The Christadelphian 1875 13-19

THE BIBLE TRUE
OR
ARGUMENTS, ARTICLES, PAPERS, EXTRACTS AND MISCELLANEOUS MATTER, FROM VARIOUS SOURCES TO PROVE THAT
THE SCRIPTURES ARE THE AUTHENTIC AND GENUINE RECORDS OF DIVINE REVELATION
AND THE ONLY SOURCE, AT PRESENT AVAILABLE TO MAN OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE, AND THE WAY BY WHICH IT IS TO BE SECURED
“Concerning Thy testimonies, I have known of old that Thou hast founded them for ever. Thy word is true from the beginning.”—(Psalm 119:152, 160.)
“Come hither, and hear the word of the Lord your God.”—(Jos. 3:9.)
“He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully: what is the chaff (dreams) to the wheat?”—(Jer. 23:28.)
“When ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God.”—(1 Thess. 2:13).
“The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”—(2 Peter 1:21.)
“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son.”—(Heb. 1:1).
“The sword of the Spirit is the word of God.”—(Eph. 6:17).
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”—(2 Tim. 3:16).
“Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed.”–(Prov. 13:13).
“Their root shall be as rottenness and their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”—(Isaiah 5:24).
THE best way of attaining a thorough conviction of the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures, and of the divine character of their origin, is to read them constantly. In this process of constant reading (assuming a tolerable acquaintance on the part of the reader with men, books and things), a vast number of evidences will be perceived that are invisible to the casual student, and some of which are scarcely capable of being expressed. Their united force is simply irresistible to a penetrating and candid mind. Unbelief is most confident where there is most ignorance of the Scriptures, and where there is the least capacity to perceive a logical result, and least inclination to look after or receive earnestly the lessons of wisdom.
There are always plenty of shallow minds with a semi-sharpness, whose propensities lead them to prefer unbelief, a bias of which, perhaps, they are scarcely conscious, but which, nevertheless, strongly impels them to seek objections and find difficulties, and give way to arguments against the Scriptures, and this, perhaps, with much show of candour and profession of desire for “truth.” To shut their mouths is an impossibility; the attempt to convince them as futile as arguing with a horse. It is not to meet their hopeless case that this department is opened in the Christadelphian. The object is to comfort the minds of believers, by strengthening their faith in the foundation on which they stand. The world is wicked, cold and desolating; the times are trying to the last point of endurance. The word is a constant refuge, and, in a sense nothing else is needed. Nevertheless, whatever helps the hand of faith to hold with a firmer grasp the unseen realities of a present divine superintendence and of the coming glory of God in the earth, is a comfort by the way which will be acceptable to every true heart that is toiling in the hardships of a faithful walk before God in Christ. For this reason, we propose to keep this department supplied by matter tending to establish the truthfulness of the word of God. This matter will sometimes be original, but more frequently culled from a variety of sources. We shall be thankful to any reader coming across anything good in this line, who will send us the same, for the benefit of the brethren generally. We make a commencement with the following excellent remarks by Dr. Thomas, which occur in an article in the Herald, in reply to a reader who expressed dissatisfaction with the Dr’s constant assumption that the Bible was true. It is headed—
“Our Assumption
We admit that we have reasoned and expounded upon the assumption that the writings of the apostles were AUTHENTIC, or had everything necessary or requisite to give them authority; and were GENUINE, or not spurious; but just what they claimed to be, as expressed in themselves. From personal examination, we were satisfied of the authenticity and genuineness of the books usually denominated ‘the Scriptures;’ and in our course of life, having been thrown among those who professed to believe that the Bible contained the only revelation of the mind, will, purpose, and promises of God, extant among men; and that it is, consequently, not only authentic, but the only authority to be deferred to in all religious questions and controversies. Having stood related to such as these, we have not hitherto laboured to convince them of what they professed to believe already; but confined ourselves to the confirmation of their professed belief, in trying to impart to them an understanding of what it taught. We have succeeded in the work to some limited degree; but not to the extent the testimony and the labour bestowed authorised one to expect. The reason probably is, or at least it may be one reason, that our unconvinced readers do not really believe the Bible-teaching to be the voice of God—that they merely acquiesce in the current opinion that the Bible is His word in some sense or other; but really believe nothing at all about the matter.”
