Description

Why do so many churches and Christians make such a big deal of the Bible? Isn’t it just an out-dated, irrelevant piece of ancient literature? Shouldn’t we keep it on the shelf and use more modern books to teach us how to live? These are the questions we’ll explore today.

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before we examine the Bible, let’s start with some fun trivia about all those other books on the shelf…

10 notable best-selling books of all time:

• The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss - 10.5 million
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - 20 million
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - 29 million
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - 40 million
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle - 43 million
• Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren - 50 million
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis - over 85 million
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling - 120 million
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - Over 200 million  
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - Over 500 million

Top three best-selling books of all time:

• The Quran - Estimated 800 million copies sold and distributed.
• Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-tung - Over 900 million copies sold.
• The Bible - Estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed.

So, back to the question we’ll unbox today:

Q. Is the Bible Just Another Book?

Think about how all of those other books were written: 

• All of those other books were the product of one or more clever minds
• They all followed a similar process:
• Come up with the concept
• Create a storyline, characters, etc.
• Do some research if needed for accuracy 
• Write and re-write
• My favorite book on the topic: “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser
• “Simplify, simplify.”
• “There’s no minimum length for a sentence that’s acceptable in the eyes of God.”
• “Writers must constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know.”
• "Ultimately the product any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is."

But this is what separates the Bible from every other book: it is not the product of one person’s ideas or creativity. Nobody had to dream up the storyline or characters, and no one had to read “On Writing Well” to turn out the best chapters and verses. The Bible, Christians believe, is unique because it alone was inspired by God. Here’s how Paul explained it to Timothy:

2 Timothy 3:16 (NLT) All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

• See Where Did We Get...