Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 08. The Atmosphere of the Book
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 08. The Atmosphere of the Book
Other Subjects in this Topic:
The Atmosphere of the Book
There lived a dear old saint of God in Würtemberg many years ago, who was scholar and philosopher as well as saint. That part of Germany is even yet fragrant with the sweet odour of his name. And all the Western Church is under tribute to John Albert Bengal for his Christliness as well as his scholarship. Bengal had three most remarkable rules for Bible study. They are like John's Gospel in one regard, simple as a child's speech in form, but deep as the Pacific in meaning. The first was "Get everything out of the Bible." That is to say, let it be the teacher. Get your beliefs and information, not from books, nor from commonly current teachings and beliefs, but only and wholly from this Book. Do not come to prove your theory but to find what is truth. That's a hard rule to follow; should I say that it is rarely followed?
Bengal's second rule was, "Read nothing into the Bible." That is a rule yet harder to follow. Maybe it can't be followed fully. Everybody has some bias or prejudice. It's all the stronger when we don't know it's there, as is so often the case. There needs to be a strong purpose and constant practice and much prayer and deep humility of spirit to follow this second rule. Yet only so can one get to the real truth.
The third rule is as simple and calls for hard work:—"Let nothing remain concealed in the Book." I am quoting these rules freely from memory. The first rule makes the result dependable, as being indeed true; the second makes it accurate; the third makes it fully rounded, avoiding partial or half-views, which are so easily gotten hold of. These are remarkable rules that would free us from unreliable, inaccurate conclusions and from half-truths or partial truths, mixtures of truth and error.
Now I want to make a faithful attempt, at least, to follow these good rules of good old Bengal faithfully and steadily through these simple talks. There is no subject where there seems to be more of the confusion that attends inaccurate and half-stated and fancifully conceived theories, honestly enough though they may be conceived, than this subject of our Lord's return. It will take a severe mental effort, and much prayer, and undiscourageable hard work, to hold aside all one has heard and hears, and attempt to find out just what the Book teaches. And it will take yet harder work and more prayer to put it into simple shape for us common folk, whose study time is limited, to get hold of easily.
There is another point to guard as we go into this schoolroom. We will be constantly tempted to stop and ask, "Why! how can that be?" regarding some point brought out in the study. As, I have gone through I have found so much that is utterly surprising, and quite contrary to what seems possible or probable, that it has taken a strong, steady purpose to hold these questions off until the facts of the Book were all gathered out. It may seem quite impossible, or at least wholly unlikely, that certain things spoken of will occur. It would involve such radical and seemingly impossible changes in the affairs of the nations.
We should, for the time being, hold determinedly off all attempts to fit together things in the world as we know them, and the things which the Book says are to be. We are not studying the probability of the statements of God's Word being true, nor weighing present events, but simply trying to find out just what the Book teaches. One thing at a time makes better work. We want to hold off our puzzling questions until we get through, and give the Book a fair chance to state its case fully without interruptions.
It will help us much to remember that the Bible has a Jewish atmosphere. It was written wholly by Jews. It was written in Jewish surroundings. To the writers the Jews are God's chosen people. It is through the Jew that blessing is to come to the rest of the world. Their minds and hearts are full of a Jewish kingdom to be set up in the earth. They even think of the Jew as a superior people, as well as being favourites of God. In the latter pages, that is the prophetic pages, and the period of the Gospel and the Epistles and the Revelation, there is an intense expectancy of the Kingdom coming. That, of course, meant to them a Jew kingdom, ruling over all nations, and bringing blessing to all.
We have swung so far away from all this sort of thing that it seems almost impossible to get the Jew standpoint of these writers. Our atmosphere is intensely non-Jewish; the Bible word for it is Gentile. We live in a Gentile atmosphere. The word really means the "nations," as distinct from the Jews. The very phrase reveals the intense Jewish atmosphere of the Bible writers.
To-day, the Jew is a scattered, despised people. He has been persecuted alike by the Christian Church, the Mohammedan, and the nations, and is being still in certain quarters. During the later centuries the wave of persecution has largely spent itself. He has come into a position of great prominence and importance. Yet he is to a large degree simply tolerated, because of his great wealth especially, and because of his unquestioned ability. The Jew, even where he has greatest liberty and opportunity, is tolerated, despised, and thought of as inferior, without analysis as to just wherein he is so.
Now sympathetic approach to any subject is essential to a fair understanding and appreciation of it. In studying a great painting, one seeks to get the artist's conception sympathetically, in order to appreciate what he has put on canvas. And so here we must attempt to get something of the Jewish standpoint and Jewish atmosphere of the Bible time and writers if we are to get the correct perspective of the pictures presented there.