“One hundred years from my day, there will not be a bible in the earth…” Voltaire is studied and revered by many today. He was a French enlightener and philosopher. He opposed Christianity and made a mockery of God and the scriptures. He is famously quoted for saying that one hundred years from his day, the only place you will be able to find a Bible is in museums. He was highly wrong.
Voltaire lived to the age of eighty-three. Like all of humanity, his body betrayed him. He died of kidney failure on May 30, 1778. America had just declared independence in the new world, and Voltaire’s influence could be felt across the Atlantic. He died an agonizing death, and as far as we know, he died apart from Christ.
I think of ourselves as Bible investors. We invest large sums of money into translating, printing, and distributing God’s Word in our generation. People who share a passion for providing God’s Word to Bibleless people are cut from the same cloth as men like Colonel Henri Tronchin. He was president of the Evangelical Society of Geneva. I picture him like a modern-day Gideon, for those who are familiar with the Bible ministry of Gideon’s International. He purchased Voltaire’s estate in the 1830’s.
He used Voltaire’s estate as a repository for Bibles throughout Europe. While Voltaire predicted that you would not be able to find a Bible a hundred years from his day, because scripture was irrelevant, here his very home was used as a Bible depot!
In light of eternity, Voltaire lived a pitiful and wasted life. James 1:10-11 says, “and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also, will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.” I want to live for what is eternal, and what will abide forever is the Word of God. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
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