1740. The Testimony of the New Testament to the Old Testament Writers

The Testimony of the New Testament to the Old Testament Writers

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2Ti_3:16).

The testimony of the New Testament to the Old Testament. The men who repudiate the Old Testament are not akin to the Apostles or to Paul. They, with unanimity, accept it all as inspired of God.

Our first passage: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2Ti_3:16). While this Scripture is applicable to the New Testament, it emphatically includes the Old.

In the Epistle to Timothy, from which we have quoted, the Holy Spirit gives special warning to those who have swerved from the faith. It speaks of Hymenaeus and Philetus, who, concerning the Truth had erred; it speaks of Jannes and Jambres, who withstood Moses, resisted the truth, and were reprobate concerning the faith; it speaks of false teachers, who shall "turn away their ears from the Truth, and shall be turned unto fables."

In the same Epistle, the saints are urged to rightly divide the Word of Truth, to continue in the thing's that they have learned and been assured of, they are to preach the Word, and to keep the faith.

The Epistle as a whole is our guide among the wreckage of radical denials. No wonder we read in its pages that "all Scripture is God-breathed" (A. S. V.).

Our second passage: "No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2Pe_1:20-21).

This passage of Scripture, like the one in II Timothy, is a precious nugget surrounded by a revelation of false teaching.

The verse following our quotation says: "There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in destructive heresies" (2Pe_2:1, A. S. V.). The Spirit then testifies that these teachers shall even deny the Lord that bought them.

The Epistle tells that "There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming?" (2Pe_3:4).

In the midst of these warnings against false teachers, radicals, modernists, New Theology adherents, the Epistle of Peter emphatically emphasizes the infallibility of the Word. The Epistle says: "We have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2Pe_1:16).

Mid the uncertainties and vagaries of critical scoffing, the Epistle confidently acclaims: "We have also a more sure Word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed" (2Pe_1:19).

Finally, as the last day scoffers reach the height of their unhallowed denials, by mocking the certainty of the second coming of Christ, the Epistle bears witness first to the ignorance of these scoffers concerning the Word of God, and then to the dependability of God's Word. The Epistle says: "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise" (see 2Pe_3:3-4, 2Pe_3:5, 2Pe_3:9). Bless God, for His Word. It is an impregnable rock.

Our third passage: "Of which salvation the Prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow" (1Pe_1:10-11).

These words are a gracious testimony to the Divine inspiration of the Old Testament writers.

The passage plainly certifies that the Spirit of Christ was upon the Prophets.

The passage also plainly certifies that the Old Testament Prophets studied their own writings with diligence.

The radicals may throw out the Prophets, but Daniel searched them and found in them the will of his God concerning Israel. We need not wonder that the modernists, ignorant and unbelieving as they are concerning the Prophets, utterly fail to see that just around the next shore line of prophetic vision, there lies the glorious landscape of the day of the Lord.

What a striking contrast is this:

First, a twentieth century high brow sitting sneeringly over the prophecies of Jeremiah, with all cunning craftiness and sleight of men, lying in wait to deceive (see Eph_4:14).

Second, the Prophet Daniel sitting reverently over the prophecies of Jeremiah, and searching diligently until he understood thereby the seventy years of desolation, that God would send upon Jerusalem (see Dan_9:2).

Men are to be pitied when they cast away both chart and compass, and are drifting with the tide, swept far from shore by the winds of men's doctrines.

Our fourth passage: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the Prophets" (Heb_1:1).

There is no doubt about the Divine authorship of the Old Testament, if one it is left to the Epistle of the Hebrews. The fact is that the New Testament never discounts the Old.

Let us, in conclusion, observe some of the precious New Testament statements concerning the Scriptures.

"The seed is the word of God" (Luk_8:11).

"The word of God should first have been spoken to you" (Act_13:46).

"They glorified the word of the Lord" (Act_13:48).

"Unto them were committed the oracles of God" (Rom_3:2).

"Holding forth the word of life" (Php_2:16).

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly" (Col_3:16).

"The word of truth, the gospel of your salvation" (Eph_1:13).

"Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles * * the other scriptures" (2Pe_3:15-16).

Surely we have Scripturally established the fact that the Bible is the very infallible Word of God, and that it is worthy to be believed.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR