Covenanter Witness Vol. 54 - Rparchives.org

us'"
plenty"
gods.'
sign,"
called"
men"
awaiting!'"
animals"
poverty; there was also the unfair competition of
slave labor. Small landowners and businessmen were
unable to purchase slaves to assist in vineyard or
farm or garden or shop, so they were driven out of
business because they could not sell products at the
same prices as the rich owners of slaves. Then those
whom they had employed lost their jobs and had
to stand all day long in the market place hoping,
often in vain, that someone might hire them. They
had no reserves for times of drought or sickness or
unemployment; for many of these people salvation
meant a time of prosperity and (pp. 107,
108).
When the author gets around to Isaiah, the
sign of the virgin's Son, Isaiah 7:14, is passed over,
though the challenge of Isaiah, "Ask a is
quoted. The omission of the sign itself is unexcusable.
But when one observes that all references (which
are printed in a special section in the back of the
book) are from the translation of Moffatt and from
the Revised Standard Version, it is understandable.
Perhaps the most serious indictment of The
One Story lies in the radical late dating of the books
of the Bible. The purpose behind this attempt of the
higher critics is to obliterate the element of pre
dictive prophecy, and to obscure the evidences of
the supernatural in the Bible. Witness the ascription
of the books of Moses to unknown and spurious
writers, who forged documents and palmed them off
as the authentic works of Moses : "Some of the faith
ful sat down to write another
book, about something
they believed to be a matter of life and death for
their countrymen to know. Through the history of
their people and the word of the prophets they had
learned that a nation disobeys God's commands
destroys itself. So they wrote a book in which they
told the secret of life and death which they had dis
covered: 'Obey God and live; disobey and the result
is destruction.' It was a book of laws interpeting the
law of God, and when it was finished they hid it in
the Temple for safekeeping. There it stayed through
the wicked reign of Manasseh and the reign of his
son. More than eighty years later, when good king
Josiah ruled the land of Judah and had the Temple
cleaned and repaired, the book was found. When it
was read to the king, he tore his robe in sorrow and
called his counselors to hear the reading. 'Listen to
this from the book," he said. 'The book of the laws
says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God,"
but our people are ...
worshiping many To Hil
kiah the priest and to Shaphan the scribe the king
gave the command, 'Go, inquire if this book is truly
the word of the Lord,' and they asked the prophetess
Huldah. She answered, 'It is truly the word of the
Lord, and the anger of the Lord is great against
(pp. 66, 67).
When these things were pointed out to a teacher
who uses this Curriculum in a Presbyterian Sabbath
school, and also in the public school of which she
is religious director, she stated that she did not
care whether the Bible is true or not, for she is only
concerned with ethics. This is apparently the attitude
of the Board of Christian Education of the Presby
terian Church, U.S.A., under whose auspices the
New Curriculum is produced. One need not stop to
ponder the ethics of using the product of deceit
and fraud to inculcate morality in the mind of youth !
Suffice it to say that even Jeremiah is made a party
February 9, 1955
to the fraud : "The first task that came to Jeremiah
was to proclaim in the towns of Judah and in the
streets of Jerusalem the laws the people had agreed
to accept in the reform instituted by King Josiah.
'Listen to the terms of the law and obey them," he
(p. 69).
The Book of Leviticus is reserved for separate
treatment by another ghost writer and forger:
"Then one of their leaders, who had been taught
by Ezekiel, compiled and edited a book of laws. Over
and over again it says to the reader, 'You shall be
holy : for I the Lord your God am holy.' These laws
gave many directions about keeping the Sabbath and
the feasts. They told about food that might be eaten
and about the slaughtering of
(p. 80).
Again: "Some of them began to rewrite the
story in the light of their new understanding of
God's ways with them" (p. 81)
.
Again :
"There arose at this time a new prophet,
one whose name we do not know, a man who had
great compassion for his people. We do not know
whether he lived in Babylon or Palestine. . . . Years
later his writings were put in the same book with
those of the prophet Isaiah." Why cannot the critics
period."
simply say, "We do not know
In the four hundred years between the Old and
New Testaments other unknowns are introduced.
One of "the thoughtful wrote a propaganda
piece to promote the idea, "We are meant to share
our knowledge of God" (p. .
96) So he wrote the story
of Jonah. "Some of those who read the book became
very thoughtful. They said, 'We are as bad and sel
fish as Jonah! Perhaps our laws are not all the
Lord's will ! Perhaps at one time it was his will that
we should bar non-Jews from companionship with
us, but not any more! He wants us to love mercy
and have compassion and to share our knowledge
of God."
In reaction to this sentiment some one else
wrote another piece of propaganda about Ruth,
a Moabitess. To authenticate his story, he tells from
his viewpoint an outright lie: "The writer knew
that many would say, 'But that was long ago, before
we had our law!' So he told them in the story, "She
was the ancestress of our greatest king, David, whose
successor we are always
(pp. 97, 98).
The Book of Job, too, is named as a product
of this period, written as a book of comfort and
circulated on the sly in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes.
It told of Daniel, "a hero persecuted for his
faith during the days of the nation's captivity. Daniel
had not been hurt even in a den of lions, and his
friends came unharmed out of a fiery furnace of
tribulation, heated seven times hotter than ever be
fore. 'God is with us in all our trials,' it meant to
care' "
say, 'We are never out of his (p. 100). The
story leaves the realm of fact and becomes an alle
gory, and the furnace a figure of speech.
Such expedients employed as a means of de
stroying the supernatural reduce the Old Testament
to a class of literature dishonest, derelict, and dis
credited. In answer, we cite the findings of one of
the world's greatest Hebrew scholars, Dr. Robert
Dick Wilson, who maintained that the foreign words
and phrases imbedded in the text of the Hebrew are
fully consistent with the early date of the Bible
books, as well as the endorsement of Jesus Christ
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