EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Jack Graham’s book The Jesus Book.
God’s Word is forever young and has no shelf life. This is because his truth is eternal. There will never be a need to update the Bible because its truth never changes.
I read an article describing a social scientist’s desire to consolidate all the major religions of the world into a new holy book that would be authored by artificial intelligence. That is, of course, preposterous. One cannot rewrite the Bible. If the intelligence it came from was “artificial,” that would mean it was superficial, and the Bible is not superficial. It is supernatural. The supernatural Scriptures are given by the supernatural Spirit of God. These words were alive in the millenniums before us and are still breathing life today.
The writer of Hebrews claimed, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two- edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). I know this to be true in my own life because the Spirit of God speaks to me through his living Word when I prayerfully invite him to. So many times God has answered my questions, confronted my heart, calmed my soul, instructed my mind, and directed my path by way of his Word, the Scriptures.
God communicates to us personally, and his Word is relevant for every generation. After we are long gone and in heaven, his Word will live into the future for our children and their children and their children’s children. It occurred to me a few years ago that it is unlikely my great- greatgrandchildren will know my name or anything about me. I doubt you know the first and last names of your great great- grandparents. Of course, this really doesn’t matter. What is critical, however, is that those who come after us know Jesus, and that we carry our faith forward into the next generation and so on.
When at last we all get to heaven, we will meet not only our predecessors, our parents from the past, but our children and their children in the future. This is because the Word of God endures from generation to generation. It is my prayer that our family will carry on the legacy of our faith. There is no other book like the Bible in that the Scriptures communicate spiritual truth to every generation.
The Bible also speaks to every culture in the world. No other book can make that claim. You may read an inspiring book of poetry, or a story of history, or an exciting novel, or even a great Christian book that strengthens and encourages you, but these books aren’t able to reach across into all people groups and cultures the way God’s Word can and does.
Like God himself, his Word is alive and will remain alive forever. God’s Word cannot cease to exist anymore than God cannot cease to exist. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus said, “but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
God’s Word is powerful, able to penetrate the human heart. The Holy Spirit invigorates and illuminates living truth to every person who listens and believes.
I remember reading that the evangelist Billy Graham would sometimes struggle with the veracity of Scripture. He’d witnessed several of his classmates abandon their belief in God and the Bible as God’s infallible Word. He wrestled with whether his faith was perhaps misplaced, naive, or uneducated.
Recalling those doubt- filled days, Graham said this: “I believe it is not possible to understand everything in the Bible intellectually, but one day some years ago I decided to accept the Scripture by faith. There were problems I could not reason through. When I accepted the Bible as the authoritative Word of God by faith, I found immediately that it became a flame in my hand.” Billy Graham preached to more people than anyone in the history of the world, all with the Bible in his hand and the Word of God on his lips.
