Throughout the years I have collected many insightful comments about the Bible. I decided to make a special section on this "Golden Nugget" that will be ongoing and updated from time to time. I think this will be an increasingly inspiring and interesting collection on God's Word! Of course, the most insightful and inspiring words about the Bible come from the Holy Scriptures of the Bible! This will be a companion "Golden Nugget" to "INSIGHTFUL SCRIPTURES ABOUT THE BIBLE!" I would encourage you to write some of these comments that you might find the most meaningful to you on the blank pages of your Bible or in the margins. These comments will encourage and inspire you from time to time about how awesome this "BOOK OF ALL BOOKS" really is!
1. GEORGE MUELLER- " The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts. I solemnly state this from the experience of 54 years. The first three years after conversion I neglected the Word of God Since I have begun to search it diligently the blessing has been wonderful. I have read the Bible through 100 times and always with increasing delight. Each time it seems like a new book to me. Great has been the blessing from consecutive, diligent Bible study.
I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good day over the Word of God."
2. DWIGHT EISENHOWER- "To read the Bible is to take a trip to a fair land where the spirit is strengthened and faith renewed."
3. D.L. MOODY- "Here search and great shall be your store. Here drink and you shall thirst no more!"
4. D.L MOODY- " I prayed for faith and, and thought that one day Faith would come down and strike me like lightening. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, 'Now faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.' I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and Faith has been growing ever since."
5.ABRAHAM LINCOLN- " I believe the Bible is the best gift that God has ever given to man. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated through this Book. I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."
7. PATRICK HENRY- "The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed."
8. ROBERT E. LEE- "In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength."
9. U.S. GRANT- "The Bible is the sheet-anchor of our liberties."
10. QUEEN VICTORIA- "That book accounts for the supremacy of England."
11. NAPOLEON- "That Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it."
12. LORD TENNYSON- " Bible reading is an education in itself."
13. ANONYMOUS-"First look at the Bible with a "telescope" and get the Big View. Then look at the Bible with a "microscope!"
14. ANONYMOUS- "Time spent with God is always time well spent."
15. ANONYMOUS- 'The importance of Bible Study may be seen if we consider the difference between a good strong cup of tea and a weak cup. You see, the same water and the same tea can be used in both. The difference is that the strong tea resulted form the teabag being in the water longer. Thus, the water could get into the tea and the tea into the water. The longer the process, the stronger the tea. The longer time we spend in God's Word allows us to get into it and it to get into us. Just like the tea, the longer we are in the Word, the "stronger" we will become."
16. ANONYMOUS- Apple Tree Bible Study- " Luther said that he studied his Bible as he gathered apples. First he shook the whole tree, that the ripest might fall; then he shook each limb and when he had shaken each limb, he shook each branch, and each branch, every twig; and then he looked under every leaf."
Search the Bible as a whole, shaking the whole tree. Read it rapidly as you would any other book. Then shake every limb, study book after book. The shake every branch, giving attention to the chapters when do not break the sense. Then shake each twig, by a careful study of the paragraphs and sentences. And you will be rewarded if you will look under each leaf, by searching the meaning of the words."
17. DOC HENRY- "Trying to destroy or defend the Word of God is like two men with toothpicks on either side of the Rock of Gibraltar. One is trying to push it over with his toothpick and other is trying to hold it up with his toothpick. The Rock is going to stay firm regardless of either man."
18. RAY STEDMAN- "The authority of Scripture is the authority of Jesus Christ; they are indivisible. To attempt to distinguish the two is like asking which blade of a pair of scissors is more important, or which leg of a pair of pants is more necessary. We know Christ through the Bible through the knowledge of Christ; the two cannot be separated. That is why Paul calls it 'the word of Christ' (Colossians 3:16)."
19. JOHN RUSKIN- "Whatever merit there is in anything that I have written is simply due to the fact that when I was a child my mother daily read me a part of the Bible and daily made me learn a part of it by heart."
20. THOMAS HUXLEY-" The Bible as been the Magna Charta of the poor and oppressed. The human race is not in a position to dispense with it."
21.W.H. SEWARD- " The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever growing influence of the Bible."
22. HORACE GREELEY- "It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially Bible-reading people. The principals of the Bible are the ground work of human freedom."
(Personal Comment: I think it is noteworthy that Abraham Lincoln, the President God used to help emancipate the slaves in our country, was a devoted Bible reader.)
