Francois Marie Voltaire, the French agnostic, said that Christianity would not survive him by a hundred years, yet a hundred years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society purchased his old home and, upon Voltaire’s own press, printed a complete edition of the Bible. A hundred years after his death, the first edition of his works sold for the equivalent of eleven U.S. cents in a Paris flea market while the Czar of Russia paid $500,000 USD for Codex Sinaticus, a Greek manuscript of the Bible.
Voltaire was neither the first nor the last to attack the Bible, striving to deal it such a blow that it would be set aside once and for all. And Jeremiah, the prophet, tells us how Jehoiakim, the king, didn’t happen to like what he heard, which Jeremiah had written, and took his penknife, cut up the parchment, and threw it into the fire. Jeremiah simply rewrote the book which has long since survived the king.
Upon occasion kings and rulers have ordered the Bible destroyed. Diocletian, the Roman emperor, passed a law in 303 A.D., ordering all Bibles to be collected and destroyed, yet a decade after that, Diocletian was succeeded by Constantine, who declared Christianity to be the state religion and pagan temples were turned into churches.
Someone put it poetically:
Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s/ And heard the anvil ring the vespered chime,/ Then looking in, I saw upon the floor/ Old hammers worn with beating years of time./ “How many anvils have you had?” said I, “To wear and batter all these hammers so.”/ “Just one,” said he; then, with a twinkling eye‑‑/ “The anvil wears the hammers out, you know./ And so, thought I, the anvil of God’s word/ For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;/ Yet though the noise of falling blows was heard,/ The anvil is unharmed‑‑the hammer’s gone.”
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
The first book to be printed by Johann Guttenberg and the first book to be taken to the moon by Astronaut Ed Mitchell was a Bible. No other book in all history has been so much in demand by so many and has endured the test of time.
Why? There is but one reason: This book is no ordinary book. Given by God, it has an authority that rings loud and clear. No other book so lucidly tells me of my own sinful condition but dashes the despair by telling me how salvation and forgiveness are possible through Jesus Christ.
The indestructibility of the Bible is one of the witnesses to the authority of this book; and, ultimately, you accept this authority by faith and submit to it, or else you reject it, which is like refusing to recognize the periodic chart of the elements, or refusing to acknowledge the metallic pull of the north pole or the warmth of the sun.
But the argument for the authority of the Word doesn’t stop with the simple fact that it has outlived its critics. There are five powerful voices which are all external testimonies to this authority:
1) The fulfillment of the prophecies of the Bible, documented and verified by secular history, such as the establishment of the modern state of Israel;
2) The spade of the archaeologist, which has only supported the historical statements of the Bible, such as the existence of the Hittites, the names of Biblical characters and secular rulers such as Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Abraham, and David;
3) Science also verifies the statements that the Bible makes;
4) The abundance of manuscript evidence supporting the integrity of the text itself; and
5) Changed lives, which can support the simple allegation that it works. Yes, the issue of authority is tremendously important!
Resource reading: Deuteronomy 5:22-33
