Billions and Billions of Books

By Allen White


This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. John 21:24-25


Just how many books would that be? Now, John wouldn’t have considered microfilm or microfiche. There was no network server or cloud computing back then. All of that aside, it would be a lot of books.


Only a third of the earth’s surface is land, but there are 57.5 million acres of land on the earth. How many books would fill a square mile? How high could you stack them? Would they be on shelves or just piled up?


Suddenly, the average Barnes & Noble seems a little small. Even amazon.com doesn’t have that kind of inventory. Thank goodness Jesus didn’t tweet. We’d never stop seeing that whale.


While Luke thoroughly investigated Jesus life (Luke 1:1-4), John witnessed everything first hand. From the day that John met Jesus along with his brother James, John was very close to Jesus. Not only was John one of the twelve, he was also in Jesus’ inner circle of Peter, James and John (Matthew 26:37). John saw it all.


As many miracles and healings as John and the other writers recorded, there were far more to report. As many profound words of wisdom that came from Jesus’ lips, not every single word could possibly be written down.


Jesus as a person fully reflected life in the Spirit. His character was impeccable. While His words at times were pointed, He was without sin. Jesus always said the right thing. Jesus always did the right thing. He had nothing to apologize for.


There is so much that we don’t know. Our job is not to worry about what we don’t know. There is so much that we do know.


What about Jesus’ life impacts you? What part of Jesus’ character would you want your life to reflect? What part of Jesus’ mission are you willing to take on?


I’m astounded by these words of Jesus: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). What could those “greater things” look like in your life?


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