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THE BIBLE DISPOSED OF

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Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 15, 1856

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 8, No. 5.

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THE BIBLE DISPOSED OF.

By Editor

WHOLESALE denials of the word of God, with no foundation but the maliciousness of those who utter them, have become so frequent and so generally known, and we may add, so generally approved, that we can no longer note them as new developments in the downward course of the present generation. We are now left to wonder not so much at the hostility which Infidelity presents to the word of God, as the gigantic proportions which it has assumed.
A writer in the Christian Spiritualist, of May 10, in reply to the question, “Who can tell us what is the meaning of the word, as recorded in the book of Genesis?” says:
“I answer: it means nothing! amounts to nothing—at least to nothing more than would an assertion from you or me, that we are omnipotent gods. The ‘word’ of Genesis means just as much as the dicta of ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ or Joe Smith, and no more, viz: that the writer was endowed with a liberal imagination. It means that the author of Genesis is to be pitied, however he is considered—whether as a fanatic or impostor. There are, in the first four chapters of Genesis, upwards of three hundred falsehoods.”
A little farther on, the writer labors to prove that his father did not lie to Eve, when he told her she should not surely die by tasting the forbidden fruit, notwithstanding it contradicted the express declaration of God. If we may credit his statements it would appear that the Devil is a person of veracity, and it is altogether a mistake to consider him the father of lies. This cluster from his infidel vine he serves up as follows:
“IN THE DAY that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely day.”
“Adam did eat, and did not die, either physically or spiritually, according to Scripture; and hence, to believe the personage in question, is to believe the Creator guilty of a falsehood. Did he die physically? No; he lived some hundred of years after said event. Did he die spiritually? No; for his soul is immortal?”
Does not the literal Hebrew of Gen. ii, 17, according to the margin, read, Dying thou shalt die, which denotes that the penalty would be paid by a gradual process, and not instantaneously? and does not the 19th verse of chap. iii, define this? “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground?” But where does he get the information that the soul is immortal? Is it in Scripture? If it is, we could hardly expect him to credit it on that account; but it is not there. The spirits themselves admit this, and therefore declare that one object of their mission is to convince the skeptic of this truth. Luther says it is found in the “Roman dung-hill of decretals.”
We anxiously watch the movements of the churches which have dreamed and preached a world’s conversion. Will they attempt to check this swelling tide of rationalism and infidelity, the legitimate offspring of their own teaching? or will they “surrender at discretion?”