The book I hold before you in my hand is easily recognizable. It is the volume we call the Bible. I say we call it that because it nowhere refers to itself by that title. Indeed, we do not know who first called it the Bible. The name originated from the ancient seaport on the Mediterranean Sea which came to be known as Byblos. It lay about twenty miles north of the modern Beirut, and was originally called Gebal. It became the center of the maritime trade in ancient times. Sailing vessels from everywhere converged upon it to secure loads of cedar and copper.
Egyptian dealers brought papyrus to Byblos for export. It was made from strips of pith taken from reeds which grew along the Nile. These were pounded together and dried into sheets which were then used for writing. We get our word paper from papyrus. There were warehouses filled with this writing material in Byblos. The papyrus soon took on the name of the city where it was purchased wholesale. At first the word "biblos" was applied to all little books of papyrus, but gradually it came to refer to the volume called "the holy Bible" to distinguish it from other books.
The Bible I am holding looks a great deal like other books. It is bound in blue cloth over boards. The type was set by a computer. The paper was made from pulp to which trees of the forest were reduced. It was printed on a press, gathered, stitched, glued, and bound like other books in your library. It is obvious that men had much to do with its production. But where did it come from? How did we receive it?
It will not be too much to concede that its origin was either natural or supernatural. If it was natural it originated with men. If it originated with men they must have been either good men or bad men. It would be incredible that bad men would have written it. It commends only what is good and condemns everything that is evil. It ends with all bad men in a lake of fire, suffering the pangs of eternal torment.
But it is the nature of bad men to excuse their evil. They constantly seek to justify it. They do not want to be held accountable. They try to make it appear that they are no worse in the final analysis than anyone else. They want to escape punishment. I doubt that wicked men would write, "There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek" (Romans 2:9). Certainly they would not write, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body" (2 Corinthians 5:10).
While evil men would not have written it good men could not have done so. The Bible claims to be a revelation from God. If it is the product of men, that is a falsehood. If it is a sham and pretence, those who wrote it could not have been good, for good men would not have palmed off such a cruel hoax on the world. The Bible is unique. It could not have been an invention of unlearned men. If it had been, men today with better education, equipment and knowledge should be able to produce a better Bible.
William Jennings Bryan, the "silver-tongued orator of the Platte," was called upon to deliver an address in Chicago, May 4, 1911, in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible. In the course of his remarks he said: "Let the atheists and materialists produce a better Bible than ours if they can. Let them collect the best of their school to be found among the graduates of universities--as many as they please from every land. Let the members of this selected group travel where they will, consult such libraries as they please and employ every modern means of swift communication. Let them glean in the fields of geology, botany, astronomy, biology and zoology, and then roam at will wherever science has opened up a way; let them take advantage of all the progress in art and in literature, in oratory and in history--let them use to the full every instrumentality that is employed in modern civilization; and when they have exhausted every source, let them embody the results of their best intelligence in a book and offer it to the world as a substitute for this Bible of ours. Will they try? If not, what excuse will they give? Has man fallen from his high estate, so that we cannot rightfully expect as much of him now as nineteen centuries ago? Or does the Bible come to us from a source that is higher than man--which?"
Perhaps it would be wise to allow the Bible to testify in its own behalf. What claim does it make for its origin? Do those who penned it claim to have originated it? The answer is that they uniformly claim for it a divine origin. There are about forty-two writers. They wrote over a period of sixteen hundred years. The first was Moses. The last was John. Every chapter in Exodus, the second book of Moses from six to fourteen begins with the expression, "The Lord said to Moses." In some of these chapters almost every paragraph thus begins. Now the Lord either spoke to Moses or Moses falsified. Yet history bears out that what God had predicted and promised came true.
John was an aged man when he wrote the Revelation letter. He had been banished to the isle of Patmos "on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus." He declared that he heard behind him a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet. He turned to see whose voice it was and saw a divine personage who identified Himself as the Living One who said, "I died and behold I am alive forevermore." He communicated to John and commissioned him to write what he saw in a book and send it to the seven churches in Asia. What we have is that book.
In the interval of sixteen centuries between these two all of those who wrote said they did so at the bidding of God. Isaiah declared he heard the voice of the Lord (6:8). Jeremiah said the word of the Lord came to him (1:4). Ezekiel said the word of the Lord came to him and the hand of the Lord was upon him (1:3). Peter writes, "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:20, 21).
There is something to be understood before one approaches the scriptures. It is foundational. It is basic. About it there should be no doubt. No scripture of prophecy is a matter of one's own interpretation. He is not speaking of our application of our mental powers in an attempt to fathom what the prophet meant. He is dealing with the origin of the message. The prophets did not see events and then seek to interpret them. They were not forecasters of the future, basing their predictions upon what they saw.
Prophecy does not come from human impulse. No prophecy of scripture ever came that way. Isaiah did not see the conditions around him and hazard a judgment about the results. The prophets were motivated by the Spirit. They spoke from God. Isaiah began by crying out, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hath spoken" (1:2).
