The Enduring Word
“…This word came to Jeremiah from the Lord.” Jeremiah 36:1
In the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle gave a manuscript to philosopher John Stuart Mill to review. Somehow, whether accidentally or intentionally, the manuscript got tossed into a fire. It was Thomas Carlyle’s only copy.
Undaunted, he set to work rewriting the lost chapters. Mere flames couldn’t stop the story, which remained intact in his mind. Out of great loss, Carlyle produced his monumental work The French Revolution.
Towards the end of the ancient kingdom of Judah, God told the prophet Jeremiah, “Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you” Jeremiah 36:2. The message in the third verse revealed God’s tender heart, calling on His people to repent in order to avoid imminent invasion.
Jeremiah did as he was told. The scroll soon found its way to Judah’s king, Jehoiakim, who methodically shredded it and threw it into the fire. Verses 23–25.
The king’s action only made matters worse, for God told Jeremiah to write another scroll with the same message. He said, “Jehoiakim will have no one to sit on the throne of David; his body will be thrown out and exposed to the heat by day and the frost by night” – verse 30.
It is possible to burn the Bible by tossing the physical book into a fire, but it is utterly futile because the Word of God endures for ever! The Word behind the words endures forever.
“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63