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The Book of Books
“The Word of the Lord endureth forever”
(1 Peter 1:25).
It has been said that out of every thousand books written, six hundred do not pay the cost of printing and only live a year, while only fifty last seven years. However, the Bible, which is centuries old in its complete form, and probably over five thousand years old in its earliest portions, is still easily the best seller. It is printed in hundreds of languages and dialects, and millions of copies of the whole or part are circulated every year. And yet no book has ever been so persecuted.
Persecution has raged since the days of Jehoikim, king of Judah (about 606 B.C.), who, “cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire” (Jeremiah 36:23). Antiochus Epiphanes (168 B.C.), destroyed all the copies he could find. Diocletian (303 A.D.), did the same, and many in later years made bonfires of the earliest printed New Testaments. The Bible has stood attacks from atheists and modernists, but is still what William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), former prime minister of England, called the “Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.”
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