THE BIBLE.

Southland Times, Issue 20206, 17 June 1927, Page 9

THE BIBLE.

To the Editor. Sir, —The attempts to obscure the real point at issue, and to reduce it to a mere difference regarding the meaning of words, is to sidestep the question entirely. The statements to which exceptions were taken in Mr Chisholm’s address: “The Bible was not free from error; in it there were contradictions; the world was not created in six days, etc.,” are so explicit and so far reaching that no amount of juggling can reconcile them with the plain statements of Holy Writ. The Bible says, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth.” Mr Chisholm says He did not and because some of us still retain our childhood faith in God’s power to do it, and truthfulness in reporting it, Mr Sykes would make it appear we are stirring up religious strife. If this be the case we must simply accept anything preachers choose to tell us. If the earth was not created in six days the onus is on the one who makes such statements to prove it. That those days were literal is apparent, for it says the evening and the morning (a dark part and a light part) were the first day and so on throughout the whole week. It also declares Adam was created on the sixth day and we know he lived over part of that day and all the seventh. Later the record gives the years of his life: this excludes the idea of long indefinite periods. Those who realise the power of God as they view the vast expanse of the starry heavens with the controlling of myriads of suns and systems, have no difficulty in believing the same being could make this little planet in six days and less if He so chose. In conclusion I would like to say we are not called upon to exercise charity to false principles and misleading statements.—l am, etc., J. PASCOE. 114 Windsor street.

To the Editor. Sir, —I have read your report of Mr. Chisholm’s Sunday evening sermon under the above heading. He says the Bible is not free from error. Well I have been studying the Bible off and on for the past 45 years and I have never found an error in it and as to contradictions there is none if the Bible is properly understood. “The world was not created in six days.” Would Mr Chisholm please inform us how many days it took to create the world and where he got his information from? God’s days are not necessarily 24 hour days because the sun, moon and stars were not created until the fourth day. "It was a ridiculous thing to imagine that God would punish a man by keeping him alive in the belly of a whale for three days.” I will now quote Dr. Talmage’s answer to Ingersoll on the above subject. A whale swallowed Jonah and ejected him upon the dry ground in three days. “If the objector would go to the museum at Nantucket, Massachusetts, he would find the skeleton of a whale large enough to hold a man. There is a cavity in the mouth of the common whale large enough for a man to live in, there have been sharks found again and again with an entire human body in them. Besides that if the poor simpleton and the other scoffers lat the Bible would only read this book of Jonah a little more carefully they would find that it says nothing about the whale. It says: ‘The Lord prepared a great fish,’ and there are scientists who tell us that there were sea monsters in other days that made the modern whale seem very insignificant. The word whale may be as well translated ‘sea monster.’ Besides that there is one word which explains the whole thing The Lord prepared a great fish,’ and if the Lord prepared the fish to carry one passenger the ventilation would be all right. Nowhere did the Bible itself make claim to infallibility.” I refer him to Timothy II (iii. 16). “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Psalm 119 (verse 160) “Thy word is true from the beginning.” Would Mr. Chisholm please read the first five verses of the third chapter of second Timothy, he will there find his character plainly laid down.—l am, etc., LEWIS MATH I ESON. Invercargill.