A New Witness for God (Volume 1 of 3)Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Religion
A New Witness for God (Volume 1 of 3)
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saint churches
Our new school of critics, however, infatuated with the chief principle
of their new science, went right on with the pruning, and made as sad
work of the New Testament as they had with the Old. They rejected the
miraculous in the New Testament writings as well as the account of
miracles which the Christians themselves rejected in the apocryphal
writings. By this step they got rid of the story of the miraculous
conception and birth of Christ; of the journey of the vision-led
magi; of the dream-led Joseph; of the testimony of the Holy Ghost,
and of the Father at Christ's baptism; of converting water into wine;
of Christ walking upon the water; of the miraculously fed multitude;
of the healing of the sick by a word or with a touch; casting out
devils; the raising of the dead; the earthquake; the rending of the
vail of the temple; and the miraculous three hours' darkness at the
crucifixion; Christ's resurrection from the dead; his appearance
after the resurrection; his final ascension into heaven; and the
declaration of the two angels that he would come again to the earth as
he had left it: in the clouds of heaven and in great glory. The new
criticism got rid of all this--all that makes Christ God, or one of
the persons of the Godhead, or that ascribes to him powers above those
that may be possessed by a man. Christ's divinity is destroyed by this
method of criticism, and one instinctively asks what there is left,
and is told--"The manifestations of the God concealed in the depths
of the human conscience." [22] "God-man, eternally incarnate, not an
individual but an idea!" [23]
To this then it comes at last, a Christianity without a Christ--that
is, without a divine Christ; and a Christ not divine--not God manifest
in the flesh, is no Christ. We had trusted that Jesus of Nazareth
had been he who would have redeemed not only all Israel, but all the
nations of the earth. We and our fathers had believed that he had
brought life and immortality to light through the gospel; but alas! it
turns out according to our new school of critics, that his "revelations
of blissful scenes of existence beyond death and the grave, are but
one of the many impostures which time after time have been palmed off
on credulous mankind!" Christ but a man, "the moralist and teacher of
Capernaum and Gennesaret"--nothing more! On a level with Socrates,
or Hillel, or Philo! What a void this new school of criticism makes!
A Christianity without the assurance of the resurrection! without
the hope of the glorious return of the Messiah, to reward every man
according to his works!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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