The Bible Introduction
‘We present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is wisdom; this is the royal law; these are the lively oracles of God.’ With these words in the coronation service the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland handed Queen Elizabeth a copy of the Bible when she was crowned in 1953.
It might be tempting to dismiss such claims for the Bible as idle rhetoric, were it not that successive generations of Christian people have found them to be true. Scripture has brought us light in darkness, strength in weakness, comfort in sadness. And so we readily endorse the psalmist’s declaration that the words of God ‘are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb’.
So it has been distressing in the West to watch the Bible being dislodged from its position of acknowledged authority, not only in the nation but also in the church. There is little hope for thoroughgoing national reform or church renewal unless the Word of God is once more widely respected, and its teaching followed.
This book is my small contribution to this goal, as I write about the urgent need to continue in, respond to, interpret and expound God’s Word.