p. 156 | Question by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 15, 1879

Question.

By Editor

INFIDELS here claim that Chinese history goes back many thousand years beyond Bible history. Is this false? and if so, has it been exposed?

It is false, and it has been abundantly exposed. If Bible history and chronology were as vague and unreliable as that of the Chinese, the infidels might well laugh us to scorn.

The following remarks we copy from Dr. Nelson's book on Infidelity. They may seem to be severe, but we think they are just:—

“When some travelers in Asia wrote back that the Chinese record made the world many thousand years older than the Mosaic history does, how it rejoiced a host of listeners. Oh, how they clapped their hands! “We thought,” said they, “that the Bible was a fabrication, unworthy of belief. If any wrote, or said to those who were thus becoming scoffers at revelation, Do not be too hasty in your conclusions: how can you tell but that national vanity may have had some share in exciting those who speak of their celestial empire, to claim a spurious antiquity? they turned away or closed their ears with satisfied confidence. They seemed to wish for no further information. After a time some additional items were published from Chinese history, such as the following: They tell the name of their first king, which would sound in the ear of some as a corruption of the word Noah. The time they assign for his reign corresponds with the age of Noah. They speak of this king as being without father; of his mother being encircled with the rainbow; of his preserving seven clean animals to sacrifice to the great Spirit; that in his day the sky fell on the earth and destroyed the race of men, etc. When we remember that the waters of the sky did this in the days of Noah; that Noah was the first of the postdiluvian race, and thus without father; that the rainbow is interestingly connected with his history; that he did take into the ark clean animals by sevens, part of which were offered in sacrifice—we begin to discover that the Chinese account is nothing more nor less than a blotted copy of the truth. See Stackhouse’s History of the Bible.”

We gather from Moses, that between the creation and the deluge there were ten generations of men, surpassing us greatly in longevity. It would be no tortured inference to suppose them vastly our superiors, both in strength and stature. This kind of men, the heathen in ages past were in the habit of calling gods, after their death. The Chinese account speaks of ten dynasties of superior beings who ruled in their country a thousand years each, before the sky fell on the earth. It is not hard to see that this is only a different and a singular manner of relating the same facts. But why did—and do now—many of the seemingly learned choose to suppose that each father ended his race before the son began to live? It was for the purpose of stretching out the time between the deluge and the creation, to ten thousand years. Moses informs us that each of these ten generations did extend near a thousand years; but he lets us know that a son and his father walked much of their earthly race together. The journey of each was long, but it was a simultaneous travel. For the purpose, if possible, of extending the earth’s chronology beyond the dates of revelation, multitudes have taken partial extracts from hearsay records; and then, to prevent these fragments from agreeing with, or upholding the history they hate, have twisted them with labor and ingenuity—failing even then to construct a passable cavil against the truth. What is the reason of this strange hungering and thirsting after mean falsehood, rather than the wonders of glorious truth? It is because men love darkness rather than light.