One of my favorite quotes about the Bible is from Gilbert K. Chesterton. He said:
“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”
Throughout the last 2,000 years, the Bible has been tried and tested and lambasted by people from all different walks of life, all different occupations, all different levels of intelligence and all over the world. Despite this testing, the Bible has withstood every attack.
Nineteenth century writer H.L. Hastings once forcibly illustrated the unique way in which the Bible has withstood the attacks of its skeptics:
““Infidels for eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet it stands today as solid rock. Its circulation increases, and it is more loved and cherished and read today than ever before. Infidels, with all their assaults, make about as much impression on this book as a man with a tack hammer would on the Pyramids of Egypt.
When the French monarch proposed the persecution of the Christians in his dominion, an old statesman and warrior said to him, ‘Sire, the church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.’ So the hammers of infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives.
No other book has been so chopped, knived, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles letters of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet? The Bible is still loved by millions, and studied by millions.”
The Bible had been tried and tested and still perseveres. At numerous time in history, the Bible has been declared antiquated and dead. Voltaire was one such example. The French atheist who dies in 1778 once announced that the Bible would be dead within one hundred years. Despite his allegedly enlightened thinking, the Bible lives on. Fifty years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society used Voltaire’s former home and a printing press to produce stacks of Bibles.
The Bible has withstood thousands of critics scouring through it for any inconsistency or inaccuracy, and it has been found 100% accurate. Even in those instances where people were 100% convinced they had found something inaccurate or incorrect, time has proven the Bible to be true.
I’ll end this section of “Why I Believe the Bible” with a poem from an unknown author about the Bible through the ages which sums up my feelings about resiliency of the Word of God:
The Anvil? God’s Word.
Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime:
Then looking in, I saw upon the floor
Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.“How many anvils have you had,” said I,
“To wear and batter all these hammers so?”
“Just one,” said he, and then, with twinkling eye,
“The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.”And so, thought I, the anvil of God’s word,
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The anvil is unharmed . . . the hammer’s gone.