The Gospel-24/7

The Power Of The Word Of God B. Carradine

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TOPIC and SUBTOPIC: Word Of God, Its Divine Power.

TITLE: The Power Of The Word Of God

In Congress a few years ago, a speaker desired that a certain passage from the Bible should be read aloud by the clerk. An eye witness of the occurrence affirmed, that prior to this request there was the murmur going on peculiar to large assemblies of men, various individuals moving about, lead pencils and pens at work here and there, but the moment the secretary opened the sacred volume and began to read, a perfect hush fell on the entire body, no one moved from his place, and every eye was turned upon the reader, and every ear bent to catch each word as it fell upon a listening audience of over three hundred lawmakers of the land. That perfect silence declared in its mute but eloquent way the power of the Word of God.

Oftentimes in the sick room we have been made to remark the strange influence of the Scripture to soothe the sufferer, and produce temporary forgetfulness of pain. Even the sound of the readers voice has been known to affect others who were in adjoining rooms, as they heard the reverent tone and knew that the words of the Almighty were being repeated by human lips for the consolation and help of troubled hearts who were not more dependent upon God than themselves.

We have been in homes where sorrow had come of the most poignant and overwhelming character, and as we opened the Bible and read, we saw the billows of agony subside and a great calm and peace steal into and fill the aching hearts of the entire household circle.

In the native State of the writer tidings came one morning to an aged Christian of eighty that his son, a most promising young man of twenty-five, had been murdered by a robber in a dense swamp in the neighborhood; that the youth had lain mortally wounded for three days and nights in the woods, living only a few minutes after his discovery by a hunter. The motive of the murder was a few dollars which the robber had seen in the young mans hand when he was in town.

The instant the crushing news was given, the old father fell on his knees gasping out, The Book the Book! The family knew well what he meant, and brought him the Bible. Opening with trembling fingers the volume that had been his stay and comfort ten thousand times, he turned to the fourteenth chapter of John and began reading with a choking voice in the midst of the weeping household, the incomparable words of the Savior, "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me."

With every successive sentence his quivering voice grew stronger, when suddenly as he read the words, "I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also," he uttered a shout of such rapturous, unearthly joy, that every hearer was electrified, and strong, unsaved men standing near the door wept like children.

We have marked the power of the Bible in the lock-jawing, dumbfounding and utter silencing of gainsayers and men who endeavored to advocate false doctrine, or press wrong ideas of duty and life upon individual and congregation. We have actually been startled at times to see the immediate effect produced on the sinful arguer and the perverse disputer in matters where good common sense should have been sufficient, without the statement of Revelation. These sudden silencings have repeatedly reminded us of one smitten voiceless and motionless by a lightning bolt from the sky. The truth of God seems to strike like the electric flash from the clouds, and who wonders, when it is the same God who sends both.

A single passage of the Word of God written upon the wall of a palace brought to a wicked king and a thousand of his sinful companions an immediate and overwhelming consternation and despair.

Men may wrangle as they will with their different views in regard to the Scripture and its measure of inspiration, and yet it remains a fact that there is no other book like it on earth in its strange ascendancy and power over the human mind and heart.

When the great author of Scotland was dying and said, Give me the book, and some one said, Which book? his reply was, There is but one, and in that response he voiced a colossal and eternal truth.

Living Illustrations By B. Carradine.