Christ, Christianity and the Bible Part 11

"When ye received the word of G.o.d which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of G.o.d."

(1 Thessalonians 2:13.)

THE Apostle here testifies that he believes himself to be the bearer of a revelation direct from G.o.d; that the words he speaks and the words he writes are not the words of man, but the Word of G.o.d, warm with his breath, filled with his thoughts, and stamped with his will.

In this same epistle he writes:

"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord." (1 Thessalonians 4:15.)

The preposition "by" is the dative of invest.i.ture as well as means, and is Paul's declaration that what he is writing to the Thessalonians are not his ideas, clothed in his own language, but ideas and thoughts whose invest.i.ture, whose very clothing, is no less than the word of the ascended Lord--he who is none other than the "Word of G.o.d."

Writing to the Corinthians he says:

"Which things we speak, _not in the words_ which man's wisdom teacheth, _but_ (and grammar requires us to understand) _in the words_ which the Holy Ghost teacheth." (1 Corinthians 2:13.)

According to Paul's testimony, therefore, the fourteen epistles which he wrote to the churches are not letters written by a mortal man, giving expression to the ideas and thoughts of man, but are the very words of the infinite G.o.d, giving utterance by the Holy Ghost to the thoughts of G.o.d.

An examination of the other epistles of the New Testament will show the same high and unqualified pretension. The apostles write (all of them) not as men who are giving an opinion of their own, but as men who know themselves under the domination of the Spirit, and as giving authoritative expression to the mind and will of G.o.d.

Nor is this peculiar to the writers of the New Testament.

Constantly, the writers of the Old Testament introduce their message with the tremendous sentence: "Thus saith the Lord." Again and again they declare the Lord has spoken "by" them. David says: "The words of the Lord were in my tongue." Jeremiah says the Word of the Lord came to him and the Lord said: "Take a roll of a book and write therein all the words that I have spoken to thee." Then we are told that "Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord, which he had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book."

After these words had been read to the princes of Israel, they asked Baruch, saying, "Tell us now, how didst thou write all these words at his mouth?" Then Baruch answered them, "He p.r.o.nounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book."

The process is clear enough. The Lord spake his words in Jeremiah.

Jeremiah received the words direct from the Lord, dictated them word for word to Baruch, Baruch wrote them as they were p.r.o.nounced in a book; and when written, the words were the written words of G.o.d.

Ezekiel declares when the Lord commanded him to speak to the children of Israel, he said to him: "Speak with _my words_ unto them." Ezekiel not only speaks them, he writes them in the book of his prophecy. Ezekiel gives an account of how the Lord spake to him and inspired the book which bears his name. He says: "The Spirit entered into me when he spoke to me; . . . the spirit entered into me and spake with me." The Spirit said unto him: "When I speak with thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, thus saith the Lord."

The Apostle Paul, speaking in commendation of Timothy because from a child he had known the Holy Scriptures (and by Holy Scriptures the Apostle meant the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi--these were the Scriptures Timothy as well as every Jew knew as such), tells him that all Scripture (and of course any decent exegesis of the pa.s.sage with its weight of context would recognize that the Apostle was referring to the Scriptures Timothy had known from childhood, the Scriptures as we have them to-day from Genesis to Malachi)--Paul tells Timothy in the most precise terms that all these writings are inspired of G.o.d.

The Apostle Peter, corroboratively speaking of these very Scriptures of the Old Testament, says they came not "by the will of man, but holy men of old spake as they were moved (literally, carried along) by the Holy Ghost."

Thus, this book we call the Bible comes to us with the enormous and uncompromising claim that it is not a man-made book, but a book whose real and sole author is the living and eternal G.o.d.

This claim stands face to face with human need.

Here we are from birth to death, pilgrims on the highway of time, not knowing whence we come, nor whither we go. We need a guide to lead us, a light to shine when we stand at that parting of the ways --where eternity becomes the end of time.

This book meets us and claims to be all that--a guide through time, a light to shine upon the road that leads to G.o.d and to be, in every line and accent, the inspired, incorruptible, infallible Word of G.o.d.

How may we know it is all it claims to be?

Never more than now did we need to know it.

Voices in the air are crying that we have been deceived; that this book upon which our fathers pillowed their heads when at the end of life's journey, they laid them down to die; this book we have held as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path is, after all, at its best, only the word of man and not the Word of G.o.d at all.

Every now and then resounding blows are heard as they strike against the old foundation. Those who pretend to be working in the interest of the truth bid us stand aside, lest we and our hopes be buried in the impending ruin.

