The Holy Bible

Heaven and earth shall pass away:
but my words shall not pass away.

Mark 13:31

We all are aware of the on-going struggle and persecution faced by many Chinese Christians—so I was interested to read an article about the printing of bibles in China.  

There is only one company licensed to print the bible in China, a factory controlled by the State owned Communist Party.  At present they are printing their 80 millionth bible and is still struggling to keep up with demand.  According to the article the factory each month previously could only make 400,000 or 500,000 copies, now their capacity is a million copies a month. The factory currently employs 600 workers.  Demand has gone through the roof with print-runs now hitting record levels. An astounding 50 million bibles have been produced for domestic use, the rest for export.  I was blown away by that number, its huge.

  

Here is something to ponder—The Bible Society of the United Kingdom calculated that the number of Bibles printed between 1816 and 1975 was 2,458,000,000 and by 1992 the estimated number rose to nearly six billion. I wonder what the number is today? How many of these Bibles have been hidden so not to be confiscated in places like China or Iran - becoming the most precious possession the person owns and willing to die for. 

It remains the number one best seller around the world even though many people want to desperately see its demise. 

Every word of God is pure:he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.

 Proverbs 30:5

   

After writing about Bible production in China, I accidentally stumbled across a small exhibition called "The Book that Changed the World" at Parliament House in Canberra (link and link).  The exhibition gave a rare view of the 400 years of the King James Version of the Bible by displaying a range of very old KJV bibles over the centuries, including one of the originals KJ bibles from 1600s. 

For those interested, it will at the Melbourne City Library from the 2nd-28th October 2011 and in Brisbane from the 4th January-28th February 2012. Other cities are yet to be announced but the brochure said it would travel to each capital city.

But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
Matthew 4:4

~oOo~