Defense of the Scriptures
“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24).
Recently, it has been gratifying to see that some have taken it upon themselves to defend the Scriptures in a public forum. Usually, newspapers publish humanistic points of view. Brethren have often responded to these—even though papers have neglected to print succinct, pertinent responses. This year the Orlando Sentinel has actually let its readers see the other side.
On February 10th, a letter to the editor appeared promoting evolution and challenging the Bible. Patterson Mosely, who lives in the area, responded. Concerning the authorship of the Scriptures, he said:
Of course, the Bible was written by men, but every word was inspired of God Therefore, it must be infallible, or it would be meaningless….
The theory of evolution has always been—and still is—just that, a theory. It has never been proved; nor can it ever be. The main glaring flaw is that it doesn’t prove how matter came into being from nothingness.
As a physician myself, I have studied the human body extensively and operated on patients thousands of times. It is quite apparent, to me at least, that we could not have simply evolved because we are far too magnificently made, and far too complex for that to have occurred.
Finally, we are surrounded every day by evidence of God's handiwork, so much so, that to deny his [sic] existence requires much more of a stretch of the imagination than to believe in evolution (A12, appearing on 2-12-14).
Congratulations to the doctor for expressing it so well. He is correct in saying that, if the Bible is not infallible, then it is worthless. This fact has been pointed out repeatedly, but opponents seem to be willing to only accept portions of it. Most appreciate, “Love your neighbor,” but are not very tolerant of portions where sin is defined and condemned. The so-called “Jesus Seminar” wasted who knows how much time attempting to discern what Jesus actually said and what He only might have said. If He did not say all that the writers of the New Testament recorded, then the entire New Testament is worthless—because there is no basis upon which to determine which passages are valid and which are not. Actually, some just look for ways to get rid of verses they do not like; they want the Word to read as it would if they were God. This approach results in futility and frustration with no one knowing anything for certain. God revealed the Scriptures so that we could know the truth.
Patterson is correct about evolution always remaining a theory; no demonstrable proof of it exists. Try as they might, they cannot get around that. The most brilliant of the brilliant have never learned how to get the vast universe from nothing—and they have had more than 150 years to do so. And after that same period of time, we still have no intermediary forms between phyla. Who can answer why all the links are missing?
Brother Thomas B. Warren used the human body and its marvelous systems in his debates against atheists. He demonstrated effectively that man would have become extinct while waiting for those systems to have evolved. The atheists he debated made no genuine effort to respond.
His fourth argument echoes: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). The vastness of the universe belies the notion that something smaller than a proton expanded and became everything we see. Can we honestly think that a billion stars came from nearly nothing? The doctor is right: it takes a far greater imagination to entertain that notion than anything that the Bible says.
Response
A woman from the area tried (in vain) to argue that the Bible and evolution are compatible (printed on 2-15-14). Although she states correctly that the Bible is not a science book, she misses the larger point that the Bible is, nevertheless, scientifically accurate when it does address the topics of science and health (see www.miraculousbible.org/better-science.pdf, pages 10-16). Scientific principles are stated in the Scriptures that men did not discover for centuries, and no explanation except for the inspiration of the Scriptures can explain how that happened.
This same woman made another statement: “Evolution is not an explanation of how matter came into being but what followed through the billions of years since.” Has she not heard of the Cosmos series? Yes, most of evolution tries to deal with what happened “afterward,” but much has also been written about origins. What “billions of years” is she talking about? The Bible specifically outlines only a few thousand years (see Genesis 5). The theory of evolution and the history set forth in the Bible are not compatible.
The reader is not sure what the writer means when she says: “Everyday evidence of science is amazing…” (A14). If she means that genuine science is helpful and wonderful, we can all agree. True science with its numerous applications is truly beneficial, and we all profit from it. How has mankind, however, profited from evolution? Has it got us to the moon and improved the quality of life? Not at all. But since it is a purely naturalistic idea of man’s origin—one which casts out the concept of God—it has done great harm. If God does not exist, no morals or standards of an objective nature exist, and mankind will never have anyone to whom he must give account. The writer has overlooked huge bits of information.
She concludes by saying, “Happy birthday, Darwin.” If the Bible is true (and it is), Darwin will not be celebrating his birthday or any other day. He is and will be forever regretting his decision to turn away from God. Furthermore, he will give an account for all of the millions he has helped depart from the faith, many of whom have been assisted by their college professors. How sad that he departed from both the Scriptures and genuine science.
The Old Versus the New
A second diatribe against the Scriptures was published on 2-13-14 and was refuted within two days. A lady from the Orlando area wrote the following:
If the Bible is infallible, then why are fundamentalists not stoning to death adulterous women and drunken, rebellious sons?
Why are they wearing clothing made of two or more fibers together, shaving their sideburns, eating milk and meat together?
In the Bible, the punishment for any of these abominations is death. So why are we not seeing routine, ritual stonings outside fundamentalist churches as the Bible requires?
What? Some of these verses are outdated and no longer “need” to be followed? Which ones? Who gets to decide? And why should the devout literally put their faith in the “deciders”?
The real abomination is the hypocrisy of fundamentalists who gloss over their own sinfulness, while continuing to victimize others for their differences?
It’s why studying the word of God personally is so necessary, whether it be the Torah, Christian Bible or the Quran, so one can meditate on the value of obedience with compassion, mercy and the understanding of what it means to be human.
This allows us to elevate God’s word into something deeper and richer than mere infallibility (A14).