We need to know at any cost whether this splendid and sustaining faith has deceived us; whether this book we have looked upon as holy and divine is nothing more than the word of man, spoken with his stammering tongue and written with his stumbling pen.

We must know, and know for a certainty that will leave no peradventure to arise as a troubling after-ghost, whether this Bible is, as Paul says it is, in truth, the Word of G.o.d; and the question will insistently repeat itself:

"How may we know the Bible _is_ the Word of G.o.d?"

The question need not make us tremble.

The answers are at hand.

The evidence is so great, its very wealth is an embarra.s.sment.

That evidence stated, detailed, a.n.a.lyzed and elaborated, would require--not a few pages--but whole libraries.

One broad and general proposition may be laid down.

It is this:

The Bible is proved to BE the Word of G.o.d when it is shown to be NOT the word of man; and it is proved to be not the word of man when it is shown to be--not such a book as a man WOULD write if he COULD; nor such a book as a man COULD write if he WOULD.

That it is not the word of man--not such a book as a man _would_ write if he could, is made clear enough by the picture it paints of the natural man.

This picture is so sharply drawn, the figures stand out in such living and apt delineation, that no one can mistake the import.

According to the Bible, man came direct from the hand of G.o.d. G.o.d created him body, soul and spirit--a tripart.i.te being. The soul was the person, the seat of appet.i.te and pa.s.sions. The spirit was the seat of the mind, the centre of reflection. Spirit and body were the distinct agents of the soul. The spirit, the agent to connect the soul with G.o.d--the body, the medium of the soul's manifestation or materialization in this world, and the instrument for its use and enjoyment. The mind, seated in the spirit, was intended, under the influence of the spirit, to be the governor and regulator of the soul--enabling the soul rightly to use its appet.i.te and legitimately to satisfy its pa.s.sions.

Thus organized, G.o.d set man up in the world to be his const.i.tutional, moral, spiritual and governmental image--his likeness morally--his image (his representative) administratively.

Man turned his back on G.o.d, listened to the appet.i.te of his soul, and surrendered to the demands of sensual hunger.

The soul, at once, sank down into the environment of the body. The mind sank down into the environment of the soul and became, henceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind "sensual," "devilish,"

a mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimited gratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind, the spirit lost its vital relationship to G.o.d, lost its function as a connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will of G.o.d; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understand G.o.d; and feeling the influence of the mind, instead of influencing it, followed it in its downward course into the environment of the soul.

Out of this dislocation the soul came forth dominant over mind and spirit. Soul appet.i.te and soul desires became supreme; the body, the willing and active agent thereof. From this period on, man was no longer a possible spiritual being, but a "natural" man. The word "natural" is "soulical." In Scripture it is twice translated "sensual." The much-used word "psychological" is a derivation of it.

In the Bible sense of the word, a psychological person is just the opposite of a pneumatical or spiritual person.

Man was now psychological, soulical, sensual. He had been transformed into a being no better than an _intellectual_ animal, and the slave of his physical functions. Instead of being the master of his appet.i.tes, he was mastered by them. His pa.s.sions intended, under right use, to be blessings, became curses; instead of angels, they became as demons. Instead of dwelling in the midst of his endowment in harmony with it and able to direct it, he found himself at its mercy, incessantly smitten by it and suffering his own equipment. Repudiating faith, walking by sight, talking of reason and governed by his senses, he threw himself open to invasion by the world, the flesh and the Devil.

As a result of his fall, man has become a degenerate, full of the germs of evil, "every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only evil continually"--an incurable self-corrupter.

In him there is not one thing that commends him to a holy G.o.d; and even should he succeed in living a life of perfect morality, his best righteousness in the sight of G.o.d would be no better than a bundle of filthy and contagious rags.

There is no power within him by which he can change the essential character and determined trend of his life. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. All the effort that the most devoted and laborious of men might give to the culture of a hedgerow of thorns would not succeed in producing one grape. Though men spent life and fortune in cultivating a field of thistles, they would not gather a single fig. No sooner (says the Bible) can the natural man bring forth the fruit of righteousness unto G.o.d. The Ethiopian may change his skin, the leopard his spots, before a natural man can change himself into a spiritual man. "The carnal mind is enmity with G.o.d; for it is not subject to the law of G.o.d, _neither indeed can be_." "The natural man (the word 'natural' is psuchikos, soulical) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of G.o.d: for they are foolishness unto him: _neither can he know them_, because they are spiritually (pneumatikos, _pneumatically_) discerned." "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" meaning thereby that G.o.d alone can sound the depths of its measureless capacity for sin and iniquity; therefore, he says: "I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins."

The end of man is to die.

Such an end is not natural.

It is unnatural.