Bible Knowledge
The reputation that assembly Christians normally have in
evangelical Christendom is that they have a better knowledge than most of their
Bibles. On the surface this may seem to be strange since almost alone in
Christendom we don’t have a trained ministry. The explanation is simple,
of course, for we have generally had many Christians in fellowship who studied
the scriptures for the sheer pleasure of doing so. In fact in former days there
were those who taught themselves to read after they were converted so that they
could read the scriptures for themselves. After all Christians who claimed to
guide their church practices by the Bible could not afford to be ignorant of
that book.
Such was their love of the Bible that early in our history there
began conferences for Bible teaching. While the worldling flocked to the sports
stadia and pleasure palaces at weekends and at holiday times assembly
Christians were glad to meet with like-minded folks to hear Bible teaching.
This explains the large number of Bank Holiday conferences throughout England
and Wales, the numerous Scottish New Year conferences and the Saturday
conferences in the more populous parts.
Nor were we behind anybody in
Christendom in scholarship. Our proportion of Bible translators must be higher
than most. John Nelson Darby, no matter what evils he may be charged with, was
the translator of the Bible into four major European languages. His English
version was completed by William Kelly, no mean scholar himself. Darby’s
written language leaves a great deal to be desired in the realm of fluency yet
another translator, Weymouth paid tribute to Darby’s in this sentence:
"The reader who is spent on getting a literal rendering, such as he can
commonly find in the R.V. or often a better one, in Darby’s New Testament,
should always be on his guard against its strong tendency to mislead." It is
surprising that nobody has collected Kelly’s own translation from his
various books and issued it as such.
Another substantial contribution to
Bible study by "early brethren" were "An Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee
Concordance" and "An Englishman’s Greek Concordance to the New Testament"
which were sponsored and paid for by George V. Wigram. Among the help enlisted
for these, perhaps the best of all concordances, was that of one of the
greatest of 19th Century Bible scholars, S.P. Tregelles who was for many years
associated with assemblies. Only ill health prevented Tregelles being one of
the translators of the 1881 Revised Version. He did prepare a Greek text of the
New Testament.
Another of the early brethren was F.W. Grant whose
"Numerical Bible" constitutes a translation in its own right. Nobody has made a
greater attempt to provide an edition of the Bible for students who have no
knowledge of Hebrew and Greek than
Thomas Newberry whose signs
and symbols indicate to the English reader the tenses, numbers, etc., of the
original words.
The 20th Century has seen at least two eminent Bible
scholars emerge from our ranks. The first was W.E. Vine whose "Dictionary of
New Testament Words" is a dictionary-cum-commentary. The other is Prof. F.F.
Bruce whose work is sufficiently well known to the present generation as not to
need mentioning.
I have merely mentioned the scholars. No young Christian
need feel embarrassed about the intellectual standing of quite a number of
those who have taken a simple approach to Christian living and church practice.
All of this ignores the many other aids to Bible understanding contributed by
our forebears on this pathway. Dr. Harry Ironside believed that one of the
biggest contributions assemblies had made to Christendom was its numerous books
on scriptural topics. This applies both to writers and to publishers. An early
brother, William Yapp, was a publisher and gave his name to a form of Bible
binding which is well known to this day. Various publishing houses have been
established during our history and three in the British Isles still issue
books.
Needless to say their approach to understanding the Bible was
fundamentalist. That’s why such complete obedience was given to what they
believed to be God’s Word. Even Malcolm Muggeridge teaches that people who
do not believe this would be far better to stop claiming to be Christian. If
the Bible is God’s Word then I am duty bound to obey it; if it is not
God’s Word then I am at the mercy of every mutilator of the book.
Apart from the return to New Testament simplicity early brethren contributed to
Christian thought the idea of dispensationalism. This means that God’s
dealings with men proceeds in cycles, in each of which His offered relationship
is an advance on what was offered previously. The big weakness attached to
making a new discovery is that those accepting the idea tend to find it
everywhere and scripture is strained and wrested to prove it. This may well
have happened but it does not mean that scripture knows nothing of
dispensations. If there is any progress of doctrine then dispensations must
exist. Equally anybody who attempts it must find it hard to really prove that
God does not have a nobler set of blessings for His church than He has for his
earthly people, Israel.
Another great contribution made to Bible
thought and accepted on a large scale by the evangelical world is "the
catastrophic view of eschatology." This simply means that the world is not
steadily becoming better but rather that Christ’s coming will be swift and
sudden to execute judgement. Generally speaking it was believed that this
coming would be in two phases — one to remove ‘‘His own" from
the world to glory and the other to return with them to the world in
judgement.
Great delight was taken in interpreting Old Testament typology.
This was taken to mean that God had hidden his intentions for men and the world
in the various celebrations of ancient Israel. That imagination was allowed to
run riot I would not deny but there seems little doubt that those men of God
were more on the right track than their successors who see no significance in
those things at all. The New Testament attaches significance to meanings of
names, tenses or words, events, etc., and therefore nobody can dogmatically
deny that this principle runs through Holy Scripture.
Language may date but
meaning cannot change. These men were less far from God’s truth than some
think. Let’s appreciate what they established. Let’s have the same
desires as they had to find in God’s word what he has stored for us there.
We have more leisure than they had and generally speaking a better education.
Let’s maintain our reputation of knowing our Bibles — and practicing
what we know.
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