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NEVER ON THE SALE RACK #5

BOMBS AND BIBLES IN BOSNIA

“What . . . is . . . the solution?”  If there were ever a place, a country, on this planet where people can’t seem to answer that four-word question, you’d think here in the year 2000 that Bosnia would continue to be that place.  What should U.N. troops do?  You’ve got NATO peacekeepers in there and the KLA — the Kosovo Liberation Army.  Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.  All the fighting factions, each claiming to be right.  Each claiming territory that belongs to someone else.  Meanwhile, we see the pictures of dead bodies lying in the woods, two ladies burying the nude body of an infant which, without food or shelter, had frozen to death.

And then came this quiet, unnoticed headline which brought some excitement to people in my own Adventist denomination.  I remember back in late 1998 when my friend Pastor Dwight Nelson, and a helping cast, literally, of thousands launched a global downlink Christian seminar series called “The NeXt Millennium:  How to Have a Forever Friendship With God.”  It was actually spanning the entire planet, with simultaneous translation into 40-plus languages, satellite servers on every continent, local teams to reach out to people searching for truth, needing Jesus Christ in their lives.

And then this news bulletin: In Yugoslavia, where all of this pain is happening, with the military checkpoints, the slaughter, the street snipers, there were 3,500 people attending this Bible seminar in 41 locations.  In Yugoslavia!  In Macedonia, in fact, Pastor Milan Sasljic faxed in to report that official state TV was carrying these Christian sermon messages.  And get this: right in Bosnia itself, at the very core of the war, there were 200 people in one church attending these satellite downlink services.  Two hundred people who somehow knew that where politicians fail and where tanks fail and where bullets and bombs simply go back and forth, delivering craters and death but no solutions, this old, old Book called the Holy Bible was their only chance of survival.

In Romania, 50,000 people attending.  More than a thousand churches pulling in that live signal.  In Papua New Guinea — and somehow those words have always put a picture in my head of headhunters and primitive paganism — 32,000 people flocked in to three stadiums to hear from this incredible, never-out-of-date Book called the Word of God.

Friend, I don’t know what to say except for these two things: first of all, maybe Friday should be Thanksgiving Day instead of Thursday!  Certainly we can continue our attitude of praise from yesterday.  Friday should certainly be a day of prayer, and we remember all of these people who, in their times of greatest need, their search for truth and answers, turned to the very best source.

But the second thing is this.  We’ve said all week that this is one Book which never goes on the sale rack.  It’s not obsolete!  It’s not outdated.  I’m sure that sometime during that five-week satellite series, Dwight Nelson had to include this powerful New Testament verse found in John 14:27:

“Peace I leave with you; My peace I GIVE you.”

Or Matthew 5:9:

“Blessed are the peaceMAKERS.”

Or the Bible’s numerous, too-many-to-count promises about resurrection, about a day when there will be no war, no hatred, no fighting.  When innocent people struck down by bullets or Molotov cocktails will be restored to those who today are grieving.  That’s the news those 200 people needed at that church in Bosnia, and they heard it from this wonderful, old Book.

It’s interesting that even with the latest, newest, high-tech hardware in the world for spreading the Gospel of Jesus, it still goes back to this ancient Book.  My friend Warren Judd was back there for six weeks in Berrien Springs, Michigan, coordinating the uplink: all the computerized tracking, the software for graphics, the dishes, the interlinks from one country to the next, the spacing of these huge satellite “footprints” so the whole world can tune in.  They were using a special kind of transmitter — only two of them in existence being used anywhere, I understand — to enable those 40 audio translation channels to go out all at once.  But what were the 40 gifted translators speaking into their headsets as Dwight shared?  Well, they were saying what he was saying: the words of Jesus as quoted in this life-changing Book.  He shared biblical truth; they shared it too.

There’s an anniversary which doesn’t actually happen until next Tuesday, but since we wrap up this series on behalf of the National Bible Week today, why don’t we peek ahead?  November 28, is the 372^nd anniversary of the birth of John Bunyan.  Clear back in the year 1628, on a cold November 28, John was born in Elstow, England.  The son of a tinker.  And it was in prison, serving a 12-year sentence for the crime of preaching without permission, that he wrote the monumental Christian book, Pilgrim’s Progress.

