1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

THE Bible a consistent book? Not so,
said one of America's founding fathers
and much quoted writer, the deist Thomas
Paine. And, Not so, also says the American
Association for the Advancement of
Atheism of today and agnostics such as
the British philosopher Bertrand Russell.
Of the same mind are ever so many
of the professedly Christian clergymen
throughout the world. Thus J. C. Wansey,
a Church of England rector, is quoted as
having said at a meeting of the clergy:
"It is essential that our people be fed
with food convenient for them and not
with poison. There is so much spiritual
junk in the Old Testament." An example
of what rector Wansey meant by "poison"
he indicated by quoting from Deuteronomy
32:42, which is a part of Moses' farewell
song and which in powerful, graphic and
poetic language tells of Jehovah's vengeance
upon his enemies: "I shall intoxicate
my arrows with blood, while my
sword will eat flesh, with the blood of the
slain and the captives, with the heads of
the leaders of the enemy."
Another such clergyman is Dr. L. Weatherhead,
a former president of the Methodist
Conference. He is reported as having
said he would like to use a blue pencil on
the Bible to delete, among other things,
"a lot of bloody massacres." According
to him the "Old Testament is completely
outmoded," for "we have learned much
since those times."
JULY 8, 1964
By such expressions these clergymtm
would have us believe that the Bible Is
an inconsistent book, that its Hebrew
Scriptures, the so-called Old Testament,
present a different God and morality than
do the Christian Greek Scriptures, the
"New Testament." But not so. Both the
Hebrew and the Christian Greek Scriptures
present the same kind of GOd, a
God omnipotent, omniscient, altogether
righteous and the personification of love.
That the Bible in its two parts is consistent
is also clearly indicated from Jesus'
summary of the duties of man: "All things,
therefore, that you want men to do to
you, you also must likewise do to them;
this, in fact, is what the Law and the
Prophets mean."-Matt. 7:12.
As for the Bible's record of "massacres":
Where a people or a nation was
deserving of execution because of gross
immorality or willful opposition to the
God of the universe, Jehovah, He was
perfectly within his rights to execute them
-as well as to choose the means for doing
so, whether by fire from heaven, as in
the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, or by
human instrumentality, as in the case of
certain cities and peoples in Canaanland.
Even as governments today execute murderers
by human agencies, so at times
Jehovah God chose human agencies, his
people, to serve in such a capacity. Of
course, today the Christian's warfare is
spiritual or religious rather than fleshly,
but at all times what God requires of
his creatures is in line with his wise, just
and loving principles.-Gen. 19: 13, 24, 25;
LeV. 18:24,25; 2 Cor. 10:4.
Those who find fault with the -Hebrew
Scriptures because of expressions of Jehovah's
vengeance, such as at Deuteronomy
32:42, overlook the fact that the
Christian Greek ScriptlU'es contain similar
forceful expressions. Thus Jesus, in his
illustration of a nobleman who went to
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