Burning Bibles: “Fahrenheit 451” Deep-Dive

Our degeneration of respect for the Bible made me think of how the media, especially secular media, have treated the Bible in works of fiction. This led me to reexamine a book I read as a teenager (and possibly all of you in school); the 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451. Written by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian science fiction novel in which books are outlawed and a specialized group of “firemen” are tasked to burn them. The book is from the perspective of one of these firemen, Guy Montag, as he begins to question the world around him and why he is burning these books. The novel deals with such topics as censorship, the power of ideas, knowledge vs ignorance, and technology. 

While not as famous as other dystopian fiction such as 1984 or Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 is regarded as a classic in the genre. Don’t expect much action in this novel; 451 is a book for big brains who eat red meat and do not consume soy products. Most of the novel’s notable parts comes from Montag’s many conversations with the characters around himself. Montag is very similar to Neo from The Matrix in a way that he knows something is wrong with the world around him. In the world of 451, he tries to search for the truth, and eventually he tries to “escape” or break away from the state he is living in with the deck stacked high against him. Both lead double lives. Neo is a hacker, while Montag hides books in his house despite being one of these firemen tasked to destroy them. Both must make radical decisions that will change their lives forever. Neo must decide if he wants to take the red pill and know the truth about the Matrix, or take the blue pill and believe whatever he wants to believe. Montag must decide to conform to society’s degenerate norms or escape and be a free man to learn, grow and experience the world outside his dystopian city. That is where the comparisons stop. After all, Montag is not fighting evil agents in 3-piece suits doing kung-fu in a glorified video game simulation. And while it might be a stretch to compare these two characters, the underlying issue is the search for truth in a world that is fundamentally truthless and blissfully ignorant of what is going on around them and the impending judgement coming.

Montag’s world in Fahrenheit 451 can be looked at as more frightening or depressing than being hooked up in a machine (depending on your point of view). For a book written and published in 1953, the similarities between our current world and the one pictured in 451 are quite jaw-dropping. The society in 451 is illiterate, pleasure obsessed, full of vanity, and totally void of any empathy or substance whatsoever. The human resources in this dystopia often use electronic “sea shells” that they wear on the ears to constantly pump their minds with nonsense and entertainment. Just as in today’s society we plug in our wireless earbuds and listen to mindless rubbish like Joe Rogan or grifters like Ben Shipiro. Prescription drugs are rampant in Montag’s world, and are constantly used to numb the subconscious. EMT’s have become like glorified Uber drivers, resuscitating those who overdose on a regular basis with attitudes like they were delivering McDonalds. Robotic dogs are used to track down and spy on people, which is eerily like the flying drones that watch us from the skies. This is the world that Bradbury envisioned in 1953 and I must say that he nailed it. It is profound because we hear all the time about the glory days of the 1950s. Clearly there was something there that Bradbury did not like, with the rise of TV and media during his era. And could see a foreshadowing of just how morally bankrupt the western world would become. 

What interests me most about this book is not the science fiction or the plot itself. The plot is simple and is only a vehicle to engage the audience in deep thought and meaning behind the themes Bradbury was trying to convey. What did interest me was how Bradbury used the Bible itself as a powerful prop to point just how much society has degenerated intellectually and spiritually in the world of 451. 

When researching on Ray Bradbury himself, it is hard to pin-point exactly what Bradbury believes in terms of religion. He was raised Baptist but his parents were infrequent church goers. By the time he was 14, he visited synagogues, catholic, and charismatic churches to try and figure out his faith. It seems that Bradbury did have a general respect for the faith but as for if he claimed Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, that is up for debate. Many of his quotes are typical of an agnostic that likes to cherry-pick from different religions to create a spiritual soup of cringe. But despite his vagueness, I do believe that Ray Bradbury, as a writer, respected the Bible. Not for the sacredness of the writing, but that the Bible has influenced and shaped more literature than any book ever written. For someone who makes a living as a writer, Bradbury would know how special and influential the Bible is to his craft. 

However, make no mistake, 451 is not going to be a book that directly points you to Jesus Christ. The book deals more with such things as censorship, the power of books and ideas, and ignorance and knowledge. Still, there is something deeper in this book if you look hard and ponder on the message and dialogue, even to followers of Christ.

