RANDOM STATEMENTS by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 1, 1900

RANDOM STATEMENTS.

By John Norton Loughborough

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.

By random statements I mean those without the proof being presented, and even such as are mere guesswork, asserted on the thought of the moment, and which may not only lack evidence, to sustain them, but which on careful thought will be found contrary to fact. As an illustration, I will refer to a statement I heard a minister make in the pulpit. Speaking of the second coming of Christ, he said: “It is a very important subject, one spoken of in every book and chapter in the Bible.” As to the effect of such an assertion upon thoughtful minds, even candid ones, we had an illustration at the close of the discourse. One of his hearers remarked, “That was a rash statement. I would like to know where he would find the coming of Christ mentioned in the book of Esther.”

What I wish especially to speak of in this article is an item that is being extensively copied in religious prints; namely, that “there are thirty-six thousand distinct promises in the Bible.” Now it is true that the Lord has made “a great many promises, and ‘exceeding great and precious’ ones,” but the number given above is rather doubtful. When I first saw this item, I said: “I do not see how that can be; for at one time, in reading the Bible through by course, I made a list of chapter and verse of direct promises there made, classifying them as those relating to the present state, and those referring directly to the future. I did not have any thirty-six thousand in my list; but considerably less than two thousand. One thing I did learn by the count which was a happy surprise to me, and that was that there are at least three times as many promises relating to the present as there are to the future. All right. The present world is where the battles against evil are to be fought. The rewards in the future world are in the Lord’s hands. He doeth all things according to his own word. That word will never pass, though the heaven and earth should fail.”

Again: I thought, “Thirty-six thousand promises, I believe that is more than the number of verses in the Bible; and surely every verse is not an expressed promise to say the least, whatever may be implied even in the statement that ‘all God’s commands are enabling,’ being assurances of help to those yielding to obey him.”

To test this matter I made a careful examination of the Bible with this result: In the Old Testament there are twenty-three thousand five hundred and fifty-six verses. In the New Testament seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven, or a total of thirty-one thousand five hundred and thirteen. In many of these verses we have threatenings of God’s wrath against sin, and his denunciations of evil. We could hardly count those as “precious promises” to his people. Then we have many verses, and in some cases whole chapters, of simply names of persons. This will be seen in the records of Adam’s posterity; the descendants of Noah’s sons; the posterity of Esau, Jacob, Reuben, Aaron; names in the courses of the priests, and the heads of Israel; names of places of Israel’s journeyings; nations, cities, and kings taken by the Israelites; names of David’s great men, etc. Twelve chapters of 1 Chronicles—over five hundred verses—are nearly all names of persons. In Ezra and Nehemiah are lists of the leading ones who went up from the captivity, and of those who had married strange wives. In the New Testament is a genealogy of Christ, as well as lists of names in some of the epistles. In the cases of names mentioned above there are more than fifteen hundred verses, which would reduce the total of promises to about thirty thousand verses. This would be six thousand less than the number of promises claimed.

Instead of accepting such wonderful “random statements,” and passing them on as verity and truth, it certainly would be well first to give them a little candid thought. I can say that the tracing of this matter was not to me a mere problem of arithmetical figures; but in this journey through the Scriptures many precious gems of truth shone out with greater luster than ever before.