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Red letter people

“To become Christ-like is the only thing in the whole world worth caring for” Henry Drummond

“To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life.”
John 6:63

We have the Word of God today because for centuries people valued it so much they made it their life’s work to write it out, copying it, painstakingly, word by word. The wonderful Book of Kells, which can still be viewed in Dublin, consists of the four Gospels and is thought to have taken a small team up to 30 years
to complete. Right now an American publisher is touring the United States creating the first handwritten NIV Bible – with the help of 31,173 people.

The Persecuted Church can certainly teach us how to value Scripture. An old Christian woman in China risked her life during the Cultural Revolution by hiding a Bible. Other Christians begged
to be allowed to borrow it. Eventually she gave in and allowed them to borrow it for 20 days. They took shifts, two copying and two correcting. By the last night they had finished. Their handwritten Bible was the only copy to be shared among ten churches.

But we must never be sentimental about the Bible. Pastor Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned in Communist Romania for 14 years, much of it in solitary confinement. He wrote, “When you pass through suffering you realise it was never meant by God that Psalm 23 should strengthen you. It is the Lord who can strengthen you, not the Psalm which speaks of Him… If you only have thewords of the Lord, you can very easily
be broken. If you are united with the Reality, the Lord Almighty, evil loses its power over you; it cannot break the Lord Almighty.”

In 1899 Louis Klopsch, the editor of The Christian Herald Magazine, invented the red letter edition of the Bible, in which
all the words spoken by Jesus are printed in red ink. He was inspired by Luke 22:20: “This cup is the new testament in
my blood, which is shed for you.”

Open Doors is still distributing Bibles because the Bible reveals Jesus. Alongside that, in 2009 more than ever, the world needs ‘red letter people’ – people committed to living out the words
of Jesus. As writer Bridget Willard puts it, “Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let’s not go to Church, let’s be the Church.”

Are you still looking for a New Year resolution? You could do worse than resolve to read again the words of Jesus, and pray that your life will itself be an open book in which others can discover Christ.

Eddie Lyle
CEO Open Doors UK & Ireland