The Testimony of God Through Preservation & Miracles:
Westminster Larger Catechism Question 4 #4.
(Go to Part 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6)
[5-8-1999. This is an edited transcription from a series
Pastor Bacon taught on Westminster Larger Catechism Question 4. Previously the
parts were mis-numbered. The parts in order as published are: The Blue Banner.
v.2#4-5. (Part I). v.6#4 (II). v.7#2 (III). v.8#4 (IV). v.7#9 (V). v.8#7-8 (VI).
Our
text this morning is Matthew 24:35, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
words shall not pass away.” I submit to
you that this verse teaches the doctrine of verbal preservation of God’s
Word. As enduring as are the stars in
the heaven, and as everlasting as are the sun and the moon, as old as they are
and as long as they will last, we know from Scripture that they will pass away.
But the Word of God will not pass away.
As we study the preservation of God’s Word through the centuries, we
must touch upon the subject of textual criticism. I believe that eclecticism (selecting what appears to be best
from various documents) is a pernicious view that has much infected evangelical
and conservative Christianity. We need
to understand that when the statement is made that using other text types does
not affect a single doctrine of Scripture, the assumption is made that verbal
preservation of God’s Word is not a doctrine.
Psalm
138:2 explains to us that God has magnified his Word even above his name. As God’s name will not pass away, neither is
there any possibility that his Word will pass away. God has preserved his Word intact for us down to this present
day. Books less ancient than the Bible,
books of a much later date, have been lost.
Nothing is known of them except that they once existed. We should be amazed that a book as ancient
as the Bible has come down to us at all. We should be astonished that we have even the smallest fragment
of a book that was written so many thousands of years ago, by so many people,
over such a long time, in so many different places. It is a wonder that we have anything at all. And yet, what we have is the book in its
entirety. We do not have a single
manuscript; we have literally thousands of manuscripts of the Greek and
Hebrew Scriptures. Because we have so many
manuscripts, each one can be judged in terms of the whole.
We
do not have one single manuscript on which we must rely. If someone were digging in North Africa and
found a lost book by Hippolytus or Origen, we would have to take the manuscript
by itself on its own evidence. We would
have to believe that the manuscript was an accurate text of the lost book
because there are no other texts available to corroborate it. But if we had five thousand copies of
that same ancient book, we could judge the newly found copy by the five
thousand copies we already had.
We do
have many many manuscripts of the Bible!
Suppose I were rummaging through the Arabian desert, around the Dead
Sea, looking for scrolls in a cave.
Suppose I found an old manuscript of the book of Isaiah, or an old
manuscript of a New Testament book, or even a book that is not really
canonical, but one that is often associated with Scripture. Would I judge this newly found copy by the
entire corpus of manuscripts that have come down through the ages and are in
essential agreement, or would I judge the entire five thousand previously known
manuscripts against the newly discovered one?
Of course I would take the five thousand that have previously existed and
that agree with one another and judge the newly found one in terms of those
five thousand.
Basically,
that is what happened. Men, rummaging
around the desert, found various fragments of manuscripts that had been sitting
in caves for thousands of years. Only
they want to judge the five thousand extant manuscripts by the newly found
ones. I maintain that there is no
possible reason for giving a manuscript that has laid — untouched and unused — for thousands of years
priority over a group of manuscripts that have been changing the lives of God’s
people for thousands of years.
We
may not agree with everything that Dr. Edward Hills said in his book, The
King James Version Defended, but he was certainly correct when he stated
that we approach the subject of textural criticism either as a believer or as
an unbeliever. There is no
neutrality. If we approach textural
criticism with the same mindset as an unbeliever, the fact that we claim to be
a believer does not change the fact that we have a wrong attitude toward the
Scriptures. When we study the
preservation of Scripture — when we study textural criticism — we must do it
from a believing mindset. We must begin
with the fact that God has spoken in his Word, and that he has preserved his
Word for his people by his people. God
has not preserved his Word in a jug in a cave near the Dead Sea. God did not preserve his Word by setting it
on a shelf unattended and forgotten.
God preserved his Word by his people loving it so much that they made
copies of it! God preserved his
Word by the copies that his people made of it, so that today, we have thousands
and thousands of manuscripts of God’s Word that are in essential agreement with
one another.
