The Bible Scientific by G. D. Ballou

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 27, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 22.

The Bible Scientific

By G. D. Ballou

(Concluded.)

MODERN science has developed a system of object-lesson teaching for kindergarten work which has proved most effective in keeping the attention of the little folks, and impressing on their plastic minds the preparatory development so necessary to mold them for advance work.

A few simple objects, as toothpicks, kernels of corn, beans, or grains of wheat, are given names of persons or animals, and even character is ascribed to these representative objects. A story is told, and they are made the actors. The law of association is successfully involved by the skilled teacher, and many a lesson is deeply and lastingly impressed on the receptive child-mind.

This is considered to be the very acme of science. Now God the Creator, in His word, endeavoring to open up the future to the minds of His little children, uses precisely the same method. Note particularly those two books which have been so unsparingly criticized by the modern pulpit, — Daniel and the Revelation. Both have been pronounced incomprehensible mysteries which the heavenly Father never designed His patient, trusting children should ever bother with. Yet in these is a complete illustration of the kindergarten science. In Daniel 2 is an image made of four metals, which is smitten by a stone. The God of heaven reveals to the prophet the meaning of each metal part and of the stone, and he tells the simple story to the king. That object-lesson, revealing the coming of three other universal monarchies and the utter passing of all, and the establishment of the kingdom of God in their stead, produced a most profound impression on the mind of Nebuchadnezzar. How simple it all was! Just a kindergarten story, and no more; but it was God’s kindergarten method of making impressions on a giant mind which could not have been so thoroly aroused by any other statement of the same truths. This, with a later personal experience, where another lesson of the same kind is taught, in which the king was likened to a tree, even to a stump, resulted in Nebuchadnezzar’s conversion.

In chapter seven occurs another object-lesson. The kingdoms of this world are represented by beasts. Just as the teacher tells the children that the kernels of corn are sheep, and that a toothpick is the shepherd, so God said that these beasts, the lion, the bear, the leopard, and that awful beast with nails of brass and teeth of iron, were the same four kingdoms about which He had told Nebuchadnezzar.

Again, in chapter eight are two beasts and a horn that grew wonderfully great: The angel said that the ram represented the Medo-Persian kingdom, and the goat, the kingdom of Greece.

So we might go on in the book of Daniel and all thru the Revelation. Object-lesson after object-lesson is introduced to make lasting impressions on the human mind and to make it easy for the understanding to grasp the great lessons of future things. Shall we call our work and our ways scientific, and not acknowledge the ways of the Lord to be also scientific? There must be something worse than color-blindness in him who can see light and wisdom in modern human methods and pronounce the same methods dark and mysterious when God sees fit to use them. Each line of prophecy is as distinct and clear in itself as ever was any lesson of science, and the only thing God has left for us to do is to compare these different lessons He has given, and thus search out the whole chain of truth.

Each great truth is set forth clearly and simply, and God would have us use our intellects in finding the relationship of these various truths.

I can not better illustrate the manner in which the men and women of this generation have been induced to discredit the Bible, especially the prophecies, than by supposing that a certain young man had been told by his grandfather and master and his own parents and his school-teacher, that he would never be able to understand geometry. It was all a mystery, never designed to be understood, there was no use for him ever to meddle with it, and that the old neighborhood surveyor knew of it all that was necessary for the good of the community. Do you think that young man would have much ambition to study geometry? So it has been with the Bible. The ministry of the churches has not hesitated to pronounce the prophetic portion of it mysterious, dark, profound, and beyond human comprehension. I do not wonder that my fellow men feel that way about the Bible. So much has been said to discourage and hinder that I marvel that any one has the courage to attempt its study.

But having shown that the Old Book is as scientific, and more so, as the methods of men, we are content to leave it with the reader to decide whether or not it will be wise for him to give it the same careful attention he would and does give to the common sciences relating chiefly to this life. If half the time were given to the Bible prophecies that is given to the study of mathematics alone, there would be an end of infidelity and skepticism, and men would be more numerous of whom the apostle Peter speaks: "Therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."