In December 1999 the cable TV network A&E aired a series called, Biography of the Millennium: 100 People-1000 Years. In the series many famous scholars, politicians and theologians were interviewed in an attempt to identify those individuals who most impacted our world, for better or worse, from 1000 AD to 2000 AD.
A list of the top 100 names were compiled. In the top 10 were some names that you might have guessed such as Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. But very few people ever guess the name that was picked as the most influential person of the last millennium – Johann Gutenberg.
You see this humble man, who lived in the fifteenth century, invented the metal movable type printing press. And what an invention this was! Before Gutenberg’s invention books had to be hand copied to share with others; which as you can imagine made the transmission of information painstaking slow. But thanks to his press books could be copied quickly, efficiently and inexpensively. And with this one invention information began to flow around the world at breathtaking speed. As a result the world would never be the same again.
But for Gutenberg he desired a mission that would not only transform the way and speed in which information would be disseminated but would also transform the heart of every individual by allowing each person to read the Bible and be exposed to the good news of Jesus Christ. Before Gutenberg’s press, as you can imagine, very few people owned a hand copied Bible. But now the potential to share the Bible, and its good news, could be available to millions. Gutenberg’s great passion to make the Bible, and its message, available to everyone can be seen in the following two quotes that he shared over 500 years ago:
“God suffers in the multitude of souls whom His word cannot reach. Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books, which confine instead of spread the public treasure. Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world by her word no longer written at great expense by hands easily palsied, but multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine.”[1]
“Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams, the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men! Through it, God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men.”[2]
I can’t think of a nobler mission than to allow countless millions access to the Holy Bible!
[1] Alphonse De Lamartine, Memories of Celebrated Characters, Vol. 2, 2nd ed. (London: Richard Bentley, 1854), 323.
[2] Ibid. 334.