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One of the first discourses in the book is after Montag and his crew were tasked with burning a large collection of books and magazines. In the process, the woman who owned these books willingly let herself be burned along with them. A shocked Montag tries to persuade her to live, but the woman stubbornly refuses and perishes. During this event, Montag manages to steal another book for his hidden cache of literature. However, after this event, he is haunted by the woman’s death and struggles to understand why this old lady was willing to die for this literature. What type of power do these books have? He ends up taking the day off, emotionally sick and pondering if he should quit his job as a fireman. That is when Montag’s commander, Beatty, shows up and gives a background of why books were banned in the first place. Beatty explains that  due to the technological advances such as motion pictures, radio, and television, things started to have more “mass” and became faster. After an undisclosed civil war, there began an era of peace, and the result was a spike in population growth. As he continues to explain, the various media begins to “speed up” where everything is boiled down to the snap ending, a catchphrase and a one time gag. Books are cut shorter, classics are cut to 15-minutes, then cut again to two minutes. Articles about matters such as politics are only a few paragraphs until the people read nothing but the headlines. The world gets more busier, and much more fast paced. School is shortened, with history, philosophy and eventually English and languages are dropped. Life is immediate, and work has less and less meaning. You go to your wage-slave job, and afterwards pleasure awaits after work. Why learn anything when machines have taken your place? Eventually the people grow more obsessed with pleasure, and are rewarded for their idol worship. More fun, more sportsball, more pictures in books. Less intelligence, less substance, more impatience.

If this all sounds eerily familiar, it should, as this is exactly what is going on with today’s society and the internet age. I must remind you that this book was published in 1953, only eight years after the end of World War II, yet Bradbury must have seen a radical vision of America with the growing “baby boom” of the 1950s along with the rise of television and other forms of media. Today, it is not about the intellectual deep dive of knowledge, or the pursuit of truth, but who can draw the most eyeballs to your article. Who can make the most outrageous headline to sell the papers, and who can make the quickest advertising buck by promoting fear, filth, and hatred. The world’s news cycle is so fast that stories that would last a month in the early 2000s would be buried with more media raw sewage by the end of the afternoon. After all, the average American’s attention span is almost entirely on their wage slave job, families, hobbies, sportsball, and any number of idols. They are just waiting for the 5-o’clock punch-out time to get home and indulge in any number of degenerate acts to numb the pain and inflame their passions. And if they are not employed? Well they can always live the gamer lifestyle. Playing nothing but minecraft, Overwatch, and a JRPG in the evening while gorging on chicken tendies. 

What is even more eerie is the way Beatty describes how minorities have an intense power over the various forces that control the world. This isn’t exclusively a racial sort of minority, but more of a splintered group of identities and sub-cultures that people hold on and identify with. Cat-ladies and Dog Moms, Doctors, Lawyers, businessmen, soliders, religions of all nature, people from this tribe, people from that tribe, Democrats and Republicans, Rich and poor, Conservative and Liberial, Feminists and gamers, gay and straight, transsexual and those who identify as trans-dragon, etc, etc. And as Beatty explains to Montag “The bigger your market, the less you can handle controversy.” Market forces drove away the more contraversial, thought-provoking and intelligent content while keeping the comics and sex magazines. After all, you cannot market something that might offend people because that might invoke the wrath of the minority group, or scare the advertisers away. But porn and Marvel comics? That always draws. The book burning did not start by a government. Technology, mass economic exploitation and minority pressure did the trick. 

Again, I must point out, this book was published in 1953 and a mere seventy decades later we are right in the middle of 451. Big tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and their advertising overlords rule the western world and will censor any dissenting or controversial opinions that don’t line up with their agendas or the advertisers agenda. Exploitative capitalism has completely ravaged the soul with pornography, sugary junk food, plastic crap, big cars, big houses, tiny brain-numbing phones, big products for everyone to buy. The tyranny of the minority is the political and economic dynamo of the times where politicians have to juggle different political tribes based on race, sex, status, and relgion. All to get that precious vote.

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This leads us to the revelation that the one book that Montag saved from the burning woman’s house is none other than the Bible, and Montag believes it might be the only complete copy in existence. To an audience outside the confines of the novel, this is a big deal because we know just how vital and important the Bible is to the world. But in 451 this copy of the scriptures is treated more of a passive prop, as if this was the last copy of Plato’s Republic, or a book of poetry. And is used as a vehicle, albeit a powerful one, to point out how much knowledge has been lost in this society. One would think that Christianity is banned in 451, but disturbingly this isn’t the case. 

