An Interesting Elevator Ride: The Book That Sparks Opinion
If you ever want to make an elevator ride interesting, just casually ask the fellow riders in the car what they think about THE BIBLE. And, then, hope you’re in a tall building, because it seems that everybody has an opinion about the Bible.
The varying opinions of the Bible are many. Views range from a “pack of lies”… to “the hope of the world.”
One psychologist wrote that in his opinion, “…a person who takes the Bible seriously is demonstrating a sickening form of dependency that ought to be addressed in long-term therapy.” On the contrary, a federal judge once said that, in his opinion, “…unless there is a widespread return to believing in the Bible, our society is doomed.”
Some Christians are content to simply say, “If it’s in the Bible, I believe it…no questions asked.” Others ask, “What makes this particular book so special? I need proof.”
Years ago I was asking that same question. As I searched, I found answers, dozens of them. Among the most satisfying of the answers was the incomparable unity in this book. Although it was written via thirty-five men who lived over fifteen centuries in three different languages and on three different continents, it has one central message. Consider this:
“Say you were going to write a book, and this was how you had to write it: For a start, find 35 different writers – totally different writers. Get some who are highly educated, even doctors. Then, get some farmers. Go dig a guy off a ranch somewhere and say, ‘I’d like you to help me write a book.’ Then find some fishermen. And then get them all writing about such things as: religion, poetry, ethics, science, philosophy, the nature of man, the creation of the universe and where it’s going…and ask them to throw in a few things about where they think it will all end and how.
Next, you need to collect all that information, and then…oh, by the way, you have to separate these people so they can’t communicate by phone or telegraph…only possibly by word of mouth passed down over the years. Oh yes, I said years…you collect all this stuff over about one and a half thousand years, and compile the whole thing in one book. What would you have?
I know what you’d have-you’d have the most confusing book you’ve ever seen in your life, with people totally contradicting each other! But that’s not what you have when you read your Bible. The more you read this book, the more you see the incredible unity of it. Because the more you get into it, the more incredibly detailed it is, and you find there are not 35 people and their opinions who wrote it, but One Person.” 1
That is enough to be amazed, but what is even more amazing is this: This book understands me and you…and it has some sweeping things to say about your life and eternity. Mark Twain once said, “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that disturb me, rather it’s the parts of the Bible that I do understand that disturb me.”
There is no book so full of honesty and truth, or comfort and hope, as is this one extraordinary book – the Bible. Read it, and you will learn much about God…and yourself!
1 Adapted from article by Winkie Pratney in the Last Days Newsletter.