23. SIR WILLIAM HERSHEL- "All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more he truths discovered in scripture."
24. CHARLES DICKENS- " The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world."
25. DAVID NETTLETON-"When Columbus saw the great Orinoco River, which flow for fifteen hundred miles through Venezuela, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean, someone said that he had discovered an island. Columbus replied, 'No such river flows from an island. That mighty torrent must drain the waters of a continent.' So the Bible comes not from the empty hearts of impostors or small minds of men, but rather springs forth from the eternal depths of Divine wisdom. It is the Work of God and the Word of God".
26. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS- "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 be useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year."
27. DANIEL WEBSTER- "Without the Bible man would be in the midst of a sandy desert, surrounded on all sides by a dark and impenetrable prison."
28. ANONYMOUS- "The Bible is a mirror in which man can see himself as he is"
29. QUEEN ELIZABETH II- "To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house the Bible?"
30. ANONYMOUS-
"The New Testament Is In The Old Testament Concealed.
The Old Testament Is In The New Testament Revealed.
The New Testament Is In The Old Testament Contained.
The Old Testament Is In The New Testament Explained."
31. JOHN WYCLIFFE- (He was called the "Morning Star of The Reformation". He translated the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into the English, providing for the first time a Bible for the English speaking people. Here are his rules for properly interpreting the Bible:
It shall greatly helpe ye to understande Scripture,
If you mark,
Not only what is spoken or wrytten,
But of whom,
And to whom,
With what words,
At what time,
Where,
To what intent,
With what circumstances,
Considering what goeth before,
And what followeth.
32. SIR WALTER SCOTT
THE BIBLE
"Within this wondrous volume lies
The mystery of mysteries
Happiest they of human race
To whom their God has given grace.
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch, to find the way;
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn."
38.DWIGHT L. MOODY- "There's no better book with which to defend the Bible than the Bible itself."
39. DWIGHT L. MOODY- "The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible."
40. MARK TWAIN- Someone told Mark Twain one time that he was bothered by things in the Bible he didn't understand. Mark Twain said, " It's not the things I read in the Bible that I don't understand that bother me. What bothers me is the things I do understand!"
41. PROFESSOR WILLIAM MOULTON- " We have done almost everything that is possible with the Hebrew and Greek writings....There is only thing left to do with the Bible; simply to read it."
42. DANIEL WEBSTER-" If we abide by principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering; but if we and our posterity neglect it's instructions and authority; no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."
43. NAPOLEAN- "That Bible on the table is a mere book to you. It is far more than a book to me. It speaks to me ; it is as it were a person".
44. JOHN BUNYAN- " I was never out of my Bible."
45. JOHN WESLEY- " I am a man of one Book".
46. G. CAMPBELL MORGAN- " Homer has been translated into about twenty different languages. Shakespeare has been translateed into about forty differnt languages. Leaving out all others, there are two books, so far as I know that have gone into over one hundred translations. They are John Bunyan's 'Pilgrims's Progress and' The 'Imitation of Christ", by Thomas A. Kempis. The only two books which have reached the three figures are dependent upon the Bible. They are the offspring of the Bible. THE BIBLE IN IT'S ENTIRETY, OR PARTS OF IT, HAS BEEN TRANSLATED INTO JUST OVER ONE THOUSAND LANGUAGES OF HUMAN SPEECH."
COMMENT: This was written aproximately one hundred years ago. Listen to these later figures from Wikepedia (Bible Translations) , "The Bible has been translated into many languages from the Biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. As of November 2014 the full Bible has been translated into 531 languages, and 2,883 languages have at least some portion of the Bible"
47. ABRAHAM LINCOLN (Sixteenth U.S. President)- "But for this book we should not know right from wrong. I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man".
48. JOHN ADAMS (Second U.S. President) - " The Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more....than all the libraries I have seen".
49. GEORGE WASHINGTON (First U.S. President) " It is impossible to rightly govern the world without the Bible.
50.THOMAS JEFFERSON (Third U.S. President) " The Bible makes the best people in the world".
51. GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: Believe me, sir, never a night goes by, be I ever so tired, but I read the Word of God before I go to bed."
52. DWIGHT L. MOODY - " I never saw a useful Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in his work, but God cannot make much use of him."
