The words of Leviticus 25:10 are inscribed on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Lincoln quoted Isaiah in his greatest speeches. The Ten Commandments are carved in stone at the Supreme Court. Benjamin Franklin, hardly the most orthodox of the founders, rose during the Constitutional Convention to remind the assembled architects of democracy of the words of Psalm 127: Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Even Franklin knew you could not build a free nation without Scripture.

The Bible has been burned, banned, buried, and ridiculed. It has been smuggled across borders in the lining of coats, memorized in prison cells, and passed hand to hand in nations where possession of it was a crime. And it has outlasted every empire, every ideology, and every attempt to silence it. The Soviet Union tried to eradicate it, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. Rome tried to burn it, and Rome is rubble while the church is still preaching. You cannot kill God’s Word because the Author is alive, and He keeps showing up in the pages to speak to whoever opens them.

Here is what you must understand about Scripture: it is not primarily a history text, though its history is accurate. It is not primarily a moral guide, though its ethics are the best given to humanity. It is not primarily a political document, though its principles have informed the greatest free governments in history. It is a living word. God speaking. And according to the writer of Hebrews, it is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. When you open your Bible, you are not studying an ancient artifact. You are standing before the God who wrote it, and He has something to say.

The people who built this nation knew this. The Bible was not a decoration in colonial America. It was the curriculum. It was in more than ninety percent of colonial homes, read and discussed and memorized and lived. The moral consensus that made self-government possible was not produced by philosophical reflection or political negotiation. It was produced by a people who had been reading the same Scripture for generations and had internalized its vision of human dignity, justice, and accountability.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. What has changed is whether we are reading it. And that is the most important thing that could change in America today, not the occupants of government, but the posture of the church toward the Scripture that built this nation. Open it. Believe it. Live it.