Northwestern Bible School - Scroll Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

Page 12 text:

has done all that and vastly more ' and if you ask “How?” the answer is to be found in a single sentence and the only sentence that has any meaning whatever, namely it has given the world “a Bible ' and out of that Book has blossomed every blessing personal social or national known to man. Who can believe that such a stream will flow from an uninspired; fountain? But I turn from this question to THE WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE confidently affirming that it is with the claims of inspiration. The anticipations of the liible positively prove inspiration A, J. Gordon said Prophecy is the mould of history ' If so, we have in prophetic fulfilments a scientific demonstration of inspiration. Here we come upon a wealth of argu¬ ment the weight of which is as irresistible as would be an avalanche sweeping the sides of Mt. Everest, The comparatively minor sentences of prophecy that majored in history, who can measure? In the book of Deuteronomy we read of Israel Ye shall be plucked from the land. The Lord shall scatter ye among all people Among these nations thou shalt find no ease. Every man who knows aught of the Jew knows that that prophecy finds in history a literal fulfilment Jesus looked on Jerusalem and declared its coming destruction. Descending to very minutiae of speech He said, Not one stone of the temple shall be left upon another ' Forty years later it was so! Daniel in the second chapter of his book prophesied an outline of history from which twenty-seven centuries have de¬ parted in no particular ! But to show how the prophets could express even the very particulars of an incident remind yourself of Zeohariall’s statement concerning the Christ who was to come He shall ride into Jerusalem upon a colt, the foal of an ass”—a sentence that waited seven hundred years for its fulfilment and at the end of that time saw the last word of the assertion realized. To show how potent is this argument only remember that prophecies concerning the Christ begin in the third chapter of Genesis and conclude with the twenty-second of Revelation, and only those have failed to find tile forms of history that remain for certain fulfilment. The total character of the Book demands inspiration I have spoken of The Book, and such it is. Someone says, No, it is a library! It is sixty-sis hooks!” Yes! Written by forty authors? Yes! Produced in a period equalling if not exceeding fifteen hundred years? Yes! By men, many of whom never met each other or heard one of another. Yes, and yet we find it one book. The unity of the Scripture is an evidence of its divinity. Its authors lived in different coun¬ tries; were affected by different circumstances, spoke different languages em¬ ployed diversities of literary style represented all grades of culture and yet from Moses to Malaehi the Old Testament moves without a break, and from Matthew to Revelation the New proceeds without a hiatus. Not one of the sixty-six is in conflict with another Yea more, not one of the sixty-six but produces an essen¬ tial part of the glorious whole and so fits what he has to say into the consummation as to complete and perfect it. Men know that our Bible cannot be improved upon. Yea better, they know full well it will never again lie equalled. If not. why make a mock of the masterpiece of the ages? If not why neglect tlie Book of Books? If not, why shut the cars against sentences that are so clearly from God? If not why sit at t)u i feet of men and permit them in your presence to scorn its evident di¬ vinity? If not, why not accept it as the basis for life building, as the Pole Star for life’s direction and as the source of Information concerning the life that is to come? Students, fear not to believe nor yet to preach and teach it. It is the in¬ spired Word! [ 3 ]