I only wish I had written this, but I am reading through one of his Bibles (maybe this one) in my quiet times now. I take it to church with me and use it during my home Bible studies with Jehovah's Witnesses:
I do not look particularly special or imposing; just an old King James Bible with a somewhat battered cover and pages worn with time and much use, and with verses underlined and notes scribbled in the margins. I am not his only Bible – many of my brothers, older or younger than I, were carried and read and studied and used by him, for the better part of six decades. But, like all of the others, I was loved and honored and believed by him…and most of all I was preached by him.
For Clyde Hartley was a preacher, and that makes me a preacher’s Bible. In the 12 churches he pastored from one end of Alabama to the other, he preached. Revivals and supply preaching, he preached. Every opportunity he got, he preached. Without boasting, I say there is something special about a preacher’s Bible. All Bibles are precious and powerful and important to the saints of God who believe them, but I was privileged to be owned by a preacher – by an old soldier of the cross.
I have ridden in his car with him, walked into pulpits with him, accompanied him to gravesides, kept watch with him on long dark nights, listened as he said, “You may kiss the bride,” and helped him give counsel and comfort to those seeking it.
I don’t know how many sermons have been preached from my pages, but it is many. I could not say how many souls have come to Jesus through my Gospel, but the number is great. I do not know how many lives have been influenced or how many people helped by the preacher and me, but it is a vast multitude, for he preached many years and touched many people.
He preached about Jericho and Jerusalem and Jabesh-Gilead.
About Samson and Samuel and Saul of Tarsus.
About Heaven and hell, and the rich man and Lazarus.
About blind Bartimaeus, Peter, John the Baptist, and doubting Thomas.
Little Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree, and John on the Isle of Patmos.
About Moses, Daniel, the three Hebrew children, Abraham, Joseph, Nicodemus, Elijah, Noah, Solomon, and the woman at the well.
He preached salvation, and said, “All have sinned,” and, “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and, “God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us,” and, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”
He preached about sin and the second coming.
About love and holiness and power.
About hope and peace and mercy.
About grace and goodness and glory.
About The Great Commission, The Great Physician, and The Great Shepherd.
About David and Goliath, Paul and Silas, Ruth and Naomi, Cain and Abel, and Jonah and the whale.
And most of all, above all, he preached Jesus. His birth, life, death, resurrection and return. His beauty, power, wisdom, and His ministry at the right hand of the throne of God.
And because I knew the man personally, I can say: he lived what he preached. He walked with God, had great faith, looked for a new Heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness…and in so doing left a legacy for those who follow.
And now the preacher’s voice is silent, and his form is stilled.
But his work remains, and in that City he preached about so often he has found that every word I gave him was true, for he knows now the One who wrote me.
So now we’ll say our amens and goodbyes and depart, but we will expect to meet again soon, because he and I have told you to expect that.
If he were here he would take me and open me and read me and tell you one last time: “God loves you,” and, “Ye must be born again,” and, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
Now I’ll go home with someone, and be put in a place of safekeeping, and perhaps be used very little for the rest of my days. But that is all right with me. Like the preacher who owned me I have finished my course. But when you take me out and look at me and handle me, treat me with the honor and respect due God’s Word, and with a little more besides.
Because in my younger days…
I was Clyde Hartley’s Bible.
By Ricky Emery, Baptist preacher and Clyde Hartley’s son-in-law, for his funeral Aug. 1, 2008.
