Harry Rimmer

“ Our generation knows better. Dead men do tell tales, and marvelous and wonderful are the stories they bring to us. By means of an archeological resurrection, the great men of antiquity are with us again. Once more we hear the accounts of their fascinating lives and adventures, and read again the records of their culture. The tongueless tombs of the distant past have suddenly become vocal, and this mighty chorus of the dead great has forced us to revise many of our once cherished opinions. ”

“ The richest finds of archeology come to us from the very periods of history that are dealt with in the pages of Holy Writ, and names that were known only from the record of the Scripture 4 are now the common possession of the scholarly world. So much is this the case, that we have a new technique of Bible study in our day. Just as the microscope is the instrument for the study of biology, and the spectroscope has become the means of study in physics, so the Bible is best read today in the light that is reflected upon its pages from the blade of a spade! ”

“ Through the first tombs, we peer back into an older preceding culture that dazzles and amazes the human understanding. Instead of finding the dawn of a developing humanity, we see mankind already in the high noon of cultural accomplishments. Instead of nomadic dwellers in shaggy tents, we look upon works of enduring stone. Instead of brutish, Egyptian ancestral artifacts, we find a pottery culture that is really superb. It almost seems that the farther back we go into Egyptian antiquity, the more perfect was their culture and learning. ”

“ While this exalted boast was still echoing upon the king’s lips, there fell a voice from heaven which said that the hour of the fulfillment of the prophecy had come.
Madness fell upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he fled from the presence of men. Sleeping in the open fields and dwelling with the beasts of the earth, his hair grew as long as an eagle’s feathers and his nails became like the claws of a bird. During those seven years of the madness of Nebuchadnezzar, his faithful 330 counselors administered his kingdom, apparently in the earnest hope that the reason of the king would be restored. ”

“ Like a blanket of filth the slimy, wet monstrosities covered the land, until men sickened at the continued squashing crunch of the ghastly pavement they were forced to walk upon. If a man’s feet slipped on the greasy mass of their crushed bodies, he fell into an indescribably offensive mass of putrid uncleanness, and when he sought water to cleanse himself, the water was so solid with frogs, he got no cleansing there. In sheer desperation the mighty king was forced to beg, “Call off your frogs, and I will let the people go!” Read Exodus 8:1-15. ”

“ Just as the night follows the day, and the next day dawns only to be succeeded by the darkness in turn, so the learning and progress of man has been a cycle, rather than a steady climb up a ladder of learning, from level to level, until the heights of present civilization were reached. The old error must now be abandoned, or else we must close our eyes to the entire record of archeological discovery, and frankly confess that we are not interested in facts which refute erroneous, but accepted theories. ”

“ This foundational fact of the Christian revelation has disappeared from the walls and the worship of many a once-Christian gathering. In the place of that golden fact there is the ghastly and brazen substitute of an illegitimate child, who was probably the fruit of a woman’s sin! And then men wonder that the old-time power and greatness of the Christian faith seem lacking in much of our land today!
In like manner, the golden shield of redemption through the shed blood of Calvary has been exchanged for the brazen substitute of a “Perfect Example.” ”

“ But more than that, it is a living, resurrected testimony to the truth and credibility of the Word of God!
There is no scene of desolation and ruin that amazes the spirit of man as much as the desolation of Edom. Forsaken of human occupants, the wonderful Rose Red City is today a curiosity to be viewed by the hardy adventurer who would study the antiquities of the Eastern world. ”

“ It is rather amusing in the light of this dogmatic assurance of critical authorities to journey back through the hallways of time and find that writing was a common custom a thousand years before Moses, or even a thousand years before that! Throughout Egypt especially, the art of writing was a universal possession among all classes of the populace. The toilet articles used by the beauties of Ancient Egypt were highly engraved with charms, and with prayers to the goddess of beauty. ”

“ A few facts from Egypt suddenly fit into the pattern of certain other events that occurred in Assyria, and these in turn naturally correlate themselves with a record inscribed upon a stone by some king of Moab. Like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, these isolated and apparently unrelated facts make a complete picture when they are intelligently assembled, but careless or ignorant handling can never show the marvelous pattern in its complete beauty. ”

“ The problem of the antiquity and culture of man was the battleground of infidelity which the skeptical chose to demonstrate the fallacy of the Bible’s claims to supernatural origin.
If it can be proved by the aid of science that the human race is older than is implied by the Genesis account of creation, and if it can be shown that man has ascended from a dim and brutish ancestry, instead of being created perfect by the hand of God, the foundation would admittedly be swept from beneath the Scripture, and the entire structure of revelation collapses. ”

“ Men and women who are saved by the grace of God recognize the supernatural nature of the Book that is the means of their redemption. Men and women who are lost, resent the honesty of that Book in that it condemns their sin and iniquity.
In our day and age, infidelity has, under the guise of an attempted scientific refutation, directed its chief argument against the integrity of the Scripture. Living in an age of science, when all things are again evaluated in the light of man’s technical knowledge, it is inevitable that the Bible should come in for this type of investigation. ”

“ Against this background of understanding, we now turn our thoughts to one of the most stirring dramas in all human history. Again there was a famine in the entire land of Sumeria, and the people turned, as was customary, to the land of Egypt for succor and relief. Had this epic been invented by some literary genius of antiquity, the arrival of the brothers of Joseph to buy grain for their starving clan would be deemed one of the most melodramatic episodes ever conceived by the human mind. ”

