Time Capsule and Bible

            Did you ever make a time capsule when you were in grade school? Did you grow up in a small town where some previous generation nostalgically buried a time capsule in the city square? I vaguely remember doing so, and I do not remember or what we put in it. I am sure the attempt here is communicate something of the life and culture now to a future generation. Yet, what would anything drawn by the first grader communicate to some future generation? Something inside us today does not want future generations to forget us.

However, there are many formal time capsule projects intending to communicate real messages to future excavators. They became somewhat of a trend in the 50s and 60s, which means that many of the 50-year time capsules from those days have been coming due recently.

The Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument was created in Amarillo in 1968. Moreover, like all things in Texas, it is big. It consists of four time capsules locked in giant, stainless steel spires that were to be opened after 25, 50, 100, and 1,000 years. The one set for 25 years is already open. The one set for 50 years will open in 2018. Maybe you are yawning over the idea of a Texas trinket collection. But the 1,000 year column contains a passbook for a $10 savings account -- and with 4% interest compounded annually until 2968, it will be worth more than $1,000,000,000,000,000 ($1 quadrillion) when opened! Well, I like my Starbucks. Do you think my double-tall soy cappuccino might be about that much? 

A few times in the Bible, it seems like the Bible itself became part of a time capsule, forgotten by people. I think of II Kings 22, where during the reign of King Josiah, someone finds the book of the Law during a time of the restoration of the Temple. The discovery let to be a brief period of reform.

I invite you to think of it would be like to live in a world where God no longer provided a word of revelation or guidance.

The Book of Eli is a 2010 movie starring Denzel Washington. It received average reviews and did not do that well at the box office. It reflected upon the condition of humanity after an apocalyptic-type war. Eli hears a voice telling him to take a book to the west coast. Along the way, he will encounter many challenges, we will learn about what happened to the world, and we learn about the book. By the end of the movie, we know it is a Bible. We also learn that the text is braille. Only Eli can read it, and he does so, as another person writes down what he says. Eventually, he dies as he speaks the last words of the text. Here is a community that is carefully preserving the great words of history.

           

We also know that around 428 BC, after Nehemiah had the walls rebuilt, Ezra the priest read the words of the Law before a people who had long since forgotten what God wanted of them (Nehemiah 8). Maybe the years in Babylon had caused them to lose their memory. Maybe the promises of restoration that we find in Ezekiel and in Isaiah 40-55, which made it seem as if things would be wonderful upon the return of the exiles to Jerusalem, no longer inspired people. Even the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah regarding the rebuilding of the Temple might ring hollow. They still wrestled with who they are now, as a people, after the devastation of the exile and still ruled by a foreign power, Persia. Yet, Ezra and Nehemiah pull out the scroll of the Torah, Ezra reads, and the people acknowledge that they had forgotten.

            Within the church, we still have our Bibles. We can read them privately, we can read them in small groups, and we can preach from them.

The rest of culture may forget its roots in the Bible and in Christianity. In fact, the process is beginning, I think. The secularizing of the culture will steadily push away the church and the Bible. Future generations will find the speeches of early Presidents quite strange, simply because they will not have heard of the biblical and Christian background of America. I do not want you to misunderstand. Even though many people did not go to church and many people used their Bible to support slavery, most people knew their Bible. Such days, I suggest, are soon gone.

Here is the problem. The culture will do what it will, and if it wishes to seek values independently of the Bible, it will do so. After all, God has granted us freedom and independence. The culture can seek complete independence of the Bible. That is its right.

In contrast, the church lives by a different code – or at least it should. The church looks upon the Bible as the primary witness to the revelation of God.

Here is my point. If Christianity forgets its Bible, it will die.