Now, that anniversary and that wonderful book make a couple of pertinent points.  Here’s a book that dates back more than three centuries.  And how does it sound?  Well, it sounds old, of course.  It’s old-fashioned, with that ancient English all the way through, and words like quoth and prithee.  “Music” is spelled m-u-s-i-c-k.  And yet, a recent 1985 printing of the book by Barbour and Company says right on the front cover: “#1 Christian bestseller.”  Is it on the sale rack?  Is it half price?  Is it marked down because its principles are now a universal joke?  No.  Because it tells of a journey to a Celestial City — a story that is purely biblical in nature — this book and its message are never obsolete.

Here’s point #2.  One of the incredibly enduring things about this Bible we celebrate here all week is not just that it contains answers.  I mean, if that weren’t true, this NeXt Millennium seminar would be a waste of time and talent; it would be a joke.  Yes, God’s Word contains proven, working, tangible answers; that’s the only reason 3,500 people in Yugoslavia packed into those churches and aimed their satellite dishes at the sky.

So the Word of God contains answers, but there’s more than that.  It contains truth, but more than that too.  Formulas which resolve our daily problems — that’s true also. We’ve been quoting from John Stott, who says in his book, The Contemporary Christian:

“Although the Scriptures do not provide an exact replica of every problem that can occur in life, they are more than adequate to provide us with the knowledge and skill for handling anything that may come our way.”

But you know, there’s even more.  The Bible is more than an algebra book with all the solutions printed in the back.  Friend, this Bible is just a total, life-changing, relationally complete, man- and woman-transforming powerful thing!  It doesn’t just put a few answers in your head; it picks you up and completely makes you over.  It’s not just one university course; it’s a complete education.  Speaking about John Bunyan, another man whose mind was completely remade by the Christian faith, C. S. Lewis, observes in his own book, Mere Christianity:

“Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.”  Now notice this next line: “That is why an uneducated believer like John Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.”

Maybe you recall a radio series we did just a few weeks ago, that drew from the book of First Corinthians.  And there is such a huge wealth of practical help just in those 16 chapters; you could pay a hundred dollars if the Bible only had First Corinthians in it and easily get your money’s worth.  But notice these seven words at the end of chapter two:

“But we have the mind of Christ.”

Just that.  “We have the mind of Christ.”  Friend, if the Bible gives us the mind of Christ, what more could any human person want?  What an education that would be!  What a life-changer!  What an incredible bargain . . . to have the mind of Christ.  And it’s found only in this Book we celebrate during National Bible Week.

Let me close with a paragraph from John Stott’s book, The Contemporary Christian . . . and this ties in so perfectly as we think about the war-torn scars of Bosnia, the agonies we can only imagine over there.  Dr. Stott writes about how Christians believe all these things like war and famine and hatred are going to come to an end.  Don’t we?  We believe Jesus is coming — don’t we?  We believe God is going to triumph — don’t we?  And then he says this:

“But how can we be so sure of these things?  There are no obvious grounds for such confidence.  Evil flourishes.  The wicked get away with their wickedness.  World problems appear intractable.  And the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion still overshadows the horizon.”  That’s all true, isn’t it?  So he goes on to ask: “Is there not more reason for despair than hope?  Yes, there would be — if it were not for the Bible!  It is the Bible which arouses, directs and nurtures hope.”

I try to envision those 200 people in a crowded little church in Bosnia.  There are huge holes in the concrete wall where hand grenades have carved out their telltale scars.  Faint red streaks in the street outside where somebody bled and died just days earlier after a rooftop sniper’s bullet found its random mark.  It’s cold in that church.  They don’t have money to serve coffee; half the attendees probably had no supper.  But they look at that television screen, and they hear that dubbed-in voice-over sharing words from the Bible.  Jesus talking: “Behold, I come quickly.  And My reward is with Me.”  Words which arouse hope, direct hope, nurture hope.

Yes, friend, National Bible Week may be coming to an end.  But a Bible LIFE — a life rooted in the hope found in this miracle Book — can begin for each of us right now.