How Dictators Regard the Bible

In a statement quoted in Treasury of the Christian World Harold T. Barrow speaks of the many people who regard the Bible as old-fashioned. “They imagine it is finished, out-of-date, superseded,” he writes. “The remarkable thing is that the Dictators of the world, whether in Germany, Italy or Japan, have not shared this view. Indeed they have dreaded all Bible teaching because they came to realize that the message and influence and precepts of the Word of God were in direct opposition to their program! Even the atheist and agnostic have to admit the ethical value of the Bible while they may deny the God it proclaims. A company of infidels, including Voltaire, were discussing their theories around the table one day when Voltaire said suddenly, ‘Hush, gentlemen—till the servants are gone. If they believed as we do, none of our lives would be safe!’” And in the camp of Bible-discarding dictators, whose life has ever been safe?