Montag’s curiosity and hunger for more knowledge and truth eventually brings back a memory of a chance meeting with a literature professor named Faber. Montag eventually tracks him down to learn from him and shows the cautious professor the Bible he has kept safe. Faber is amazed because he has not seen a Bible for a very long time. He reflects on what the Bible meant to people back in the past, but as he explains, Christ has become just another character on TV: 

“Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper absolutely needs”

Instead of the Jesus that is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, He is instead a character in more of the image of Santa Claus. Instead of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus in 451 is just another pitchman on TV getting His capitalist on. Instead of Jesus that is the way and truth and life, we get a Jesus that has been stripped down, sugar coated, and sold to the masses. Is it any shock that art imitates life? 

Have not this generation done the exact thing that 451 portrays when it comes to Christ and the Gospel? We compromise, and give the culture what it wants, little by little. We give people a Savior and take out the Lordship. We preach forgiveness of sins and throw away a call for repentance. We teach people about the Kingdom of Heaven and tone down the coming Judgement of hellfire. In the end we only give people half truths instead of the full council. In the end, we craft a Jesus Christ into a nice corporate image, trying desperately to fit in the culture. We take away all the offensive and challenging revelation of God’s Word, all for the sake of pushing our own agendas, or satisfying our flesh, which rebels against God. 

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Throughout the whole book, while all of society is in a stupor, there is a constant theme of an impending war about to happen in Montag’s world. Bradbury gives subtle hints such as fighter jets screaming through the skies or radio broadcasts telling people there is nothing to worry about. But the symbolism here is that judgment is about to come in the world of 451 and many in society don’t have a care in the world. This leads towards the final act of Fahrenheit 451. Montag gets caught with the books and ends up having his secret collection of literature, including the Bible, burned up by his own hand, provoked by his fellow Firemen. His wife has left him, his house and life has burned down, and Montag has nothing left to lose in his vapid life. He ends up turning the flamethrower on his colleges, including Beatty, burning them up. Montag then makes a getaway to outside the city and the society. Avoiding the authorities and dog-drones from hell, he manages to escape the city by jumping in a river, which reminds me a lot of Moses. After wandering down the river, and reflecting on his choices, he ends up meeting a group of professors in a homeless compound. Nearly all of them have remembered many books. They have stored them in their brain, as a verbal memory bank and are waiting for the city to be destroyed by the bombs to rebuild society and rewrite the knowledge they have collected. Montag is amazed by their knowledge and has a thirst to learn more now that he has unplugged from the Matrix of his world. He laments how he only knows just a couple of verses from two books in the Bible: Ecclesiastes, and Revelation. However the professors comfort him and tell him that soon, after a little while, the knowledge and passages of these books will come back to him. Eventually, the bombs do drop on Montag’s former home and it is revealed Montag’s wife was in a drug-induced state along with the rest of the citizens as the city is nuked and wiped off the Earth. 

In this way, this scene is symbolic as Montag himself is in the image of Lot, who God rescued from Sodom and Gamorrah before he completely destroyed the city with a rain of fire. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for Montag and Lot, both their wives were killed. Lot’s wife looked back at the city’s destruction and turned to a pillar of salt. Montag’s wife refused to join his quest for meaning and ended up getting nuked along with the rest of the city. I do not think Bradbury intended this, but the similarities are there and both have the same themes. Sodom and Gamorrah and Montag’s city, were both in a state of grave sin. Both of their citizens were completely oblivious to their condition or did not care either way. Both were judged harshly by God, with this judgement coming out of nowhere to an unsuspecting people. Nothing is new under the sun as this pattern is throughout the Bible from The Flood narrative, to the Babaloynion exile to the days of the son of man. People were eating and drinking, and marrying and given into marriage. Then the flood came and wiped them all out. No one knows when destruction might come or the time where God demands our life. 

Soberly, Montag’s party eventually walks back to the ruins of the city. Montag ponders and meditates on his journey and life and how it got to this point. He laments his wife and the city’s demise, but also has a quiet peace within himself as he is outside the bubble now. He can now learn and grow. At this, he remembers a couple of verses from Ecclesiastes, the famous “time” passages in Ecclesiastes 3. He then closes the novel by remembering another famous passage from Revelation 22:2

down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, producing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

