Think of Moses. He wrote long centuries before printing by metal type was thought of. A few years ago I passed through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. The description of the desert had from my earliest years fascinated me. At last I saw it with my own eyes. I was pointed out the part where Mount Sinai is situated. I thought of Moses. I had looked upon him as a hero, but I thought far more of him when I saw the lonely trackless barren desert where he was for forty years the leader of a stiff-necked and rebellious people.
I thought of his writing the five books that bear his name—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy—in those dreary and desolate regions. Did he inscribe the sacred writings in cuneiform characters on clay tablets? All we know is that the work must have been crude and laborious compared with our methods. The wonder is the Books have been preserved, and have come down to the present time in their wonderful detail. The whole of Genesis is taken up with history that took place hundreds of years before Moses was born. Was there ever such a book? How is it that this record did not disappear?
Secular books of that period have vanished tracelessly, or are at best known by mere fragments, and disjointed statements, that compare very unfavorably with Genesis. For instance, the world was said to be borne on the back of an elephant, the elephant standing on the back of a tortoise, but we are not told what the tortoise stood upon. The ungainly movements of the elephant were said to be the cause of earthquakes. Genesis is free from such ridiculous accounts. How is this?
Think of David, the little shepherd lad, who grew up to be the King and the sweet singer of Israel. How is it that his Psalms have survived, and are even now, many centuries after they were penned, the solace and comfort of untold multitudes down the centuries?
Think of that matchless Psa. 22. One thousand years, ten long centuries, before our Savior died, this Psalm anticipated the cry of anguish uttered by the Holy Sufferer upon the cross of Calvary—" My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The Psalm foretold the mode of His death, "They pierced My hands and My feet" (verse 16). At that time crucifixion was a death unknown. How David himself must have wondered when he wrote these words. They did not refer to his hands. His hands were not pierced. He foretold the robber soldiers gambling for our Lord's clothes, "They part My garments among them, and cast lots upon My vesture" (verse 18).
It has been said that our Lord, knowing this Psalm, took care to fulfill it, uttering the cry foretold at its beginning. Such a subterfuge is senseless, and shows how hard up the opposers of the truth are for arguments that they will condescend to such puerilities. For we may ask, Did the Roman soldiers, who drove in the nails in our Lord's hands and feet, know of the Psalm, and were they anxious to fulfill it? Did they gamble for His clothes to fulfill the Psalm? No, such writing as Psa. 22 could not come from the pen of an uninspired writer. Inspiration is clearly marked upon its every line.
A volume could be written on this theme, but let this suffice. Surely God is the Author of the Book.