The Bible as a Whole by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 5, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 48.

The Bible as a Whole

By Editor

A LITTLE tract has come to us called "Christian Conservation," by Wilbert W. White, president of the Bible Teachers' Training School, New York. It emphasizes one thing which seems to us pre-eminently true, and that for which the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has stood through all the years, and that is that the Bible as a whole is true, if any of it is true. Dr. White says:

If there is not good and sufficient reason for accepting the message of the Bible as a whole, I, for one, have no particular interest in studying or teaching it. Let its trees be cut down. If, I say, its message in its entirety, as the Bible itself interprets itself, and, if you please, corrects itself—if, I say, there is not good and sufficient reason for accepting the message of the Bible as a whole, as a unique revelation from God Himself, then there is no future for us. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, if the dead are not raised. Life and immortality are brought to light in the which I insist is the Bible as a whole, or the is vain. The church of Christ has accepted the apostolic teaching concerning God and Christ, and this as a whole is true, or as a whole it is false.

This is indeed refreshing, in these days of infidelity. Dr. White further says:

Let not the issue be obscured; it is the message as a whole with which we must deal. We always lose vantage-ground when we allow the adversary to limit us to this miracle or that, to this doctrine or that, in our defense of the Gospel. Each particular is to be defended in its setting. Reasons which might appear cogent against a doctrine or a statement in isolation, may not be weighty in the light of the context. The context here is Genesis-Revelation. . . . Again I say, let us not allow any one to confuse us as to the issue of to-day; it is not, Is this doctrine, or that doctrine, true? It is this: Is the Bible as a whole true, or is it not true? . . . This is the question.

And it is the question. And it is this question which Christianity to-day must face. And it is upon the decision of this question that not only the church of Christ itself, but the Christian as an individual, must stand or fall.