The great evidence of the Bible’s preservation is the power its words still have to reach and change lives! It is so powerful God will go to incredible lengths to bring it to us. Consider the following true story.
Many years ago, in the 1850’s to be exact, a teenager left home to attend college. His mother, worried about him, gave him a Bible and printed a verse of Scripture on the flyleaf. The young man soon discovered college life to be an endless series of parties, in which he spent all the money he could acquire on fleeting pleasures. On one occasion, he needed money for whiskey, and he pawned his Bible for it.
In spite of a pleasure-seeking lifestyle he eventually made it through college — and became a doctor in a large hospital, Dr. W.P. Mackay (1839-1885).
One day, Dr. Mackay treated a dying patient who knew that he was dying and asked for his “book.” After the man passed away, Dr. Mackay noticed the man’s “book” among his effects. He couldn’t believe his eyes: it was the very Bible his mother had given him years before, with his name and the verse of Scripture still on the flyleaf!
He returned to his office and began pouring over the book. Several hours later he knelt and asked Jesus Christ to be his Savior and Lord. Dr. W.P. Mackay later became a Scottish- Presbyterian pastor — and the writer of the old Gospel hymn “Revive Us Again.”
God speaks these words to us in Isaiah 55:10-11, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is My Word that goes out from My mouth: It will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
God’s Word lives and abides forever! If we will believe it, claim it, live it, God will fulfill it in our lives — and in the lives of those we are praying for!