Appendix

Narrator: Chris Genthree
Duration: 24min
 •  20 min. read  •  grade level: 13
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The All-Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures
If any word of ours could deepen in the souls of our readers the unspeakable importance of possessing a written revelation from God, we would be truly thankful. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament consisting of 66 books, and embracing an endless variety of subjects, being the work of about 40 different penmen, drawn from all classes of society, from the wisest of monarchs down to the unlettered fisherman of Galilee. They are composed at different periods during the progress of 16 centuries, and in some cases in, places up to 1,000 miles apart. These Scriptures, though penned in such diversity, are pervaded by One mind, one plan, and characterized throughout by unity of design because they are fully inspired of God, and hence their authority is absolute and unquestionable. The authority of the Living God is lodged in these divine and imperishable records. The declarations of Scripture on whatever subject, must be accepted as the voice and will of God.
The contempt of man has been poured upon the Scriptures; the power and ingenuity of man have been exerted to their utmost to blot them out of existence; the learning of man has been employed to destroy their divine diameter; but all has been in vain. Has the accumulated lore of 33 centuries produced one fact contradicting a single statement in the earliest written of all books — the book of Genesis? On the contrary, that venerable document written by Moses on the plains of Moab, in the middle of the fifteenth century before Christ, throws its certain light upon every branch of science and subject to which it refers, and upon every moral question bearing upon man, his present and future. Fuller light there may be in other portions of the matchless Word of God, but there is as much divine certainty in the statements written by Moses as in the utterances of the Lord Himself (John 5:45-47). Believing most firmly in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures — as they came from the hands of the various penmen employed by the Spirit of God — we utterly reject the thought that Bible statements need to be confirmed by human testimony; or that the sacred page needs light from the scientist; or that text throws light upon text. “The words of the Lord are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times” (Psa. 12:6).
With ever-increasing delight we turn to the sacred volume, every page, and line, and word of which were penned by inspiration of God. In these divine records we have unfolded the history of man from paradise to paradise, from the first transgression to its final judgment in the lake of fire, from the tribunal in the garden (Genesis) to the judgment throne of eternity (Rev. 20), from eternity, through all time and its vicissitudes, on to eternity.
What a tangled, twisted web, what a mass of complications, what a crowd of unanswered questions, and multitude of unsolved problems the history of man presents! But in the Word of God all is plain, and the mind of man is fully instructed in every theme bearing on his present relation to God, and on those connected with his eternal future. There the true account of creation, the origin and unity of the race and subsequent history, their distribution into nations, their geographical location, their future whether of judgment or blessing, and kindred subjects of universal interest are clearly unfolded; while the yet more perplexing questions of the ancients, as the existence of sin, the unity and character of God, the ultimate triumph of good; the revelation of heaven, of hell, of eternity; of grace, and of Christ too, are moral questions of supreme moment satisfactorily and divinely answered by Him who alone could sound the depths of man’s utter wretchedness and ruin, and yet disclose in love and righteousness His beloved Son as the Saviour of the lost. In the divine volume we have the veil lifted from the historic-past and the prophetic-future — for with God all is one present. The certain light of inspiration is thrown across the whole history of the race, and we are given to weigh actions and motives, origin and destiny, in the light of God and of eternity. What a book! Truly its author is God!
The Records of Antiquity
When we turn to the boasted records of antiquity, to the historic annals and hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Hindus, Chinese, Egyptians, and Assyrians, we are at once plunged into a labyrinth of doubt and perplexity.
The earliest scraps of information outside the Bible are furnished by the Greek poets, Homer and Hesiod, who flourished about a century and a half after Solomon. Both writers did much to form and mould the Greek mind, and Homer has been pronounced as a man unequalled in his day and “the prince of poets;” but it has been found no easy task to separate fact from fiction in these early poems. Even Herodotus, who produced his celebrated history (the first in time of all historians) about the close of the Old Testament canon, makes too many demands upon the credulity of his readers to make his great work in all respects trustworthy. The Greek writers, it is admitted, were exceedingly fond of the marvelous, hence their tendency to exaggerate — not a commendable quality in a historian.
