Dripping Springs Weekly Bulletins

Rewriting the Bible It seems that the 20th and 21st centuries will go down in history as the age when men sought to rewrite the Bible and present to men what THEY want to hear rather than what God wants them to hear. The modern versions [for the most part] are the product of an attempt to put INTO the Bible the creeds and doctrines of men rather than an honest evaluation and translation of what God communicated to mankind. Calvinism is embedded in the New International Version and modernism is manifest in the Revised Standard Version. In fact, I think I could say without fear of contradiction that some form of error is propagated in about every modern version that has hit the market in the last 50 years or so. And the more liberal the translation, the more error will be found therein. Now we hear of yet another translation soon to hit the book shelves. This one attempts to be "gender" free. And the beat goes on. Attacks upon the word of God are as old as man himself. Satan sought to place doubt in the mind of Eve by suggesting that God did not say what she thought he said. There is now an attempt underway to literally reconstruct Old Testament history. This time the attack is coming from modernists who have specialized in the area of Higher Criticism. For the benefit of those who have not had the opportunity to study Higher Criticism, Textual Criticism and Modernism, let me assure you that it is not one of my favorite fields of study. All such "theologians" and "scholars" take, for the most part, a critical approach to the examination of the scriptures. One of the areas of attack is on the origin, authenticity, and reliability of the scriptures. This past month, William Murchison [Dallas Morning News, 3-13-02], had some things to say about those who would discredit the book of Genesis. According to some so-called "scholars" the book of Genesis is myth, tales and fables. No Abraham, no Moses, no Ten Commandments. According to Murchison, the most recent attempt to rewrite Biblical history is headed by (now get this) the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. A well-known rabbi, Harold Kushner, has co-edited an adventure in which the publishers will "bid adieu to the childish version of the Bible." Archaeological evidence, in their opinion, is lacking. Influenced by the "no absolutes" mentality of their kissing cousins in the field of philosophy, these new-found spiritual leaders for our generation are quick to point out that "you just can't be sure about these things." Murchison reminds us that a "central theme of modernism is the impossibility of really knowing anything except scientific theories." What it boils down to is this. The new generation of theologians and philosophers inform us that they know you cannot know. Their conclusion is that the Bible is a "grossy [sic, he may have meant 'grossly', TW] overrated book," and that "today no one seriously accepts that Jesus in fact walked on the sea and raised the dead" [I wonder why I was not included in their poll]. But the modernist does not make claims that area based upon evidence. Quite the contrary. The modernist makes his foolish claims in spite of the evidence. I am in the process of reading a little paper-back written by Norman Geisler and William Nix, entitled From God to Us. These authors present irrefutable evidence of the reliability of both Old and New Testaments. One of the observations they make is that "there are thousands of manuscripts for both Old and New Testaments, compared with a handful of many great secular classics. This makes the Bible the best documented book from the ancient world." But the modernists believe, as have others, that if you tell someone something long enough and loud enough, they will eventually believe it, no matter how foolish it might seem to be, or how lacking in evidence to support their claim. I am like Murchinson. While these so-called scholars are bold and brash in their claims, "What entitles a modernist to say that? Where is his authority? Why believe him?" Indeed! There is sufficient evidence to prove to the honest seeker of truth that the book you hold in your hand is, beyond any shadow of doubt, the inspired word of God, all the modernists not withstanding. Tom Wacaster

Tragedies and the Will of God Part 1 of 3 The failure of man to distinguish among the three dimensions of the will of God causes much of our confusion about God's will as it relates to suffering. Life is full of difficult questions. Among the toughest questions are those that relate to the issues of suffering and the will of God. When one looks at the painful situations in people's lives, those two issues often are so intertwined that it is impossible to deal with one without also dealing with the other. People who are hurting frequently ask, "Is it God's will that this awful thing has happened to me?" Others are more passive and resigned to life's unfortunate events -- they simply shrug their shoulders, shake their heads and say, "It must be God's will." But is it? A young mother is involved in a terrible car accident, her body trapped inside a mass of twisted steel and shattered glass. Emergency crews race frantically for nearly half an hour to free her. But by the time they get her out, she has bled to death. Some well-meaning bystander says, "Well, I suppose it was God's will." And in the very same breath they say, "If only we could have rescued her sooner, we could have saved her life." Do you see the confusion, even the contradiction in those two statements? If God's will was for that young mother to die, would getting her out earlier have saved her life? Last year, a drunken driver speeding the wrong way down a Kentucky interstate highway plowed his truck into a bus load of youngster returning from a church-sponsored trip. The driver of the truck survived, but the lives of the bus driver and 26 teens ended tragically and needlessly. Some good-intentioned soul suggests, "We must accept it, for it is the will of God." Must we? Is it really God's will? The next week we were shocked to hear about the crazed woman who walked into an Illinois classroom, randomly shooting and wounding six children and killing another before turning the gun on herself and taking her own life. Add your own stories. Misfortune is so widespread among the human race that everyone has a story to tell. But let us not hide our confusion about all of this with the words, "Maybe this is the will of God." Sometimes, I think that is what we say when we do not know what else to say. Let us be brutally frank about the questions that such a statement really implies. Does God plan car wrecks that kill our loved ones? Is it His design for drunks to collide with school buses full of children? Did God send that woman into that classroom to gun down little children? Call these events evil, call them tragic, call them accidents, or call them the inevitable result of wrong choices or of sin. But please do not call them the will of God as if God intended them to happen. God gets blamed for all kinds of circumstances that are not His will at all. No doubt some of you reading these words are hurting deeply because of some tragedy in your own lives, and you are questioning in your own hearts, "Why is all this happening?" "Where is God in all of this?" "If I only knew why God is doing this to me." If you never have experienced that empty, wrenching feeling, the chances are good that you will experience it some day. Tragedy, catastrophic illness or misfortune may not strike you personally, but it will affect some one you know and love dearly. And when it hits close to home, you too will ask those same haunting questions. In 1944, at the close of World War II, a British preacher named Leslie D. Weatherhead delivered a series of sermons in London about the will of God. Those lessons were preached at a time of tremendous devastation, suffering and grief. Sure, the Allies won the war, but as the British people climbed over the mounds of rubble that once were their homes and workplaces, as they peered through the gaping holes left by enemy bombs, as they wept over their loved ones who died during those terrible years of bloodshed, as they pondered the unspeakably horrible extermination of six million Jews by Hitler's Nazi regime, they were asking the inevitable question, "WHY?" Dan Dozier Gospel Advocate 2/89