Paul said about his gospel, "For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). He said, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you" (1 Corinthians 11:23). God chose to make known His will to men through men. When one whom God chose and qualified as an ambassador makes known the word of God there is a responsibility upon the part of the hearer. So Paul said "And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
What it really is! The word of God. But we have a check-point. It is at work in you believers. Now if the believers demonstrate a life-style which differs from those about them and from their previous conduct, it can be attributed to the word of God as a motivating force. Jesus declared "Ye shall know them by their fruits." He asked some pertinent questions. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" Of course they do not. Grapes are gathered from grapevines. Figs are produced on fig trees.
Jesus continues, "Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." Wherever the Bible has been discovered it has worked reform. It has overthrown superstition. It has elevated mankind. Let us give you an example from the Book itself.
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign over Judah. He was the son of Amon and grandson of Manasseh. Both of these were very wicked. It was said of the first that he filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. But they did not have Jeremiah the prophet, or Huldah the prophetess, or Hilkiah the high priest to instruct them as did Josiah. It was in the eighteenth year of his reign that Josiah commissioned Hilkiah to begin repair of the temple. Hilkiah found the book of the law which Moses had written many years before and sent it to the king.
When the king heard the words of the book he tore his clothing. He summoned all the people both small and great to the temple. Standing by a royal column he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant. He "made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant."
The result of this renewal was a great reformation. Idols were broken down. Altars were smashed to bits. Priests who had been appointed to conduct the worship for the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars were deposed. Cult prostitutes and homosexuals were driven out. Horses dedicated to the worship of the sun were removed with their chariots. The Passover was celebrated again. It is written that "No Passover like this one had ever been celebrated by any of the kings of Israel or of Judah, since the time when judges ruled the nation."
It was the restoration of scripture which worked the mighty reforms of Luther, the Augustinian monk. In the lonely castle at Wartburg where he had been a virtual prisoner for his own safety he meditated upon these things. One historian records that "The doctrine of the Church, the scholastic theology, knew nothing of the consolations that proceed from faith, but the Scriptures proclaim them with great force, and there it was that he had found them. Faith in the Word of God had made him free. By it he felt emancipated from the dogmatic authority of the Church from its hierarchy and traditions, from the opinions of the schoolmen, the power of prejudice, and from every human ordinance. Those strong and numerous bonds which for centuries had enchained and stifled Christendom were snapped asunder, broken in pieces, and scattered round him; and he nobly raised his head freed from all authority except that of the Word."
A papal decree had forbidden giving the Bible to the German people in the vulgar tongue. But Luther had said "Would that this one book were in every language, in every hand, before the eyes, and in the ears and hearts of every man." He saw that the translation of the scriptures was the one essential to delivering the people from what he termed "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church." Scripture without any comment is the sun from which all teachers receive their light." All of the tremendous gains which have been made, and which have swept like a tidal wave over the heart have come as a result of the translation of the Word of God in the vernacular of the people.
J. R. Green, who wrote a "Short History of the English People" which made a book of 872 pages, says, "No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years which parted the middle of the reign of Elizabeth from the meeting of the Long Parliament. England became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible. It was as yet the one English book which was familiar to all Englishmen; it was read at churches and at home; and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which custom had not deadened, kindled a startling enthusiasm."
Green continues, "But far greater than its effect on literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible on the character of the people at large. Elizabeth might silence or tune the pulpits; but it was impossible for her to silence or tune the great preachers of justice, and mercy, and truth, who spoke from the book which she had again opened for her people. The whole moral effect which is produced now-a-days by the religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the lecture, the missionary report, the sermon, was then produced by the Bible alone, and its effect in this way, however dispassionately we examine it, was amazing.
It seems to me that the Bible had to be given because of our deep need for it. Men required light and the sun was given for it. Would God withhold from man the moral light which was required to illumine his steps? It is true that Nature speaks of God. The heavens declare his glory. The firmament demonstrates his handwork. By familiarizing ourselves with her marvelous works and interlacing power we can learn a great deal. But there is still required a special revelation to inform men of the nature and origin of sin and the means of his salvation from it.
He who reads the book of Nature reads from a page that is blackened with men's sins. "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." All of creation awaits with eager longing for God to reveal his sons. "For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so" (Romans 8:19, 20). The fall-out from man's transgression has created a smog over the universe so that we see through a glass darkly. Genius is the interpreter of Nature but not the prophet of God. It may tell us a great deal of what is below the sun but can tell us nothing that is above it.
Reason is the placing of two known facts together in such a manner as to arrive at a third and new fact called a conclusion. But if one of the facts is supposition the conclusion will not be correct. It is possible to draw the wrong conclusion even if the facts are correct. Human reason is faulty. It has often betrayed its possessor. It is limited. There are things we cry out to know which we cannot discern. Conscience has its recurring moods of hesitation and bewilderment. The religious instinct may betray us into bowing before an idol, trembling in the presence of an eclipse, or shuddering at the contemplation of death. Much can be learned by Science in the study of man, but Science is limited to data which is at hand, to man as he is. It cannot probe beyond his beginning. It is forced into guesswork by his origin educated though that guesswork may be.
