THE FULNESS OF THE BIBLE by George F. Pentecost, D.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 41.

THE FULNESS OF THE BIBLE.

By George F. Pentecost, D.D.

THIS is the day in which all the critics are saying to us that we have made a tremendous mistake in not dealing with the Bible as literature, and a great many people are afraid because some one has said, perhaps not because they desired to exalt or magnify God's Word, but they have at least indirectly sought to undermine the traditional faith in God's Word, and they have termed it literature in order to get rid of what they describe as a superstitious reverence for the Book, so that they go at it as a surgeon would dissect a body, hunting for the soul of it. But you can not in this way find the inspiration of God's Bible any more than you can find the human soul by cutting up and dissecting the body. The Bible is the summum bonum of all literature. There never was such literature in all this world as is found in the Bible.

A few people can tell us something about the life of Plato or Socrates or the thousand kings of Greece and Rome, but millions will tell you something about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Isaiah, the judges of Israel and the prophets of Israel, and of Peter and James and John and Paul—these are the men that have made the centuries that have come after them.

The Bible is the best history the world has ever had, because it was a history every line of which was guarded and superintended by the Spirit of God. There is no such poetry in all this world as is found in the Bible. It has outlived the poets of Greece and of Rome.

The Bible in itself has power to give you culture. Do you want philosophy? the first word of the Bible, which is also the last word of human philosophy and the science of the nineteenth century, "In the beginning God." That is science. That is the last word of science. The Bible had all the secrets of science and philosophy before modern or Greek philosophy was born.

Do we want to study geology? behold, he is the Rock of ages. Do we want to study astronomy? behold, he is the bright and morning star. Do we want to study botany? behold, he is the Lily of the valley and the chiefest among ten thousand. Do we want to study biology? behold, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He is the secret of life. There is not a science in this world that is not suggested by that matchless, peerless Christ, who is the living embodiment, the flower of art, and the inspiration of every page of that divine Book. With the Bible in your hand, without knowing Greek or Hebrew, or any of the dead languages, you have the secret and the key of literature.—Geo. F. Pentecost, D.D.