If
we had five thousand manuscripts here in front of us, we would likely not find
any two that were in exact agreement.
It is like the child’s puzzle, where he must decide which two things are
exactly alike. That is the kind of
puzzle we must do when we compare manuscripts.
It may be that no two are exactly alike. But that does not matter! We have so many manuscripts that
one is always going to be in conflict with the other five thousand. So it does not matter if there are no two
that are exactly alike. It is only when
we put the weight on the one and decide to judge the rest of the five thousand
by just that one that we have trouble.
Textural
criticism is a legitimate science. As
Christians we have to collate manuscripts.
But as we do that what we discover is that there is a remarkable
agreement among the manuscripts!
But
today, many modern critics tear down the Bible. They put doubts in the minds of God’s people. They do not say, “God has not said,” but
instead they ask, “Hath God said?” They
have taken a small handful of manuscripts that they literally found in jugs —
manuscripts that were not being used — and elevated them at the expense of the
existing, well known, five thousand.
Let me give you an illustration.
If you went to my closet you would find some old slacks. They are old because I do not wear them
anymore. The very fact that they are
still in my closet after five years, or ten years, or fifteen years is an
indication of the fact that I do not wear them. The ones that I like I wear out!
The slacks that have worth to me are not hanging in the back of my
closet unused. The very fact that some
manuscripts are old — the fact that they are ancient — is not an argument in
their favor. It is not in their favor
if you understand that it means they were sitting on a shelf and not being
used.
It
is the job of an archeologist to go through other people’s trash — people who
died a long time ago, but nevertheless what he basically does is go through
other people’s trash. So the fact is
that he found these manuscripts in someone’s trash. That should tell us that they threw the manuscript away!
This manuscript was not being used; it was
set on a shelf.
God’s
Word has been preserved — not by sitting on a shelf — but by being used in
every generation of his people. Not
only has the Word been preserved but also the very words that God spoke have been
preserved. We believe in “verbal
inspiration.” Verbal inspiration means
that not just the general ideas were inspired, but the very words were
inspired. We do not mean that the words
were only inspired in the original autographs. We do not have any of the original autographs. If we say that verbal inspiration was only
true in the original autographs, then we have said nothing. Verbal inspiration is only a significant
doctrine if verbal preservation is true!
It would be of no value if a book was inspired at every word if we do
not have that book anymore. The
question that concerns us — the question that concerns the church today —
is: “Is this Bible that I hold in my hand
— that you read in your homes — verbally inspired?” Only the preservation of this book — word by word — is
significant to us. It is not
significant to us if the words of God have not been preserved. Inspiration is meaningless unless God has
preserved those words that he inspired.
We cannot believe verbal inspiration without believing verbal preservation.
Not
only does Satan desire to overthrow God’s Word but worldlings — those who are
not converted by the Scriptures — also oppose the Bible because the Bible
presents righteous requirements.
Scriptures teach of a narrow gate; the Bible speaks of a strait and
narrow way. Scripture reveals truth to
a sinner. It judges him. It condemns him. It declares to the sinner that he is not the person he claims to
be. The worldlings oppose the
Scriptures because they call him to give an account of his life and actions.
There
are even heretics within the visible church perverting the Word — changing,
chopping and cutting. This has been
going on from the time that the Scriptures were first being written. In 2 Peter 3:16, Peter warns, “As also in
all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things
hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as
they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”
These
three forces — human forces outside the church, human forces in the visible
church and supernatural forces in Satan’s kingdom itself — oppose the Word of
God. Nevertheless, it has stood the
test of time and has come down today identical to the day it was written. There is only one way to account for such a
remarkable preservation. God has, is
and always will, preserve his Word. God has magnified his Word above his very name.
I
do not want to elevate one translation above another any more than need be, but
I do want to discuss the King James Version, often called the Authorized
Version of the Bible. I will grant that
there are some problems in some specific places. For example, in Acts 12:4 the word “pascha” should not be
translated “Easter.” We must admit that
it is not a perfect translation; there are some difficulties. However I contend
that there is no other translation of the Bible that God has used more to
convert the hearts of his people over the last three hundred and fifty
years. There is no version of Scripture
you can buy today that God has used more.
