| Highlights of Dawn | February 1957 |
The Unknown Book
THE Bible has the widest circulation of any book in the world. All portions of it have been translated and published in more than 1,100 languages and dialects. In America a copy of the Bible is to be found in nearly every room of the country’s hotels, placed there by the “Gideons.” There are few homes, especially of Protestants, which do not contain a Bible, and many families have several. We have a national Bible Week. Yet withal, the Bible is very largely an unknown book so far as its contents are concerned, and this is particularly true of modern youth.
This fact has been emphasized by a survey made by a national magazine in which nearly three hundred teenage students in eleven schools were asked a number of questions concerning the Bible and their belief in it. Questions were also asked as to their attendance at church, and whether or not they also claimed to be Christians. Here are the results:
In answer to the question, “When did you last attend church?” sixty-eight percent answered “Last Sunday,” nineteen percent had been to church within the month; twelve percent had not recently been to church, and one percent couldn’t remember.
“Do you believe the Bible?” was another question asked. Ninety-three percent claimed that they did; five percent claimed partial belief, and two percent avowed disbelief.
Another question was, “What is the first book of the Bible?” Fifty-four percent answered this question correctly, forty-three percent said they did not know. Five percent gave the wrong answer.
In answer to the question, “Who was Jesus Christ?” forty-eight percent said that he was the Son of God; eight percent said that they did not know; twenty-three percent said he was the Savior, and one percent believed that he was God.
The widespread lack of biblical knowledge revealed by this survey was considered deplorable by most observers, and, generally speaking, the blame for it was placed upon the religious leaders. But we see no reason for this. No doubt these leaders did the best they could, but the fact is that according to the teachings of the Bible itself there was no reason to hope that the situation would be any different.
In the first place, the Bible was not written to enlighten the world. Referring to the prophets who wrote the Old Testament, Peter explains “that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the Gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.” (I Pet. 1:12) The “us” referred to by Peter as the ones to whom the prophets ministered are identified by him in verse 2 as the “elect according to the foreknowledge of God”—not the world in general, neither the teenagers nor the oldsters, in Peter’s day, or in our modern times.
A glance at the opening salutations of the various epistles in the New Testament reveals that they also were written, not to enlighten the world, but to enlighten and edify the footstep followers of Jesus. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was addressed only to his disciples, after he drew away from the multitude and his disciples came to him. Most of Jesus’ teachings were in parables which he explained only to his disciples.
Circumstances prove that the Bible was not designed to enlighten the world. The Lord himself said, “My Word … shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isa. 55:11) If God sent out his Word to enlighten the world then it has not accomplished his design, and his plan has failed; for at no time has the world ever been enlightened by that Word.
Let us consider the facts, and face them. In Jesus’ day very few copies of the Old Testament existed. The art of printing was not then known. Every copy of the Old Testament was hand written. When the New Testament books were written, the same was true of them. The early congregations of Christians were fortunate if there was one copy of the Bible available for the entire group, and certainly there was no general circulation of the Bible among the public.
Nor did this situation change with the advancing centuries. Even more significant, the Bible was purposely kept “buried” in the Latin language, which was understood only by the learned; and most of these were forbidden to be read under pain of death. The “chained Bible” of the Dark Ages is a well-known historical fact.
With the Reformation, the Bible began to be translated into “live” languages, but not until the invention of the printing press was there any possibility of its having a wide circulation. Even then, every possible effort was made to keep it from the public. Translators and distributors of the Bible were cruelly persecuted, some of them even burned at the stake.
This situation gradually changed, however, and early in the nineteenth century large Bible Societies were organized, so that in the last 150 years the Word of God has enjoyed an ever increasing circulation. Today, as we have already noted, it is in more homes, and read in more languages, than any other book in the world.
Torch of Civilization
Without doubt the moral and ethical teachings of the Bible did have, in the Western World, a tremendous impact on human thinking and behavior, particularly during the nineteenth century. Prior to the printing press, the Bible as such had little influence on general world opinion. The nations of Europe accepted Christianity, so called, not because the people were influenced to do so by reading the Bible, but because it was forced upon them by the power of the sword. If a survey had been made during the Dark Ages, it would have been found that the public in general knew little or nothing about the Bible. The masses were illiterate in any event.
