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Most people don't know the history of the Bible, how it came to be spared, how it came to be translated into our modern language, and even how it was banned and burned by religious leaders throughout history. You wouldn't think religious leaders who taught Christianity would ever ban or burn the Bible, but history is fraught with it. During the Dark Ages and The Inquisition, many religious leaders and government officials didn't want lay people to own a Bible and even encouraged illiteracy. They did it to keep people ignorant. They knew that if people were uninformed, uneducated, and illiterate, they would have a difficult time in challenging them about the truth of Christianity and all other important matters. In other words, people would be dumb enough to follow their lead on just about anything.
Thankfully, many men like John Wyclif, William Tyndale, and many others loved the Bible so much, and felt that everyone should know the God of the Bible that they worked on creating translations from Greek and Hebrew into the common man's language. Unfortunately for them, they were killed for their attempt to do so.
This reminds me of what happens in today's reading of the Bible.
God ordered Jeremiah to write ALL of the prophecies he's ever told within a scroll and to have it read to the people and archived for posterity's sake. He relegated the dictating responsibility to man by the name of Baruch. God knew the people needed these warnings in writing, so that one day they can look back and see that all the prophecies Jeremiah told the people were truly from Him.
After dictating the message, Jeremiah told Baruch to go to the balcony over the temple near the main gate during a festival time at Jerusalem where thousands of Jewish people had gathered and to read out loud the message of the scroll. When Baruch read the message, it not only frightened the people who heard it, but it also caught the attention of the city's leadership. Once hearing about it, they demanded that the scroll be read to them. They, too, were frightened by all that God said and just exactly how it had come to pass.
Sadly, the king Zedekiah had no regard for God nor the writings of God's words of warning. As he heard them by a scribe who was reading them to him, he took his knife every few minutes and cut off the passage he didn't like and threw them into the fire! He hated God's words because he was a sinner at heart. When the Bible exposes our failures, fallacies, and sinfulness, it doesn't make us too happy - unless we love God - something Zedekiah didn't go.
Now, with the scroll burnt to a crisp, God told Jeremiah to write another one, but one that prophesied a horrible and tragic event that King Zedekiah would face because of his actions.. The prophesied pronounced a horrible judgement on Zedekiah! He was to watch the Babylonians kills his sons and friends before his very eyes, and then have his eyes gorged out and then exiled to Babylon.
There is judgement for those who have a disrespect for God's word as well as a disinterest in the things of God. Although God loves these kinds of people with all of His heart and hopes they'll change their attitude towards Him, He is a holy God and must just sin.
While most Christians would NEVER think of burning the bible or even destroying one, many Christians throughout the world do it without ever knowing it. Perhaps they don't actually burn the Bible, but they're disinterested in reading it. In my opinion, if you're a Christian who has little interest in reading the Bible, you've developed the same attitude as what King Zedekiah had. While he perhaps had no interest in initially in burning the scrolls, his lack of interest in the things of God coupled with his disdain for Jeremiah's doom and gloom preaching caused him to reacte and consequently in an outburst of anger burned the scrolls.
How interested are you in the Word of God? Do you long to read the Word of God? Do you find it nourishing to your spirit? If not, you might want to do a check up on your heart for God!
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