I do not care if the version was translated by liberals, or by
conservatives or by sacerdotalists or by evangelicals, it is not a version of
Scripture that God has used more convincingly in the hearts of his people than
the King James Version. There are places in the King James Version that could
be updated; where the language is archaic.
There are some places where some words have been translated incorrectly.
Perhaps if this generation were committed to the God of the Bible, if this
generation were committed to the preservation of his Word, it might be time to
update some of these things, to revise some things, to bring them more into
conformity with modern spelling, more into conformity with modern language and
usage. But we do not live in a
generation like that. We live in a generation
that has gone out of the way to proliferate translations and to throw doubt on
the truth of the Word of God. Even the
(so called) evangelical translations have raised doubts upon whether God has
preserved his Word. Does the King James
Version need to be revised? Yes, but
not by this generation. A proper update
of the Authorized Version cannot be done until God’s Spirit blows upon a
generation in such a way that they know to approach the criticism of his Word
with a believing heart and not an unbelieving heart. They would have to approach the book with the mindset of godly
submission to the Word of God. There
are changes that could be made. There
is some updating that could be done. It
is not a perfect translation. I do not
believe that anything in which man’s hands have had a part will ever be
perfect, at least, not on this side of heaven.
But having said that, there is no other version — there is no other rendering in English —
that has been more used by God than the Authorized Version. It is the most accurate translation of
the inspired text. That is the reason we should use it.
In
a related yet somewhat different way, God has also testified that the
Scriptures are his Word through an extraordinary method — an extraordinary
witness — : miracles. As God has
revealed his Word, as God has caused the authors of Scripture to pen the words,
it has often been accompanied by the miraculous. God is interested in our sicknesses, but that is not the primary
reason for the healings that took place at the time of Christ, at the time of
Elijah and so forth. Elijah could have
healed many more Syrians than he did.
He could have healed more lepers within the nation of Israel than he
did. It was not that there were no
widows in Israel in the days of Elijah that he was sent to the widow of
Zarephath in 1 Kings 17. Christ tells
us in Luke 4:25 that there were many widows in Israel. It was so God’s hand might be known; that
his power might be shown. Through the
miraculous, God testifies — he gives witness to the fact — that the Scriptures
are his Word. God testified first of
all that Elijah was his man; that Elijah was his prophet; that
Christ is his Messiah and so forth.
He testifies to the people who receive the Word that it came from a man
of God by the miracles that accompany that man’s ministry.
We
need to understand what miracles are.
This is an important distinction.
If we maintain that miracles are an attestation to God’s Word, then
logically it follows that if miracles are going on today, then it is attesting
to the fact that the canon of Scripture is still open. It is attesting to possible future
revelation. That is exactly what the
Charismatics maintain when they claim to be speaking the words of God in
revelations, dreams, utterances, etc.
God
heals people. Anyone who is healed is
healed by the power of God. That is
true whether the healing took place through normal means or through “abnormal”
means. But “miracles” as Scripture uses
the term, are for the purpose of attesting to the fact that God’s very words
are being spoken to a generation. The
last generation it attested to was the one to which the apostles preached. In 2 Corinthians 12:8, the Apostle Paul
prayed for healing three times. “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice,
that it might depart from me.” But God
told Paul in verse 9, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” Paul explained in
verses 9-12, “…for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly
therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in
necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am
weak, then am I strong. I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me:
for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very
chiefest apostles, though I be nothing.
Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs,
and wonders, and mighty deeds.” Paul
was speaking of the miraculous. Paul
did the miraculous signs of an apostle.
The last generation of the inspired writers of Scripture were
accompanied by miracles and signs.
Often
we use the term “miraculous” in a light way.
