The Blessed Bible by G. B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 7, 1915

The Blessed Bible

By G. B. Thompson

WHEN Sir Walter Scott lay dying, he is reported to have turned to a friend and said, “Lockhart, my dear, reach me the Book.” “What book?” said his friend. “Ah,” said the great man, “there is but one theme, and one book, for a dying man, and that is Christianity and the Bible.” When the death damp gathers, and the relentless tyrant Death, with his icy hands, begins to feel for our heartstrings, and we stand looking into the portals of the tomb, it is then that the tremendous pillars of truth revealed in God’s Word stand out in their grandeur and power, bringing hope to the soul.

The old Book stands, notwithstanding the assaults of its enemies. Voltaire boasted that “with one hand he would overthrow the edifice of Christianity, which required the hands of twelve apostles to build up.” Voltaire has disappeared, and it is said that the very presses which printed his arrogant blasphemies have been used for years to print Bibles.

Thomas Paine is reported to have said, “I have gone up and down through the Christian garden of Eden, and with my simple ax I have cut down one after another of its trees till I have scarcely left a sapling standing.” But Paine is gone, and his ribald calumny and impious vilification have left the Scriptures of Truth unscathed. The Bible still lives. Men have reviled the Bible, but have never been able to refute it. Skeptics have marched around it and examined its foundations. It has had a multitude of vulgar assailants who, in various ways, have endeavored to show that it was but a book of myth and fable.

Science has tested this Gibraltar of strength by casting against the Bible the husks and hulls of its logic and its conclusions. But the effort has been in vain. Historians have denied some of the Bible’s most important statements, only to have the spade of the explorer turn up afterward tablets which established the Word, and caused its enemies to go in search of some new material with which to daub their untempered wall. Geologists have ransacked the bowels of the earth, and as a result have reached certain conclusions, showing that the old Book is mistaken. But, like the witnesses who condemned Jesus, no two ever agree. Yea, verily, more than eighteen hundred years of research and criticism only serve to establish the Bible as the infallible word of God. Dr. Cummings has truly said:—

The empire of Cæsar is gone; the legions of Rome are moldering in the dust; the avalanches that Napoleon hurled upon Europe have melted away; the pride of the Pharaohs is fallen; the pyramids they raised to be their tombs are sinking every day in the desert sands; Tyre is a rock for bleaching fishermen’s nets; Sidon has scarcely left a wreck behind; but the Word of God still survives. All things that threatened to extinguish it have only aided it; and it proves every day how transient is the noblest monument that man can build, how enduring is the least word that God has spoken. Tradition has dug for it a grave; Intolerance has lighted for it many a fagot; many a Judas has betrayed it with a kiss; many a Peter has denied it with an oath; many a Demas has forsaken it; but the Word of God still endures.

G. B. THOMPSON.