Usually, the general public does not respond to these charges, but someone did in this instance—and quickly. The person showed how that Christians are under a different covenant (using the book of Hebrews). The writer of the editorial was clearly irate and antagonistic toward Christianity. Her hostility was matched only by her ignorance. When attacking something as widespread and popular as Christianity, one ought to be certain that one has done her homework.
The Old or First Covenant was given by God to govern His people Israel. It was not in effect before Sinai, and it has not been operative since the cross (including the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ). Christians today have never been under the Law of Moses; we have always been under the New Testament of Christ (Heb. 8:6-7). We do not stone adulterous women because we have no command to do so. Under the Old Law, the civil and the moral judgments were part of the same system. Today, the church does not govern the country, and the civil government does not legislate for the church.
Christians do not decide what to obey and what not to; God made that decision. We are not under the Old Law, and anyone who appeals to it must obey all of it, according to Galatians 5:1-4. If the letter writer knew the Bible a little better, she might not have made such a blunder in accusing Christians of inconsistency. On what basis does she continue the diatribe by accusing Christians of glossing over their own sinfulness? To be sure, all Christians sin (1 John 1:8), but a wholesale indictment against followers of Jesus is slanderous and serves to smear those conscientiously trying to live the way God has commanded. Christians do not victimize others; however, we do call them to salvation and to living on a higher plane than just a fleshly one.
Her last two paragraphs are puzzling. Is she actually advocating that people keep the Torah? Does she realize that all the things she complained about (putting people to death) came from that document? Does she not realize that the Qur’an teaches that violence is acceptable? What do either of these have to do with personal study? How can God’s Word be deeper and richer than infallibility when that is the very quality that makes it deep and rich? At any rate, her key point was answered by showing that Christians are today under the authority of Christ rather than Moses.
The Color of Truth
Earlier this year (1-2-14) someone from this area wrote a response to a previous letter to the editor, in which the writer had affirmed that the color of truth is gray. The rebuttal states:
Truth is not always gray. Our society has been brain-washed into believing that everything is relevant, that there are no absolute standards of what is right or wrong. This philosophy has led many to accept practically every deviant form of lifestyle imaginable (A12).
The writer is absolutely correct. Truth is only gray if one adheres to the doctrine of relativism or subjectivism. The kind of morality this ideology leads to is what was experienced in the time period of the Book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25). No condemnation for any kind of behavior eventually results from this kind of thinking. In other words, nothing can be considered immoral; everything is acceptable.
The writer closes by saying that “we all know that there are some truths that are still absolute.” Yes, and those are the ones God gave to us in the New Testament. These are objective standards of morality in that they were delivered by God He alone can define sin and perversion, and He has in passages such as Romans 1:21-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Galatians 5:9-21, and Revelation 21:8. He has also defined what is good and right behavior for mankind (Gal. 5:22-23; 2 Peter 1:5-7). To these qualities we ought to aspire.
John 15:6
Some may have heard of the high IQ society called Mensa. It is theoretically composed of the most intelligent people in society, but sometimes that is questionable. They publish a magazine, the Mensa Bulletin, in which some of the writers are, uh, shall we say, less than brilliant. The contents of a January article can be seen by the replies in the March issue. A writer named Michele used John 15:6 as an illustration that Jesus’ teachings were not always peaceable (all quotations are from page 7). The verse says:
“If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”
Three readers responded to this absurd position. Randy wrote:
The above quote is from the Last Supper. Jesus is speaking directly to 11 of His disciples. Jesus is saying, I am confident, that any of His followers who do not abide in Him will dry up, wither away, and, in effect, be useless. He certainly was not commanding that anyone be burned at the stake.
Yes, Michele had alleged that John 15:6 had been used to justify burning people at the stake. If that had actually ever happened, it would only serve as an example of the misuse of Scripture.
Another reader named Charles commented: “The quote from Jesus in John 15:6 was obviously a metaphor. His implication was that a nonbeliever is spiritually dead already.” That statement should be amended to say that some would become spiritually dead instead of continuing to abide in Him. We do not know how many Christians were burned at the stake, but Charles closes with a pertinent question: “How many were massacred in the name of Marxism?” Another writer name Fred wrote:
Michele demonstrated true cherry-picking by her choice of verse, John 15:6, from the New Testament. She also perpetuated a misinterpretation of the verse. It is a metaphor of the final judgment where men and women will be judged (by God, not man) based on their acceptance of Jesus, His teachings, and how they lived out those teachings (see Matthew 25), not a prescription for how we are to treat one another. If she had read further down in the fifteenth chapter of John, she would have seen the real message of the Gospel. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
Yes, the sense is that, just as men gather up withered branches and burn them, so will God do at the judgment with those that did not abide in Him but became useless. Nothing in this verse authorizes Christians to burn anyone at the stake for having a different view. Jesus’ followers, the apostles, certainly never did such a thing, and they faced heretics throughout the history of the church in the first century. The strongest words ever used were that certain ones had fallen from grace (Gal. 5:1-4) and that they had been delivered to Satan (1 Tim. 1:18-20), meaning that the church withdrew fellowship from them. The goal of Christians (even in withdrawal) is to bring men to eternal life.
Attacks against Christianity and the Bible will probably increase in the days ahead. No one ever said that such vitriol would be based in logic. Many of those who oppose heavenly things are motivated more by emotion than logic. How could one seriously attempt to use John 15:6 against Christianity? Some have an ax to grind and lash out in ignorance, not knowing how to rightly divide the Word. Others think they are being “scientific.” Whatever charges might be leveled, Christians must be set for the defense of the Gospel (1 Peter 3:15).