These are two very interesting passages that Bradbury decided to feature at the end and it is also very poetic that he features Ecclesiastes and Revelation as the scriptures of choice. Ecclesiastes is one of the wisdom books that tackles the subject of life’s vanity, and our lot in life. In Ecclesiastes 3, the chapter points out and explains that there is a time and a place for everything in our lives and that life happens in these cycles. Bradbury, in a way, is reminding the reader that nothing lasts forever and everything has its moment, then is uprooted, as what happened to Montag’s society and his life in general. That there is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build. Ecclesiastes also points out that only by living by faith in God can we find any meaning in our short lives on Earth and that God judges everything in the end. Montag’s world did not go after the things of God and instead went after the lusts of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life. In the end God judged them harshly. This bridges into Revelation 22:2, describing the Tree of Life and how its leaves will be for the healing of the nations. That though there was destruction now, there will be healing and a new beginning. This gives a secular audience an interesting ending to chew on, a glimmer of hope that this will turn out good in the end for Montag and his world. To those of the faith, Revelation deals with the things to come, and previews a glimmer of what the New Heavens and Earth will be like. I do not know what Bradbury’s intent was on featuring Revelation in the ending. But this shows how powerful a message of hope is in a nearly vain and hopeless world. Especially a world that relies on other influences other than God or completely checks out of life all together. Now that Montag is completely out of his vain society, the knowledge from the Bible is coming back that he can’t wait to share with the other members of his party. This is how the book closes. 

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451 gives the most interesting of thought experiments: What would happen if all the Bibles in the world were burned and the knowledge was lost?

Interestingly, the Bible itself contains scenes of characters burning scripture. Jeremiah 36 details how the prophet Jerimiah read the words of the LORD through a scroll to the unrepentant, evil king of Judah, Jehoiakim. Jerimiah was preaching the Lord’s words, calling for all of Judah to repent and turn from their evil ways. However whenever King Jehoiakim read three or four columns of the scroll, he would cut the portion out and throw them into a firepot until the entire scroll was burned. The king and his attendants who heard the words of the Lord showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes (a sign of humility and repentance). Eventually God commissioned Jerimiah to rewrite the scroll and Jehoiakim died a shameful death. 

Indeed, the image of a Bible burning is very powerful and gravely offensive, especially to the God who has given us this special revelation. Book burning, in general, has always been a powerful symbol and act in society. Whether it be to reject a worldview, censorship, an ideal, or has themes that would offend the reader. But the interesting thing to get out of the narrative of book burning going on in Fahrenheit 451 is not the act of the burning itself. The burning of literature is just an outward symptom of a much deeper problem. The most damning part of Fahrenheit 451 is Bradbury pointing out that it was not an “evil” government that started censoring people and burning books. This is what the people wanted. This is what a society wants that shuns being offended, disregards the truth, and is after things passing from this world. 

God is the one who gives authority to the kings and governments of the world, and there comes a point where God places judgement over a nation and gives the people what they want and/or deserve. Just as Paul writes in Romans, God gives them over to a reprobate mind, to do the things they ought not to.Instead of the absolute, unfiltered, and often painful truth, they traded it in for blissful ignorance, and society’s heart was darkened by their own evil. Instead of something challenging or stimulating to the mind, body and spirit, Montag’s society traded it in for a vapid world. Montag’s wife is vapid, his friends are vapid, the entertainment is vapid, and Montag grows more disgusted with everything that is around him. Society, in the name of not offending anyone, ended up crafting Jesus Christ and the Bible into something more friendly and not offensive. Instead of telling people the truth, that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father, the 451 Jesus is just another religious figure people can choose from to punch their religion ticket and sear their conscience to the truth of what is going on. After all, it is not offensive to tell people there are many ways to Heaven. You cannot sell an agenda telling people that the Kingdom of Heaven is here and ushered in by Christ and He is the only door to salvation. “Christianity,” instead of being about and walking in truth, to be separate from the world which is passing away, metamorphosed into just another socio-political sect to be marketed, used, and abused by the world and its degeneracy. Is it any shock that God gives them over to governments and mega corporations who will do the book burning and censorship for the people? 

One might think that only non-believers can be victims of the times we are living in, but this is not the case as every follower of Christ has to constantly battle the distractions and influences of everyday life. One of the more profound moments of Fahrenheit 451 is a scene where Montag is on a subway, boldly reading the Bible. Montag is desperately trying to understand Matthew 6:38 and the meaning behind the “lilies in the field.” Montag struggles to concentrate the meaning behind these words of Jesus Christ but the subway he is riding is constantly blasting and spewing advertisements to the passengers to an obnoxious level. How many times has this happened to us in our own lives and the current age we live in? From the palm of our hands with cell phones, to the great outdoors with billboards, everyone is trying to catch the attention of your mind. We are often so distracted by the outside forces that we neglect or outright ignore time with the Lord of Glory. This is a very deceptive and powerful problem to a new generation that has always had smartphones and always had the internet. There is a constant war for the mind to pull you away from God and the truth and to things that will turn to dust in the end. This is not to say that all advertising, or economic activity or pleasure, or leisure time, is evil. After all, God created the dopamine in our body for us to enjoy. But what 451 is trying to point out is that there comes a point of no return for society that craves nothing but pleasure and shuns being offended or learning about the truth. 