Look at a map of the world and note how small a portion of the earth lies within the orbit which benefited from the Bible even during the nineteenth century. Europe and America are about all. These countries have claimed to be Christian, and to have their laws based upon the teachings of the Bible. To the extent that this has been true, the people of these lands have been benefited. They have enjoyed greater liberty of thought and action, and their moral standards have been higher.
To the extent that civilization has progressed in the countries where the Bible is promoted, its moral and ethical teachings have had much to do with it. From this standpoint the title, “Torch of Civilization,” has been properly applied to the Bible. To the extent that these civilized nations have acted uncivilized it is because the teachings of the Bible have been ignored.
During the nineteenth century, the rank and file of church members, especially of Protestant denominations, knew considerable about the Bible as a book, and much more about its teachings than church members of today. The various denominations came into being largely because of honest differences of opinion concerning the doctrines of the Bible. This began, of course, prior to the nineteenth century, but the wider circulation of the Bible later made it possible for church membership in general to enter into the controversies, and they did.
In those days a man belonged to the Presbyterian Church because for one thing, he was convinced that the Bible taught the doctrine of “election.” Now, one would have a great deal of difficulty finding a person, young or old, and regardless of denominational affiliation, who would even know the meaning of the Presbyterian doctrine of election.
In those days one reason some joined the Methodist Church was because they believed in “free grace.” Ask a Methodist today why he is a Methodist, and he will probably say he doesn’t really know; or else that it was the church nearest to his home, or he liked the minister, or considered it best for his business.
Most church members in the “good old days” studied their Bibles, and held positive convictions as to its teachings. Those convictions were not always in harmony with the Bible, but they were firmly believed, and church people were confident that what they believed was taught in the Bible.
To a large extent this is still true within the smaller so-called Fundamentalist groups. We say “so-called” Fundamentalists. One of the teachings considered fundamental by these is eternal torture for the wicked, which is not taught in the Bible at all. Another is the “Holy Trinity,” which is also an unscriptural doctrine, and there are others. Nevertheless, these good people do study their Bibles. They know which is the first book in the Bible, and all the other books as well, and the sequence in which they appear.
In the nineteenth century, while the Bible was being published and circulated in ever increasing numbers, there developed the “Modernist” conception of Christianity. Associated with this was “Higher Criticism,” the Higher Critics claiming that the Bible was not inspired by God, and that they had the ability to determine which parts of the Bible were good and profitable, and which were not.
Meanwhile many, particularly of the religious leaders, became weary of controversy and began advocating that church people should forget their differences and work together. What difference does it make, they argued, whether one believes in “election” or in “free grace”? And, after all, is it not just as efficacious to have a little water poured or sprinkled on one’s head as a form of baptism, as it is to be immersed in water? And, even if it is not exactly logical to baptize infants, it doesn’t do them any harm.
This spirit of liberalism has grown until now it engulfs seventy-five percent of the Protestant world. The Bible having lost much of its authority in the minds of the Modernists, naturally it is not studied with the same degree of enthusiasm as in the past. Youth, quick to take advantage of any opportunity to break away from authority, reasons, that since their elders consider the Bible largely from the standpoint of merely good literature, why should they pay much attention to it?
God’s Plan
How sad it would be if this lack of interest in the Bible, in this favored and enlightened twentieth century, meant that God’s purpose in providing the Bible had failed! We are thankful indeed that this is not the case. Throughout the entire age the Bible has continued to accomplish that for which it was written. That purpose is clearly outlined for us in the Bible.
The followers of Jesus were commissioned to go into all the world and preach the Gospel, and thereby to make disciples of all nations. (Matt. 28:19; Acts 1:8) This did not mean that the plan of God was for all the people in every nation to become disciples of Christ. Jesus said, “If any man will come after me [be my disciple], let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matt. 16:24) God does not expect the whole world to do this.
“God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name,” we read in Acts 15:14. This taking out from the world of a “people for his name” is what is involved in the “election” aspect of God’s plan. Those in the past who held to the doctrine of “election” understood it to mean that God foreordained that some would be saved, and that all others would be lost, which to them meant suffering an eternity of torture in a fiery hell. No wonder the Methodists and others rebelled against such a blasphemy against the character of God.
The true concept of “election” in the plan of God is stated by the Apostle Paul, who wrote, “Whom he [God] did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Rom. 8:29) In the plan of God, he foreknew that through the Gospel a class would be called out from the world to suffer and die with Jesus, and he predestinated that each one in this class would have to be conformed to the character-likeness of his beloved Son.
