X. The Bible - Who reads the Bible anymore? Amos 8 and II Timothy 4 ... 'The days are coming,' declares the Sovereign Lord, 'when I will send a famine through the land --- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from the north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.' In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage---with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to heaar. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. These are two statements from two different times----the first 800 years before Christ; the second about 60 years after Christ. Yet they're so similar in what is stated, which is, God's Word, (the Bible with its teachings) has become scarce. In one example, there was not merely a fast eclipse of light from God's Word, but a long blackout. Even today the question still persists: Is it any different today? Here's just one insight. Will Herberg reported in his book, 'Protestant, Catholic, Jew' that 80% of the people he interviewed believed that the Bible was the 'revealed Word of God' and not merely a great piece of literature like that of Milton or Shakespeare. We rejoice and say, 'God be praised.' However, when he asked these same people to name one of the 4 evangelists on the New Testament (that's the first 4 books) 53% of them could not even name one of the four evangelists. Imagine how ignorant they were of the contents of God's Word. We do have a famine of the Word of God. What have you done about this dilemma in your life? How does your home and your family reflect learning about God's word? HOME