Gold Nugget 213 - Revelation - The Right Way?
It is not often said that God has made a mistake in constituting the moral and material universe in such a way that so much sin and suffering should be possible; but the feeling is often entertained that it would have been well if some other course had been instituted. There is more of this feeling lurking in some hearts than is supposed. …
Many attacks on the Bible proceed from a discontent with what is conceived to be inadequate to the wants of the world; and in some this feeling has generated the supposed discovery of reasons for discarding the book as a revelation from God at all. The very primitive biographical notices; outlines of tribal history interblended with singular personal experiences; genealogies of uninteresting names; crude ideas and antique customs of strange people – all this in connection with a favoured people, and relieved by streaks of light suited to men of later times, does not seem to be a mode of revelation most likely to survive the advancing intelligence of the world.
It is also not the most satisfactory thing for so precious a boon as a revelation to be given in detached portions, to be conveyed originally to men of one country, and to be characterized by a series of supernatural events. Men feel that God has imposed a hard task on them to have to defend and justify what seems open to assault from so many sides. They wish it had been his will to have given his light so unmixed with an ancient human history that the most keen antagonist would be compelled to recognize its presence. To some it really seems as though the form and origin of the contents of the Bible were a misfortune.
Of course this discontent, silent or expressed, springs from an imperfect consideration of the real nature and purport of the revelation given, as well as of the inevitable conditions of any revelation that has to be coextensive with the wants of both the first and last stages of the world; and that, moreover, has to be concentrated and verified in a Divine person duly attested by a contemporary evidence harmonious with a chain of antecedent proof.
It would be useful to the Church, if some one, dissatisfied with the way in which God is affirmed to have made known his will to succeeding ages, would prescribe the right way.
The Pulpit Commentary, I Samuel p.146, I Samuel 8:1-9, (C. Chapman)
Gold Nugget 213 – Revelation – The Right Way?
