Books, books and more books

Someone said that the Postmodern age is a time of images and not reading but you would never know that by the number of books that are being printed. Today it is more difficult than ever to find the right reading material. You cannot trust the publishers. Once publishers such as Word or Zondervan were solid evangelical publishers but today you cannot be sure.
Though the years from Malachi to Matthew are called silent years there was much writing going on. There are the twelve books of the Apocrypha but there were many others as well. Many of these writings are good historical sources but others have a great deal of error. Much like today.

400 Years

Those of us who have read the Bible all our lives are very use to the change from the Old to the New Testament but imagine that you have picked up the Bible for the first time. You have followed the story line of the Old Testament and then you turn the page and begin reading in Matthew. Who are the Pharisee, Sadducee's, Scribes? What happened to Persia and now why are the Romans in charge? What happened to the small temple and why is there now a large beautiful temple? What are synagogues? What about Galilee and Samaria? When you think about it it is a completely different world. 400 years is a long time and much can happen.

My Glorious Brothers

One of my favourite novels is a novel by Howard fast written sixty years ago. It is the story of the Maccabees and their fight against Antiochus Epiphanies. The story is told from the perspective of Simeon, the only existing brother, the others having been killed in their battles against the oppressors. My copy of the book is falling apart but I cannot find another copy so I will continue to hang onto mine.

1611

It is almost four hundred years since the King James Bible as we know it now came to us. The work had begun earlier but the official date is 1611. The preface of that edition had this paragraph:
"Truly (good Christian Reader) we never thought from the beginning, that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one,...but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against, that hath been our endeavor."
That translation has been with us almost 400 years and it is still one of the most loved translations in the English language. Though many of us do not use the KJV as much today there are still many who do. The KJV made the Bible available to the common person.
Four hundred years is a long time for a translation to remain popular but imagine that if during that 400 years we didn't have any word from the Lord at all.

1837

I had a friend who did a workshop for the Mathematics Teachers over ten years ago. I invited him to stay over instead of flying back home that night but he told me that he wanted to get home as he and his wife had a new baby. When I asked him how many children he had he told me that this was their first. He was about 41 at the time. I remarked that he was a late bloomer and he told me that he came from a family of late bloomers. He then told me that his grandfather was born in 1837. He said that when his grandfather was 58 years old, in 1895, he had a son which was his father and when his father was 59 years old, in 1954, he had a son which was him. Imagine how different his grandfather's world in 1837 was to what his world in 1954.
This coming Sunday at our Sundays at Six we will be looking at the 400 silent years, the time between Malachi and Matthew. 400 years is a long time even in the ancient world. The difference between the world at the close of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament is enormous.