Richard Roberts, in the Biblical Illustrator, tells the story of a frontispiece, an illustration facing the title page, in Wycliffe’s Bible.
It pictures a fire burning and spreading rather rapidly, representing true Christianity. Around this spreading fire are congregated a number of significant individuals, all trying to devise methods whereby they can put the fire out. One with horns and tail represents Satan. There are red-coated false teachers, who forbade the promulgating of the Bible among the common people. Another represents infidelity.
At length, one suggests that they all make a united effort to blow the fire out. The resolution is adopted, and there they are, with swollen cheeks and extended lips, blowing upon the fire with all their might, but instead of blowing it out, they are blowing it up, and they only blow themselves out of breath.
The fire is inextinguishable. “The word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).
In 1908, Kahlil Gibran wrote an Arabic novel entitled Spirits Rebellious. In it he included this timeless poem:
They burned Truth in the market place
And thought their work complete;
But next day, with a smiling face,
They met it on the street.
They threw it in a dungeon damp
And thought it was no more;
But lo, it walked with lighted lamp
Among them as before.
They scorned and ostracized it,
And ordered it to depart;
But still it dwelt in all the land
And challenged every heart.
—Author Unknown
“The word of the Lord endures forever.“ – 1 Peter 1:25
