THE BIBLE AND THE AMERICAN HOMEBy Cornelius R. Stam
More than nineteen hundred years ago St. Paul wrote to
a young man named Timothy: "From a child thou hast
known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise
unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus"
(II Tim. 3:15).Timothy was a fortunate young man. His father was not
a believer, but his godly mother made up for the lack, and
her mother helped as, day after day, from his earliest child-
hood, they taught him the Word of God. As a result he
came to know Christ as his Savior at an early age, and later
became Pauls faithful co-worker and closest associate in
making known the wonderful "gospel of the grace of God."
In his very last letter the Apostle recalls Timothys "un-
feigned faith... which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois,
and thy mother Eunice" (II Tim. 1:5).If only we had more such grandmothers today, and
mothers, with husbands to help them! If only our American
children were not set adrift on a tossing sea of human spec-
ulation, but were taught the eternal truths of that Old
Book, the Bible!
Certainly the rebellion of so much of our American youth
against law, authority and morality is directly related to
the disappearance of the Bible from American life. It is not
those young people who have been brought up in Bible-
reading homes and in Church and Sunday School, who are
making us ashamed today; it is those, from backgrounds
both rich and poor, who have been brought up without
Bible teaching.We all need to "know the holy Scriptures," not only be-
cause they teach reverence for God and build moral char-
acter, but most of all because they "are able to make [us]
wise unto salvation through faith... in Christ Jesus."The theme of the Bible, Old Testament as well as New, is
the Lord Jesus Christ, the riches of whose saving grace are
unfolded to us in the Epistles of Paul, the chief of sinners
saved by grace.<
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