Assyria, Egypt, and other nations held the existence of a reign of gods and demigods before man appeared on the scene, founded, we suppose, on the divine account of the origin of the giant races furnished by Moses (Gen. 6). Assyrian history ascribes godhead to Nimrod, the founder of their kingdom. The Egyptian priests, who supplied Herodotus with records and information concerning their country, assigned a reign of 30,000 years to the Sun, besides shorter periods to inferior gods and demigods, and this before the first of kings — Menes — commenced his reign. But besides these fabulous accounts, they produced a papyrus roll containing a dry list of more than 300 names of sovereigns who reigned in succession after Menes, but of whom nothing is known “because they left no monuments behind them.” But who was Menes? When did he reign? Was he a real person, or one of their deities merely? These are questions on which the learned are not yet agreed. Then Manetho, the Egyptian priest who wrote a history of his country in Greek for the Alexandrian Library, corrected numerous mistakes in the account by Herodotus. The history as a whole perished, but certain fragments found in Josephus and Eusebius attest the existence and value of Manetho’s work. It is true that the monuments — the enduring witness of past Egyptian greatness — sometimes confirm the statements of Manetho, but they frequently correct them. Now, which are we to believe — the stone or written history? Which, too, of the historians are we to credit — Herodotus or Manetho? Even Josephus, the popular referee on Jewish matters, cannot always be relied on, as there is good evidence to believe that his text has been tampered with. Where will you find a sane person in these lands who seriously credits the historical veracity of the Hindu and Chinese annals? Is the Hindu account of creation resting on a huge tortoise, and the whole encircled by the serpent, or their absurd chronology, assigning periods of from 30,000 to 300,000 years for the past history of our race, worth a moment’s serious consideration? A favorite task both by nations and individuals, especially in the east, is self-glorification; that would at least partly account for these enormous periods of time, which was sometimes arrived at by the curious process of giving 15 days to a month, and two months to a year.
How blessed to turn from these vagaries and baseless speculations to the unerring testimony of Scripture! The scientist only writes truly when the first chapter of the Bible lies open before him, and God’s account of creation is accepted in its literality. The chronologist is alone safe when he reverently founds his studies upon the fifth chapter of the Bible. The historian has sure landmarks to guide him in his interesting researches with the tenth chapter of Genesis as a basis. What a flood of light is poured upon the present questions agitating the scientific and theological world by the first book of Holy Scripture!
The highest point of antiquity to which authentic profane history conducts us is about 250 years after the flood, and for all the knowledge we possess of events and dates previous to that we are alone indebted to the Hebrew text of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Word of God then is our only safe guide to the understanding of the past, as it alone unfolds the future. Neither the kingdom records of the past, nor present monumental remains, interesting as these are, of Assyria and Babylon, can afford the slightest information of a reliable kind as to the origin of these ancient empires. The part of Herodotus’ history bearing upon Assyria is lost, so in that quarter nothing can be known; nor is Rollin, of modern date, to be trusted, for he gives carefully arranged accounts of the Greek historians, who delighted and feasted on the marvelous. But when we turn to Scripture we learn on divine testimony that Nimrod, the first hunter and conqueror in the world, was the founder of both kingdoms, and further that the original strength of each consisted of but four cities; for Babylon, see Genesis 10:10, and for Assyria, see verse 11 and 12.
It may reasonably be questioned whether any of the fathers of the first three Christian centuries, except Origen, were acquainted with Hebrew; hence their extreme reverence for the Greek version of the Old Testament. This, the oldest translation of the earlier oracles of God, the Old Testament — commenced if not finished in the third century before Christ — differs considerably from the Hebrew in names and dates. Our English Bible, following the Hebrew, assigns a period of 1,656 years from Adam to Noah, whereas the Septuagint adding a century to the age of the early patriarchs, noted in Genesis 5, brings up the period to 2,242 years at least. The fact that the Septuagint was repeatedly quoted from by the Lord, and writers of the New Testament, no doubt endeared it to the early Church. Undoubtedly its general correctness was thus divinely sanctioned. Jerome, who flourished in the beginning of the fourth century, and who was an accomplished Hebraist in these times, was the first of the fathers who discarded in toto the authority of the Septuagint for that of the Hebrew, the language in which the original Scriptures of the Old Testament were penned. The Greek Church still accepts the authority of the Septuagint over that from which it was translated; while the Western Churches adhere to the ancient Hebrew. The English readers of the Bible may depend upon it that the dates in their Bibles are correct. We have, of late, been interested in the perusal of an unpretending little volume, of anonymous authorship, — entitled: “The Dates and Chronology of Scripture,” (Morrish, London) — in which the writer, without any effort to arrive at a foregone conclusion, carefully goes through the dates mentioned in the text of the Word of God, with the result of fixing the date given in our English Bibles, 4004 B.C., thus confirming the conclusions of Clinton, Ussher, Lloyd, and other chronologists.
