Sermon Tone Analysis

It’s Penned by God.

Why does it matter?

Salvation depends on the promise of salvation contained in it.

Your assurance derives from by planting yourself on it’s truth.

Your growth depends upon living according to it’s principles.

Power for witnessing comes through declaring it.

You can trust it because Jesus Proclaimed it as the Word of God.

Prophecies God predicted in the Bible have been fulfilled!

Could a baby make himself born in Bethlehem?

Micah 5:2

If it were a mere mortal’s opinion, how and why did Jesus force Pilate to crucify him among thieves?

isa53:9-13

Could a mere human book produce a man who rose from the dead and had 500 witnesses willing to live for Him? 1cor15

The Bible has persisted despite Satan’s war against it!

THE BIBLE HAS SURVIVED THE WAR SATAN HAS RAGED AGAINST IT.

It’s not impressive is a nation exists under Islamic law and the Koran exists there.

It’s another thing that where freedom exists or where persecution, the Bible flourishes.

French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778).

The story purports that Voltaire, in his voluminous writings against Christianity and the Bible, predicted in 1776, “One hundred years from my day, there will not be a Bible on earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity-seeker.”

As the story alleges, within fifty years after his death, in an ironic twist of Providence, the very house in which he once lived and wrote was used by the Evangelical Society of Geneva as a storehouse for Bibles and Gospel tracts and the printing presses he used to print his irreverent works was used to print Bibles.

The story has been used repeatedly through the years by Christians as an example of the enduring intrinsic quality of the Bible and the futility of those who oppose the Inspired Volume.

For years there have been those who dispute this story as to its validity.

Humanists, rationalists, agnostics, and atheists have called it an apocryphal story fabricated by Christians to bolster their argument that the Bible is inspired and possesses an intrinsic quality that enables it to withstand attacks by unbelievers.

David Ross wrote an article in the Journal of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists, vol.

77, no. 1, Autumn 2004, entitled “Voltaire’s House and the Bible Society,” in which he went to great lengths to dismiss the story as having any real basis in fact.

Ross contends the story has been either fabricated or it began as a misunderstanding and has spread.

Ross’ article and others like it are of such a convincing nature that books like Introduction to the Bible by Norman Geisler and William Nix, left it out of later editions.[1]

The question to consider, is there any validity to the story?

Did Voltaire ever make such a prediction?

Is there proof that the home in which Voltaire once lived, that after his death, was used as a storehouse for Bibles?

After much research, this writer has come to the conclusion that the story is true and that those who seek to discredit the story do so because it gives credence to the argument of apologists of God’s providential preservation of His Word.

Voltaire was born in Paris, France in 1694.

As a philosopher, historian and free thinker, he became a most influential and prolific writer during what has been called the Age of Enlightenment.

From the beginning, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for criticisms toward the government.

He twice served brief prison sentences in the Bastille for being critical of a Regent.

His first literary work appeared in 1718.

During his life he wrote more than 20,000 letters and some 2,000 pamphlets and books and was a successful playwriter.

While a Deist, he vehemently opposed the Christian faith and wrote many rather scoffing works expressing his disdain for the faith and the Bible.

His railings against Christianity are filled with poisonous venom, calling the Christian faith the “infamous superstition.”

Several examples of his slanderous words against the Christian faith and the Bible are cited.

In 1764 he wrote, “The Bible.

That is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach and young children are made to learn by heart” (Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764).

“We are living in the twilight of Christianity” (Philosophical Dictionary).

In a 1767 letter to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, he wrote: “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world…My one regret in dying is that I cannot aid you in this noble enterprise of extirpating the world of this infamous superstition.”[2]

Voltaire ended every letter to friends with “Ecrasez l’infame” (crush the infamy — the Christian religion).

In his pamphlet, The Sermon on the Fifty (1762) he attacked viciously the Old Testament, biblical miracles, biblical contradictions, the Jewish religion, the Christian God, the virgin birth and Christ’s death on the cross.

Of the Four Gospels he wrote, “What folly, what misery, what puerile and odious things they contain [and the Bible is filled] with contradictions, follies, and horrors”[3].

Voltaire regarded most of the doctrines of the Christin faith – the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Trinity, Communion – as folly and irrational.[4]

And finally, “To invent all those things [in the Bible], the last degree of rascality.

To believe them, the extreme of brutal stupidity!”[5]

Many more such quotes could be cited as to Voltaire’s disdain for Christianity, but those will suffice.

Voltaire’s writings were so divisive that in 1754 Louis XV banned him from Paris.

Relocating in December 1754 to Geneva, Switzerland, he purchased a beautiful chateau called Les Delices (The Delights).

He lived there for five years until 1760 when as the result of his antagonistic writings and plays attacking Christianity, he was virtually driven from Geneva by the Calvinist Reformers.

To escape the pressure from the Calvinists, Voltaire moved across the border to Ferney, France, where the controversial Frenchmen lived for eighteen years until the end of his life in 1778 at age 83.

He continued to write until his hand was stilled in death.

Now the question arises as to the veracity of what some call an “apocryphal story.”

While Voltaire’s disdain for the Bible is evident, did he ever make such a prediction and did any Bible Society ever use either of his residences, from where he wrote his blasphemous words against the Bible and the Christianity, as a warehouse to store Bibles?

The answer to that question is an emphatic, “YES!”

The second part of the story will be dealt with first.

In August 1836, only fifty-eight years after Voltaire’s death, Rev. William Acworth of the British and Foreign Bible Society saw with his own eyes Voltaire’s former residence in Geneva, Switzerland, Les Delices, being used as a “repository for Bibles and Religious tracts.”