Flesh and Blood Not the Author of the Bible
But though we have assumed that our readers were in truth believers in the authenticity and genuineness of the Bible, we have ever been presenting them the strongest possible testimony for its divine origin and authority in showing them, that from the very nature of the peculiar principles and doctrines it revealed, and which we have endeavoured to teach them, it must have come from a source independent of the laws to which flesh and blood are subjected. In other words, that the truly philosophical way to have faith in the Bible is to understand its teaching. We never yet heard of a man who understood it, denying that God spake by the prophets and apostles; but we have heard of many learned in the wisdom of the world, but fools in the teaching of the Bible, who reject it as a cunningly-devised fable. These persons have been unable to define and expound one of its first principles, and yet they have rejected it with scorn and contempt. Such a course as this would be condemned as exceedingly unphilosophical and reprehensible by those very persons, if bibliofidels were to act so in relation to the subjects they favoured and approved. We conclude, then, that the first step to faith in the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures is to understand the doctrine or teaching; in other words, THE SYSTEM OF IDEAS they reveal. This system will be found to be sui generis—as high above any system elaborated by human wisdom, or rather folly, as the throne of the Eternal is above this nether earth. From our experience and observation of flesh and blood in its literary and spiritual enterprises, which are in accordance with the history of the world in all ages, we are certain that no combination of brains working by blood arterial, under the excitation derivable from all that is in the world, and from their inner consciousness, could elaborate such a system of ideas as is peculiar to the Bible alone. To anyone that understands it, it is manifestly not of the flesh; nor in harmony with the flesh; the flesh it never flatters, but denounces it as utterly destitute of any good thing; and condemns it to death, corruption, and final abolition from the earth. Hence, as it makes war upon the flesh, and rejects it as profiting nothing in regard to the eternal destiny of the children of Adam, all who are of the flesh, walking after its principles, impulses, and failings, reject it as unsuitable to nature, to nature’s laws, and to nature’s conception of nature’s God.
Nay, verily; nature, that is, flesh and blood, or ground nature is not, and could not in the very nature of things be the author of the Bible. Its ideas are too grand, too luminous, too exalted for souls of dusty origin to conceive. None but a mind comprehending all things at a glance; that sees the end from the beginning, with all those intermediate devious and entangled complications weaving out that predetermined consummation—none but such minds could have built up, during four thousand years, the pyramid of thought destined to stand out from a background of seventy centuries, the observed, from base to point, of all earth’s ransomed people, so long as the sun and moon endures. The Bible system of ideas being of this character, we find it impossible to attribute any other origin to it than that which it testifies of itself—that ‘prophecy was not actuated at any time by man’s will, but the holy men of God spake, being moved by the Holy Spirit.’ This is Peter’s testimony, to which also Paul consents, saying, ‘In many portions and in various ways, God formerly spake to the fathers in the prophets, during these last days He spake to us in a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things.’ And the apostles both agreed with Nehemiah, the old Tirshatha of Jerusalem, who addressing Jehovah saith, ‘Thou gavest also thy Good Spirit to instruct our fathers’ in the wilderness. “Many years didst thou forbear them, and testifiedest against them by Thy Spirit in Thy prophets, yet would they not give ear.’
One True Cause of Infidelity
All the testimony for Jesus is contained in the Scriptures. If it be not there, it is nowhere else among men. Many a heart and brains is denied access to that testimony by educational and circumstantial hindrances, whose owner would otherwise not only confess that Jesus is Jehovah, but would also believe the gospel and obey it, if he could but free himself, or be freed, from their trammels. The men whose hearts and brains are not to be envied, are those having the hearts and brains of presidents, professors, theologists, and clergymen, who are ever babbling about divinity in trinity, and making the word of God of none effect by their traditions. It is such men as these that have perverted the people, and turned them into merely nominal believers of the Bible, which is literally of no use in the matter of clerical piety and religion. The Bible has fallen into desuetude, and “ignorance” has become among Protestants, who once boasted that the Bible was their religion, truly “the mother of devotion.” In fact, infidelity now reigns in church and world, and all its “hearts and brains” are overpowered with spiritual surfeiting and drunkenness.
