Biblical exegesis

“ It appears to me, so far as I can judge and read here”—my Bible was still in my hand—“that throughout the New, and in many parts of the Old Testament, runs one clear doctrine, namely, that any sin, however great, being repented of and forsaken, is by God, and ought to be by man, altogether pardoned, blotted out and done away.” ”

“ The Writer recurs to the supreme theme of the Epistle, the antithesis between the Lord Jesus, with His finished work and absolute permanence, and the transitory antecedents of the older dispensation. Once more the Hebrews are to remember His eternity, His eternal personal identity, unbeginning and without end (ver. 8) ; He is "the same, yesterday, and to-day, and unto the ages." Before all types and preparations, before law, and ritual, and prophecy, He is. When, having done their long work, they cease, He still is. Over the glory of His being and character passes no "shadow of turning." ”

“ Hereby he shows that the Old Testament agrees with the New, both being given by one God. For the devil resisted, trying to deceive, saying, 'The body is mine, for I am the Lord of matter,' and was answered by 'The Lord rebuke thee'—that is, the Lord who is Master of all spirits. Others say that God, willing to show that after our departure hence demons oppose our souls on their upward course, permitted this to be beheld at the burial of Moses. ”

“ It is God speaking through men, and the Old Testament is therefore just as much the Word of God as though God spake every single word of it with His own lips. The Scriptures are the result of divine inbreathing, just as human speech is uttered by the breathing through a man's mouth.
2 Pet. 1:21—"For not by the will of man was prophecy brought at any time, but being borne by the Holy Spirit, the holy men of God spoke." (This is a literal rendering, and brings out the sense more clearly.) ”

“ They accept implicitly and literally the New Testament as the infallible guide in spiritual matters, holding it to be the inspired word of God, revealed through Jesus Christ and, by inspiration, through the Apostles. ”

“ In Christianity, in whose history the theory of revelation has played so great a part, there is in fact—and this is frequently overlooked—no declaration on the subject by Christ or the apostles themselves. That the Gospels, as they have come down to us, have been revealed, is nowhere stated in them, nor can it be gathered from the Acts of the Apostles or the Epistles. ”

“ In a word, the modern world will probably end exactly where the Bible begins. In that inevitable setting of spirit against spirit, or god against god, we shall soon be in a position to do more justice not only to the New Testament, but to the Old Testament. ”

“ This Evangelion or gospel (that is to say, such joyful tidings) is called the New Testament; because that as a man, when he shall die, appointeth his goods to be dealt and distributed after his death among them which he nameth to be his heirs; even so Christ, before his death, commanded and appointed that such Evangelion, gospel, or tidings, should be declared throughout all the world, and therewith to give unto all that believe, all his goods; that is to say, his life, wherewith he swallowed and devoured up death; his righteousness, wherewith he banished sin ”

“ The matter of supreme importance for us is to apprehend aright the far-seeing and ulterior purpose in the mind of the Spirit in giving the Revelation. And in search for this we should not allow our zeal for the original interpretation to lead us to forget the significant lesson of the Old Testament, that the primary teaching of prophecy has often not voiced its deeper message, that God's thought has mostly proved wider than man's first apprehension ”

“ The Bible tells of many of God's acts which seem very wonderful to us. We call these acts 'miracles,' because we cannot explain them, nor how they happened.
Now the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the rest of the prophets are also miracles, for although these men wrote at widely different times, and hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, yet their books all speak of Him. The light of God's Spirit shone into their hearts so that they foresaw and foretold the coming of the Saviour King. ”

“ The professor may now safely pass on to the use of Scripture in matters of theology. On this head it must be observed that, in addition to the usual reasons which make ancient writings more or less difficult to understand, there are some which are peculiar to the Bible. For the language of the Bible is employed to express, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, many things which are beyond the power and scope of the reason of man—that is to say, divine mysteries and all that is related to them. ”

“ The doctrine it enshrines (substitution) is the essence of the teaching in Old and New Testaments, as well as the central truth of the prophecy. It is moreover, the essence of the message of comfort with which the prophet begins (xl. i, 2) , solving the problem as to how " her iniquity is pardoned." ”

“ He created the human body and is the author of sin, which springs from matter and not from the spirit. The Old Testament must be either partly or entirely ascribed to him; whereas the New Testament is the revelation of the beneficent God. ”

“ The Scriptures are replete with similar prophecies pointing to the gathering of Israel to Zion and Jerusalem, the coming of the Lord, and other important events. How any one could believe that these glorious prophecies could be verified without more revelation and the establishment of a new dispensation of the Gospel, is more of a marvel to a true believer in the Bible than is believing in prophecy, revelations, visions, miracles, etc. ”

“ The starting-point of this newer criticism of the prophets is the clearer practical recognition of the fact that all pre-exilic prophecy has come down to us in the works of post-exilic editors, and that for the old statement of the problem of the prophetic books—What prophecies or elements in Isaiah, Jeremiah and the rest are later than these prophets?—is to be substituted the new critical question—From these post-exilic collections how are the pre-exilic elements to be extracted? ”

“ As in the Psalm that is the only instance in which an individual man is, in the Old Testament, addressed as God, so is its application in the Epistle to the Hebrews the only indisputable instance in which an individual is addressed as God in the New Testament. ”

“ We should there find the key to every miracle. The true explanation of the matter seems to be, that the apostolic writers, looking through the Old Testament, and finding texts therein which they believed to be prophetic of the display of the miraculous power of Jesus, and passages which they religiously believed foreshadowed his coming and mission, or some important event in his history, they were impressed with the deepest conviction that God would not suffer any prophecy to go unfulfilled. ”