The inutility of man's power to think without enlightenment from God can be seen in the gropings of the most profound thinkers of ancient paganism. The finest truths uttered by them were splendid guesses rather than assured certainties. They were celebrated as much for what they did not reveal as for what they disclosed. Socrates advised his pupil Alcibiades to forego his sacrifice at the temple until a teacher from heaven could be sent. He said, "We must wait patiently until someone, either a god or an inspired man, teach us our moral and religious duties."
Plato, when addressing the Athenians, says that, "unless God, in pity, send them an instructor, they must remain in a state of ignorance forever." Xenophanes, founder of the Eclectic sect, closes his work on Nature with the sentence, "No man has discovered any certainty, nor will discover it, concerning the Gods, and what I say of the universe. For if he utters what is even most perfect, still he does not know it, but conjecture hangs over all." So God had to speak or man was doomed to remain in a state of ignorance forever. Pope has said, "Either God finally has spoken or there is no God, and man is the incomprehensible creation of chance, and the sport of the chance that has created him."
Those who deny the Bible as an authoritative statement of moral truth, generally prefer to live in a culture which has been shaped by it. Atheism has built no hospitals. One of us could hardly assess the effect of the book upon the lives of all of us. Most of us could say with John Wesley, "I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit, coming from God, and returning to God: just hovering over the great gulf; a few moments hence I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing--the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be a man of one book. Here then, I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone. Only God is here. In his presence, I open, I read his book for this end--to find the way to heaven."
If the thesis be true that there is a need for the Bible, and the Bible was given to meet that need, we should be able to show that once it was given there was a noticeable change in man. That such was the case can be easily demonstrated.
Pascal wrote, "And it happened that in the time of the fourth monarchy, before the destruction of the second temple, the pagans in multitudes adored the true God and led an angelic life; women consecrated to religion their virginity, and their lives; men voluntarily renounced all the pleasures of sense. That, which Plato was unable to persuade a few of the wisest and best informed of men of his time to do, a Secret Power, by means of a few words, now effected in thousands of uneducated men."
But in order to enforce our reasoning let us consider the state of the world when it was entered by the Christian faith. We shall not make reference to the sensuality and passion which were a way of life among the more uncivilized regions of the earth. Instead, let us look at the localities where the light and moral vigor of the heathen world were concentrated. Let us survey Rome and Greece, where philosophy held her court, and literature and the arts were cultivated with the utmost devotion and success.
Paul, who lived at this time, and who sought to take the teaching of Christ into the very territory in which we are interested wrote that, "Claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles." He further declares that they were "filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless."
Deities were multiplied until there was a god for everything and anything answered for a god. There was a god for the trees of the forest and each tree in the forest could become a god. Athens which became a center for learning was full of statues dedicated to different deities. Those of various countries were so crowded together that it was said, "In Athens it is easier to find a god than a man."
Rome exceeded Athens in the number of her gods only, by having, as mistress of the world, all nations to collect from and all forms of paganism to countenance. In "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Gibbon says, "the deities of a thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed in peace their local and respective influence; nor could the Roman who depreciated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian who presented his offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile. Every virtue and every vice acquired its divine representative, every art and profession its patron, whose attributes, in the most distant ages and countries, were uniformly derived from the character of their particular votaries. It was the custom of the Roman to tempt the protectors of besieged cities by the promise of more distinguished honor than they possessed in their native country. Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects, and the freedom of the city was bestowed on the gods of mankind."
At the very time when Peter was announcing to the Gentile Cornelius the only remedy for sin and evil, the gospel of Christ, Seneca, the Stoic professor, was writing, "The world is filled with crimes and vices. Things are too far gone to be healed by any regimen. Men are battling for the palm of reprobate manners. Each day lust waxes and shame wanes. Trampling down all that is good and sacred, lust hies it whithersoever it will. Vices no longer shun the light. So barefaced is wickedness become, and so wildly does it blaze up in all bosoms, that innocence is not to say rare, but is nowhere to be found."
Contrast this with the letter of Clement to Diognetus. After eloquently demonstrating the vanity of the heathen idols, and the superstitious practices of the Jews, he continues: "The Christians are not separated from other men by earthly abode, by language or by custom. Nowhere do they dwell in cities by themselves. They do not use a different speech, or affect a life of singularity. They dwell in the cities of the Greeks and barbarians, each as his lot has been cast; and while they conform to the usages of the country in respect to dress, food and other things pertaining to the outward life, they yet show a peculiarity of conduct wondrous to all. They inhabit their native country, but as strangers. They take their share of all burdens as citizens, and yet endure all kinds of wrong as though they were foreigners. Every strange soil is their fatherland, and everyone's fatherland is a strange soil unto them. They are in the flesh but they live not after the flesh. They tarry on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the laws, and they conquer the laws by their lives. They love all, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and yet are condemned; they are killed, and made alive. They are poor, and make many rich. They are blasphemed, and yet justified. They are reviled, and they bless . . . What the soul is to the body, that Christians are in the world. The soul dwells in the body and yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world but are not of the world."