Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and I looked, and behold a flying roll. And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered, I see a flying roll…Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth.
Zechariah 5:1-3
We may interpret the scriptures in one way or another. We may study or neglect, revere or despise them; we may consider them to be below the level of human intelligence; we may call them a word of delusion, or the Word of God, but in the extremest varieties of opinion, no one can escape from this–that they are a leading phenomenon in the history of civilization and in the aspect of the moral world.
In the text, an angel speaks in vision to the prophet and asks, “What seest thou?” The prophet raises his eyes and sees a winged book, “a flying roll” of restless speed. It “goeth forth over the face of the whole earth.” It was the roll of the Lord’s judgments–a consuming fire. It is a testimony against unrighteousness; a “fiery law.”
Consider the points that we discover in the “flying roll”:
The Extraordinary Dimensions of the Book
What a space does the Bible fill in the gaze of mankind, though it can be carried about in the hand of the feeblest wayfarer! Do we not speak truly of its wonderful dimensions when it holds on its ample pages such a widely scattered wisdom, and is discerned from so far?
Its Preservation and Continuance Through so Long a Sweep of Time
This is remarkable. Since faithful Abraham came out from Chaldea, vast tribes and strong nations have risen to renown and passed away into silence. Oracles of wisdom have grown forgotten as well as dumb. Genius and learning have gone down into the dust, and there is not a finger track of an inscription upon it for their posterity to read. Whole literatures have disappeared, their tongues having ceased, and their characters blotted entirely out. But here is writing, from many hands, dating as far back as the school lessons of human improvement. It has defied time. It has repelled decay. The Lord protected its archives.
Its Spread
It is, indeed, a “flying roll.” The scriptures move rapidly. They are not only preserved, but incredibly multiplied. They were addressed for the most part to one people, and they now speak to all people. They were written in their own peculiar tongues, and now they call all tongues their own. Have they not “gone forth over the face of the whole earth”? They are among the studies of learned men, who find there a wisdom higher than all else they know; while the ignorant and the simple, reading as they run, are made wise to life everlasting.
Its Influence and Surprising Power
That roll of the divine covenants has always been of a divine force. It has acted upon communities, wherever it has been introduced, so as to accomplish the most astonishing consequences. Are you inquiring what overthrew many of the oppressions, the enormous abuses, of the elder times? It was its paper edges that smote upon all that dark strength, and before those thin leaves buttress and battlement went down. How much has it done for individual minds.
The Honour with which It has Been Received as It has Flown Along
They are recognised in the public worship of most of the civilised tribes now under heaven. They are revered, at least with all outward forms of homage, in the courts of the proudest empires. They are sworn upon when the most solemn vows by which we can be bound are to be attested. Countless presses are now perpetually busy, that they may be distributed over the globe. The rarest genius and the profoundest learning are employed upon the illustration of them.
It may be objected that we have said nothing of the disrespect and derision with which the scriptures are regarded by multitudes, and have always been. We may admit this, but consider that they have withstood even this trial. Nothing could better show how deeply they are seated in the veneration of mankind.
Its Immeasurable Superiority, Above Everything that has Been Handed Down to Us From the Ancient World
There is in their contents a deep spring of instruction, such as the old generations nowhere furnish, and the coming ones are not likely soon to exhaust. Your own minds will surely leap to the inference–the finger of God was here. You may be perplexed with many passages in your Bible. You may slight some things as unimportant, and repel others as uncongenial. You may think you discern great blemishes and errors here and there, but what of that–the finger of God was here!
Yes, the divine providence ordained and protected this charter of man’s truest liberty and highest good. Let us look thoughtfully at it, then, as it flies on its holy errand.
N. L. Frothingham
