The Authority of the Word of God

OF any two characteristics must always be inseparably associated with this devout disciple whose dream is here recorded, they must surely be his unshaken confidence in the seven-sealed book of God and his personal surrender to the seven-fold power of the Spirit of God. As to the book, that is a remarkable description, or designation given us in the fifth chapter of the Apocalypse — the scroll, written within and on the back side, sealed with seven seals. What a striking metaphor to express the very handwriting of God in the inspired volume, attested with the seven-fold seal of complete authority and authenticity, and so bearing the unmistakable sanction of the divine Author!

The work will bear the marks of the workman — his knowledge and wisdom, skill and design. Moreover, the more perfect the workmanship the more complete the exhibition of the character of him who thought out and wrought out such perfection of product. Now it is very remarkable

that just such seven-fold perfection is claimed for the word of God. We associate with him who is its author, seven attributes: such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence — natural attributes; and providence, truth, righteousness, and love — moral attributes. All these his word displays in a remarkable manner and degree:

His Omnipotence, in the miracles of power which it records.

His Omniscience, in its predictive prophecies.

His Omnipresence, in its unity of plan and structure.

His Providence, in its history and biography.

His Truth, in its general accuracy.

His Righteousness, in its faultless morality.

His Love, in its transforming energy.

No survey of the inspired word is complete until it takes in all these forms of proof and methods of attestation and authentication. As it is of the utmost importance to us to know beyond doubt that the Bible is God’s book, and to repose with absolute certainty upon its teachings, God has so fully set his seal and sanction upon it that no reasonable doubt remains. And it is significant that all these proofs of its divine origin lie within itself, so that we have only to search the Scriptures to find God’s seven-fold seal impressed on them all the way through.

A. J. (Gordon was the man of the book, and of the one book. No man, perhaps, of his generation, has done more in the line of Christian apolol getics, but it was mostly by indirection. He defended the Bible by expounding it.

His attitude toward the Holy Scriptures was beautifully reverent. To him the Bible 7L>as a livi7ig book, not only containing a divine message, but divinely inbreathed, and therefore instinct with the divine life. As God first made man out of the dust of the ground, and then breathed into him the breath of life, so that man became a living soul, so, whatever was earthly and human in the book had taken form and fashion under the finger of God and had become living by the breath of his divine inspiration. This humble believer went to the Bible not as to a dead book, but as to a living being; he communed with the word as with a person, and expected to find in such converse the response to his advances and questionings, and he was not disap])ointed. He has often spoken of the word of God as giving answer, as one prayerfully searches it and seeks guidance in doubt, difficulty, and perplexity; and, in common with the most prayerful students of its mysteries, he found the heavenly Interpreter unfolding and applying its truths with the skill of a personal counsellor.

Dr. Gordon was not among those who doubt either the inspiration or infallibility of the divine word. He believed that it was essentially inerrant, and when he found difficulties or discrepancies, instead of distrusting the accuracy of the divine oracles, he rather suspected the accuracy of his own understanding. He traced the defects, not to the objects seen, but to the eye seeing; and when contradiction was apparent, he waited, as when the twin pictures of the stereoscope fail to blend, one waits to get the common focal center of vision which resolves the discord into harmonious unity. In other departments of knowledge we understand in order to believe; but in this divine science of spiritual mysteries we believe in order to understand. Faith is philosophy here, and obedience is the organ of spiritual vision: “If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine.” “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.”

To this constant and searching study of the word of God, our departed brother owed much of the energy and beauty of his writings.

In literary style he revealed remarkable power in analysis and antithesis, and these are perhaps the most conspicious features of his composition. He saw truth in itself and its relations. He had the homiletical faculty which detects the natural divisions of a text or theme as an astronomer sees orderly constellations where common eyes see only irregular and scattered stars. The facility and felicity with which he saw and expressed the elements of a complete truth, discriminated between things that differ, and arranged and adjusted related truths, were very remarkable.

He must have been a clear thinker to make such clear distinctions. There was no indefinite haze or indiscriminate muddle about his views or statements of truth; and we cannot but think that he owed even these literary attainments largely to the daily study of His words who spake as never man spake.

A few examples may both prove and illustrate what we have said. In that remarkable book on “The Ministry of the Spirit,” contrasting the work of Conscience and of the Holy Spirit, he thus represents the matter;

Conscience Convinces — Of sin committed;
Of righteousness impossible;
Of judgment impending.

The Comforter Convinces — Of sin committed;
Of righteousness imputed;
Of judgment accomplished.

He further says,^ that “Conscience is the witness to the law; the Spirit is the witness to grace. Conscience brings legal conviction; the Spirit brings evangelical conviction; the one begets a conviction unto despair, the other a conviction unto hope.”

Who cannot see in such distinctions and discriminations as these the fruits of a microscopic study of the inspired word? The man who believed Scripture to be “literature indwelt by the Spirit of God” that in the Scripture the Holy Ghost speaks, and “we can only understand his thoughts by listening to his words “; * such a

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man would naturally examine into the exact terms used, and into the nicest shades of meaning which distinguish them from each other, and so learn for himself to use language with deep apprehension of its significance and critical accuracy in its application to the expression of ideas.