The Boy Who Memorised Scripture – by Eliezer Gonzalez

• Bible
• Bible study
• Christian Evidences
• Christian Living
• Christianity
• Dr Eliezer Gonzalez
• Faith
• Gospel
• Jesus

Feb 7, 2015 3266

At the village church in Kalonovka, Russia, attendance at Sunday school picked up after the priest started handing out candy to the peasant children. One of the most faithful was a pug-nosed, pugnacious lad who recited his Scriptures with proper piety, pocketed his reward, then fled into the fields to munch on it. The priest took a liking to the boy, persuaded him to attend church school. This was preferable to doing household chores from which his devout parents excused him. By offering other inducements, the priest managed to teach the boy the four Gospels. In fact, he won a special prize for learning all four by heart and reciting them nonstop in church.

Later on in life, the same boy, now a man, also liked to recite Scriptures, but in a context that would have horrifed the old priest. For the prize pupil, who memorized so much of the Bible, was Nikita Khrushchev, who became the leader of the Societ Union.

The same Nikita Khrushchev who nimbly mouthed God’s Word when a child, later declared God to be nonexistent – because his cosmonauts had not seen Him.

Like everything else related to our salvation, “doing things” in return for lollies never works, even if we think that the lollies are being handed out by God. It doesn’t work that way.

And all the Scripture reading and memorization in the world will not profit you unless you are doing it to know the Author, and in order to love Him more. And the same goes for all kinds of religious devotion.

In all of these things you have to get the “why” right, because the “why” always comes before the “what.”

– Eliezer Gonzalez