Untitled article by Bible Triumphant

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, September 24, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 15

Infidel Objections to the Bible Answered. No. 15.

By Bible Triumphant

Christ ascended from Mount Olivet.—And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. . . . Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet.—Acts i, 9, 12.

Christ ascended from BETHANY.—And he led them out so far as to Bethany; and he lifted up his hands and blessed them.—And it came to pass that while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.—Luke xxiv, 50, 51.

MODERN skeptics of small intellect, and less information, have said a great deal about the two texts above quoted. We have read about this “dreadful contradiction, so fatal to the veracity of the sacred writers,” and they ask, with all the sarcasm of conceited ignorance, “Which tells the truth? Shall we believe Luke, or the statement found in Acts?” To which we reply, believe them both. Allow us to state, for the information of this class of second-rate infidels, that Bethany was a village which was built on the south-east side of the mount of Olives. See Mark xi, 1, also Bible Dictionary, Encyclopedia, &c. Hence, the difficulty at once vanishes, and we find that a little knowledge of geography would not be out of place in the infidel’s brain. Suppose an author in writing the life of George Washington, should say in one place that he died at Mount Vernon, and again that he died in Virginia—if a man should attempt to prove that in making these two statements the author had contradicted himself, the civilized world would at once pronounce him either a lunatic or a fool, and yet in the above proposition, the compiler places himself in the same position.—Bible Triumphant.