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THE KING’S BUSINESS
“Holy men o f God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." “Holy men o f God.” Some manuscripts omit the w o rd , “holy” and substitute the word “ from” for “ of,” thus making the passage; read: “Men spake from God.” The full passage would then read: “ For'not by the will o f man Was prophecy, at any time, borne in, But by the Holy Spirit, being borne along, Spake men from God.” Thus again is it clear that the snbject of this passage is not what Scripture means, but whence it came r “Men spake”—Not always holy men either (compare Caiaphas, John 11:49-51; Baalam, Numbers 23:25, 26). For Baalam said: “What the Lord saith unto me that inust I speak,” though his greed for gain prompted him to the opposite. “Men from God spake as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit.” “ Spake.” May we not quite naturally infer that this word “ spake” includes both writings and .words ?( David was a prophet (Acts 2:30), and being a prophet, we are told that he “ spake” o f the resurrection o f "Christ. Yet we know that writing is involved in the word “spake;” for he wrote the 16th Psalm, from which Peter in Acts 2 :30, 31, quotes. It was customary for the prophets to write their prophecies (cf. “Moses wrote of me,” John 5:46; “Write the words I have spoken,” Jeremiah 30:2; “ Take, my breth ren, the prophets who have spoken in the name o f the Lord,” James 5:10). Does not writing involve words? Are the words o f Scripture inspired then? So it would seem from the words o f the Apostle Paul: “Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teach- eth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth” (1 Corinthians 2 :13). Does this quotation teach that God controls the utterance as well as the conception? Assuredly it does. “ The theory that God inspired the con ception and not the words will not answer. Burke has wisely said, as to the words in a sentence, that every word is one o f the feet upon which the sentence walks, and
paring spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit o f God; for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things.”— 1 Corinthians 2:10-15. God gives both the vision and the inter pretation thereof (Genesis 40:8; 41:16). The same inspiration it took to write the Scriptures, it takes also to interpret them —the inspiration o f the Holy Ghost. - "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man.” Prophecy at no time, whether by the prophet in the Old or the apostle in the New Testament dispensa tion, came, or, more literally, was brought by the “will o f man.” Here again it is clear that it is the origin and not, at least not primarily, the interpretation or exposi tion that is under discussion in this con nection. The word "came" makes this cer tain, for it is the same word used to desig nate the source from which the voice heard on the transfiguration mount proceeded, namely, not from “ cunningly devised fables” on the part o f man, but from God’s “ voice which came from heaven.” This verse explains more fully the statement made in the previous verse that “no proph ecy o f the scripture is of any private inter pretation,” that is to say it does not have its source in any man or set o f men. Could the full inspiration of the prophets be more fully asserted than in these words? The will, genius, determination is by no means the source o f the prophecy of the Scripture. The events predicted therein lay above and beyond any human power and ken, exceeded any flight o f man’s imagina tion, and recorded such subjects as only the foreknowledge o f God could define. The Scripture, according to the Apostle Peter, is an illumination to which man could not have attained by any wisdom of his own, nay, could not even have formed the wish to attain unto it. It lay hid amid God’s mysteries; it is something which must b e ' revealed and interpreted to men by God.
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