We look in upon a room in Jerusalem. Two men are there.
At the table sits Baruch, the scribe, with a roll of parchment and an
iron pen in his hand. The other man is walking the floor, as if strangely
agitated.
There is an unearthly appearance about his countenance, and his whole
frame quakes as if pressed upon by something unseen and supernal.
This is Jeremiah, in the spirit of prophecy. Being too much excited to
write with his own hands the words that the Almighty pours upon his mind
about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, he dictates to Baruch, the
scribe. It is a seething, scalding, burning denunciation of Jehoiakim,
the king, and a prophecy of approaching disasters.
Of course, King Jehoiakim hears of the occurrence, and he sends Jehudi to
obtain the parchment and read its contents.
It is winter. Jehoiakim is sitting in his comfortable winter house, by
a fire that glows upon the hearth and lights up the faces of the lords,
princes and senators who have gathered to hear the reading of the strange
document.
Silence is ordered. The royal circle bend forward to listen. Every eye is
fixed.
Jehudi unrolls the book gleaming with the words of God, and as he reads
Jehoiakim frowns; his eye kindles; his cheek burns; his foot comes down
with thundering indignation.
King Jehoiakim snatches the book from Jehudi’s hand, feels for his knife,
crumples up the book, and goes to work cutting it up with his penknife.
Thus God’s book was permanently destroyed, and the king escaped.
Was it destroyed?
Did Jehoiakim escape?
In a little while King Jehoiakim’s dead body is hurled forth to blacken
in the sun, and the only epitaph that he ever had was that which Jeremiah
wrote:
“Buried with the burial of an ass.”
To restore the book which was destroyed, Baruch again takes his seat at
the table, while Jeremiah walks the floor and again dictates the terrible
prophecy.
It would take more penknives than cutler ever sharpened to hew into
permanent destruction the Word of God. He who shoots at this eternal rock
will feel the bullet rebound into his own torn and lacerated bosom.
When the Almighty goes forth armed with the thunderbolts of His power, I
pity any Jehoiakim who attempts to fight Him with a penknife.
That Oriental scene has vanished, but it has often been repeated. There
are thousands of Jehoiakims yet alive who cut the Word of God with their
penknives.
King Jehoiakim showed as much indignity toward the scroll when he cut one
way as when he cut the other. You might as well behead Moses as to behead
Jonah. Yes, Sir, I shall take all of the Bible or none. Men laugh at us
as if we were the most gullible people in the world for believing in the
genuineness of the Scriptures; but there can be no doubt that the Bible,
as we have it, is the same--no more, no less--as God wrote it.
As to the books of the New Testament, the great writers of the different
centuries give complete catalogs of their contents. Polycarp, Ignatius
and Clemens Romanus, in the first century, give a catalog of the New
Testament books; Tertullian and Justin Martyr, in the second century;
Cyprian and Origen, in the third century; Augustine, Jerome and Eusebius,
in the fourth century. Their catalogs of the different books of the New
Testament silence the suggestion that any new books could have been
stealthily put in.
As to the books of the Old Testament, Christ sanctioned them by
recommending them to the Jews. If any part of the Old Testament had
been uninspired, Christ would have said: “Search the Scriptures--all
except that Book of Jonah,” or “Search the Scriptures, except the Book
of Esther.” When Christ commends to all the canon of the Old Testament
Scriptures, He affirms its genuineness.
There never could have been any interpolations in the Bible, for the Jews
were constantly watching, and there were men whose lifetime business it
was to attend to the keeping of the Scriptures unadulterated.