Have Confidence In Your Bible 8

The Bible has been massively important in shaping our culture. Marks of its phenomenal influence can be seen almost everywhere you look. Its words are inscribed on public buildings. Officials are sworn into office, hand on a Bible.

Biblical standards underpin our fundamental sense of right and wrong. Lawmakers have drawn heavily on its standards. The Bible has been foundational in the building of our political systems. Its values have inspired the formation of many of the world’s best-known charitable institutions and lie behind many of our modern welfare programmes. It has been the driving force behind many of the world’s great reform movements.

World leaders have acknowledged the part the Bible has played in making the world what it is.

"That book accounts for the supremacy of England."

Queen Victoria

"I have known ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these eighty-seven were followers of the Bible." "The Bible is stamped with a specialness of origin, and an immeasurable distance separates it from all competitors."

W.E. Gladstone

"The Bible is no mere book, but a living creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it."

Napoleon

"I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given man. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book."

Abraham Lincoln

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

George Washington

"That book, sir, is the rock on which our republic rests."

Andrew Jackson:

"In all my perplexities and distresses the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength."

Robert E. Lee

"So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society."

John Quincy Adams

Some say we don’t need the Bible. Take it away, they say, it has only been influential because Christians have forced it on the world. But where it has been taken away — where its influence has been removed or has never extended — the effect is clear. Someone has put it like this: "Draw a line around the nations which have the Bible and you will then have divided between barbarism and civilisation, between thrift and poverty, between selfishness and charity, between oppression and freedom, between life and the shadow of death.” Whatever view you take on that, the practical influence the Bible has had on our history and society cannot be denied. No other book has had such an influence. No other book has continued to have such influence for so long.

More evidence that the Bible is a special book. More evidence that you can have confidence in your Bible.

Adapted from Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell. Available to purchase at ICM Books.