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The Fundamentals “independent” courses of Bible study but in helps on the In ternational Lessons, issued by regular denominational boards, are found lesson comments that assume the error and human authorship of parts of the Bible instead of inerrant, inspired authorship. It has been a distressing thing to many to note this terrible encroachment of the Adversary as he uses the very tools of the Church of Christ to lead teachers and pupils away from the hope of eternal life. For, as has been well pointed out, the Adversary’s first move is to discredit parts of the Bible, then the atonement of Jesus Christ, then the deity of Christ. And without a Saviour who is God the “evan gelism” of the Sunday School is not the Good News. Not long ago “The Sunday School Times” had occasion to investigate a certain “Completely Graded Series” of Sunday School lessons (not the International Graded Lessons) of which the publisher said: “These lessons are already in use in thousands of up-to-date Sunday Schools. The various courses of study have been prepared under the direction of men who are recognized as authorities in this country in religious education, and they therefore embody the results of the latest scholarship.” Upon looking into the lesson courses themselves, such statements as the following were found: “It is easy to see that the age that produced the Gospels would not be anxious for scientific accounts of the deeds of Jesus, but that it would expect of Him exactly the acts that are attributed to Him. It is possible therefore that some events, like the restoration of the centurion’s servant, were simple coincidences; that others, like the apparent walking of Jesus on the water, were natural deeds which the darkness and confusion caused to be misunderstood; that others, like the turning of water into wine, were really parables that be came in course of time changed into miracles. As nearly all the miracles not of healing had their prototypes in the Old Testament, many of them at least were attributed to Jesus because men expected such deeds from their Messiah, and finally became convinced that He must have performed them. — E d it o r .”
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