The Fundamentals - 1910: Vol.5

74

The Fundamentals prophecy ever came by the will of man, but man spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” 3. The Bible is literature written by the command of God, under the guidance of God, and preserved by the providential care of God. Moses commanded that the book of the law should be placed by the side of the Ark. No safer place could have been found, and the more I study the history of the Bible the more profoundly am I convinced that God has kept His book by the side of some ark all through the ages. As the Church has been under His care and protection, so has the Book. I t is not difficult for me to believe that the manuscript which Hilkiah found in the Temple was the identical book which Moses wrote in the wilderness, and that this very manu- script was in the hands of Ezra on the pulpit of wood as he preached in the open air. It is only one thousand years from Joshua to Josiah and only one hundred and seventy-five years from Josiah to Ezra. There are now in our libraries scores of manuscripts which we know to be over a thousand years old, and two or three which have certainly been preserved more than fourteen hundred years. With the kindly oriental climate and the care which the Jewish reverence for the book would naturally lead them to have, it is not at all improbable that the manuscript of Moses should have been preserved for more than a thousand years. And the history of the Bible from the time of Christ to the present confirms the proposition that it has been preserved by the providential care of God. Let us now look at “the Scriptures” in their own light. In John 5 :39 Jesus said: “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me. And in 2 Timothy 3:16 we read, “All Scripture is God- breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor- rection, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” In these Scriptures are four things:

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