With all this in mind, how do we make of 451, our society, our current faith and the future? The truth is, that this has been going on since the days of Adam and Eve, we reach out our hand to the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil to become our own Gods. The result is we build shame in our hearts and hide from the light because our deeds are evil. But the constant theme in the Bible is that though we run from God, God is searching for us. That salvation is from the Lord. That God always comes through, saves and preserves his people. In Genesis, the world turned from the Lord, and God sent the Great Flood to destroy them. But God preserved humanity through Noah. We touched briefly on the story of Lot and how he was preserved. Israel, when Ahab was king, was almost completely destroyed by its pegan worship yet God preserved 7000 who did not worship Baal. These are but a few examples of God dealing with an unrepentant society. The Israelites continuously rebelled against God and turned to idols and degeneracy. And continuously God dealt with them in order that they might repent and turn from their sins. From the beginning of the Fall of Man, to the crescendo of the scriptures, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the common narrative in the Bible is that salvation belongs to God and it is God alone preserves and saves humanity from their wickedness. 

This whole thing is the power of God. Even if all of scripture is burned by the fires of evil, this central message of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven will always be preserved, and will always be preached. The Holy Spirit is always at work, always preserving, always enduring. Men can twist, edit, and defame the Bible and its words for their own agendas, but the truth about the Living God and His Son, Jesus Christ will last forever. God will always have prophets, preachers, teachers, brave men, and women from every part of life to uphold the truth and preach Jesus Christ. Just as the days of Ahab and the people worshiping Baal, so too will be the days of this generation. God will preserve a people for himself, a church for His Son and the gates of hell will not prevail against them. 

What does that say about our current generation and our relationship to the Bible? Will our generation be judged by the first generation of believers who might have not have the complete canon of scripture at their fingertips? Will we be judged for treating the Bible as a textbook instead of revelation from God? What would Christ think about today’s generation who want to unhinge from the Old Testament even though Christ himself constantly preached from the Torah, the Psalms and the Prophets? What will God say to a generation that denies and blasphemes Genesis and profanes and degenerate Revelation? What would the generations of the past that would die for this book say to this generation that argues fruitlessly about scholarly gasbagging about who wrote this section of scripture or arguing over hebrew letters and other nonsense that produces nothing of real value? What would God have to say to a church that prostitutes itself to false gospels and vain theology in the hopes of being relevant in a dying world? The fact is we are a society under judgement because our respect for God’s word has deteriorated. Just like in Montag’s society, we run away from the hard truths that God reveals to us. We shun being offended and offending others. And in the end, man collectively rejects the Bible and instead crafts an idol of God to suit his degeneracy of choice. All the while we are blissfully ignorant of the impending end. We do not care about real spiritual matters and instead care only about ourselves and our lives. We do not seek after God, but instead seek only the next fad to improve our marriage, and finances or any other problems in our lives. Instead of seeking repentance, we seek our best life now. Instead of seeking forgiveness, we seek vengeance. We do not care at all for real, authentic, truth. Instead we search for teachers that will tickle our ears and tell us what we want to hear instead of what we should hear. In the end, we believe the lie of our own self-righteousness. Junk thinking, junk life, junk soul. 

What we need to do as followers of Jesus Christ is to repent of this sin and madness. We need to open our eyes and see the condition of the world for what it is. That Christ is coming soon and we need to start preparing and preaching like never before. We need to stop acting like “Christianity” is some sect, or political affiliation, or just another theology on equal footing with other cringy world views. We need to stop trying to be like the world, which is passing away. We need to realize that we have the truth! We have the red pill to wake people up! We have the ultimate truth about God, humanity, salvation, sin, the depravity of the human heart, and God’s love for the world by sending His Son to die for us. We have the resurrection and the life. We need to start respecting the Bible and start believing what it says. 

