Solutions to stumbling blocks – God’s divinely inspired book, part 6; John 16:1.

Title: Solutions to stumbling blocks - God’s divinely inspired book, part 6; John 16:1.

 

 

THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE. It is to be expected that the literature created to convey God’s message to man, regardless of secondary causes and agencies, would be worthy of the divine Author.

 

As a means for the transmitting of thought, the reducing of a language to writing is an achievement of surpassing importance. It is reasonable and to be expected that God, in communication with man, would put His message into human form. How else could it be either pondered or preserved? It is equally to be expected that the literature thus created, regardless of secondary causes and agencies, would be worthy of the divine Author.

 

This aspect of the Bible’s priority even the unregenerate may profitably consider.

 

The supremacy of the literature of the Bible cannot be attributed to its human authors.

 

With few exceptions, they were common men of their times who had received no preparatory discipline for the task they assumed. In this connection it is observable that the intruding first personal pronoun is very seldom seen in these writings.

 

The New Testament is the only “holy book” comprised of letters or epistles rather than by formal dissertation.

 

The personal opinions of the human authors on the material they present are never given, as the message of the Bible is strictly God’s message to man through the agency of God the Holy Spirit and the selected writers. It is impossible for all of the writers to avoid personal opinion, as we see in almost every other work of man, and at the same time write so succinctly and beautifully.

 

In fact, the Jewish nation, from which source these human authors of the Scriptures are wholly drawn, has no ancient literature of importance outside this Sacred Book.

 

We can even contrast the writings of the early church fathers as well as the reformers or the puritans and see that none of them write with the authority of the Bible, but comment on the Bible in attempts at translation and interpretation, but never as fully and authoritatively as the any of the two testaments.

 

Everything else shows itself to be normally human with all the characteristics of a human, while the Bible has the characteristics of only an almighty God.

 

No message other than the Bible has ever been written by any man in all past ages that has secured any reasonable recognition as being more than is normally human, or that could sustain any claim to a place in the Divine Library.

 

Each age has witnessed the dismissal of the vast portion of its literature into oblivion, but the Bible abides.

 

It is literally true that books may come and books may go, but the Bible goes on forever. Outside the range of Jewish and Christian literature, the Koran would probably receive first consideration; yet “without Moses, and the prophets, the angel Gabriel, and Christ, the Koran is simply inconceivable—for the essential purport of the Koran is derived from the Old and New Testaments’” (“Mahomedanism,” Encyclopaedia Britannica) cited by Henry Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 5th ed., p. 266).

 

Yet Muslims claim that no man could write the Koran, yet it was dictated by one man and in which are several of the Bible narratives with often great discrepancies, perhaps the greatest is that Abraham attempted to sacrifice Ishmael and not Isaac, but before the birth of Isaac. They explain that the Jews corrupted the original text.

 

No unaided human writer has ever been able to imitate the simplicity of the Bible language in which the greatest truths are conveyed in the simplest language, but in the deepest grace.

 

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies,

 

The four Gospels, like all other books of the New Testament, are inexhaustible in the ever unfolding truth they convey; yet the text itself is restricted to the point of a brevity that is impossible to imitate. 

 

And the seamlessness of it is incredible.

 

GEN 2:10

Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.

 

Ex 26:32

And you shall hang it on four pillars of acacia overlaid with gold, their hooks also being of gold, on four sockets of silver.

 

REV 4:7

And the first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle.

 

Matthew: The kingship of Jesus Christ. [lion]

Mark: The Servant Jesus Christ. [calf or ox]

Luke: The Humanity of Jesus Christ. [man]

John: The Deity of Jesus Christ. [eagle]

 

There is no person in ancient history that has this much written about him. Jesus is the most documented man in all of ancient history.

 

On the other hand, the Bible message is never hurried, cramped, or unreadable. In fact, the narrative at times seems unnecessarily explicit and repetitive.

 

The Bible affirms certain facts or incidents without opinionated commentary that is found in almost all human manuscripts. 

