The impact of the Bible in the history of man is remarkable. Most books from the ancient past are hardly ever read. Yet, the Bible, though thousands of years old, remains at the top of the list of best sellers each year. This fact alone should help us marvel that our educational system has removed it from our classrooms. In many places, a teacher cannot even have a copy of it on his/her desk. What a tragic mistake!
Bible Trivia
Each year over 100,000,000 copies of the Bible are sold or given away freely in our world. It has been translated into nearly 350 languages and parts of it have been translated into over 1,100 languages and dialects. Most American homes have about three copies of the Bible. (How many do you have? I checked my shelves at the office and immediately found 57 copies of the Bible). The precise number of Bibles printed is difficult to ascertain, but 6,001,500,000 Bible have been printed since Gutenberg printed the first one in 1455.
The Largest Printed Bible
The largest printed Bible was finished in 1930. Louis Waynai, a member of the church, used a homemade rubberstamp press, and it took him 8,700 hours to complete the project. That Bible is in the library at Abilene Christian University. When closed, it is 34 inches tall and almost four feet wide. It weighs 1,094 pounds and has 8,700 pages.
The Smallest Printed Bible
The smallest printed Bible is about the size of a grain of sugar. Using a process called “Focused Ion Beam,” the Haifi Institute of Technology printed 1,514 pages of the Bible on a metal plate the size of the head of a pin. It weighs less than one half of an ounce.
The Invisible Bible
Yet, there is something far more remarkable than the facts just given. There is a Bible so “small” that it is impossible to be seen. Its impact is also greater and has more influence than all the Bibles ever printed. Consider these words describing this Bible. “Your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psa. 119:11). “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children” (Deut. 6:6-7). “Written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:3). This Bible is invisible to the eye of any mortal, but is seen daily in the lives of His people.
One final question. Do you have your Bible on a shelf in your home or hidden in your heart?