The writers of the Bible had to express their ideas in human language.
It was written by human men. These men were inspired of the Holy Spirit.
Because of the imperfections of human understanding of language, or the
perversity of the human mind, ingenious in evading truth, many read and
understand the Bible to please themselves. It is not that the difficulty is in
the Bible. Opposing politicians argue points of law in the statute book, and
take opposite views in their application and in these laws.
The Scriptures were given to men, not in a continuous chain of unbroken
utterances, but piece by piece through successive generations, as God in His
providence saw a fitting opportunity to impress man at sundry times and [p. 20]
divers places. Men wrote as they were moved upon by the Holy Ghost. There is
"first the bud, then the blossom, and next the fruit," "first the blade, then
the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." This is exactly what the Bible
utterances are to us.
There is not always perfect order or apparent unity in the Scriptures.
The miracles of Christ are not given in exact order, but are given just as the
circumstances occurred, which called for this divine revealing of the power of
Christ. The truths of the Bible are as pearls hidden. They must be searched,
dug out by painstaking effort. Those who take only a surface view of the
Scriptures will, with their superficial knowledge, which they think is very
deep, talk of the contradictions of the Bible, and question the authority of
the Scriptures. But those whose hearts are in harmony with truth and duty will
search the Scriptures with a heart prepared to receive divine impressions. The
illuminated soul sees a spiritual unity, one grand golden thread running
through the whole, but it requires patience, thought, and prayer to trace out
the precious golden thread. Sharp contentions over the Bible have led to
investigation and revealed the precious jewels of truth. Many tears have been
shed, many prayers offered, that the Lord would open the understanding to His
Word.
The Bible is not given to us in grand superhuman language. Jesus, in
order to reach man where he is, took humanity. The Bible must be given in the
language of men. Everything that is human is imperfect. Different meanings are
expressed by the same word; there is not one word for each distinct idea. The
Bible was given for practical purposes.
The stamps of minds are different. All do not understand expressions and
statements alike. Some understand the statements of the Scriptures to suit
their own particular minds and cases. Prepossessions, prejudices, and passions
have a strong influence to darken the understanding and confuse the mind even
in reading the words of Holy Writ.
The disciples traveling to Emmaus needed to be disentangled in their
interpretation of the Scriptures. Jesus [p. 21] walked with them disguised, and
as a man He talked with them. Beginning at Moses and the prophets He taught
them in all things concerning Himself, that His life, His mission, His
sufferings, His death were just as the Word of God had foretold. He opened
their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. How quickly He
straightened out the tangled ends and showed the unity and divine verity of the
Scriptures. How much men in these times need their understanding opened.
The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God's mode of
thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not
represented. Men will often say such an expression is not like God. But God has
not put Himself in words, in logic, in rhetoric, on trial in the Bible. The
writers of the Bible were God's penmen, not His pen. Look at the different
writers.
It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that
were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man's words or his expressions but
on the man himself, who, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, is imbued with
thoughts. But the words receive the impress of the individual mind. The divine
mind is diffused. The divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and
will; thus the utterances of the man are the word of God. (Manuscript 24, 1886;
written in Europe in 1886.)