Perceptions #200222

"A Look At The Body"

by Jerry Hodge

The Bible has withstood vicious attacks of its enemies as no other book. Some have tried to burn it, ban it and bury the text. (I was running out of B words). From the days of the Roman emperors to present day liberal media, the Bible has been under the gun.

Sidney Collett in All About the Bible says, "Voltaire, the noted French infidel who died in 1779, said that in one hundred years from his time Christianity would be swept from existence and passed into history." But what has happened? Voltaire passed into history, while the circulation of the Bible continues to increase in almost all parts of the world, carrying blessings wherever it goes.

Now for the rest of the story! Fifty years after the death of Voltaire, the Geneva Bible Society used his own press to produce stacks of Bibles.

In A. D. 303 Caesar Diocletian issued an edict to stop Christian worship and to destroy the Scriptures. An imperial letter was sent everywhere ordering the razing of churches to the ground and the destruction by fire of the Scripture. Could the early church survive such a hostile enemy? (How is this for irony?) Eusebius records an edict given just 25 years after Diocletian's attack. Constantine, the new Caesar, ordered 50 copies of the Scriptures should be prepared at the expense of the government.

How about a word for archaeology? William Albright, known as a great archaeologist, states, "There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the Old Testament tradition." Nelson Glueck writes, "No archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference."

I believe the Bible and I can't wait for the rest of the story."

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