Christians love the Bible. Some love it so much that they would even die for it. In the secular world, governments usually ban evil books and promote good ones. The Bible is definitely a book of love, a book of salvation, yet there has been much opposition to the Bible and persecution of its readers. Within three hundred years of the Lord’s walk on this earth, the emperors of the Roman Empire tried their best to destroy the Bible and everyone who read and believed the Bible. In one instance, 150,000 Christians were killed. Some were burned to death, some were bound together and thrown into the sea, and some were devoured by lions in the Coliseum in Rome as entertainment for twenty thousand spectators.
After a few hundred years, the Roman Catholic Church also persecuted the readers of the Bible. The so-called Christian church opposed the reading of the Bible by Christians. What a pity! The Pope was afraid that, by reading the Bible, the Christians would find out that the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church were not biblical. Bible-loving Christians were thrown into prisons. Some were hung and some were burned; this was done in order to force them to stop reading the Bible and to reveal the names of others who also loved the Bible. The ones who did not yield to these demands were tortured and killed. Some were sawn in two; others were covered with wax and burned like candles.
People loved the Bible more than their own lives. How much we should treasure the Bible while we can read it freely!
The Bible is scientifically correct. Scientific theories are not always correct. Theories are updated when new discoveries are made. When theories are modified to match what the Bible says, they become correct, and there is no need to improve them any further.
Just over five hundred years ago, it was generally believed that the earth was flat. Some thought that ships would fall off the edge of the ocean somewhere beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. Some even thought that the earth was held up by four big turtles; others thought that it was held up by a giant called Atlas. You may laugh at these theories, but they were very real to people at that time. They took these theories so seriously that anyone who insisted that the earth was round was considered a heretic and burned at the stake. We all know that the earth is round, but they, strangely, believed otherwise. About five hundred years ago, explorers of the oceans proved that the earth is indeed round.
The Bible revealed that the earth was round over 2,500 years ago. If man had carefully read the Word of God, they might have discovered the truth much earlier. Job 26:7 says, “He (God) stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” Isaiah 40:22 says, “It is He (God) who sits above the circle of the earth.” The word circle here in Hebrew denotes a sphere. You can see that the Bible clearly stated that the earth was a sphere in space. Job 38:14 says, “It (the earth) is changed as clay under the seal.” The word changed here in Hebrew means revolved. The clay here is talking about the printing clay roller of Mesopotamia. It has an axle in the middle to turn it around. This is exactly what people discovered thousands of years later—that the earth is revolving around its own axis.
Jeremiah 33:22 says, “The host of heaven (stars) cannot be numbered.” Before the telescope was invented, Kepler, a famous astronomer from Germany, said that there were a total of 1,005 stars. With the invention and continual improvement of the telescope, this number keeps climbing. The most recent figure that scientists have calculated is 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. The number will go up again as soon as a better telescope is developed. Remember, the Bible says that the stars cannot be numbered.
Scientific books are updated all the time. The books of the Bible have remained the same since they were written. Why? Science is merely man’s study of what has been created by God. Man’s theories need to be updated; God’s word is eternal. Matthew 24:35 says, “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but My words shall by no means pass away.” Praise the Lord! We need to be filled up with His living and abiding word (1 Pet. 1:23).