Our Lord's Teaching

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 26, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 29.

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Our Lord's Teaching

Matt. 5:2-12

And He . . . taught them, saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake.

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

3195.—Catholic and Protestant Bibles

Why is it the Catholics have the Apocrypha in their Bible?

1. The Catholics include in their Bible what we call the Apocrypha, composed of books like Tobit, Judith, Esdras, Maccabees, etc., because some of the early fathers placed them in the canon of Scripture. We know of no other reason. Other of the early fathers rejected them; and there is good reason to reject them, because there are things in them that are utterly different in character and in form and dignity from the other Scriptures. Many of the deeds recorded may have happened. Doubtless some of them did. Some of the things recorded there probably never happened, simply the imagination of some unknown writer.

2. These books were not written in the Hebrew, but in the Greek, and after the regular canon of Old Testament Scripture closed, at the time of Malachi.

3. Our Lord never quotes from these books, nor do the writers of the New Testament. Their quotations are from the recognized canon of Scripture as held by the Hebrews.

4. The Septuagint was translated from the original Hebrew Scriptures, but it did not translate any of the Apocryphal books from the Hebrew, because they are not written in the Hebrew. If you have access, as you must in your town, in some good library, to McClintock and Strong's Religious Encyclopedia, or to Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, you will find the history of the canon of Scripture, with fuller reasons for rejecting the Apocrypha than we can possibly give in this department.

5. The Latin Vulgate is not recognized as an original version of the written Word of God. It has undergone a great many changes in the Catholic Church itself. Certain versions have been set aside, even the most ancient, and a new version made, and later the new version set aside, and the church has reverted to the more ancient versions of the Latin Vulgate. The oldest versions of the Scripture are not in Latin; nor is the Latin Vulgate the best of the early copies.

6. The only account we have of Daniel's being thrown into the den of lions is given in the book of Daniel, and we have no reason to believe that he was cast there any other time.

7. Some Protestant Bibles, especially the large Bibles sold by subscription, have the Apocrypha simply to make it a selling feature, and to sell to Roman Catholics if their subscription can be secured. It is not placed in Protestant Bibles as inspired Scripture.

8. The verses in 2 Maccabees 12:43-46 are simply a record of that time. The faith of the Jews had been greatly perverted even at that time. They had mixed with the Grecians, and had imbibed more or less of the heathen philosophy. That is shown in their own traditions as well as in the Apocryphal books. They probably did just what the record says they did; but they were a long way from God, and had so intermixed His truth with heathen philosophy, that we must not look to their belief as the truth. This is shown in their holding the parable which our Lord used against them of the rich man and Lazarus. Josephus records it as a belief which they themselves held. Heathen philosophy had intermixed and perverted the truth of God.