Gibbon, Hume, Volney, and Voltaire were men whose want of faith in the Bible was mainly attributable to the hearts and brains of the clerical orders of their respective countries. Volney and Voltaire only knowing Christianity as burlesqued in the sprinkled Paganism of Europe, renounced “the church,” and uttered impieties against the Jesus of the idiotic and demoniac priests of Rome. Gibbon and Hume were surrounded by similar influences. They looked at Christianity through the state religions or prostitutions of Britain, and rejected it, as the Jews now reject it, because they do not understand the Old and New Testaments, and confound Romanism, Protestantism, and Sectarianism with the doctrine of Christ. It is the clergy that make men infidels, by teaching them nonsense which makes the Bible unintelligible and fabulous to all thinking men who try to interpret it, by their traditions. This Gibbon, Hume, and others found it impossible to do; and, therefore, instead of rejecting the foolishness of the clergy, and holding on to the Bible as not responsible for the ignorance and sophistry of learned fools, they rejected the whole affair, and avowed themselves the disciples of nature, and the hierophants of what is termed by that school ‘Nature’s God.’
‘Miracles’
The word ‘miracle,’ in Scripture, is τερας, teras, a wonder, and is used in sixteen texts in the New testament, but always in connection with other words, as σημειον, sêmeion, a sign; δυναμις, dunamis, power; or μερισμος, merismos, distribution. In Heb. 2:4, Paul introduces the four words, saying, that God bore witness to the apostolic testimony, ‘by signs and wonders, and various powers and distributions of Holy Spirit, according to His will.’ Objectors to the manifestations of divine energy, as ‘opposed to the laws of nature, and against human experience,’ group these indiscriminately under the word ‘miracles,’ which they regard as violations of nature’s laws, so that their proposition amounts to this, namely, ‘A sign, a wonder, power and distributions of Holy Spirit, are all contrary to the laws of nature, and against human experience!’ But in opposition to this, we venture to affirm that these things are all in accordance with nature’s laws, and in harmony with human experience in a multitude of instances. Thus, ‘the lights in the firmament of the heavens are for signs.’—(Gen. 1:14.) The rainbow is a sign that the earth shall be no more submerged by a flood of waters.—(Gen. 4:12, 13.) Isaiah and his sons were for signs and wonders in Israel.—(chap. 8:18.) There is nothing in all this contrary to nature’s laws or staggering to human experience; but perfectly reasonable in the bearings thereof.
But ‘wonders and signs’ used oftentimes to go together. Thus, Moses was a subject of wonder in his own person. He put his hand into his bosom, and when he drew it out ‘it was leprous as snow;’ and he put it in again, and withdrew it a second time, ‘and it was turned again as his other flesh.’ This was wonderful, but was it contrary to nature’s laws, and human experience? Do men ever have the leprosy and get cured? Yes, but not so suddenly. Truly; and the suddenness of the thing made it an especial wonder. Its suddenness was not contrary to Moses’ experience, for it happened to him, but then not as yet within the range of other people’s experience; and as to human experience in general, we venture to say that it is not yet acquainted with all the wonders which are educible by the itensifying of laws already existing, many of which it is to be presumed human experience, though very wise in its own conceit, has not yet discovered by its philosophisings and experiments!
Now the sudden infliction and cure of a disease (which on a larger scale was repeated in the case of Miriam, the sister of Moses) was not only a wonder but a sign to be exhibited before Israel in Egypt, in confirmation of the truth that the God of Abraham had appeared to him, as he declared. This was what the wonder signified when performed in connexion with Moses’ declaration, that the God of Abraham had appeared to him, and sent him to deliver them. When the wonder was performed, it became an item of human experience; and apart from any declaration, only signified to Moses and those who saw it, the presence of a supernatural power. The declaration of the angel at the bush, made the wonder a special sign; and every Jew that rejoices in Moses as their deliverer from Egypt, is a living witness that a sign and a wonder are reasonable and possible things, and according to the experience of 600,000 men, who, in consequence of this experience, put themselves under Him as their commander and prophet king.
