The people of the Book

One of the alarming trends in today's evangelical community is the low priority being given to the importance of the daily or regular reading and study of the Scriptures.

The consequences of this are alarming, for unless something is done to correct this trend, future generations might turn out to be charismatically sophisticated but biblically illiterate.

In many of our churches (particularly those with a strong emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit), the Christian life is less a matter of assimilating truth from the Word of God than it is experiencing a spiritual high. A 'great' service may have more to do with the worship group than the expository ability of the preacher. As one writer puts it: 'The Christian life nowadays has become more a matter of experiencing something than learning something.'

Postmodernism - the theory that feelings are where it's at - is affecting the thought-life of Christians (especially our young people) more than we might realise. Faith and certainty is anchored less to historical and biblical fact than it is to powerful spiritual encounters. Am I against powerful spiritual encounters? Of course not. I thank God for every one I have experienced and for every one you have experienced, but the validity of what we do as Christians should be grounded not in what we feel but what we think. And what we think should be guided by the Bible - the word that is alive! (Hebrews 4.12).

Biblical literacy

One of the passions of my life at the moment is to recover biblical literacy in the church. In a church at which I spoke the other day - a strong evangelical community - I began by asking the congregation a number of simple questions about the Bible, which most were unable to answer. A university student came up to me at the end of the service and suggested that perhaps a working knowledge of the Bible is not as important as an active faith in Christ. 'Is Christianity,' he asked, 'a compilation of facts and stories or is it about knowing Jesus personally?' The postmodern influence again.

The facts and stories of the Bible do matter. The Scriptures provide us with the basis of our faith and those who think they can live an effective life without reading it and studying it are fooling themselves. I have never met a spiritually mature person who did not know his or her Bible. The biblically illiterate are the spiritually impoverished.

In a recent issue of the American magazine Christianity Today (August 1999) entitled: 'The Greatest Story Never Read', the writer, Gary M. Burge, Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, Illinois, a bastion of evangelicalism in the US, said: 'For the last four years . . . Wheaton College has studied the biblical and theological literacy of incoming students. These students are intellectually ambitious and spiritually passionate. They represent almost every Protestant denomination and most come from strong evangelical churches. They use the Bible regularly . . . but curiously few genuinely know its stories. When asked to complete a test in which a series of biblical events must be placed in order, our students returned surprising results. One third could not put the following in order: Abraham, the Old Testament prophets, the death of Christ and Pentecost. Half could not sequence Moses in Egypt, Isaac's birth, Saul's death and Judah's exile. One third could not identify Matthew as an apostle from a list of New Testament names. When asked to locate the biblical book supplying a given story, one third could not find Paul's travels in Acts, half did not know that the Christmas story was in Matthew or that the Passover story was in Exodus.'

Ultimate authority

There is a great deal of debate at the present moment on whether or not the Reformation was a good thing. At least it brought into focus the fact that the Bible is our ultimate source of authority. Gary Burge continues: 'Neglect of the Bible . . . leaves us vulnerable, unable to check the teachings of those who invite us to follow, incapable of charting a true course past siren voices calling from treacherous islands such as TV programmes, popular books and enchanting prophecies displayed on colourful websites. I am amazed at how many times mature Christians have come to me bearing ideas discovered in some spiritual flea-market, ideas about the Spirit, or prayer or eschatology, or prosperity that flatly contradict the plain teaching of the Bible.'

For several decades now, I have been concerned about the need to get people into the Bible on a daily or regular basis. This is why, close on 35 years ago, I began to write Every day with Jesus which, over the years, has brought hundreds of thousands in contact with the Word of God every day. That has been very gratifying for me as you can imagine, and in some ways has been my greatest contribution to the Body of Christ.

All the way through

However, as we have moved toward the third millennium, I have felt a great burden to get at least a million people reading through the whole of the Bible in the year 2000. The programme is called 'Cover to Cover - Through the Bible as it Happened'.

The exciting thing about this reading programme is that it lays out the passages of the Bible in chronological order. It begins, for example, with John 1.1, then the act of creation, and so on. A timeline runs through the whole of the publication, revealing (as near as we can tell) the date on which the event happened. Readers get a sense of following a story - God's Big Story, that began in the eternity past and will end in the eternity to come.

This programme is being extended beyond the UK and already many countries have committed themselves to reading through the whole of the Bible in the year 2000. Nigeria has ordered 100,000, the Philippines 100,000, with other countries signing up almost weekly.

Personally, everything I have ever accomplished has been because of the Bible. Now, after close on 50 years in Christian ministry and 55 years as a Christian, I can testify that the greatest piece of advice I was ever given was from my pastor, David Thomas, who on the very next day after my conversion said: 'Get into the Bible regularly, every day if you can. The more you know the Bible, the deeper you will know God, and the deeper you know God, the more you will want to know your Bible.'

A precious Book

John Rogers, Puritan minister of Dedham, Essex, preached a memorable sermon in the year 1620 on the theme of making the Bible an important part of daily life, at the same time allowing himself some pulpit dramatics. First, he portrayed God addressing the congregation and saying: 'I have trusted you so long with my Bible, but you have slighted it; it lies in your houses covered over with cobwebs, you care not to listen to it. Because of this, you shall have my Bible no longer.'

Removing the huge pulpit Bible from its place, he covered it over with a cloth. Then, kneeling down in the pulpit, he impersonated the people crying: 'Oh God, whatever you do, don't take the Bible away from us. Take our children, burn our houses, destroy our goods, but spare us the Bible.' Then, acting as God again, he said: 'Say you so? Well, I will try you a little while longer.' Replacing the Bible onto the reading desk, he said: 'I will see from now on how you use it, whether you love it more, observe it more, practise it more and live more according to it.' The result of this?

The whole congregation dissolved in tears. Thomas Goodwin, who was an eyewitness to this occasion, said that he was compelled to hang for a quarter of an hour upon the neck of his horse weeping, before he had the power to mount, so strange an impression was there upon him and generally upon the people. John Rogers had touched upon a very sensitive spot for Puritanism - whatever else it might have had against it and with all its flaws, it was a Bible movement. They saw reverence of God as reverence for his Word, service for God as obeying his Word, and disregard of Scripture as the greatest possible insult to its divine author. But should not all decades be like that?

In a world that seems to be increasingly intent on rejecting every source of authority, my hope and prayer is that the next decade - the first in a new millennium - we might see the Bible in the place where it ought to be at the centre of our churches, the centre of our homes and the centre of our hearts.
May God help us to become once again 'people of the Book'.

Selwyn Hughes is a pastor at Waverley Abbey House, Farnham, Surrey GU9 8EP.

© Evangelicals Now - November 1999
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