But this does not mean that all others are predestinated to be lost. Quite the reverse is true. This foreordained class is to be the channel of blessing for all mankind, the living and the dead. This is the “free grace” aspect of the divine plan, and it will be grace far more free, abundant, and widespread than many who argued for this doctrine ever imagined could be possible.
They believed that God’s free grace was being extended to the world during the present time, yet they knew that only a few were accepting it, and they supposed that all who did not would surely suffer eternal torture. Thus the end result of their belief was essentially the same as that envisioned by those who believed in predestination. The only difference was that in one case the vast majority of mankind were to be tortured forever because God had predestinated it thus; and on the other hand they were to be tormented because of the Creator’s inability to save them.
But how different is the real truth of the Bible! After telling us that God visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name, James continued, “After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down [a reference to the re-establishment of royalty and dominion which typically existed in the “house” of David], … that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called saith the Lord, who doeth all these things. Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.”—Acts 15:15-18
Yes, right from the beginning God has known that all mankind are to be given a genuine opportunity to call upon him and receive the benefit of his free grace. He knew that this would be after the work of this age is completed, after the “people for his name” had been selected, or taken out from the world. It was for the teaching, guidance, and preparation of this “people for his name” that the Bible was written.
Through this people, with Jesus as their Head and Leader, the whole world will be enlightened during the Millennium. Concerning that time we read that the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:9) No doubt the people then will become thoroughly acquainted with the Bible. They will experience the fulfillment of its many promises which have revealed to the disciples of Christ the divine purpose in calling them to suffer and die with him that they might share his heavenly inheritance and live and reign with him.
Since so much of the Bible was written to direct and encourage those willing to sacrifice their lives in the divine service, even as Jesus did, it will not be a guidebook for the world, because mankind will not then be expected to suffer and die with Jesus. Instead, the divine program for them will be what Peter described as “restitution,” or restoration. All God’s prophets foretold the “times of restitution,” and the world will be happy that they are living in those “times.”
The Bible does not reveal in detail the divine program for instructing the world of mankind during the Millennium. The final result is foretold to be that God’s law will be written in the hearts of the people, and in their “inward parts.” (Jer. 31:31-34) This is in contrast to the manner in which God’s ‘law was once written on tables of stone. If, when this glorious work of Christ’s kingdom is complete, a survey should be made, it would be found that no one, anywhere, regardless of age, would be ignorant of the Lord, for the promise is, “They shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.”
NEW YORK
IT is promised that by next spring there will be available concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. A concordance is an alphabetical index which lists each key word in a book and tells you where to find it. The compiler of this new concordance to the Bible was the electric computer known as Univac. It did the job in about thirteen hundred hours. The publishers compare this with the thirty years which it took Professor James Strong to compile his concordance to the King James Version of the Bible completed back in 1894.
Without minimizing the efficiency of Univac, it is only fair to point out that Professor Strong not only compiled an Exhaustive English concordance to the Bible, but listed the Hebrew or Greek words from which the English translations were made, and gave the true meanings. This was a gigantic undertaking, and Professor Strong’s thirty years of work have been a wonderful blessing to all sincere students of the Bible. By the use of this concordance one may learn the meaning of the original Hebrew or Greek word used in any text in the Bible. Thus today, to those who have made use of this concordance, it is common knowledge that the Hebrew word sheol in the Old Testament, and the Greek word hades in the New Testament, both of which are translated “hell,” do not mean eternal torture, but simply the state of death, which, according to the Bible, is the sleep of death from which there is to be a resurrection. The Revised Standard Version of the Bible leaves these words untranslated, but their meaning can be ascertained by consulting Strong’s Concordance, which may be found in almost any public library.
LAKE CHAD, WEST AFRICA
LAKE CHAD, in West Africa, is the last remnant of a sprawling inland sea estimated to have been about the size of the Caspian. Long before it was first sighted by Europeans in 1823 it began receding before the southward encroachment of the Sahara desert. Rice farmers along the banks of the lake’s once fertile shores packed up and moved southward. In 1953 the centuries-old trend was unaccountably reversed. The lake began to rise rapidly. Although the water level of the lake is currently higher than it has been for fifty years, and continuing to rise, there has been no increase in rain to account for it.
