New Witnesses for God (Volume 2 of 3) — John Shaqi
New Witnesses for God (Volume 2 of 3)Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Religion
New Witnesses for God (Volume 2 of 3)
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Book of Mormon; Smith, Joseph, Jr., 1805-1844
It is not my purpose here to enter into a discussion of the merits or
demerits of Higher Criticism; to point out what is true in it, and
what false. I am merely calling attention to a condition that has been
created by that method of Bible treatment, viz., a condition of rapidly
increasing unbelief among the masses in the Bible as the undoubted
word of God. The learned who are leaders in the new method of Bible
criticism, after destroying confidence in the authenticity of almost
every book of the Old Testament; after questioning the credibility of
the greater part of all those same books; after retiring some of the
books from the dignified realm of reliable history to the questionable
station of belles-lettres; after saying, "We are obliged to admit
that there are scientific errors in the Bible, errors of astronomy,
of geology, of zoology, of botany, and anthropology;" after saying,
"There are historical mistakes in the Christian scriptures, mistakes
of chronology and geography, errors of historical events and persons,
discrepancies and inconsistencies in the historians, which cannot be
removed by any proper method of interpretation;" after reducing the
inspired writers to the level of just ordinary historical, poetical,
and fiction-writing authors, by saying that the foregoing enumerated
errors in the sacred books "are just where you would expect to find
them in accurate, truthful writers of history in ancient times," and
that the sacred writers merely "used with fidelity the best sources
of information accessible to them--ancient poems, popular traditions,
legends and ballads, regal and family archives, codes of law and
ancient narratives," and "there is no evidence that they received any
of this history by revelation from God, there is no evidence that the
divine Spirit corrected their narratives either when they were being
composed in their minds, or written in manuscript;" after saying, "we
cannot defend the morals of the Old Testament at all points, * * *
the Patriarchs were not truthful, their age seems to have had little
apprehension of the principles of truth;" after saying that "God spake
in much the greater part of the Old Testament through the voices and
pens of the human authors of the scriptures," and then ask--"Did the
human voice and pen in all the numerous writers and editors of the
Holy Scriptures prior to the completion of the Canon always deliver
an inerrant word?" and, "Even if all the writers were possessed of
the Holy Spirit as to be merely passive in his hands, the question
arises, can the finite voice and the finite pen deliver and express
the inerrant truth of God?" After all this, then these Higher Critics
propound the question: Can we, in the face of all the results of our
literary and historical [12] method of treating the scriptures, still
maintain the truthfulness of the Bible? And while they are speculating
how they can make it appear that "the substantial truthfulness of the
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