50
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
February, 1938
Pillowed on
The Peril of “Adjusting" the Scriptures By V A N C E HAVNER * Charleston, S. C.
God’s Promises While it is a dangerous and unscriptural practice to wrest any promise from the Word of God in order to make it fit some selfish human need, it is possible on the other hand to be cautious to the point of actual unbelief. He who by the grace of God overcomes this latter tendency will know the safe rest of which Spurgeon speaks: “ No promise is of private interpretation: it belongs not to one saint, but to all be lievers. If, my brother, thou canst in faith lie down upon a promise, and take thy rest thereon, it is thine. Where Jacob ‘lighted,’ and tarried, and rested, there he took pos session. Stretching his weary length upon the ground, with the stones of that place for his pillows, he little fancied that he was thus entering into ownership of the land; and yet so it was, for God said, ‘The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it’ (Gen. 2 8 :1 3 ). Jacob saw in a dream that wondrous ladder which for all true believers unites earth and heaven; and surely where the foot of the ladder stood he must have right to the soil, for otherwise he could not reach the divine stairway. All the promises of God are Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus; and as He is ours, every promise is ours if we will but lie down upon it in restful faith. Come, weary one, use thy Lord’s words as thy pillows. Lie down in peace. Dream only of Him. Jesus is thy ladder of light. Be sure that the promise is thine own God-given portion, and that it will not be robbery for thee to take it to thyself, as spoken espe cially to thee.” — CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON I N M Y early Christian experience I set out to read the Bible with all the zeal of the average young believer, taking the promises at face value, believ-' ing the Scriptures as I found them with out benefit of footnotes and commentaries. I began with Genesis and was claiming the promises for myself when I encoun tered a Bible student from somewhere who informed me that those promises were not for me but for the Jews! It had been evident to me in reading the Scriptures, as it must be to any pray erful student, that certain divine commit ments relate particularly to Israel. But the restraint which my well-meaning friend placed upon my appropriation of spiritual truth for myself caused a sudden dampening of my ardor. Then I moved over into the New Testament and began appropriating the blessings of the Sermon on the Mount, and again I was inter rupted and duly notified that all those things belonged to the kingdom age! Next, I began in Acts and was moving along, daring to believe that I might claim some if not all of the powers that flowed from Pentecost, when I was again reminded that the Acts covered a transitional period * Pastor, First Baptist Church.
and we were not to press those matters too literally! I knew they would not let me have Revelation since it was concerning the future; so I was shut up to the Epistles. By the time I had made allowances for Greek roots and marginal refer ences and disagreeing footnotes, I came out in the same dilemma in which many Bible Christians find themselves today. I did not k n o w which promises really were mine. I could not stand with »confidence at any place in the Scriptures lest some divider of the W ord like a policeman come along to order me off pri vate property and inform me that my verse did not mean just what it said, or that it was meant for some one else.
several dozen books to find what this man and that one thinks it means. After God called him, Paul conferred not with flesh and blood (Gal. 1:16). But when God speaks to us, we do confer first with flesh and blood; we consult the au thorities ! And by the time we have paid tribute at all the tollgates of private inter pretation and have looked at the Scriptures through the spectacles of a dozen disagree ing expositors, we come out with “ loads of learned lumber in our heads” but unable to build from it all any worthy structure. Instead of asking, “What saith the Scrip ture?” we ask, “What say the scholars about the Scripture?” W e are like one who would miss the sentiment of a love- letter through studying its syntax. Besides, if the Bible were so puzzling that one could not know it until the schol ars explained it, what would become of the common people who could not go to schools nor buy heavy sets o f commentaries? “ I have a life with Christ to live; But, ere I live it, must I wait T ill learning can clear answer give T o this and that book’s date? “ I have a life with Christ to live, A death with Christ to d ie; And must I wait till science give All doubts a clear reply?” No! And neither should we fall into the grievous error of missing what the Bible says by forever trying to pour it into this and that mold of private explanation. Trimming God's Word to Fit Human Experience On the other hand, we err in adjusting the Scriptures to fit the limitations of our own experiences. W e look at a glowing promise or declaration, then we look around at what we call “ facts,” and if the facts do not seem to bear out the Scriptures, we make the Scriptures fit the facts instead of demanding that the facts rise to the level of the Scriptures. W e whittle down the Scriptures to fit experience. We read that “ whosover is born of God sinneth not.” Then we look around and say: “But yonder is a born- again believer who is living in sin,” and thus we seek to adjust the Bible to experi ence. W e read that the prayer of faith shall heal the sick. But we know some-
The Unbelief of Fundamentalists
The outgrowth of it all has been a deep conviction that
Bible Christians suffer today from the dou ble error of making the Scriptures fit their own explanations on one hand or their own experiences on the other. W e spend much time denouncing modernism, and surely we ought to say with Paul, “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel . . . let him be accursed.” But some-! times I am not so afraid of modernist doubt from without as I am afraid of fun damentalist unbelief from within. By fun damentalist unbelief I mean that strange species of unbelief which loudly declares the Scriptures to be God-breathed, but im mediately turns around and sets about ad justing the Bible to the limitations of our logic and our lives. First, we endeavor to adjust the Scrip tures to our own explanations. Mythology tells us of the bed of Procrustes. If a man was too short, they stretched him until he would fit the bed. If he was too long, they chopped him off until he would fit it. Do we not first decide what we are going to believe about the Bible, then size and sort the Scriptures, stretch them out or lop them off to fit the Procrustean beds of our private systems of interpretation? W e come across a promise that glitters like a diamond on velvet. But we dare not ac cept it as it stands until we get down
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