Psalm 12:6,7
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
WILLIAM TYNDALE (1490-1536): The Word of God never was without persecution—no more than the sun can be without his light.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): Infinite potentates have raged against His book, and sought to destroy and uproot it—king Alexander the Great, the princes of Egypt and of Babylon, the monarchs of Persia, of Greece, and of Rome, the emperors Julius and Augustus—but they nothing prevailed; they are all gone and vanished, while the Book remains, and will remain for ever and ever, perfect and entire, as it was declared at the first. Who has thus helped it—who has thus protected it against such mighty forces? No one, surely, but God Himself, who is the Master of all things. And ’tis no small miracle how God has so long preserved and protected this Book; for the devil and the world are sore foes to it.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): If the Holy Scriptures had not been of God, they would not have been in being at this day; God’s care of the Bible is a plain indication of His interest in it.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): How then, can we account for the survival of the Bible in the face of such bitter persecution? The only solution is to be found in the promises of God, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away, Luke 21:33.
EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): For thousands of years this volume has withstood, not only the iron tooth of time, which devours men and their works together, but all the physical and intellectual strength of man. Pretended friends have endeavoured to corrupt and betray it; kings and princes have perseveringly sought to banish it from the world; the civil and military powers of the greatest empires have been leagued for its destruction; the fires of persecution have often been lighted to consume it, and its friends together; and at many seasons, death, in some horrid form, has been the almost certain consequence of affording it an asylum from the fury of its enemies…Thousands, too, have sealed their belief of its truth with their blood; rejoicing to shed it in defence of a book, which, while it led them to the stake, enabled them to triumph over its tortures.
A. W. PINK: During the first three centuries of the Christian era the Roman Emperors sought to destroy God’s Word. One of them, named Diocletian, believed that he had succeeded. He had slain so many Christians and destroyed so many Bibles, that when the lovers of the Bible remained quiet for a season and kept in hiding, he imagined that he had made an end of the Scriptures. So elated was he at this achievement, he ordered a medal to be struck inscribed with the words, “The Christian religion is destroyed and the worship of the gods restored.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Remember that our Bible is a blood stained Book; the blood of martyrs is on the Bible, the blood of translators and confessors. The doctrines which we preach to you are doctrines that have been baptized in blood; swords have been drawn to slay the confessors of them.
A. W. PINK: Centuries after the persecution by the Roman Emperors, when the Roman Catholic Church obtained command of the city of Rome, the Pope and his priests took up the old quarrel against the Bible. The Holy Scriptures were taken away from the people, copies of the Bible were forbidden to be purchased, and all who were found with a copy of God’s Word in their possession were tortured and killed. For centuries the Roman Catholic Church bitterly persecuted the Bible.
EDWARD PAYSON: Yet still the object of all these attacks remains uninjured, while one army of its assailants after another has melted away. Though it has been ridiculed more bitterly, misrepresented more grossly, opposed more rancorously, and burnt more frequently, than any other book, and perhaps than all other books united, it is so far from sinking under the efforts of its enemies, that the probability of its surviving until the final consummation of all things is now evidently much greater than ever. The rain has descended; the floods have come; the storm has arisen, and beat upon it; but it falls not, for it is founded upon a rock. Like the burning bush, it has ever been in flames, yet is still unconsumed; a sufficient proof, were there no other, that He who dwelt in the bush preserves the Bible.
HULDREICH ZWINGLI (1484-1531): Gracious lords, defend the Word of God!
C. H. SPURGEON: Defend the Bible! How would you defend a lion? Open the cage and let him out!
HUGH LATIMER (1483-1555): The Author of Holy Scripture is the Mighty One, the Everlasting God Himself!―and this Scripture partakes of the might, and eternity of its Author.
A. W. PINK: The Almighty who made the heavens and the earth is also the Author of the Bible…The God of creation and the God of written revelation are One.
DUTCH PSALTER 268 (Psalm 100): His truth at all times firmly stood,
And shall from age to age endure.
MARTIN LUTHER: I’ll trust in God’s unchanging Word, till soul and body sever;
For though all things shall pass away, His Word shall stand forever.
