Where the Bible Speaks

By Bob J. White

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     Since the origin of the phrase "We speak where the Bible speaks, and we are silent where it is silent," almost every faction which has existed has used it as a campaign slogan to drum up business for their particular party.

     I have in my files at least three pamphlets which contain this slogan word for word. In each case neither one of the groups responsible for the pamphlet will recognize each other as "faithful brethren."

     A few years ago I was discussing religion with a group of boys when suddenly, to my utter amazement, one lad who was a member of the Christian Church boastfully declared, "There is one thing you can always count on; and that is the Christian Church always speaks where the Bible speaks and is silent where it is silent." I resented his usage of that slogan which belonged entirely to The Church of Christ. Why, I remembered that every preacher that ever held us our annual two weeks' meeting used that slogan just before the invitation song and after he had enumerated the five steps to Salvation.

     Since that time I have discovered that every fraction of each faction claims to have a monopoly on that slogan. Such heroic statements are not new. I recall Balaam having made a similar statement one time when he told the princes of Balak who offered him great rewards for responding to their plea, "If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of God to do less or more." The statement sounds good, but the irony of it was that Balaam approached God again to seek justification in the thing God had already told him not to do.

     Recently I sat in a religious service where the preacher shouted until he was hoarse that "it isn't what man thinks about a subject; it's what the Bible says!" He was ridiculing a division of his own group who no longer used the prayer altar in their public worship. I do not question his sincerity in such a statement because I, too, have often insisted that if people would only do what the Bible says, nothing more ... there would be perfect agreement. However, I overlooked one thing; our differences don't arise over what the Bible says but over our interpretation of its sayings.

     Not long ago, I was listening to an evangelist of the church of Christ teaching that the religious world should be ONE, with which I agreed. In an effort to show that everyone should agree with him, he quoted Isaiah 35: 8 like this: "A highway shall be there and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; the WAY IS

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SO PLAIN THAT A FOOL NEED NOT ERR THEREIN." To read OR interpret the verse in this fashion is to say that only people more ignorant than fools have any worry about understanding the requirements of that way. If the Way mentioned here is the same Way Christ spoke of in Matthew 7: 14, then the American Revised Version of the Bible seems to give the better translation of these verses. Isaiah speaks of the vengeance and recompense of God in verse 4. Verses 5-7 make a figurative contrast of the condition before and after the time of Christ. Verse 8 says that a highway shall be there and a way . . . and it shall be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for the redeemed; the wayfaring men, yea fools, shall not err therein." In other words fools will not wander or accidentally stumble into it. Besides fools, he goes on to name the lion and ravenous beasts which will not be found there. In order to be one of the redeemed it will take more effort than what a fool will put forth to walk in that way.

     I appreciate the confidence that some brethren have in their ability to interpret scriptures, but I doubt that the slogans and heroic hackneyed phrases mentioned in this article accomplish any more than the loud whistling of the little boy walking through the grave yard. He was afraid to stop whistling for fear he would hear something he did not want to hear. We need brave men, not cowards!