structed it were chosen by Him to execute His plan; and they spoke or wrote as He gave them utterance. Its construction can be explained upon no other ground. TH E MATCHLESS PERFECTION OF TH E BIBLE The Bible was completed nearly two thousand years ago; yet not one word has been added since then. Why? Because it is matchlessly perfect. Man has improved upon every invention of man. We have one world’s fair after another to show man’s progress in discovery and invention. When the “ Santa Fe Super-Chief” locomotive engine of today is placed beside “ The Rocket,” the first locomotive ever built, the great improvements made upon Ste phenson’s original product become most evident. The same is true of the automobile. Do you remember your old “ Model T Ford” ? When Mr. Ford put that machine out, we thought man’s inventive power had reached its climax. We do not think so now. The first sewing-machine was but a crude, affair, when compared with the modern sewing-machine, which is run by electricity, and with light ning rapidity can make any article of wearing apparel worn by human beings. Almost unnumbered improve ments have been made upon Howe’s invention. The McCormick invention of the reaping-machine was among the greatest of modern times. But the improvements made upon it are one hundred times more complex and remarkable than was the orig inal machine. And what of the differ ence between the plane Orville and Wilbur Wright flew and our jets of today ? It is the same with everything that man has invented or discov ered. However, God’s Book still stands—unimproved and impossible of improvement, because, like all the works of God, it is impossible for God Himself to improve upon that which is perfect. And certainly fallible man cannot improve upon the work of the infallible God! A million millenniums might come and go; and yet no man, with his ever-increas ing knowledge of science and art, could dare add to or take away from God’s Holy Word—that is, no man who acknowledges himself a sinner; and the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Saviour. Skeptics and scoffers would dare any work of the devil; yet even their effort to rob the Bible of its matchless perfection are futile and vain. The Bible, like Him of whom it treats, is “ the same yester day, and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). In the front of the building of The Bible Institute of Los An
geles these words are carved in stone, “ For ever, 0 Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.” And that quotation from Psalm 119:89 can be written over the en tire Bible. TH E SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF TH E BIBLE The Bible is scientifically correct yet it was never intended to teach science. God did not ordain that the Bible should be a scientific textbook yet, in His record, never once does He violate the best science known to man, even in our own century. Herbert Spencer once said that he could never be a Christian until he could find in the Bible an explana tion of the five creative periods which science demands: creation of time, of space, of matter, of force, and of motion. “ All these must have been,” said Professor Spencer; and he spent forty years in searching for the answers to these five creat iv e periods. How strange that he could not see that Moses put into the first two verses of Genesis the an swer, for which Herbert Spencer searched for forty years! There we read: “ In the beginning”—that is time. “God created the heavens”—that is space. “ And the earth”—that is matter. “ And the Spirit of God”—that is force. “Moved upon the face of the deep” —that is motion. The Bible agrees with the truest science the world has ever known. We were a long time discovering that the earth is round; our fore fathers believed it was square. It remained for Columbus, in 1492 A.D., to demonstrate that the world was round. Philosophers before his time, including Plato and Aristotle, believed that the world was square. And yet, long before Plato and Aris totle philosophized and Columbus sailed, God inspired Isaiah to write: “ It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). Again, in Luke 17:34-36, the Lord Jesus speaking of His return to the earth, said, “ There shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.” Job was inspired of the Holy Spirit to say that God “ stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7). Solomon was not a teacher of the
science of medicine, but long before Dr. Harvey ever discovered the cir culation of the blood, and found that the heart was like a pump, driving the blood to the hands and fingers and tips of the toes, Solomon wrote, by inspiration of God, warning men not to wait until they were old before remembering their Creator. And this, in part, is how Solomon de scribed old age: “ In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened . . . because man goeth to his long home . . . or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:3-7). Here the heart is likened to a wheel on the old-fashioned pump, passing in a continuous chain, going round and round, and drawing water. Thus did Solomon describe the circulation of the blood. Of course the Bible used the lan guage of appearance. We do today. The newspapers write of the rising and setting of the sun; and yet we know that it is the earth’s revolu tions that give this appearance. How else could we describe these things? The Bible is the only Book that answers the great mysteries that confront us. The four most search ing questions that a man ever put to his soul are these: Who am I? Where am I? Whence did I come? Where am I going? Science cannot answer them. Science fails to tell the origin of human life. Scientists have been digging into the earth with the excavator’s spade. They have harnessed lightning and used it. They have gone into chemical analysis. They have split the atom. And yet they have failed to explain the origin of human life. What is life? They do not know, and yet they know we live. When a man dies, they know that he is dead, that life is gone out of him. But what is life? They cannot analyze it. Life to them is a mystery. It baffles all science. But when we bring these questions to the Bible, we find an answer that satisfies every trusting soul. Our conclusion is inevitable, and it is sane: The hand that made man is the hand that wrote the Bible through “ holy men of God . . . as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (II Peter 1:21). This special feature tvill be concluded in next month's issue.
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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