It is our desire to give glory to God, but we need to be careful that we
use words correctly. When God gives
signs and miracles, he is attesting to the authors of Scripture. If it is the case that the canon is closed,
and if one maintains that he is speaking the very words of God in revelation,
then he is lying. The canon of
Scripture is closed! Those who maintain that there are “miracles” happening
today are the very ones who maintain that the canon is not closed. Along with the Charismatics, the Roman
Catholic church has historically maintained that they are capable of working
miracles. Their most common “miracle”
is supposedly turning bread and wine into flesh and blood during their
idolatrous mass. They also maintain
various sightings of supposed saints and assert the supposed power of relics to
heal people. They teach that Scripture
is not the only Word of God. The Roman
Catholic Church believes that the Pope, their traditions and the words of their
church councils are also the very words of God. They do not believe that the canon is closed. Notice the correlation: when a church maintains that the miraculous
is still taking place today, they also believe in an open canon.
The
miraculous has a specific place: it is
to attest to Scripture. God attests to
the Scriptures being his Word by the miracles, by the signs and wonders, that
accompany it — whether in the time of Moses, or of Elijah or of Christ. When Moses wrote the Pentateuch, there were
miracles in Egypt. His walking stick
became a snake. The plagues were
visited on Egypt. They were not merely
natural events. They came about by the
word of Moses; that indicates they were miraculous. These miracles were God giving his “seal of approval” to Moses’
ministry and to his words. When the
children of Israel reached the Red Sea, they had the Sea in front of them and
Pharaoh’s army behind them. Which way
could they turn? Moses held up his
staff, and the waters parted. It
was not just anyone that the Red Sea would obey. It was because it was Moses that held the staff that the
waters parted. Remember at the battle
with the Amalikites in Exodus 17 Moses held up his staff. When his arms got tired, Aaron and Hur had
to help him hold them up. They did
not try to take the staff themselves just to give Moses a rest. The power was not in the staff. The power was in the fact that Moses was
holding up the staff. The attestation
of God was to Moses’ words. Only Moses
— and no one else — could hold up the brazen serpent in the wilderness in
Numbers 21:8. Years later, during the
reign of Hezekiah, in 2 Kings 18:2, the king actually had to destroy the brazen
serpent because it had become the object of idolatrous worship. The people of Israel had begun to believe
that the power was in the brass serpent instead Moses’ ministry of God’s Word.
A
miracle is an extraordinary divine work, whereby something is produced contrary
to the common course of nature. I did
not use the term “natural law.” There
is no such thing as natural law; there is only the covenant that God has made
with creation (Genesis 9:16-17).
God
has worked miracles to attest to his prophets; whether it was Moses, or Elijah,
or Christ. There is a conviction that
is given to those who see the miracles.
In Matthew 12:22-24 we read, “Then was brought unto him one possessed
with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and
dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this
the son of David?” What they meant by
“is this not the son of David?” was “Is this not Messiah?” They knew from reading Isaiah’s prophecy
(Isaiah 35) that these kinds of miracles would accompany Messiah. Continue on in verses 24-27, “ But when the
Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by
Beelzebub the prince of the devils. And Jesus knew their thoughts…” (Jesus knew
their thoughts because he is God.) “…and said unto them, Every kingdom divided
against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided
against itself shall not stand: And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided
against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast
out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be
your judges.” Christ was referring to
his disciples as “their children.”
Christ’s disciples were casting out devils as well! He asked the Pharisees, “By whom are they
casting them out?” Christ told the
Pharisees that “their children” — the disciples — were going to rise up in the
judgment and speak against them regarding this. In this passage the miraculous is attesting to Christ as the “son
of David” — Christ as Messiah. There
were miracles taking place. Satan was being cast out. Devils were being cast out.
The Pharisees did not deny that these things were happening! The
reproach from the Pharisees was not that the miracles did not happen, but that
they were from an evil source. It was a stupid explanation for it — Christ
pointed out to them how stupid it was — but they did not deny the fact that
miracles were taking place! They
admitted that the blind could see and the dumb could talk. The miracles were real. There is no question about that; even the
enemies of Christ did not deny them. God used miracles to attest to the
ministry of Christ and to his Word.
Some
might object that while it is the case that the mission of the prophet
is attested to by miracles, it does not necessarily follow that the subject
matter is being attested to as well.
