THE HOLY BIBLE.

Southland Times, Issue 20207, 18 June 1927, Page 9

THE HOLY BIBLE.

To the Editor. Sir, —In your issue of Monday 13th inst. you report what purports to be an address delivered at Knox Church by its minister, Mr Chisholm. In his prelude he pleads the Biblical ignorance of the average man and woman, with which, though reluctant, we are bound to agree, but would remind Mr Chisholm that when the teacher fails in precept he fails also in moral development and consequently would miss its mark of true fertility even in a son of the manse. Mr Chisholm proceeds in his exegesis through you, Sir, and admits that Jesus of Nazar at h is God’s perfect revelation. Now this truth being conclusive let us revert to the book of Genesis and ascertain in conjunction with statements accruing in his address. Here Mr Chisholm exclaims the world was not made in six days, surely a

bold acknowledgment in a Presbyterian minister and one certainly absonant with the confession of faith of that church according to our belief hitherto. Now Moses, that profoundly inspired compiler of God’s most wonderful Creation, informs us in the following chapter of Genesis (Ist Chap, and 31st verse) that the evening and the morning was the sixth day, then in the 2nd chapter (Ist verse): “Thus the Heavens and the Earth were finished and all the hosts of them” (2nd verse) He (God) rested on the seventh day from all His work which God had created and made (verse 3) and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because that He had rested from all His work which God had created and made. In the third chapter (verse 15) we find that the Messiah who is peculiarly the seed of the woman is to bruise Satan’s heel. Now Mr Chisholm has already admitted that Jesus of Nazarath is God’s perfect revelation, then why, Sir, does he attempt to deny the statement of God’s almighty power of creation of the world in the time set forth and already accounted for. He accepts the one as authentic and falls away from its connection in the other. He further asserts his unbelief in the two bears killing i the 42 children. Bethel was guilty of I great idolatry and the people degenerate, i presuming to hold God’s Holy Prophets in their contempt and were heathen in their worship and so God’s wrath would visit the parents through the destruction of the children which is by no means an isolated instance. In the 12th Chapter and 29th verse of the book of. Exodus we find that the Lord smote all the first born in Egypt and as recorded in chapter 2 of St. Matthew Gospel (verse 16) where all the children of two years and under were slain by the order of King Herod and was a fulfilment of the Prophecy of Jeremiah which will be found in the 31st verse of Chapter 15. Mr Chisholm’s incredulous opinion in respect to the Prophet Jonah’s being swallowed by the whale does not in any way affect the authority of God’s Holy Bible as we find in the Ist Chapter of Jonah (verse 17) it says: “And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” Further in Matthew Chapter 12 (verse 40) Christ himself makes it as perfectly clear as he is the perfect revelation of God in these words, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the Earth.” So at last the minister of Knox Church reaches all the way from the creation of the world right on to the four gospels and in the course of his address and here he stumbles sadly. We find by your report, Sir, that the only thing he seems able to make of them is want of detailed agreement but here is what Christ says of those gospels (Mark 6th chapter, verse 15) : “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” The apostles had no greater work to complete their lives as God’s true servants than to go out proclaiming the Gospel message whereever they went which Gospel had emerged out of the prophecies as foretold. Christ himself clearly states that the Scriptures might be fulfilled and therefore surely infallible in as much as Christ says of himself in St. John’s Gospel (Chapter 14 and verse 6) : “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” This together with innumerable passages in Scripture puts us into very distant retrospection from the period which Mr Chisholm would impose on his audience as implied in his remarks relative to the infallibility of God’s Holy Bible, the best, the greatest and the only word which God has given to the world since the beginning and shall ever remain so till the end. And I for one with my friends I do not share the view expressed by Mr Chisholm of Knox Church.

I fear, Sir, that I may have encroached upon your indulgence and will conclude with your permission by requesting Mr Chisholm if he will please answer the following questions.

What specific part of Scripture does he find his authority for stating 1. That the world was not created in six days. 2. That the two bears did not kill the the 42 children. 3. Wherein the Gospels of Christ are not in agreement. 4. Does he disconnect the book of Genesis with the promise of Christ’s salvation. —I am, etc., A. McDOUGALL. Grey street, Gladstone. June 17, 1927.