Even still, forces and principalities are hard at work to try and distort God’s word. The fact is, we all would be at a severe disadvantage if the knowledge of the Bible was lost in the ashes of history and all we had was the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. After all, Jesus Christ taught out of the Old Testament. And the writers of the New Testament explained what Christ’s victory means in the context of the Old Testament. What would happen if we lost that? We would lose the Torah and all the knowledge about the origins of man, the world, the miracles like the parting of the red sea and the careful and deliberate plan God unfolds to save mankind from sin. We would lose the Psalms and all the poetic writings detailing the prophecies of Christ,  the heartaches, redemption, forgiveness, judgement of the wicked, and salvation. We would lose the prophets who had visions of Jesus Christ and His kingdom. We would lose the New Testement  writings that detailed the career of Jesus Christ and the early church. We would lose so much. Yet, this is the power of that message of Jesus Christ. In the gospel, it reveals so much about the wickedness of man, and the incomprehensible love God has for the world. It is a supernatural message that can pierce through the hearts of man. As stated earlier, this is all the work of the Holy Spirit. There is a reason why this message spread like wildfire throughout the world from Juresleum. Because it is that scandalous, that powerful, and that controversial in the context of our great evil, sin and heart issues. That even though we have sinned against each other and a Holy God, that this God loved us so much that He sent His only son to pay the penalty for our iniquities. Now whoever believes on the name of the only begotten son shall not perish, but have everlasting life. It is offensive to the jews and foolishness to gentiles. But it is in this offensive, and incomprehensible message that can give hope and life to many. After all, Jesus did not come to bring peace on Earth, but instead he brought a sword. This gospel message will divide people, as with any truth. And there will be agents of the devil to try and censor or pervert this message of the gospel. 

Fahrenheit 451 is a very somber warning letter to western man. But here is the profound part; if a secular man, such as Bradbury, can see and predict this dystopia we are currently living in, how come we as followers of Christ cannot see that the world is passing away and Christ is coming for His Bride? As followers of Christ, we need to open our eyes about what is going on. And to Non-believers in Christ, now is the time to get right with God. Ray Bradbury was trying to point out that this type of censorship could very much happen in our future. But the fact is, that it already is happening. You can see it in “cancel culture” around the internet. Instead of book burnings and fire raids to censor the dissenters, all it takes is the click of a button and you are banned, with your content deleted. People with bad intentions who don’t like what you have to say can threaten your job and career to make you shut up. 

But even more important in the context of believers in Christ is we ourselves are burning the Bible when it comes to how we respect, treat and treasure it’s words. We are not physically burning the book, but instead throwing it in the fire of our own lust of our hearts. But the good news is if we change our minds and start treating the Bible with respect, God will open our eyes and give us profound wisdom and knowledge in the scripture. Only with a circumcised heart, instead of one of stone, will our eyes open up to see and we will have ears to hear. 

For those who don’t believe, I implore you to read and study the Bible. The Bible is not a textbook. It is the inspired word of the Living God. Given to us to reveal all truth about the world, man, man’s condition, the character of God, the coming judgement, and the hope we have of the future. Above all else, the Bible is about one man who claimed He was from God, and claimed He is God. That man is Jesus Christ. In Him we have light and we have salvation. In Him, we finally know the truth about all matters. In Him, we can finally have life and life abundantly. The fact is that you have been given an opportunity in this very moment, in this very age, to explore who God is. You might claim to know God already, you might claim there are many ways to the Father, and many ways to salvation. But there is a reason why the Bible has endured for such a long time. Because God and God’s word never change. He is, was, and always will be. There is only one God, one book that reveals Himself, and one way to salvation, which is through His Son. 

The time is very short and the days are few. As stated by the scripture, the end times will be perilous and marked by an increase of evil. While it is beyond the scope of this ministry to pinpoint the coming of the day of the Lord, we have to be like watchmen. We have to see the seasons and prepare ourselves accordingly. Unfortunately, we are at the threshold of a world envisioned by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451. And while I doubt there will be serious book burnings of the Bible, we are already doing that with our hearts by how much we respect it in the great scope of things. But there is real hope in the madness: Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead. The battle has already won. It is finished. With the world passing away and darkening in its iniquity, at the same time the Bible is shining brighter and brighter every day. As the world grows more in it’s sin, the Bible is the one book that stands out and tells the truth about what is going on. Let us all repent, pray, fast, be vigilant, be thankful for what we have, and treasure these times. Montag may have only read one portion of Revelation, but here is what comes next after that verse that gives comfort and hope:

 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.  There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

Note from the editor: What I hope you get out of reading this article is how important it is to read things and analyze the world and the various media, through the lens of the Bible. This is also known as the “Biblical Perspective” in some evangel circles. If you like and want to see more of this type of content, feel free to contact me at jesuschristredpill@gmail.com