BIBLE CONSISTENCY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 3, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 14.

BIBLE CONSISTENCY.

How much more sensible and consistent is Bible truth than the theories of men opposed to the truth! Egypt claims great antiquity of itself. Learned men, contending that the claims are false in the main, concede them in part. They allow that Egyptian civilization is doubtless the oldest the world knows, and entirely independent of Babylonian and Assyrian.

The Bible gives us the story of a universal flood, and the peopling of the earth by the survivors of that flood. And from all parts of the earth, from people of all races, come traditions, all perverted more or less, of that same story of the flood. The Bible presents the true. The counterfeits prove the genuine.

The Bible story shows that the earth was peopled by the descendants of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and for aught we know other sons were born unto Noah. As these multiplied in the vicinity of the place where the ark rested, colonies of men pushed out. Some of these, strong and intellectual, founded cities, and various nuclei for the other companies, till they built up cities, tribes, kingdoms, empires.

Nimrod, of the family of Ham, founded Babylon, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh. Some of Ham's descendants pushed on into Canaan, Arabia, Africa, Egypt. It is said that Egyptian remains show her to have had no connection with the more eastern civilizations. But Mizraim, who founded Egypt, and others who joined him, may have been driven out by force, and in their enmity may have cast off everything of the parent civilization, reversing and perverting all so that they possessed naught in common save the same unsubdued, carnal, human nature. Man changes his customs, but he can not his heart.

Among the most ancient cities of Egypt was Zoan, an ancient royal seat, the Tanis of the Greeks. But Moses tells us, and he writes with the definiteness of one who knows, that Hebron, in Palestine, “was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.” Num. 13:22. And all this is in harmony with the story of Genesis 10. One company of great men—giants they were—went westward and southward, came to the site of Hebron, and founded that city. Seven years later a new colony leaves the parent nest, passes on by Hebron and founds Zoan in Egypt. Perhaps they went from Hebron to Zoan. Either supposition is plausible. But of this we are assured, Hebron outdated Zoan. As Sayce well remarks (and it is as true of Egypt as of Babylon and Assyria), “It is only the Old Testament which gives us fuller and more trustworthy information.” “The Word of the Lord endureth forever.”