53. HENRY VAN DYKE- " No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own."
54. CANON DYSON HAGUE- " The depth of the Bible is infinite. Millons of readers and writers, age after age , have dug in this unfathomable mine and its depths are still unexhausted..... You cannot gild gold. You cannot brighten diamonds, and no artist can touch with final touch this finished Word of God. This proud- pinnacled century can add nothing to it. It stands as the sun in the sky. It has the glory of God."
55. MARTIN LUTHER- " It cannot be otherwise, for the scriptures are Divine; in them God speaks, and they are His Word. To hear or to read the Scriptures is nothing else than to hear God."
56. JEROME- " Give ear for a moment that I may tell you how you are to walk in the Holy Scriptures. To hear or read the Scriptures is nothing else than to hear God."
57. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM- " It is a great thing, this reading of the Scriptures. For it is not possible I say to exhaust the mines of the Scriptures. It is a well which has no bottom."
58. JEROME- " Not versions, but perversions." (Speaking of the versions of the Bible current in his day)
59. GEORGE HERERT- " Bibles laid open, millions of surprises".
60. NOVALIS- " The history of every individual should be a Bible".
61. DR. JAMES McGray
" Despised and torn in pieces,
By infidels decried-
The thunderfbolts of hatred
The haughty cynic's pride-
All these have railed against it,
In this and other lands,
Yet dynasties have fallen,
And still the Bible stands!"
62. SIR ISSAC NEWTON- "There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history."
63. W.E. GLADSTONE- "I have know ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these eighty-seven were followers of the Bible"
64. W.E. GLADSTONE- " The Bible is stamped with a Specialty of Origin , and an immeasurable distance seperates it from all it's competitors."
COMMENT: The "Specialty of Origin" of course is that it finds it's origin in the Inspiration of God! No other writing or book could possibly compete!
65. HENRY FORD- "All the sense of integrity, honor and service I have in my heart, I got from hearing the Bible read by a school teacher in the three years I was privileged to go to a little, old fashioned grammar school. The teacher read the Bible every morning to start the day right. I got a great deal out of that influence. I was brought up in the church. I belong to the church. I attend church. I never go to hear a sermon, whether it is by a a preacher in a small church or a large one, that I do not get help."
66. SAMUEL M. ZWEMER -"The Bible has been a hammer for nineteen centuries and when other hammers today try to break God's eternal anvil of truth — we remember the inscription on the monument to the Huguenots at Paris — " Hammer away ye hostile hands; Your hammers break; God's ANVIL stands!"
67. MARTIN LUTHER- "He that has but one Word of God before him, and out of that Word cannot make a sermon, can never be a preacher". [ Table Talk 1569]
68. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY- The English Bible — a book which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of it's beauty and power." [1828]
COMMENT: As helpful as all the reference work and resources are that we have about the Bible — it surely could stand alone by itself!
69. JOHN SELDEN - "We pick out a text here and there to make it serve our turn, whereas if we take it all together, and considered what went before and what followed after, we should find it meant no such thing." [ The Scriptures 1689]
COMMENT: This reminds me of the statement, "The three most important principals of Bible interpretation are Context, Context and CONTEXT!"
70. RICHMOND CECIL- "The Old and New Testament contain but one scheme [ plan] of religion. Neither part of this scheme [plan] can be understood without the other."
. 71. JEROME -"Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her Godly life."
72. SIR WALTER SCOTT- " The most learned, acute; and diligent student cannot, in the longest life, obtain an entire knowledge of this one volume."
73. JAMES HAMILTON- "The Word of God is solid; it will stand a thousand readings; and the man who has gone over it the most frequently and the most carefully is the surest of finding new wonders there."
74. MATTHEW ARNOLD - ( 1822-1828) " He [the translator] will find find one English book, and one only, where as in the Illiad itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with perfect nobleness, and that book is the Bible."
75. FRANCIS BACON - (1561-1526) " The knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above, and some springing from beneath; the one informed by the light of nature, the other inspired by DIVINE REVELATION."
76. FRANCIS BACON - (1561-1526) "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New."
77. HENRY H. HALLEY - (Author of Halley's Bible Handbook) - " EVERYBODY out to Love the Bible. Everybody ought to be a Regular Reader of the Bible. Everybody ought to strive to live by the Bible's Teachings. The Bible ought to have Central Place in the Life and Working of every Church; and in Every Pulpit. THE PULPIT'S ONE BUSINESS IS THE SIMPLE EXPOSITORY TEACHING OF GOD'S WORD."