 

Human authors seem hopelessly unable to let simple facts speak for themselves, nor are they willing to credit the reader with the requisite sagacity [discernment] to draw his own conclusions. What novelist has been able to refrain from those extended introductions of their characters which assay to analyze every motive and, to that extent, predetermine the reader’s deductions? When has biography been so written that the reader retained any latitude whatever in the evaluation of character based on the subject in action? The biographer’s opinion and not the subject’s life is too often exhibited.

 

In the Bible, however, the human author’s analyzing and moralizing efforts are excluded and the complicated field of the application of truth is left to the Spirit of God and is not disturbed by human interpretation.

 

The pastor teacher does his share of interpretation, but that has to be under the power of the Spirit as well. As a priest you have the right to accept or reject anything that the pastor teaches in the privacy of your own soul.

 

The Bible has fascinated the child and the sage, has been translated into approx. 1000 languages, printed roughly 50 million per year, and has provoked countless literature, music, movies, and art.

 

Without offering the usual barriers found in the literary productions of men, the Bible fascinates the child and entrances the wise man. It, as no other book has ever done or could do, has made its appeal to all races and peoples regardless of national bias; which appeal is demonstrated by the fact that the Bible, or portions of it, and to meet the urgent need, has been translated into about one thousand languages and dialects and the output and distribution of these has reached to about forty million copies in a year. This is a striking reversal of Voltaire’s prediction, made one 200 years ago, that within one hundred years from the time he spoke the Bible would be obsolete.

 

The impulse to translate the Bible into other languages is itself inexplicable. This impulse has served to extend the knowledge of God’s Word and has gone far in stirring the feeble incentive on the part of men to translate other ancient writings.

 

And what can be said of the prodigious volume and exalted character of literature, music, movies, and art which the Bible has provoked? What books have ever done that?

 

The Bible represents 1300th of all Greek and Roman literature; yet it has produced more thought, analysis, comparisons, and illustrations than all literature combined.

 

The Bible itself represents in magnitude not a three hundredth part of the extant Greek and Roman literature; yet it has attracted to, and concentrated upon, itself more thought and produced more works, explanatory, illustrative, apologetic—upon its text, its exegesis, its doctrines, its history, its geography, its ethnology, its chronology, and its evidences—than all the Greek and Roman literature combined. Not to mention being copied more than any other book in existence.

 

Likewise, what can be said of the quotations from the Bible by almost every class of authors in the world? How many people have said, “the truth will set you free,” or, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or, “spare the rod and spoil the child,” or  hung the 10 commandments in public buildings. What quotes from the Koran or the Dao or any other religious writings are quoted over and over by people that aren’t even positive towards it?

 

What other book has served to develop, fix, and preserve the languages into which it is translated, or to retard changes and corruption of speech, as has the Bible?

 

From no angle of approach to its literary properties is the Bible seen to be such a book as man could have written if he would. It is, therefore, the Word of God.

 

THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. Science is ever shifting and revising yet the Bible has not changed and has never conflicted with sound science. Science always catches up to the Bible.

 

JOB 26:3

He stretches out the north over empty space,

And hangs the earth on nothing.

 

In the field of science, no human author has been able to avoid the fate of obsolescence in later periods; yet the Divine Records have been so framed that there is no conflict with true science in this or any age of human history. It is impossible for human authors to write as the Bible is written in matters of science.

 

ISA 55:10 [700 BC]

"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

And do not return there without watering the earth,

 

God alone could execute the superhuman task of writing a book which, though dispensing facts concerning nature, even from its creation to its final glories, nevertheless avoids a conflict with ignorance and bigotry as these have existed in endless variety from the dawn of human history.

 

THE BIBLE AND TEMPORAL POWER. The intention to surmount human opposition and defeat the forces of evil by reliance upon divine power could never have originated in the human heart.

 

It is natural and normal for men to resort to such coercive power as is available to achieve their ends. And history records no movement other than Christianity which has secured its designs by the appeal to heart and mind of each individual and not a call to arms or to a certain country or a certain government or political group. Indeed, it is one of the deflections of the Church of Rome that she departed from this spiritual ideal. The intention to surmount human opposition and defeat the forces of evil by reliance upon divine power could never have originated in the human heart.