Living Words

Is the Bible just empty words--or do its pages point us to a path leading to eternal life?

There is no doubt the Bible is unique. It is the only book ever written where you need to know the author for it to make sense!

You can read it and understand the history. But you have to meet the author in the person of Jesus Christ for it to change your soul.

“Now hold on just a minute! How can you meet Jesus? Didn’t he live 2,000 years ago?”

You meet him in the New Testament of the Bible. He changes your life when you personally accept him for who he claimed to be: the divine Son of God and the Savior of the world.

Unfortunately not everyone who reads it believes it. In fact there have been people who memorized much of the New Testament but never met Jesus or believed in him.

On February 11, 1962, Parade Magazine published a brief article about such a person called “Still Munching Candy.”

“At the village church in Kalonovka, Russia, attendance at Sunday school picked up after the priest started handing out candy to the peasant children. One of the most faithful was a pug-nosed, pugnacious lad who recited his Scriptures with proper piety, pocketed his reward, then fled into the fields to munch on it.”

“The priest took a liking to the boy and persuaded him to attend church school. This was preferable to doing household chores from which his devout parents excused him.”

“By offering other inducements, the priest managed to teach the boy the four Gospels. In fact, he won a special prize for learning all four by heart and reciting them nonstop in church.”

“Now, 60 years later, he still likes to recite Scriptures, but in a context that would horrify the old priest. For the prize pupil, who memorized so much of the Bible, is Nikita Khrushchev, the former Communist Premier.” [Khrushchev died in 1971, nine years after the article was written.]

As this story illustrates, the “why” behind learning is just as important as the “what” that is learned. The same Nikita Khrushchev who mouthed God's Word as a child, later declared God to be nonexistent -- because his cosmonauts had not seen Him.

Khrushchev memorized the Scriptures for the candy, the rewards and the bribes, rather than for the meaning it had for his life. Artificial motivation produced artificial results.

Sadly, Nikita didn’t believe what he read in the Bible. For him it was dead words.

But Jesus said, “The words I have spoken to you are life.” So what happened to Nikita?

Jesus once compared the good news of the Gospel to seed. Even though seed resembles an inanimate object (like a pebble), it contains life.

For the life to show itself, the seed must be planted in good soil. If you put seed in a rock garden it will never take root or bear fruit.

A receptive mind seeking truth is good soil for God’s word. When a person hears the good news that Jesus died on the cross for their sin and rose from the dead to give them new life, the seed is sown. When they believe it and trust it to be true, new life takes root in their soul.

“Believe” is the key word. The reader must personally believe Christ died for him or her and trust in him. When they do, God forgives their sin and gives them the gift of eternal life.

This is why the Scripture says, “For the word of God is living and active.” Far from being dead words, the Bible is the only book in the world that can bring hope and life to the hopeless.

Listen to the Bible; it’s great for your soul!