But all wonders are not genuine. Some in the Scriptures are ‘lying wonders.’ Jannes and Jambres performed wonders ‘by their enchantments,’ but had at length to give up the contest, and confess that Moses performed his wonders by the power of God. Paul also predicted that ‘power and signs, and lying wonders’ would be displayed in the establishment of the apostasy, which now, as a pall of intense darkness, overspreads the words. The existence of these very counterfeits in all the countries where the apostles laboured through all ages since, is a standing and living testimony to the fact, that signs and wonders, powers and distribution of Holy Spirit, were formerly familiar elements of human experience, and assuredly believed to have been performed by the finger of God.
‘I am Jehovah (saith the Spirit) the powers (elohai) of all flesh;’ ‘by me they live and move and do exist;’ ‘is there anything too hard for me?’ Has He given laws to nature, and can He not work great wonders upon and through that nature vastly greater than the natural mind has ever yet experienced or conceived? Is nature subject to no other laws than are known to men? Are their knowledge and experience to be the measure of Omniscience? Cannot the Power that made man, raise him from the dead, give him sight, and heal him of whatever malady afflicts him, in an instant? All these things He can do, and more than we can conceive, and upon principles it has not yet entered into the heart of man to divine.
Christianity Not Based Upon Miracles
It is said that Christianity is based upon miracles. To those who read the Scriptures but do not study them, this may be taken as evidently true. They see that signs and wonders are frequently narrated in the Scriptures, and, therefore, imagine that the system of ideas they revealed is based upon what they consider a violation of the laws of nature, with which, indeed, all the philosophers of the human race that ever lived, put together, have been only microscopically acquainted. The foundation of Christian doctrine is not signs and wonders, but the verbal promises of the Eternal, who cannot lie. If signs and wonders had never been wrought, these promises would still remain. The signs and wonders were originally performed to convince the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of the ninth and forty-second generations from Abraham, that the Eternal Spirit spoke by Moses and Jesus. It is not necessary here to speak of the intermediate times; what we are aiming at is sufficiently established by what happened in the ninth and forty-second. These two generations are representative of the nation; and the purpose of Jehovah was to make this nation His witness as long as the years of God. Thus He said to this nation, ‘YE ARE MY WITNESSES, saith Jehovah, AND MY SERVANT whom I have chosen; that ye may believe and know, and understand that I am HE; before me there was no AIL formed, nor shall there be after me. I am HE who SHALL BE אגבי אגבי יהוה anoki anoki yahveh;) and beside me no Saviour.’ ‘Ye are my witnesses. Is there an Eloah besides me? Yea, there is no Rock; I know not any.’—(Isaiah 43:10, 11; 44:8.) Individuals and generations die and pass away, and the non-Hebrew nations, called Gentiles, sooner or later, perish from the earth; but the Hebrew nation is immortal, as it is written, ‘Though I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee, O Jacob, my servant; but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished’—(Jer. 30:11; 46:28.)
Here, then, is a witnessing nation for all generations, to whom, says Paul. ‘were committed the oracles of God. And what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?’—(Rom. 3:3.) He considered that this committal of the Scriptures to Israel’s care, gave the Jews a great advantage over the Gentiles. Now, Jehovah by His signs and wonders convinced this nation of the divine mission and inspiration of the prophets, whom they maltreated, rebelled against, and put to death often, because they would not prophesy to them ‘smooth things.’ Such a nation is certainly a credible witness in the premisses—witnessing to the truthfulness and excellency of the men who convicted them of the most hideous abominations against God and men. This nation, contemporary with Moses, with Jesus, and with ourselves as living witnesses, testifies that the Eternal proved to them satisfactorily and so demonstratively, that they have never been able to forget it; that Moses had seen His messenger at the bush, and that he had been made a God to Pharaoh, with Aaron for his prophet; and constituted both at the bush and at Sinai, the Captain of their Salvation from Egypt, and the lawgiver, prophet, and king for the Eternal over Israel. That their faith in this had not wavered for three thousand four hundred years, and more; and they have not, and could not, honestly deny it, though extermination by the most cruel torments might depend. Were they to deny it, their whole history would pronounce them to be contemptible and perjured villains. It is impossible, therefore, that they can give any other testimony concerning Moses than that which is on record in the public archives of the nation, called the Bible, or THE BOOK.