History and Prophecy
Ancient history has a charm for many minds and is a study of interest and value, but the combined subject of history and prophecy should certainly command the attention of every child of God, and mere human writings are not necessary for its efficient study. Histories in their place are useful. The English Bible, however, under the teaching of the Spirit of God, will be found amply sufficient for the education of the Christian in this as in other subjects. Of course, if time and access to works of a reliable kind, can be had, that is fine; but for the mass of believers, whose time and means and education are limited, we would strongly insist upon the all-sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures as containing all a Christian needs to know upon the origin and past history of nations, as also their future. “Knowledge puffeth up,” and it is a notable fact th at the heresies of the day are brought in by men whose intellectual endowments are of a high order, and yet these scholarly men are more ignorant of the contents of the Scriptures than thousands of simple, unlettered Christians. This fact has been forced on our attention recently, by the large number of careless statements, misquotations of Scripture, and utter inability to comprehend what a devout reader of the English Bible has no difficulty in perceiving. We would rather trust the judgment of a sober Christian man, taught of the Spirit and acquainted with his Bible, than that of the most accomplished and learned theological professor.
The Bible instructs us as to the rise, course, and doom of the four successive Gentile empires. It gives a more exact description of the imperial powers of Babylon, Medo-Persian, and Grecian, and that within the compass of a few words, than will be found in volumes written on these kingdoms (Dan. 7:4-6). Is not the conquest of the Grecian over the Persian, the character of the renowned Alexander, the swiftness, vigor, and fury of his attacks, the breakup of the empire on the death of its mighty chief, when in the very zenith of his glory, and the after formation of four kingdoms by Alexander’s principal captains — foretold with remarkable precision? And have not all been fulfilled to the very letter? (Dan. 8). The first 35 verses of the eleventh chapter of the prophet Daniel are full of most interesting details. The Syrian and Egyptian kingdoms — two of the four kingdoms into which the third empire was partitioned soon after the death of Alexander — are here the scene of war and intrigue, with Palestine lying between, and its hills and valleys eagerly coveted by both powers. The circumstantial details are related with so much minuteness, that some have boldly asserted that the book of Daniel, or the eleventh chapter at least, must have been written after the accomplishment of the events narrated. The testimony of a whole nation to the contrary, of a people so jealous of their sacred writings as the Jews ever were and are, can have no weight with such infidel objectors. If the past fulfillment of the first part of the chapter is a matter of fact, what of the relation of these same powers to each other, to the Jew, and to the Antichristian king in the last great crisis for Israel and the world? You will get a divine answer to these questions in the latter part of the chapter. We are not in the least surprised at the exactness of God’s Word; actually, we expect it in every page of that blessed book — His treasury and storehouse for man.
The notices in Scripture of the fourth universal empire are so abundant that if they were carefully collected, a history of great interest might profitably be written. The character of the Roman power, its cruelty and avarice in war, the siege of Jerusalem and cities of Judah, the fearful straits to which the people would be reduced by famine, and the complete triumph of the enemy, are vividly predicted 700 years before Rome was founded, and 1,500 years before the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus (Deut. 28:49-57). The predictions of Moses were fulfilled to the very letter (verse 57). Further particulars of that most memorable and interesting of all sieges are given by our Lord about 45 years before it took place (Luke 21:20-24).
The future of that truly amazing Latin or Roman power which will excite the admiration of the world at its revival (Rev. 17:8), is as fully recorded in Scripture as its past history. Satan will revive it. Ten kingdoms, with a supreme head or chief sitting in Rome, then capital, will historically characterize the empire. Its personal head, who will be a Gentile, will receive his authority directly from Satan — this the Lord refused (Luke 4:5-6). Energized by Satan, the “beast” will be a blaspheming power against God, and a violent persecutor of His saints. This imperial power will support the pretensions of Antichrist — the Jewish king in Palestine — enter into a seven years’ league or covenant with apostate Judah then returned to her land, and for a time uphold the guilty Church or “whore,” granting her material support, and covering her with the world’s splendor and glory. After her destruction, the empire will become openly infidel in character, and, under its great chief or imperial head, the “little horn” of Dan. 7, will gather its vast armies, a great European host, against the Lamb of God. The empire is there destroyed, and its supreme head, with the Antichrist, a Jew, will together share one common doom, the lake of fire. Satan, the source and author of all the mischief, will be confined in the bottomless pit for 1,000 years, the whole course of the kingdom reign of Christ, and will then be consigned to his eternal abode of misery, with his agents and dupes. These and numerous particulars, past and future, are recorded in the books of Daniel and the Revelation, which specially concern themselves with the history and last actings of the western powers, allied with the Jewish antichristian king and the apostate nation of Judah in the future crisis.
The Relation of the Jews to History and Prophecy
It cannot be too strongly impressed upon our souls that God inspired Scripture with a moral end in view—the glory of His beloved Son, and this applies to every part and line of the Word of God. Thus the history of nations assumes importance only as that history stands related to the Jew and Jerusalem, through whom and where God governed the earth, for the sake and glory of Christ. Thus saith the Lord God, “This is Jerusalem, I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her” (Ezek. 5:5). And however much the nations may squabble and fight to enlarge their respective countries — like Nimrod, the first who waged war upon man and beast — yet God has His eye resting on the whole political horizon, and His hand is laid on the grasping ambition of those powers which seek to pass beyond His decree. The children of Israel are the center round which God will group the millennial nations (Deut. 32:8).
