of the things about the style in which we worked, you know, there were these little booklets that came out. They were very concise. And the booklet would make a statement, and it would have a scriptural reference. And the assumption was that you would don’t believe what he said, you would believe the Bible. And you would put the booklet down, get your Bible out, open to that particular scripture, and you would read it. And you would read before it, and you would read after it. You’d make notes in the margin of your Bible, or you would underline it or mark it in some way. And so I worked my way through nearly everything Herbert Armstrong had written, just like that. Looking up every scripture, not taking his word for anything, proving things from the Bible. And all he did… was make me hear God’s word. And when I heard it, it changed my life. Call that my testimony, if you will. Now, there’s an interesting little passage here in a book by Charles Coulson entitled A Dance with Deception. I want to read this little section out of it. In case you ever happen to have a copy, it’s on page 274. He’s talking about how the church, that is particularly the Lutheran church in Russia, survived Stalinism. He said, 50 years ago, Joseph Stalin decided to destroy the Lutheran church in Russia, that Lutherans were to be a case study in how all the Christian denominations might eventually be liquidated. First, Stalin had all the pastors killed or imprisoned. For what? Because they were a Lutheran pastor. They were arrested. They either were killed or they were shipped off to prisons. Then the church buildings were confiscated, Bibles, hymn books, religious writings were all destroyed. It became a crime to own a Bible, a hymnal, or any type of Lutheran liturgy. Lutheran families were broken up. Men were forced into the army. Women and children were loaded into boxcars like cattle and scattered throughout the remote regions of the Soviet Union, some to the deserts of the Islamic Republics, some to the Arctic wastelands of Siberia. You think you’ve got trouble holding your family or church together? They loaded them in bus cars and scattered them deliberately to where they wouldn’t be near one another, to where they couldn’t have one another to lean on. In a shockingly brief period of time, the Lutheran Church of the Soviet Union was wiped off the face of the earth. And apparently you can go to St. Petersburg, you can view the only remaining physical evidence of that old Lutheran Church. It’s a Lutheran Church building that’s been turned into an indoor swimming pool. All that’s left of the old Lutheran church in Russia. But that’s not the end of the story. The Lutheran women worked stubbornly and painfully to keep their church alive. They had no pastors, no church buildings, no Bibles, no hymn books, nothing. But that didn’t stop them. They sought each other out across miles of desolate countryside. They met in one another’s homes to pray and minister to one another. They wrote down all the religious instruction they had learned by heart. Whatever they had memorized, they wrote it down. Bible verses, Luther’s catechism, hymns, liturgies. They held religious services. And, at the risk of imprisonment, they passed on the faith to their children. They actually put the faith in the one repository where they were sure it could survive. In their children. I’m talking about hiding Bibles and stuff, you know, around hiding the evidence of your faith. They didn’t hide it in that form. They hid it in their own children. Some people have a church. Some people have faith. And a faith can survive the destruction of the church. A faith can survive the scattering of people over the landscape. It can survive not having a pastor, not having a deacon, not having a liturgy, a hymnal, a system, anything of the sort. It can survive all of that. In fact, the Lutheran church, over time, some of the husbands managed to rejoin their wives. Some of the surrounding people were converted. A community of believers was formed that appointed elders and deacons. and the Lutheran Church in Russia was reborn. They now meet in more than 500 house churches. Western Christians have sent them Bibles. They have recently established a seminary. Soon they will have trained pastors again. But the trained pastors are really a luxury. I think what needs to be understood from that is that the time when you have the pastor, the time when you have the leadership, is your grace period when you need to be getting ready for the time when you don’t. In Amos 8 it says this in verse 11, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They will wander from sea to sea, from the north to the east. They will run to and fro and seek the word of the Lord, and they shall not find it. Where are the Bibles? Where are the Christians? Of course, when it’s talking about the word of the Lord, is God talking to us? Does God have anything to say? And the word of the Lord becomes so rare, scarce, precious, you can’t find it anywhere. Where are we going to be? It won’t help to have a Bible hidden in the attic or a box of cassette tapes in the garage. They’ll be taken away. They’ll be destroyed. Or you’ll be picked up and taken away from where they are. They won’t be there for you. What will be there for you? Remember the 119th Psalm, verse 11. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. That’s the one place you can hide God’s word that it can never be taken away from you. There are two kinds of time that you and I have got. We’ve got a time of the famine of the word and a time to get ready for it. That’s all. A famine of the word is coming. We’ve been given a period of grace. I think in a lot of ways that what is happening to the church right now may be a proximate warning. Not that we are heading straight into the famine of the word, but that we are given a proximate warning that it is out there, that it is coming, and you have got a period of grace. We would do well to make the most of this period of grace that we have.