“ Nothing is of such interest to the human as is humanity. The study of the life and record of our own kind rightly means more to us than can most other subjects.
But the true appreciation of the value of the contribution of archeology to our modern learning can be appreciated only by those who grasp an outstanding fact that should be self-apparent, but is so often overlooked: 14 Namely, these records derived from musty tombs and burial mounds constitute the daily events in the lives of human beings! ”

“ The fear of the greatness of my majesty overwhelmed him, even Hezekiah, and he sent after me to Nineveh my royal city, the Arabs and his bodyguards, whom he had brought for the defense of his royal city Jerusalem, and had furnished with pay along with thirty talents.... Eight hundred talents of pure silver, carbuncles and other precious stones, a couch of ivory, thrones of ivory, and elephants hide and elephant tusks, rare woods of all kinds a vast treasure, as well as Unachs from his palace, and dancing men and dancing women. ”

“ Since the Egyptians buried in sand or in stone tombs, the deposits being protected from the elements, man was the only destroyer. Even though there has been a sad record of vandalism, as ruthless hands of the ignorant have despoiled magnificent tombs of priceless records and information, there is much that remained undisturbed. The people of Egypt built for endurance. The mighty pyramids, from Sakkara to the Great Pyramid; the Colossi at Luxor and the awe-inspiring ruins of Karnak, are present evidences of the durability of their labors. ”

“ Most of us can remember how recently it was the fashion for the opponents of the Bible to laugh at those who believed in the historicity of Joshua’s strange conquest of the Canaanite city of Jericho. The collapse of the walls of that ancient city has long been a source of mystery to the scientific student, and of hilarity to the unbeliever. The faith of the intelligent is vindicated, however, and the laughter of the unbeliever is stilled, by the exhaustive work that archeology has done in the vicinity of Jericho. ”

“ The denial of the truth of God’s spoken word originated with the enemy of man: and it would behoove us all to remember that any man who has questioned His written word from that hour to this, is also an enemy, and an emissary of the original foe of mankind! Do we owe Satan so great a debt of gratitude for the deep and dark pit of woe into which he has lured our race, that we must lend slavish attention to the same old error when he sponsors it today? ”

“ Strangely, in view of the consistent demands of the evolutionary school, we find no evidence of human evolution in the land of Egypt. More than this, the doctrine that man began with a brutish intellect and gradually developed his high and peculiar culture, is refuted by the evidences from this country. In fact, the contrary is strikingly the case. Instead of proving a process of evolution, the history of man as found in the archeology of Egypt is a consistent record of degeneration. ”

“ Undoubtedly it is the largest temple ever constructed by man. Two million, two hundred and fifty thousand feet of floor space make quite a place of worship in any day and age!
The original sanctuary was probably begun by Usertesen the First, who dedicated it to Amon-Ra. Having done so, the king then used the walls, pillars, beams, and all other available space to carve a record of his own reign and greatness; not forgetting, of course, to give Amon-Ra due credit here and there for such divine aid as the Pharaoh may have needed from time to time! ”

“ Because we stand upon the certainty of the approved and orthodox conception of the credibility of the Scriptures, and maintain our case with the most exact evidence, we are not “scholarly.” Yet here is a reputedly religious leader, utterly ignorant of an enormous body of knowledge derived from a generation of research, who misleads those who are unfortunate enough to be under his ministry, and offers them the fallacious, repudiated, and utterly baseless conclusions of higher criticism, in the place of the living bread which God has provided for His children! ”

“ For this “modern” attempt to discredit the Scripture is but a recrudescence of his ancient and simple strategy for the hurt of mankind. Well does he know that if he can but shake the faith of our generation in the integrity of the Bible, faith in God must soon be lost as well. Once more pedantic scoffers, professors of this and of that, arise solemnly to refute the truth of the only “map” that can ever guide men back to the Paradise we lost when the first man rejected God’s revelation. ”

“ The Hittites became historical to the modern scholar from the records of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. They become real to us from their own inscriptions.
Nowhere in all the records of human research and endeavour is it possible to find a greater and more complete assembling of the vindication of the integrity of the Word of God. Even though the hand of the Almighty must shake the very foundations of ancient history, He has sworn that His Word shall be maintained. ”

“ Research, in the exact sense of the word, cannot be used legitimately to establish a pet theory to which the advocate 38 clings without regard to evidence in the case. The attempt to demonstrate the organic evolution of man belongs in the realm of philosophy and not of science. The work of science is the correlation of facts. The sphere of philosophy is the interpretation of facts. In all of this controversy, we are not debating the facts of humanity, but are at odds concerning the application of those facts. The real issue then is not the antiquity of man, but the origin of man! ”

“ The Semitic peoples who preceded them, however, have left this record in stone as a testimony to their reverence for the dead. What the future will yield in the hoped-for excavations of Petra, no one is able to say. If, however, a spade is never sunk into soil and no more appears to the gaze of man than is seen by the casual traveler today, we have sufficient to call forth a doxology from the hearts of those who love and reverence the Word of God. ”

“ The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ has been bartered for a misty idea of some sort of a spiritual resurrection that has no bearing upon the facts of the record that God has given to man. Shield by shield, and buckler by buckler, the things that were given to us for our defense, gleaming with the intrinsic value of a supernatural revelation, have been stolen away by the enemy. ”