By Fred E. Maxey
*This Article is republished from the 1960s issue of the FWB Paper. The text below was originally printed in three separate issues of the, then, weekly FWB newspaper. The articles have been merged into one post.
In his work against heretics, Tertullian says: "If you are willing to exercise your curiosity profitably in the business of your salvation, visit the Apostolic Churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside in their places, in which their very AUTHENTIC LETTERS ARE RECITED, sounding forth the voice and representing the countenance of every one of them. Is Achaia near you: You have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi and Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you are near to Italy, you have Rome."
Emperor Constantine's Knowledge Based on the State Documents of the Roman Empire
The Roman Emperor Constantine, who became emperor in 306 A. D. and was converted to Christianity in A. D. 312, had the means of knowing whether his friend Eusebius was stating facts when in his Ecclesiastical History B.ii.c.ii) he wrote: "The fame of our Lord's remarkable resurrection being now spread abroad, according to an ancient custom to communicate novel occurrences to the emperor, Pontius Pilate transmits to Tiberius an account of the circumstances concerning the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. Tiberius referred the matter to the Senate, but it is said they rejected the proposition."
Constantine had the means of KNOWING whether Tertullian, A.D. 160-220, wrote truly, when in his "Apology to the Rulers of the Roman Empire" (p. 21) he spoke of the Darkness at the Crucifixion, and said: — "You yourselves have an account of the world-portent still in your archives." And when after recording Christ's condemnation, death, burial, resurrection and ascension, he said, "All these did Pilate do to Christ, and now in fact a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Him to the reigning Caesar, who was at the time Tiberius."
Constantine knew whether Justin Martyr, A. D. 105-165, spoke truly, when in his apology to the emperor Antoninus Pius (chap. 1) he testified of Christ healing the sick, casting out demons, cleansing lepers, and raising the dead and added: "And that He did these things you can learn from the Acts of Pontius Pilate."
The records of the acts of Pontius Pilate have since been lost, BUT THEY EXISTED IN CONSTANTINE'S DAY. The State Records were subsequently destroyed by the barbarians. The Emperor Constantine was familiar with all these matters. The public records of Rome and Pilate's Official Reports from Jerusalem to the emperor had not yet been destroyed by the barbarian conquerors, and were at his command. He was nearly thirty years old in A. D. 303. when his predecessor Diocletian, published his Imperial Edict commanding them to tear down the churches of the Christians, and BURN THEIR COPIES OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES.
How the Original MSS. Were Lost
"We saw with our own eyes our houses of worship thrown down from their elevations. The Sacred Scriptures of inspiration committed to the flames, in the midst of the markets. It was the nineteenth year of the reign of Dicoletian, (A. D. 302), in the Dystrus, called by the Romans, March, in which the festival of our Saviour was at hand, when the Imperial Edicts were everywhere published to tear down the churches to the foundation, and to destroy the Sacred Scriptures by fire." Possibly original MSS. written by the apostles, were destroyed in this and earlier persecutions. (See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book VIII, Chap, ii.)
Roman Emperor Constantine Orders Fifty Copies of the Holy Scriptures
Under these circumstances, it appears that the Roman Emperor ordered, at the public expense, fifty splendid copies of the Sacred Writings which recorded the life of Christ and the beginning of Christianity, that they might be distributed among the churches in the Imperial Capital, where they would be publicly read every Lord's day. Tischendorff thought the Sinatic MS. was one of them, as the writing was so beautifully done.
Christianity and the New Testament had a beginning. None of the writers of antiquity mention them. Neither Homer, nor Hesoid, Herodotus or Manetho, Plato, nor Socrates, allude to Christ or His Gospel. During the seventy years from B. C. 50 to A. D. 20, we may scan the writings of Diodorus, Caesar, Cicero, Strabo,, Livy, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, without finding the slightest reference to Christ or the Christian religion. The Jews were known and noticed; but Christianity was not mentioned.
Mention of Christ by Independent Early Writers
A Generation later we find the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, Trajan, and others who mentioned Christ as the Founder of Christianity, and they spoke of the multitudes of Christians scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Some where within this narrow circle of a ringle life-time, Christianity was established. Luke, chapter three, tells us when. The Books of the New Testament must have been written in the First Century of our Era, because they are quoted in the Second Century, and have been quoted in every Century since.
