April 1924
T H E
K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
201
Authority) of the Scriptures By The Rev. William Carter, Pastor Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. (One of a series of sermons on “Investigating Jesus” )
A ll S crip tu re is given by in sp iratio n of God,” 2 Tim . 2:16 ‘ No prophecy of th e S crip tu res is of any p riv ate in terp retatio n . F or th e prophecy cam e n o t in old tim e by th e will of m an, b u t holy men of God spake as they w ere m oved by th e H oly G host,” 2 P e t. 1:20, 21. “T he W ord of o u r God shall sta n d forever.” Isa. 11:8 H N this task we must first of all establish the rules of evidence, the tenets of testimony, the preced ents, documents and authorities for our basic fun damental. In other words, we must have a recog nized court of inquiry, an authoritative tribunal, a final arbiter and judge. Rules of evidence insist that the witness must be trust worthy, that the testimony be credible, that the precedents and authorities be unbiased and veritable. The first thing that is necessary, therefore, is to establish the veritability of the Scriptures as our final arbiter, to prove that it is the system of law as given by the Supreme Judge of the uni verse, that the testimony as given by this authority is cred ible, and that the witnesses are trustworthy as to the cir cumstances and conditions under which they testified. We are to prove, in other words, that “no prophecy of the Scrip ture is of any private interpretation,” that, on the other hand, “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” and that, if those things are so, if “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,” and not through any personal bias or “private interpretation,” the witnesses must be trustworthy, the testimony credible and this “Book of the Law,” as the inspired Word of God, must be a verit able authority of no passing power, but one that must “stand forever” as our final arbiter and guide. Why we should be compelled to prove this after all these years of the pre-eminence of the Bible it is hard to say. No one has come forward to dispute the authority of Black- stone’s Commentaries as an arbiter in the law. He is still referred to every day, in our courts of law, as authoritative, and an established precedent from his works is regarded as of highest moment. Webster’s arguments in the Dart mouth College case are still taken as conclusive for all charters and corporations governed by the same, Alexander Hamilton is still accepted as authority, par excellence, in all constitutional matters. Why not the Bible and the prophets of God in matters spiritual? It is illogical to ac cept the one and not the other, and yet, Percy Stickney Grant says, as quoted in last Sunday’s New York Times, “Adam was a myth!” “We have at least the right,” he goes on to say, “to disencumber our minds from these an cient theories of creation and thought of God, and these myths as to how man came into the world and where his troubles came from.” And yet, Dr. S. D. McConnell says, in his “Confessions of an Old Priest,” speaking even of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, “I was driven to confess to myself that His teaching, in these regards not only could not, but ought not to be followed.” Fallibility of Reason and Science We well may ask with the Psalmist, in view of all this: “If the foundations be destroyed what can the righteous do?” If we have no final court of appeal, no law and testi mony to argue from, what shall we accept as authoritative? Reason? Science? Note how they correct themselves from day to day. Note how they argue among themselves. Note how one school denounces another and laughs at their pro nouncements, and you see into what “confusion worse con
founded” we are plunged. We must have some foundation on which to build. Reason is biased. Science is not agreed. “We have a more sure word of prophecy,” and would say to the critics, as Peter goes on to say, “Whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Day Star arise in your hearts.” Since I am speaking not to theologians but to the great mass of people interested in these things at the present time, when people— thanks to the critics— are talking more about the Bible and Biblical doctrines than ever before, I am not going to give the usual theological argument but plain statements and illustrations that will set forth the doctrine of inspiration and prove the authority of the Scriptures as a basic fundamental and a court of last ap peal, where we can try the case of Jesus and the doctrines pertaining to Himself now so violently opposed te the mod ernists and rationalists. The first argument that I wish to bring forward in proof of the inspiration and divine authority of the Bible is: The writers could not possibly have known of the matters of which they wrote in any other way. It was during the reigns of Rameses II, “the Pharaoh of the oppression,” and Menepthah, “the Pharaoh of the Ex odus,” about 200 years after Tutankhamen, that Moses lived, but we have no evidence from their tombs, which were discovered many years ago, that the Egyptians of that time had any formulated system of the universe as found in Genesis. Dr. David R. Breed tells us in his work on the Israelites in Egypt that Moses undoubtedly went to the “House of Seti,” a university whose ruins are still standing in the Valley of the Kings, that this university taught lit erature, medicine, architecture and art in general, that music was included and Moses undoubtedly took a course in music; but he does not mention astronomy, for it was not until the time of Ptolemseus Claudius, in the 2d Cen tury, A. D., that astronomy was brought to its fruition, by that mathematician and astronomer, in the Ptolemaic sys tem of the universe, which was superseded by the Coper- nican system in the 16 th Century. Not only was there nothing in Egypt to guide Moses. but in all the Syrian and Assyrian lands there was nothing on which he could build his system. How, then, did Moses know astronomy 1,500 years before Ptolemy? How could he formulate a system of cosmogony that accounts for the orderly development of the universe “in the heavens above, the earth beneath and the waters under the earth?” The critics may say, “but he was wrong!” That would be a final argument, if it were true, but Cuvier, the founder of the science of paleontology, says: “Moses has left us a cosmogony the truth of which is being verified more and more day by day,” while Prof. Dana, late professor of ge ology in Yale, says: “The first page of Genesis corresponds so clearly with the last page of Nature as to prove that both were written by the same hand.” How could this be? The only explanation is God! “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.” We appeal to the “law and the prophets,” aye, and to the scientists them selves! Which ought to prove to the most case-hardened, (Continued on Page 248)
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