In addition to all of the other evidence the survival of the Bible itself through persecution, time and criticism is in indication of some sort of supernatural protection of the text.

The Bible is the most persecuted literary work in human history.  Multitudes of its human authors were killed.  In many cases, God worked through the death of those human writers to provide strength to the argument for the validity of scripture.  Later in this study we will look at the 12 apostles chosen by Jesus.  All but one died a violent death because of their insistence of the truth of the story told by scripture – namely the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  While some may be willing to suffer for a lie, it is impossible to believe that all would go to their deaths in order to perpetuate a lie.

Shortly following the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Roman Empire began to persecute Christians, and vast numbers of Bibles were destroyed prior to Constantine declaring Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313 A.D.  Indeed, in 303 A/D the Roman Emperor Diocletian declared that anyone found possessing a Bible would be executed.  Those who possess the Bible are routinely killed even today in countries around the world.  Communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and China outlawed possession of Bibles and destroyed copies which they found. Albert Baird Cummins offers the following summary:

“The empire of Caesar is gone;  the legions of Rome are smouldering in the dust;  the avalanches of Napoleon hurled upon Europe have melted away, the prince of the pharoahs is fallen;  the pyramids they raised to be their tombs are sinking every day in the desert sands;  Tyre is a rock for bleaching fisherman’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 men can build, how enduring is the least Word that God has spoken.”

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