“ In fine, the miracles said to have been wrought by Jesus, are, according to the Old Testament, the gospel scheme, and the words of Jesus himself, no absolute proof of his being the Messiah, or of the truth of Christianity ”

“ Thus much thought I to speak of the old Testament, wherein Almighty God openeth unto us his mighty power, his wisdom, his loving mercy and righteousness: for the which cause it ought of no man to be abhorred, despised, or lightly regarded, as though it were an old scripture that nothing belonged unto us, or that now were to be refused. ”

“ When you rashly complain of us that our teaching to you controverts that of the Old Testament, we can but answer that it does indeed controvert that old and repulsive view ... but that it is in fullest accord with that divinely inspired revelation of Himself which He gave through Jesus Christ—a revelation which man has done so much to debase, and from which the best of the followers of Christ have so grievously fallen away. ”

“ It is more consistent to hold the radical "orthodox" theory of heaven-going and deny entirely the personal coming of Christ. But the only safe way is to accept the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. What has every reader of Scripture a right to expect from the prophecies and promises we find, in the Old Testament especially? The very first promise we have, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, would surely give us to understand that Christ, who is the seed of the woman referred to, will accomplish what is implied by bruising the serpent’s head. ”

“ I will remind those who hear me this day of one fact which can be clearly demonstrated to the mind of every careful reader of the Scriptures, and which fact is a guarantee, as it were, to the rational mind, for the manner of the fulfilment of that which is future; it is this, that the prophecies contained in the Holy Bible, spoken by Moses and the Prophets, Jesus and the Apostles, have been fulfilled literally and naturally, so far as they have been fulfilled at all. ”

“ Wasat (Arabic) , centre or foundation; Al Thuraiya (Arabic) , the abundance; Vergiliæ (Latin) , the centre (Arabic, vertex) turned on, rolled round.
Every thing points to the important truth, and all turns on the fact that the Lord is coming to rule! This is the central truth of all prophecy. “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” All hope for Creation, all hope for the world, all hope for Israel, all hope for the Church, turns on this, that “Jesus is coming again,” and that when He comes His saints, “the daughters of the King” (like the Pleiades and Hyades) , will be with Him. ”

“ There is not a spiritually minded man in the world who reads the Bible but will acknowledge that the Elders of Israel, the Latter-day Saints, proclaim the Gospel, precisely, as Jesus and his apostles proclaimed it. ”

“ All the stages of the world’s history were therefore preparations leading up to this full revelation, and God’s care was not confined to the Hebrews alone. The worship of the heavenly bodies, for instance, was given to man at an early stage that he might rise from a contemplation of these sublime objects to the worship of the Creator. ”

“ The only thing which those who maintain that the New Testament contains a divine revelation can be called on to defend, is the express statements of the book itself, and not a system of thought which subsequent writers may have attempted to deduce from it. ”

“ The doctrines of "Original Sin," "Fall of Man," "The Atonement," "The Trinity," "The Word," "Forgiveness," "An Angry God," "Future Endless Punishment," etc., etc. (see the author's "Biography of Satan,") were a part of the religion of each of these sin-atoning Gods, as found set forth in several oriental bibles and "holy books," similar in character and spirit to the Christian's bible, and written, like it, by "inspired and holy men" before the time of either Christ or Moses (before Moses, in some cases, at least) . ”

“ After he rose from the dead, he commanded the apostles, Saying, "Go, preach the gospel to every creature: he that believes and is immersed shall be saved; and he that believes not shall be condemned"; and "Lo, I am with you always, until the end of the world." In view of these texts, can anyone be so mystified as not to see that salvation is predicated on believing the gospel of the kingdom, and being baptized into Jesus Christ? ”

“ It is of course the merest commonplace to say that the revelation of God in the Scriptures comes to its climax in Christ. The revelation in Christ gathers up all that is loftiest in the utterances of the Old Testament and gives it embodiment in a human life. ”

“ The Elders of Israel were prepared to meet, the priests on this ground, and they prevailed over the devil, for those who believed the Bible saw that they had to believe in new revelation, and the devil had to give up that point. ”

“ Now we must, above all things, come to an understanding as to what is meant by revelation before we attribute revelation to the Bible. There are not many now who really believe that an angel in bodily form descended from heaven and whispered into the ear of the apostles, in rather bad Greek, every verse, every word, even every letter of our Gospels. ”

“ Such a scripture among books is this Epistle, and such a scripture among chapters is that on which we enter now.
It is impressive by the majestic singleness of its theme; Faith, from first to last, is its matter and its burthen. Further, it carries one long appeal to the heart by its method; almost from the exordium to the very close it deals with its theme not by abstract reasoning, nor even by a [Pg 62] citation of inspired utterances only. It works out its message by a display, in long and living procession, of inspired human experiences. ”

“ Some of you now say in your hearts, we have the everlasting gospel contained here in this book, the New Testament, and we have had it for some eighteen centuries or more, and consequently what was the use of another angel having the same everlasting gospel to commit to the children of men when we already had it? ”

“ Rightly then, prophecy, in proclaiming the Lord, in order not to seem to some to blaspheme while speaking what was beyond the ideas of the multitude, embodied its declarations in expressions capable of leading to other conceptions. Now all the prophets who foretold the Lord’s coming, and the holy mysteries accompanying it, were persecuted and killed. As also the Lord Himself, in explaining the Scriptures to them, and His disciples who preached the word like Him, and subsequently to His life, used parables. ”

“ The presence of this divine element was recognized by Jesus and by all the New Testament writers, and surely it is a significant fact that in the first outburst of Christian enthusiasm, and under the living impression of the unique personality of the Master, no doubt arose concerning the inspiration and permanent value of the Old Testament. With the Christian the testimony of Jesus and his disciples carries great weight. ”