This item of news is not in itself world shaking in its implications. However, it does remind us of certain prophecies of the Bible which give us a preview of a time on the earth when “in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert,” and when in “thirsty lands,” there shall be “springs of water.” What is happening to Lake Chad in West Africa may be a token of what can be expected throughout all the deserts of earth l as we approach nearer to the time for the full establishment of Christ’s kingdom.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
DAVID SARNOFF, speaking on a Voice of America program, told listeners that leisure rather than labor would be “the great problem of the decades ahead.” Automation and other aspects of scientific advance will put a premium on brains rather than brawn,” he said.
This, of course, is not news, except that it was voiced by the head of one of America’s largest corporations. The Bible highlights this item by reminding us that because of original sin man was sentenced to a life of hard toil. The sentence reads, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. “Now the time is nearing when this sentence, this curse, upon the human race is, through the agencies of Christ’s kingdom, to be lifted. Jesus took the sinner’s place in death, which opens the way for man to return to life in a restored paradise. Time prophecies of the Bible refer to the present transition period as the day of God’s preparation, in which there would be a great increase of knowledge. In this time of preparation God is permitting man to discover some of the means by which blessings will flow to him under the laws of Christ’s kingdom. We are living in a wonderful day.
INDIANAPOLIS
DR. JOHN A. MACAY, addressing the Divisions of Home Missions and Christian Life and Work of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., urged that an effort be made to contact their colleagues in communist China. He indicated that some success had been obtained along this line in Russia and other communist countries.
The world-shaking events of the past forty years have brought about a drastic change in the field of Christian missionary endeavor. Prior to the first World War, the general expectation was that the time had come for a speedy conversion of the whole world to Christ. Even after the first World War millions of dollars were raised for this purpose, Does the present outlook mean that Christianity has failed? Certainly not! It is merely that we had failed to understand the divine plan for the present age; that plan being not the conversion of the world, but, through the ministry of the Gospel, to attract those who would follow Jesus in the narrow way of suffering and death, and thus prove worthy to live and reign with him in his kingdom. It will be during the kingdom age, now near, that all the world will be converted to Christ. God’s plans never fail!
THE DEAD SEA
This item relates to the ancient scrolls recently discovered, which include portions of the Old Testament. One of these scrolls contains apocryphal stories on the Book of Genesis. One of these stories relates an alleged quarrel between Lamech, the father of Noah, and his wife. The quarrel arose, it seems, over Lamech’s accusation that one of the angels, which according to this scroll, were known as “watchers,” or “holy ones,” was Noah’s father, rather than himself.
This is extremely interesting because in the New Testament the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Jude both mention the activities of the angels prior to the flood. Peter speaks of them as the “angels which sinned,” and Jude refers to them as the “angels which kept not their first estate.” (II Pet. 2:4,5; Jude 6) Jesus said that angels neither marry nor are given in marriage. The sin of these angels therefore, was evidently in the fact that they materialized and did marry.
These angels are referred to in Genesis as the “sons of God” who saw “the daughters of men, that they were fair, and took unto themselves wives of all that they chose.” The Genesis record is that the children of these angels became men of renown, and also that they were giants who filled the earth with violence.—Gen. 6:2,4,13
Now that the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls confirms this activity of the fallen angels prior to the Flood, we are given greater assurance than ever that the records of the Bible are truly inspired by God, and that we can depend on them.
PITTSBURGH
Announcement has been made of a new electronic tube which will be known as an Image Multiplier. It is a small tube—three inches long, and two and three-quarter inches in diameter. Attached to a telescope it will increase its range more than a thousand times. Attached to the largest telescope in the world—the 200-inch lens on Mount Palomar, in California—it will give it a range of thirty-six billion, trillion miles.
In view of the mighty works of creation, the Bible says that it is a fool who says in his heart, “There is no God.”
Inventions like this teach us another lesson; namely, the fact that there is much which exists in the world and in the universe around us which we can neither see nor hear. The planets beyond the range of the present powerful telescope on Mount Palomar have been in existence right along. The new electronic tube will simply reveal their presence. Belief in God and in the Bible implies faith in things invisible to the human eye. God is invisible. The holy angels are invisible. But this does not prove they do not exist. It simply emphasizes the limitations of human eyes. Belief in God and in his promises is the only true source of comfort in this day of chaos and uncertainty.