(Continued next issue, subject concerning false teachers and Christ's warning.)
Unanointed Ministers Burning False Fire
The modern Korahs, Dathans and Abirams in the Christian ministry have done immeasurable harm to the Christian Church. The uninstructed, as in the days of Moses, mistake them at first for real Ambassadors of Christ, simply because they are educated, ordained ministers of the Gospel. History has shown us that a man may be an Archbishop of Canterbury, a Chairman of a Free Church Council, or a President of a Wesleyan, Congregational, or Baptist, or other Union, and yet be a Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who momentarily blaze forth like a wandering star and then lapses into obscurity. Jesus Christ plainly warns us in Matt. 7:22, 23, that many ministers of the gospel will be shut out of heaven at the Great Day because Christ never knew them.
The divinely called and anointed ministry proclaim the original Gospel of Christ, as St. Paul, Waldo, Wycliffe, Luther, Knox, Calvin, Wesley, Spurgeon, Ryle, Moule and other humble and mighty men of God. Christ faithfully warns us to beware of the unanointed False-Prophets— ministers, who come to us in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves, with only a second-hand knowledge of Divine Revelation. These men never reach the ungodly and lead them to Christ.
Ministers who preach the following modernist theories should always be regarded with deep suspicion:
First. That the Books of Moses were not originally written by Moses, as Christ declares, but compiled centuries later than Moses' time, even as late as 450 B. C; that the first chapters of Genesis are purely allegorical and not divinely revealed record of the order of Creation, as first rank scientist like Dawson, Lyall, Dana and others affirm.
Second. That Ada, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Jacob, Daniel and other Old Testament prophets were not real historical characters, but merely ethnic or tribal names.
Third. That the Book of Daniel was not written in Daniel's day, 600 to 550 B. C, but in B. C. 164.
Fourth. That there was no miraculous conception and Virgin Birth of Christ.
Fifth. That there was no ministry of miracles, no resurrection of Christ, and no glorious ascension, that these are merely "thought forms."
Sixth. That there is no personal Devil and no Hell, and no Day of Judgment.
Seventh. That Christ's historical knowledge was limited, and His reference to the Flood, Sodom, Jonah, Moses, Isaiah, Daniel and other Old Testament men and miracles, were not based on divine knowledge before He came to this world, but on popular Hebrew conception of His day. In short that Christ accepted and taught Hebrew mythology and history as one.
Christ states emphatically that He was in Heaven with the Father "before the world was" (John 17) . "Before Abraham was I am" — "I came down from heaven," etc. How could His knowledge of the past ages be limited of defective? He who foretold the future could with authority speak of the past.
The leaders of the Modernist School of Scriptural Interpretation are frequently brilliant scholars and hold leading official positions in the Christian Church. They are like the Wise Men of Babylon, who were called by King Belshazzar to read the Handwriting on the Wall. They could read many kinds of writing, but with all their wisdom and worldly learning, they could not interpret God's handwriting. It was only the man in whom was the Spirit of God who could solve the mystery.
The same is true to-day. Learning is one thing, and spiritual insight and a divine education quite another. Those ministers of the gospel who possess both are God's choicest gift to the Christian Church. These are the men who win all classes of men to Christ.
Cowper wrote of the Modernist of his day just as Eichhorn's Rationalism was becoming popular in Britain: "Thus men go wrong with an ingenious skill, Bend the straight rule to their own crooked will, And with a clear and shining lamp supplied, First put it out, and then take it for their guide."
This is exactly what modernists like Prof. Geg, Jackson, Dr. Glover, Can Barnes, and other nationalists in Europe and America profess to do. They claim to make the Bible more precious than ever; forgetting that the history of the Hebrew people and the Christian Church has always been a miracle surpassing belief. Missionaries like Dr. John G. Paton, Hudson Taylor, and others, have witnessed miracles surpassing belief, so did the Maldenses and Covenanters. God never manifested Himself in any age to men who were too mighty in intellect to believe in divine manifestations in human affairs. If scholarly men, scientific men like Dawson, Kelvin and others, had not shown that these men have only a smattering of scientific knowledge in its relation to the Bible, we might have reason to trust their conclusions.
The writer has worshipped in hundreds of churches during the past 25 years of nation-wide travel, and has never known a modernist minister to lead the ungodly to repentance as in St. Paul's day.