This objection might say that in the passage we just read in Matthew 12,
the miracles declare Jesus Christ to be the son of David, but they do not
attest to every last word he spoke. If it is the case that the mission of a
prophet is being confirmed, we need to ask what their mission was. What was the mission of a prophet? The mission of a prophet was to bring the
Word of God! Therefore, to say that the
miracles attest to the prophet’s mission is identical to saying that the
miracles attest to the words of the prophet as well. In the first generation of the church — at the time when the
Scriptures were still being penned by the Apostles — there were not only those
who penned the words of Scripture, but there were also those who were
“discerners” of Scripture (1 Corinthians 12:10). That gift is no long with us,
so it is impossible to say with certainty what it was. We have a report from Scripture that it
existed and, the fact is, it was necessary to have a “discerner of spirits,” to
establish the canon of Scripture. It
may
be that those “discerners of spirits” were there to help establish the
canon. That may also be the
meaning of 1 Corinthians 14:32, “And the spirits of the prophets are subject to
the prophets.” We do not insist upon
that understanding, however.
Another
objection is that, because there are no miracles today, Scripture is no longer
being confirmed. The force of this
objection is that, when there were miracles, then there was the
Word of God; but now, because there are no longer any miracles, how can we be
sure that what we have is really the Word of God? How can it be said that we have a divine testimony today? Obviously validation is not necessary for
all succeeding ages as it is for the age in which it is being delivered. At the time that God’s Word was being
delivered was the time to expect miracles — the attestation of the Word.
Look
at Matthew 12:38-39, “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees
answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and
said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and
there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” Christ
spoke of the resurrection as being the only sign to that generation. We should learn in verse 39 that a generation
that is constantly seeking after a sign is called an “evil and adulterous
generation.” In 1 Corinthians 1:22,
Paul spoke of the Jews who were seeking a sign. He was not paying them a compliment; he was pointing out a
problem. In Luke 16:31, Jesus said of
the Jews, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be
persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”
That is exactly what came to pass.
Jesus rose from the dead, and they still refused to believe. The problem was not the lack of
miracles. The miracles were given at the
time that the book was written, and the miracles attested to the writing of
Scripture. They attested to the fact
that the Scriptures say, “Thus saith the Lord.” The ongoing necessity of miracles is past. We have something now more powerful than a
miracle. We have something that is
clearer than a miracle. We have
something that is better than what the Jews called the “bath-qol,” — a
voice from heaven.
When
Jesus was being baptized, the “bath-qol” — a voice from heaven — said in
Matthew 3:17, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” In Matthew 17:5, on the Mount Of
Transfiguration there was a voice that came out of the cloud saying, “This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” In John 12:28-29, Jesus asked, “Father,
glorify thy name.” In answer, there was
what seemed to be to the people standing by thunder from heaven. But to Jesus and his followers, it was a
“…voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it
again.” In at least three instances we have Jesus Christ associated with the
Hebrew “bath-qol.” We need to
understand that when the Scriptures were written, they were written in some
measure to fulfil Jewish expectations.
And, in testimony to the fact that the Scriptures that were being
written were the Word of God, we see an attestation of God at the time. However, we do not need — and we should not
expect — a voice from heaven every time we pick up the Scriptures to be
constantly commending the Bible to us.
It is sufficient that it was done once.
The command to hear him, given then, still applies to us.
We
have the testimony of the church in all ages that the Bible is the Word of
God. Sometimes that testimony has been
more pure and sometimes it has been less pure.
Sometimes in the organized church it has been virtually lost. Yet we must say even though it may have been
more or less pure in succeeding ages, nevertheless the testimony of the church
in every age has been that the Bible is the Word of God. Sometimes it would be hard to find, yet
there has always been a testimony in the church that the Bible is the Word of
God. This is a significant
testimony. The oracles were originally
committed to the Jewish nation in the Old Testament and now those same oracles
are committed to the church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth (1
Timothy 3:15). The Scriptures lead and
guide the church and by means of the church the Bible has been preserved. We have come full circle. Some council did not sit in Rome and decide
how to preserve the Scriptures. The
people of God — the church of God considered as his people — have, as a
people, preserved the Word — whole and entire — down to our present
day. And should the Lord tarry, the
church — the people of the living God — will continue to preserve his Word
until he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.
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