78. GEORGE MULLER - " I believe that the one chief reason I have been kept in happy useful service is that I have been lover of Holy Scripture. It has been my habit to read the Bible through four times a years; in a prayerful spirit; to apply it to my heart, and practice what I find there. I have been for sixty-nine years a happy man; happy, happy, happy."
79. HENRY VAN DYKE - " No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure [the Bible] for his own."
80. JOHN CLIFFORD -
The Anvil of God's Word
Last eve I paused beside a blacksmith's door,
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime,
Then looking in I saw upon the floor,
Old hammers worn with beating years of time.
"How many anvils have you had", said I,
"To wear and batter all these hammers so?"
"Just one," said he, and then with twinkling eye,
"The anvil wears the hammers out you know."
"And so," I though, "The ANVIL of God's Word.
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon,
Yet though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The ANVIL is unchanged, the hammers gone."
81. THOMAS EDISON -"I believe in the teachings of our Lord and Master. There is a great directing head of people and things — a Supreme Being who looks after the destinies of our world."
COMMENT: Here we see again; a man who may not necessarily have been outwardly "religious" or spoke of being a professing Christian — but the Bible had an impact upon his life. In an biography of Thomas Edison, written in 1932 by Francis Treyelyan Miller, the author states: "He was familiar with the Bible and with the scriptural teachings of other religions, and considered them 'the greatest rules of conduct ever set up for for man'. He did not see how man could live without them as he required these guideposts to direct his way; therefore he confirmed the necessity of the church and the great work it accomplished." The author would also state, " There has been much discussion regarding the religion of Thomas Edison; he had a practical religion, based on the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments."
82. JOHN WYCLIFFE ( Called the Morning Star of the Reformation) - " The Sacred Scriptures are the property of the people which no one should be able to wrest from them."
COMMENT: John Wycliffe completed the first complete translation of the the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. He died in 1382. He was persecuted by for his work. After his death, his body was exhumed, burned and his ashes scattered on the Severn River that ran through his town. He trained traveling preachers; called "Lollards"; that traveled through England with his version; providing scriptures previously unavailable to the common man in the English language.
83. JOHN JAY — FIRST CHIEF JUSTICE - " The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the Word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by it's principals."
84. YALE 1787 STUDENT GUIDELINES- "All the scholars are required to live a religious and blameless life according to the rules of God's Word, diligently reading the Holy Scriptures , that fountain of divine light and truth, and constantly attending all the duties of a religion."
85. HARVARD 1636 STUDENT GUIDELINES- "Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of Him (Proverbs 2,3). Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the scriptures twice a day that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein."
86. VIDAL V. GIRARD'S EXECUTORS, 1844( UNANIMOUS DECISION COMMENDING AND ENCOURAGING THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN GOVERNMENT RUN SCHOOLS) - "Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament , without note or comment, be read and taught as a divine revelation in [schools] — it's evidences explained and it's glorious principals of morality inculcated?... Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?"
87. DWIGHT L. MOODY- " I know the Bible is inspired because it inspires me."
88. CHARLES SPURGEON -"The Word of God is the anvil upon which the opinions of men are smashed."
89. ALFRED ARMAND MONTEPERT- " A Man's Best Library: A Bible and a dictionary!
90. CHARLES SPURGEON "It was God's word that made us; is it any wonder that His word should sustain us?"
91. JOHN CALVIN -"When the Bible speaks, God speaks."
92. MARTIN LUTHER- ""Feelings come, and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the Word of God, naught else is worth believing."
(To Be Continued!)
For additional help in understanding how God's Word can strengthen and empower our lives, we recommend listening to video this sermon by clicking on this link —
10 POWERS OF GOD'S WORD
Theses resources on God's Word should also be very informative —
INSIGHTFUL SCRIPTURES ABOUT THE BIBLE!
THE CENTER VERSE OF THE BIBLE
ORIGINAL NEW TESTAMENT WRITTEN IN KOINE GREEK
POWERFUL SCRIPTURES THAT BUILD FAITH!
SHOULD WE USE THE OLD TESTAMENT?
Our good friends with the Church of God International offer this useful booklet and a goldmine of other useful Bible helps —
HOW TO STUDY YOUR BIBLE
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