What St. Paul preached, Luther, Knox and Calvin preached 1500 years later, and reached the ungodly in thousands and transformed Europe. Wesley 200 years later still, preached the same Gospel, and again awakened the English speaking world in the greatest revival since the days of John the Baptist. In 1800 A. D. began the era of Foreign Missions proclaiming the same message and again millions of all nations came into the Redeemer's Kingdom. During the next hundred years (1800 to 1900 A. D.) we had the great revivals under Finney, Moody, Sankey, Spurgeon and others, still proclaiming the same gospel and reaching in the aggregate hundreds of thousands. Many less widely known messengers continue to reach men with the same message delivered 1800 years ago.
In conclusion, the story, "Where we got our Bible," may be briefly summed us as follows:
Away back on the stream of human history, before the human family was scattered over the earth (Gen. 11:1-8) Almighty God revealed the story of the Creation to man, probably to one of the old Patriarchs, possibly to the first man Adam. To this revelation they subsequently added their own history, or rather the history of God's dealings with them and the then known world. Whether they committed them to writing, or not at first, is impossible at this late date to say, but it seems probable that, at the time when God scattered the human family over the face of the earth at the building of the Tower of Babel (About B. C. 2347, Ussher), one section of the race did commit these Scriptural facts to writing and thus preserved them from being corrupted by heathen myths, and as previously stated, handed them down from generation to generation until Moses incorporated them in his Book of the Law, or five Books of Moses, about 1500 to 1450 B. C.
Other sections of the race probably carried these truths and traditions away in an unwritten form and thus they gradually became corrupted and mixed with heathen myths and legends. This probably accounts for the mixture of Mosaic truth and heathen mythology in the Chaldean Genesis. The same may be said of the traditions of the Flood, of American Indians, and of the Fiji Islanders, etc. Their ancestors probably carried these truths away as unwritten traditions at the time of the scattering at Babel, and these afterwards became corrupted in the form we see them recorded today in their traditions and paintings.
Carefully trace on a map the wanderings of Abraham after he left UR of the Chaldees, and it will be seen he passed right through those cities and countries where the corrupted Babylonian records have since been found. About 1500 B. C. Moses, after having been in communion with God forty days on Mount Sinai, wrote the Book of the Law, and no doubt incorporated in his own writings these ancient records of Abraham and other Patriarchs.
Why the Bible Is in Both Hebrew and Greek: The formation of the remainder of the Old Testament was gradual and spread over a period of about eleven centuries, (B. C. 1400400). Ezra and his great synagogue, or Guild of Scribes, probably collected and compiled the different books into a complete Old Testament somewhere about 450 to 400 B. C, after the return of the Jews from Babylon.
About 280 B. C. the Hebrew Bible, as translated into Greek, principally at Alexandria, was due to the rise of the Grecian Empire and a World ruling power, and the spread of Greek as the universal language, and probably also to the fact that the scattered Jews of the Dispersion had almost forgotten the ancient Hebrew during their Captivity, and were more familiar with the universal Greek.
The Greek Bible continued to be the Bible of the Hebrew common people from this time to the coming of Christ. When He came, this as the Bible He used and constantly appealed to as Divine authority. The Hebrew Scriptures were preserved in the Temple and used as a Sacred learned language.
After the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, the Books of the New Testament were written, also in Greek, between the years of 50 and 96 A. D. These contain the birth, life-work, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, and the experience of the apostles who first proclaimed these great truths to the world, and also, of the special revelations made to some of them after the ascension of Christ, such as those made to St. Paul as recorded in the Book of Acts and in the Epistles, and finally, that of the great Divine Programme of the Church's History in the world from St- John's day to the Consummation of all things, as revealed in the Book of Revelation. We have seen how the Scriptures have been preserved and translated from the days of Christ's time to our own times.
It is nearly two thousand years since Christ uttered that immortal saying, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall never pass away." Some of the Scribes and Pharisees standing by probably sneered, "Hear that presumptuous Jew babbling !" Nearly two thousand years later we find His words translated into more than 500 languages and dialects from every part of the globe, and millions own allegiance to His Name.
Nations like Britain and America, which have trained their children in the Sunday Schools in Christ's words have been and are probably now the most powerful, progressive and enlightened of all the nations of earth. Our weakness as nations today is just in proportion to our neglect of this Word.
"THE WORD OF GOD IS QUICK AND POWERFUL."
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