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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 09. Inspired Revelation a-Fact
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Inspired Revelation a-Fact
The Bible is a fact. I do not mean merely that it is a fact that there is such a book. But this Book itself is a living fact or factor in Christian civilization, in Christianity, in Christian propaganda among non-Christian peoples, in the personal history of Christ Himself, and in the human lives it has touched and moulded.
Wherever it is known, it is accepted as the one standard of moral teaching, unapproached by any other. By common consent its contributions to jurisprudence, to political economy, to moral philosophy, business ethics, sanitation and hygiene, are the underlying foundation of all books on these subjects. It is characterized by a fine re-serve, a conservative caution of utterance, and a rare modesty about itself. Its high moral character is freely accepted wherever it is known.
In its ideals of life, unmatched and unapproached, its originality, its unfailing freshness and adaptation after centuries, its subtle real touch of something more than human through the human medium, and in its one outstanding person Christ, it stands in solitary grandeur among all books of whatever time or clime. The Bible is a fact in the life of the race.
And, now, there's another hatch in this brood. A bit of heart warmth will quickly pip the shell. Notice a striking thing. This conservative Book makes a certain claim for itself. It actually claims to be a distinctive revelation from God Himself.
It claims to be so in-breathed by the Holy Spirit as to be a dependable revelation of God's will and purposes, and of how He sees that things will work out. And it is so interwoven with these other plain facts that the acceptance of them, at once, involves the acceptance both of it, and of its claim.
And so, very quietly, a fifth fact adds itself to the group. It is a fact that there is a revelation from God. I know of course that this is disputed. It is disputed vigorously with bitterness and persistence. Indeed the peculiar spirit of bitterness and stubborn tenacity in the propaganda against this fact is distinctively unscholarly in spirit, and more, it is suggestive of the real source behind all this sort of thing. There's a bitterness of hate, a serpentine quality of subtlety and venom, immensely suggestive.
But the bit for the common man on the street, who wants things simple and plain and straight, is this. The fact that there is a revelation from God is as clearly a fact as these other facts named. It's as clear as the fact of the sun over-head.
A man may rest in this, as a mere matter just now of flawless logical reason, that the acceptance of these facts is in full accord with the most rugged intellectual integrity. The most vigorous insistent mentality can rest content in following this simple line of reasoning. Merely as a matter of evidence, regardless of the moral consequences involved, this group of facts may safely be left to the verdict of the highest judiciaries of these two English-speaking peoples.