Help From the Bible by Amos R. Wells

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 16, 1911

Help From the Bible

By Amos R. Wells

You have a Bible; do you own it? You hold it in your hands; do you hold it in your heart? You read it; do you feed on it?

The Bible is the medicine-chest given us by the Great Physician. Are the labels on the sixty-six vials eloquent to you? Do you know for what each is a remedy? or do you take them at haphazard and in the dark?

There are two primary mistakes with regard to the Bible. One is not to read it at all; the other is not to read it with a purpose. And so there are two primary directions for the use of the Bible. One is, Read it. Read it regularly, read it perseveringly, read it in large measure, perhaps a book at a time. The other is, Always read it for power,—power over doubt, power over grief, power over temptation. Tempted souls have gone to the Bible, opened it at ignorant random, and hit upon a vein of the gold they sought; for the Bible is rich in precious ore. But others have blundered upon no discovery, and have scouted the Bible as a useless book.

Not thus does the wise gold-seeker go to work. He prospects the mountains, valley after valley, spur after spur, peak after peak. He learns the strata, what they are, how they lie, what each contains. To this he goes for lead, to that for zinc, to another for silver. He could guide you along any path in the dark, and when he strikes pick, it is not in vain.

So it is with this mountain range of the Bible. A friend may point out one rich outcropping or two, but it is only a shift for the time. You must know the Bible through and through for yourself. No one knows whether the Bible can help him or not until he has read it from cover to cover, in sections large enough to give comprehensive views, with aids sufficient to insure understanding, and with a definite purpose systematically pursued. In no inferior fashion would you survey a farm offered for sale; and surely the Bible has as much promise for you as a farm. Therefore, O tempted soul, book after book, from Genesis to Revelation, pursue the sacred journey! Tarry not with the beauties and delights that crowd upon you. ‘Keep an eye single for one discovery,’—help against temptation. And wherever you find this help, plainly mark it in the margin, returning to the spot over and over, and reviewing its wisdom till it has joined itself to your soul. If you read the Bible with this one aim, there are few pages you will not mark; just as there are few pages you will not mark if you read the Bible with any other aim.

From the fall of man in the opening chapters to the doom of the wicked and the reward of the righteous in the closing chapter, the entire Bible is a treatise on temptation and its conquest. The stories of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Noah; of Abraham, Lot, Esau, and Jacob; of Joseph, Moses, Miriam, and Aaron; of Balaam, Joshua, Samson, and Gideon; of Eli, Samuel, Saul, David, Absalom, and Solomon; of Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Ahab, and Elijah; of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel; of Amos and Micah; of John the Baptist and Jesus our Lord; of Mary Magdalene; of Judas, Peter, and Paul,—all the names I have mentioned, and scores of names I might add, are pictured in the Bible as conquerors or victims of temptation.

It was prophesied of John the Baptist that he should live in the spirit and power of Elijah; and he did. So may all who will read the Bible live in the spirit and power of both John and Elijah, and of all the other men and women of God, who have overcome themselves and the world. It is possible, reading and thinking long of a noble character, to incorporate his personality into our lives; it is not only possible, it is inevitable. You have read your Bible to little purpose unless you, too, become an Elijah, a John the Baptist.

You will never know what portion of the wonderful Book will aid you most or next. I remember that once I was greatly helped in temptation by reading the story of the woman who touched Christ’s robe in the crowd. To this day, though it was years ago, I can feel the

thrill with which I realized that the slightest contact of faith with Christ would heal me of my sin.

Many another passage has come to me, at the time of need, with a message as fresh and startling as if God had spoken from the air above my head. Yet they might all be ineffective in your temptations, while your discoveries might be meaningless to me. For no man owns the whole Bible. It is too large for that, and our experience is too small. Every man makes his own Bible—a Bible constantly growing, if he grows, but always a smaller Bible than the Scriptures. It is a great thing to make a Bible—one of the greatest things any man ever does. For no one can make a Bible except through making his own, one by one, the experiences of the Bible heroes and saints. Did any one ever add all the psalms to his Bible? or all of the letter to the Romans?

The Bible you make is the only one you can really use. It is not using a passage to hunt it up with a concordance and dig out its meaning with a commentary, any more than it is using your house to prove title in a court of law. You use your house when you live in it, and so with a Bible passage. And what a lordly palace the Bible is! There are rooms we never enter. There are ranges of rooms that are as unfamiliar as a stranger’s house. How little of our Bibles we have really moved into! It was only the other day that I moved into First and Second Corinthians. Just now they are my favorite rooms. I am still in the new delight of discovery of those twelve connected galleries, the minor prophecies. And in every room I find surprises of usefulness and beauty all the time.

It is easy to think that you are making a Bible when you are not. No Bible is yours till you use it. You do not use it until it has become an instinct.

You do not use your Bible if, when you are tempted, you must say to yourself, “Now is there anything in Paul’s writing that fits this temptation? Let me see—Romans, Corinthians First, Second, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians; perhaps the armor chapter would fit; I will look it up.” Satan would deal his decisive stroke long before that. No; you are using Paul’s writings if, as soon as the temptation assails you, your thought leaps to its weapons: Keep the body under; mortify the flesh; crucified with Christ; with the temptation the way of escape; in all points tempted like as we are; stand, therefore; resist unto blood, striving against sin. This is to be a Paul and to own his writings, that is to say, his spirit and power.

A paper Bible will not answer; only a memory Bible will avail in the combat with the devil. He likes best to fight in the darkness, when you can not see to read; in your feebleness, when you are too weary to hunt up a book; in your despondency, when heart and will are broken. Sin flashes upon you through your instincts, the baser ones; therefore I say the Bible can not help you till it also has become an instinct, a holy one. How shall we exalt the Bible into an instinct?—Only by meditation and obedience.

By meditation. No hasty wooing wins a great truth. If you want the Bible, you must pay the price; and part of the price is time and patience. A lifetime of courageous living is in the six pages of Amos, and will you make them your own in half an hour? And by obedience. No one has a larger Bible than he obeys. No one can enlarge his Bible except by obeying more. That story of the woman who touched Christ’s garment is yours only as you also reach out the finger of faith. Paul’s armor is yours only as you engage in Paul’s battles.

To think about the Bible so much that we can not help thinking about it, and obey it so heartily that obedience becomes a habit,—this is the way to make the Bible a help in temptation.

It is a noble art—that of meditation. To start out in the day with some magnificent thought, like Paul’s “I buffet my body.” To recur to it, in the interstices of work and play. To reason with ourselves, “Now, what did Paul mean by that? What experiences led him to it? How did he illustrate it? What literal meaning has it for me? What spiritual significance? Have I done it? Am I doing it? If not, why not, and how can I do it?” To talk about it with one’s friends. To look for accidental side-lights upon it, such as are sure to come. To review it all at night, and ask God’s blessing upon it, and his Spirit to lead still farther into its truth,—all this is only a hint of the business of meditation.

And it is a still more noble art—that of obedience. The obedience that does not bandy arguments, nor palter, nor postpone. The obedience that listens eagerly and with poised powers. The obedience that exults in the authority back of the command, and is proud of a post under it. The obedience that leaps and laughs. Our age of silly independence knows little of this, as, in its silly bustle, it knows little of meditation. The more one obeys, the better he obeys he meditates and the more rejoicingly. The more one obeys, the better he obeys and the more happily. Make but a purposeful beginning, and you will soon make your Bible and your life.—Amos R. Wells, in ‘Help for the Tempted.’