Now there is not in the world the first inkling of contemporary testimony even to cast a doubt upon the truth of this great national conviction. No one can, therefore, say, ‘I do not believe that Moses ever existed, or that he was the Eternal’s prophet, historian, and registrar.’ As faith is the belief of testimony, and the testimony does not exist, such an one can have no such faith. He may play the fool, indeed, and say ‘I dont believe,’ and when asked the reason, say ‘because I don’t!’ But what is the value of a fool’s dissent from the united testimony of so ancient and renowned a nation as Jacob? It is lighter than vanity, and nought to be accounted of.
Well, then, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, called the Pentateuch, contain a true and faithful account of things from ‘the beginning’ to the death of Moses inclusive, the nation to whom they were committed being witness in all its generations. Certainly, in regard to this, it is a great foundation to stand on. They are authentic and genuine records, and being assured of this, we have ‘the assurance of faith,’ and do not need ‘miracles,’ which could add nothing useful. The foundation of Christianity is laid in Genesis, where Moses has recorded the promises of the Eternal Spirit. We believe those promises, not because of signs and wonders, but because Moses, the servant of Jehovah, declares that God made them according as he has stated. The doctrine of Christ is based upon the promises in Gen. 3:15; 12:2, 3, 7; 13:15–17; 15:5, 6 18–21; 18:5–8; 21:10, 12; 22:15–18. These passages are the basis. Abel and the sons of God before the flood believed the promise in Gen. 3:15, as a matter of testimony; and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses believed all the passages in the same way—they believed the promises without signs and wonders; so that their Christianity rested upon the Word of God credibly testified. ‘We walk by faith, not by sight’ of signs and wonders. ‘A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign;’ we are not of this sort, but believing Moses’ writings, we receive as genuine and authentic the promises he records.
Thus we have seen that the foundation of Christianity is declared to have been laid, and proved to have been so. Moses declares it; and Jehovah’s witnessing nation testifies that he is infallible authority in the matter.
When Jesus came to the forty-second generation of Abraham’s posterity, the great object of his mission was not to perform signs and wonders, but to deliver a message to Israel from the Eternal Spirit, announcing to them peace through the re-establishment of the kingdom, which was then prostrate before their enemies. The signs and wonders he performed by Holy Spirit power were to convince that generation that God approved him, and spoke by him, as he had by Moses. This conviction was thoroughly wrought into the minds of thousands of the nation, both priests and people; and into those also of such multitudes of contemporary Gentiles, that they abandoned their gods, and became Jews by adoption, being circumcised with the circumcision of the Christ, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, when buried with him in baptism.—(Col. 2:2.) From that day to this, all true believers of the other nations become Jews when they become Christians, and thus become an element of the Hebrew nation, and therefore, WITNESSES OF GOD.
These two classes, then, the believing Jews and Gentiles of the first century, became a witnessing nation, and are styled in the New Testament, THE ECCLESIA, because called out by the gospel invitation to possess hereafter the kingdom when restored to Israel. This generation of believers contemporary with Christ and the apostles, being thoroughly enlightened and convinced, they became, to all subsequent generations, what the ninth generation from Abraham was to them—credible witnesses for Jesus. This ecclesia was constituted ‘the pillar and support of the truth,’ whose mission, in its several generation, is not to perform signs and wonders, but ‘to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints,’ and, in so doing, to save themselves, and those that hear them. “The things that thou hast heard of me among witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”—(2 Tim. 2:2.) This was the arrangement for the future—by teaching the testimony; not by signs and wonders.