This principle is an all-important one in considering the history of the ancient empires of Egypt and Assyria, as also of the four successive Gentile empires (Dan. 2 and 7), besides other kingdoms as Russia (Gog, Ezek. 38-39), and minor states as Tyre, Edom, Philistia. Wherever these or other peoples are named in Scripture, it is always in relation to the Jew, through whom the earth is to be governed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Egypt is named more often in the Scriptures — about 800 clear references to the country, king, or people — than any other nation except Israel, and in every instance it is in distinct relation to God’s people.
Asia became the first seat of mighty kingdoms. No quarter of the globe has witnessed such a succession of changes, of once flourishing empires now in ruins, as the Eastern Continent; of these the most noted in Scripture history are the kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon. The former was the elder of the two, and for many centuries was the dominant power in Asia. Babylon arose on the overthrow of the Assyrian power, and it is a significant circumstance that, except for a few passing allusions, Scripture records nothing about these empires until the star of Jacob began to sink. These, then, were the two powers which God was pleased to raise up in succession as His instruments in the punishment of His idolatrous people—first Israel by Assyria, and next Judah by Babylon.
It has been asserted that many of the nations who have played their parts in the great drama of life have absolutely passed off the scene — have become extinct. It is not so; the truth is, that national responsibility is as distinctly taught in the Word, as personal accountability to God, and hence all, or nearly so, of the peoples named in Genesis chapter 10, and by whom the earth was to be occupied, are distinctly pointed out in the prophetic Scriptures as reappearing in the awful future now looming in the distance. Representatively or nationally, all will be gathered either under “Gog” (Russia), the great northern power, and oppressor of Israel, or under “the beast,” the consolidated power of the west. Psalm 83 shows a concert of the nations north and east of Palestine, under the leadership of the Assyrian; chapters 38 and 39 of the prophet Ezekiel may also be read as a summary of the powers gathered against the Jew in the future crisis of her history; while chapters 7 of Daniel and 17 of Revelation may be perused for the actings of those nations — who in the latter day will politically favor the cause of the Jew — gathered under “the beast” and “the false prophet,” the Gentile and Jewish heads of the civil and ecclesiastical apostasies. Thus, speaking generally, the one-half of the world will be arrayed in deadly conflict against the other, Judah as a people, being the cause, and Palestine as a country, being the scene of these coming world-wide conflicts.
The Lord and the Millennium
The personal return of the Lord to the Mount of Olives (the mount from whence He ascended to heaven), will accomplish the deliverance and blessing of Judah, and close the great “Eastern” or “Jewish Question” in a baptism of blood (Zech. 14).
The victorious Lord will sheathe His glittering sword, His “indignation shall cease” against His ancient people and the Gentiles with the destruction of “the Assyrian” and his master “Gog” (Isa. 10; Ezek. 39). Previous to this, the armies of the Western powers will have met with complete and utter ruin in their mad attempt to match themselves against the Lamb and His heavenly saints (Rev. 19:11-21). In the judgment of the East, the Messiah heads His conquering people of Judah against their and His enemies, and the mountains of Israel will witness to the complete overthrow of the mighty host gathered to enrich themselves with the wealth and treasures laid up in the land of Judah. The victory is with Israel, and her mountains and valleys afford but a grave to “Gog” and his allies — lured on to their own destruction by greed and lust (Ezek. 39). All Israel — Judah and Ephraim — will be saved; Jerusalem rebuilt, adorned, greatly enlarged and gifted with the wealth and splendor of the Gentile world, will become the center of government for the millennial earth, and its large and costly temple will then be “a house of prayer for all people” (Isa. 60). The Gentiles, near and distant, will, as a whole, be converted. Obedience, real or feigned, will be rendered by all to King Jesus. Satan confined in the bottomless pit, and Christ and His heavenly saints in the reign of life and glory over the earth, will be the grand witness to creation of the triumph of good over evil — of Christ’s victory and Satan’s overthrow. The tears of men will be wiped away by the hand of Him who died, the groans of creation will be hushed by the presence of Him who is love, and its evil removed by Him who is light.
Lord Jesus, come and present Thy bride spotless and in glory to Thyself! O speak, and Thy sleeping dead will wake up, and Thy waiting ones be changed! Only wave Thy hand and we will be with Thee! Sound the trump soon, O God, and the Saviour and the saints will gather is Thy presence and Thou wilt be satisfied, the heart of Jesus will rest, and Thy redeemed will triumph! O Bright and Morning Star, shine upon Thy pilgrim band, who with burning light, girded loins, and longing hearts wait for Thy coming again.