There used to be a website that posted information for those who were looking for lost family Bibles. A typical entry was like this.
LANCASTER
Last known place that the Bible was at in the late 1920s to early ’30s Wysox, Pennsylvania. This Bible had the family history in it.
Others were more poignant:
VALENTE
I’m looking for a Bible belonging to Joseph Valente. Joseph passed away in 1998, and his Mom sent the Bible to Joe’s brother Danny in North Carolina. Danny never received the Bible, and we can’t find it. The Bible has sentimental value, as Joe is no longer with us. Any info would be wonderful.
Have you ever lost a Bible? You may have put it on top of your car as you talked to a friend in the church parking lot and forgot to get it before driving home. You may have misplaced it in a move or loaned it to a friend who never returned it. Most of us have lost a Bible before—at least for a few days.
Have you lost a Bible in church? Many Bibles turn up on church lost and found tables. Of all places to lose a Bible, church seems the least likely. We expect to use our Bibles in worship—not misplace them. We expect to find truth in church—not lose it.
In the days of Josiah, the Jews found God’s law that had been lost. Hilkiah, the high priest, told Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord” (2 Kings 22:8). This led to a revival among God’s people.
Let’s take this idea of “losing the Bible” in church and explore it from different perspectives. Some Christians “lose the Bible.” How?
SOME LOSE THE BIBLE IN MODERNISM
Modernism denies the supernatural. England, who gave the world the King James Version in the seventeenth century, lost the Bible in the nineteenth century. They still had copies of Scripture; they just did not believe it anymore. Today, many reject the truth that the Bible is an inspired revelation from God (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16–17; 2 Peter 1:20–21).
Religious liberalism plagues today’s world. Many religious seminary professors do not believe in full inspiration, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, nor the miracles the Bible records that Jesus did (cf. John 20:30–31). Religious groups led by people trained at these institutions cannot expect their faith to grow.
SOME LOSE THE BIBLE IN POLITICS
France lost the Bible leading up to the French Revolution in 1789. Before the Revolution, France spent millions of dollars indoctrinating their people with atheistic literature. They felt the Bible stood in the way of progress, so they tried to remove it. When they did, they lost their government. The people gained freedom from religion and rebelled against the state.
A similar thing is currently underway in America and other nations. Many people no longer read the Bible; some openly defy it.1 Governments have distanced themselves from it while opening the doors to secularism and false religions such as Islam. As unbelief in Scripture gains ground, morality plunges. Hate runs rampant; fornication is widely practiced; divorces are common; homosexuality is accepted; abortion is defended; dishonesty, stealing, drug use, gambling, and practically every form of unethical behavior is seen on every street corner, TV show, and news report.
SOME LOSE THE BIBLE IN THE PULPIT
There are churches that get only a thimbleful of the water of life in a whole Sunday service. I am studying the Bible with a man who previously attended a denomination. He loves the church of Christ because we teach the Bible. He said his previous “pastor” vaguely referred to a verse at the beginning of a sermon, and that was it for the whole hour.
Congregations that hear little but personal interest stories, testimonials, pop psychology, current religious thought, jokes, commentary on contemporary events, and men’s opinions are spiritually starving (cf. 2 Timothy 4:2). Franklin Camp said, “[A] sermon without scripture is like an empty bucket for one dying of thirst.” How can people learn the Bible if they do not hear it? (Romans 10:14). Abraham spoke from Paradise to say, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Luke 16:29).
SOME LOSE THE BIBLE BY ABSENTEEISM
Many grew up attending Bible classes, worshiping, and reading the Bible at home, but somewhere in college or in the busy years of their twenties, they grew lax and quit attending services. God wants each one back. He accepts prodigals every week. He rejoices when the new generations of children grow up with a knowledge of God (cf. 2 Peter 2:20–22).
SOME LOSE THE BIBLE IN NEGLECT
A small child took a Bible from a coffee table and asked, “Mother, is this God’s book?”
“Yes, it surely is,” she replied.
“Well, I think we had better send it back to Him, because we don’t use it anymore.”
Satan does not care if we own ten Bibles so long as we do not read any of them. On a Bible quiz, one group thought an epistle was the wife of an apostle, the tower of Babel was the place where Solomon kept his wives, and the Mosaic Law was a law compelling people to have their floors laid with colored stones.
It may seem simplistic in this tech age to encourage such a basic thing as reading a book, but Bible reading is fundamental to spiritual life. John said, “Blessed is he who reads” (Revelation 1:3). Paul said, “Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (1 Timothy 4:13).
God commanded every king of Israel to read the Scriptures: “It shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes” (Deuteronomy 17:19).
Caleb Thomas Winchester once said that the great books are those “that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”2 No one should go to the grave without having read the Bible. The Bible is the greatest book; it deserves the most attention. Find your Bible and read it!
Endnotes
1American Bible Society, “State of the Bible,” 2025, https://www.americanbible.org/news/state-of-the-bible/.
2Mark Twain, “The Disappearance of Literature” (speech, Nineteenth Century Club Dinner, 20 November 1900), in Paul Fatout, ed., Mark Twain Speaking (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1976), 360.
