It Stood the Severest Tests and All the Storms of Time.
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not passaway." Luke 21:33.
The Bible cannot be destroyed; it is God’s Book. For twenty centuries a terrific warfare has been waged against it, but all in vain. It stands to-day as unshaken as it did thousands of years before. It has stood the severest tests, throughout which it has been gloriously confirmed. It has been attested by countless miracles and signs, the reality of which even the most rabid enemies have been forced to admit. It has been attested by millions of martyrs, who have cheerfully sealed their faith with their blood, being divinely persuaded of the truth of the Scriptures. It has been attested by its miraculous preservation up to this hour despite all efforts of the wise and mighty to banish it from the face of the earth.
Through the first three centuries of the Christian era the devil summoned up all his wit and ingenuity to do away with this Book, but failed. Edicts were issued by powerful emperors to burn all the Scriptures in order to root out Christianity, but in vain. Orders were issued to burn the Christians because they honored the Bible and thus to uproot the Christian religion, but without avail. The military and the political powers of the Old World made war upon it, but all in vain. Then, under the Pope, the people were forbidden to read the Bible; everything was tried to discredit the Bible’s teaching or to suppress it; nevertheless it stands unscathed and has been spread among well-nigh all known tongues of the globe, everywhere performing its glorious mission. Years ago a school of criticism arose which taught and still teaches: This and that in the Bible is not true. This new “learning” is now being peddled in most of our American universities, — but the Bible still stands. A book that has successfully withstood so many centuries
of the devil’s heaviest artillery is not going down before the air- guns of modern criticism. For heaven and earth shall pass away, but the Lord’s words shall not pass away.
Prayer.
Lord God, heavenly Father, we pray Thee so to govern and guide us by Thy Holy Spirit that we may with all our heart hear and receive Thy Word and amend our lives in accordance with it. Grant, we beseech Thee, that the enemies of Thy sacred Word may learn to see the error of their way, consider well the punishment now and hereafter in store for them, and turn to Thee in true penitence, so that they may, by Thy grace in Christ, be saved with us forever; through the same Thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
