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BIBLE IGNORANCE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 3, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 1.

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BIBLE IGNORANCE.

By T. E. Bowen

BY T. E. BOWEN.
A VERY striking illustration of ignorance of the Scriptures was recently shown in a report published in the New York World of Monday, Dec. 11, 1905. The Methodist Episcopal Church of St. Paul, at West End Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street, New York City, has been equipped with a telephone service, a transmitter being placed upon the pulpit directly in front of the speaker which is connected by wires to the rear of the church, where pew receivers are provided for the comfort of those who may be afflicted with deafness. The invention seems to be in every way a success, and is likely to become more generally used, but what attracted attention was the fact that a World reporter attended services Sunday the 10th to report the telephone system. He gave a very interesting account of that, but must have had his mind upon it more than upon what was said from the Bible; for he reports that “the pastor, Rev. George P. Eckman, preached from the third epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians.”
Oftentimes a mistake of the typesetters accounts for a mistake like this, but in this instance that could hardly be the case; for the words are all spelled out as quoted above.
The illustration of the pulpit represented the pastor talking with a large closed Bible on the pulpit. When the words of the living God are ignored, and in their place the words of man, however learned or eloquent he may be, are used, we can not blame a reporter for stating that texts were taken from epistles that can not be found in it. Nor can we wonder that men and women are recklessly plunging on to ruin. Nothing can save us but the Word of our God; for in it are hidden the bread of life and the water of life—salvation.
It must be that the third epistle to the Ephesians is full of wonderful texts, and this may account for the many able sermons upon the Sabbath question, where it is so clearly proved from the Scriptures that Sunday, the first day of the week, is the Sabbath of the Lord our God.