The house at this time was occupied by Colonel Henri Tronchin (1794-1865), who served as the president of the Evangelical Society of Geneva from 1834-39.[6]

The Tronchin family had long had associations with Voltaire that could be traced back to the 18th century.

One of Henri Tronchin’s ancestor’s, Francis Tronchin, was Voltaire’s doctor.

The Tronchin’s were prominent and wealthy residents of Geneva and even helped finance Voltaire in the publishing of some of his works.[7]

While the Tronchin family was prominent and wealthy citizens of Geneva, they were not predominately spiritual.

However, though it is not known exactly when, Henri Tronchin came to faith in Christ and embraced Protestantism.

Studying literature at the Academy of Geneva, he later served as artillery captain on horseback in the Dutch army.

Eventually rising in ranks to lieutenant-colonel of artillery, he married in 1824.

A superb organizer and a great leader, he helped found the Evangelical Society of Geneva (c1833).

He served as president of the Society from 1834 to 1839.

Born 100 years after Voltaire, and occupying the former home of the infamous infidel, Tronchin used the spacious house to store Bibles and Gospel tracts.

Rev. William Acworth of Queens College, Cambridge, appointed an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1829, was an eye witness to the stored Bibles and Gospel tracts.[8]

In The Missionary Register for 1836 of the BFBS, Acworth is recounting his travels in the spread of the Gospel.

Having traveled over 2,000 miles in France on the business of the Society, in the summer of 1836 his travels took him to Switzerland in August of that year.

Acworth recounts:

I went through Geneva, and was much refreshed by meeting the Committee of the Evangelical Society, with whose proceedings and objects I was so much gratified, that I wrote to this Society to make a liberal grant of 10,000 copies of the French Scriptures to promote the objects of that Society.

Our committee have only granted 5,000; but I have no doubt they will, err long, send the other 5,000.

Before I left Geneva, my friend observed.

“Probably you will like to see the house where Voltaire lived, and where he wrote his plays.”

Prompted by the spirit of curiosity, so characteristic of an Englishman, to visit the house of the celebrated infidel, I was about to put on my hat to walk into the county, when he said, “It is not necessary you should put on your hat” and he introduced me over the threshold of one room to another, and said, “tis the room where Voltaire’s play were acted for the amusement to himself and his friend.”

And what was my gratification in observing that that room had been converted into sort of Repository for Bibles and Religious Tracts.

Oh! my Christ Friends, that the spirit of infidelity had been there, to witness the results of other vaticinations [acts of prophesying] respecting the downfall of Christianity!

I know that Voltaire said, that he was living “in the twilight of Christianity” but blessed be God!

It was the twilight of the morning, which will bring on the day of universal illumination.[9]

Only fifty-eight years after his death the former home of Voltaire in Geneva, Switzerland, was indeed serving as a storehouse for Bibles and Gospel tracts.

While the Evangelical Society of Geneva did not actually purchase the house, Henri Tronchin, president of the Society, resided in the house, and used some of the rooms to store Bibles which Voltaire so vehemently opposed and prophesied Christianity’s downfall!

Yes, an ironic twist of divine Providence.

Let it also be noted, only sixteen years after Voltaire’s death, in 1794, the presence of the Bible began making in-roads in the town where he spent the last eighteen years of his life, Ferney, France.

On the very printing presses which Voltaire employed to print his irreverent works was used to print editions of the Bible and which were printed on paper that “been especially made for a superior edition of Voltaire’s works.

The Voltaire project failed, and the paper was bought and devoted to a better purpose [of printing Bibles]!”[10]

In the book Letters from an Absent Brother, by Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, which chronicles his travels through parts of Netherlands, Switzerland, Northern Italy, and France, he writes to his sister from Geneva on Wednesday evening, seven o’clock, October 1, 1823, concerning the distribution of Bibles in the town where Voltaire once lived:  When I arrived at Paris, one of the first things I heard was that a Bible society had been established at Ferney, chiefly by the aid of Baron de Stael.

What a noble triumph for Christianity over this daring infidel.

One of the first effect of the revival of true religion or even of sound learning in France, I should think would be to lower the credit of this profligate, crafty, superficial, ignorant, incorrect writer.

What plea can wit or cleverness, or the force of satire or the talent of ridicule or a fascinating style, or the power of brilliant description, form, in a Christian country, for a man who employed them all, with a bitterness or ferocity, of mind amounting to almost madness, against the Christian religion and the person of our Saviour.[11]

That a Bible society had been established in Ferney, France to help financially in the printing of Bible’s in the town where Voltaire once resided, is confirmed in the 1824 Report of the Protestant Bible Society at Paris containing the following sentence: A newly established branch at Ferney formerly the residence of Voltaire, has sent its first remittance, a sum of 167 francs.[12]

Further proof that the printing presses Voltaire once used to print his blasphemous works is contained in a transcript from the Quarterly Papers of the American and Foreign Bible Society of 1837: A Bible Society was some years since established at Ferney, once the residence of Voltaire—the prince of infidels.

This noble enterprise for the propagation of the Christian religion is said to have commenced by Baron de Stael, and a few zealous Christians in that place.

In the history of Bible Societies, this is truly a memorial event.

That the antidote should issue from the very spot where the poison of infidelity for so many years disseminated; and the advocates of Christianity should in that very place print and circulate the sacred volume, as a sufficient shield against misrepresentations sophistry which he had there assailed divine revelation, are the events which the brilliant Frenchman would have pronounced impossible.[13]