The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive CriticismWishard, S. E. (Samuel Ellis)
Religion
The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism
Wishard, S. E. (Samuel Ellis)
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Further, as to the change of style. Nothing is more natural or
reasonable than the fact that a change of theme should produce a change
of style. A more exalted theme must quicken the imagination, set the
emotions aflame, stimulate all the mental and moral powers of the
author. A historical statement, a commonplace theme, can be dealt with
in a commonplace style, while new and uplifting truth awakens new powers
in the writer. Milton's Paradise Lost was entirely different from his
ordinary prose composition. Dr. John Watson's sermons were on a higher
level than his books of fiction. Writers who do much of their literary
work on the level plain on which the people move, frequently rise to
mountain peaks of sublime composition when the occasion and theme demand
it.
The style in the later chapters of the book of Isaiah is just what we
would expect from the prophet when the Holy Spirit opened to his
enraptured mind the theme of redemption through a suffering Messiah, in
the fifty-third and following chapters of the book.
The objection to conceding the authorship of the entire book to Isaiah,
because the prophet mentions Cyrus by name before his birth, is made in
the face of the fundamental fact already stated that God inspired the
writer, and is therefore the author of prophecy, "declaring the end from
the beginning." (Isa. xlvi. 10.) He knows all the future and whom he
will choose to accomplish his glorious purposes. To deny this fact is to
deny all prophecy. If God can not foretell future events and the
instruments for their accomplishment, there can be no prophecy, and
God's omniscience is impeached. Isaiah prophesied in the seventh chapter
and fourteenth verse: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and shall call his name Immanuel." Matthew affirms that this prophecy
was fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. (Matt. i. 22, 23.) He also declares
in the same connection that the announcing angel foretold that the name
"Jesus" was to be given to the Messiah at his birth. These
preannouncements must be cast aside if the critic's dictum is accepted.
Shall we discredit Isaiah, the announcing angel, and Matthew on the
ground of the critic's literary acumen?
Further, the student of the Word will remember that when Jeroboam was
bringing disaster upon Israel, God sent his prophet to declare: "Behold
a son shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon
thee (the altar at Bethel) shall he offer the priests of the high places
that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee."
More than three hundred years after this prophecy was given, according
to Usher's Chronology, Josiah was born and did the precise things that
were predicted concerning him. (See 1 Kings xiii. 2 and 2 Kings xxiii,
15, 16.) The omniscience of the Holy Spirit can predict the name of the
instrument as readily as the event which is to be accomplished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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