About the Book

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

     

 Vol.6: Time and Eternity

Preface

     THE SIX papers in this volume, published between the years 1957 and 1967, do not form a connected series as the other volumes have done, but they have this in common: they all assume Scripture to be the touchstone of truth, and they demonstrate that it is able to stimulate one's thinking enormously, especially when the mind is informed by the data of current research. The Bible has nothing to fear from the most careful and detailed examination; more often than not the more precisely we attend to its statements, the clearer will be the overall picture of truth which emerges. I am convinced that people who find Bible study dull are simply not studying with sufficient care.
     The first paper, "Time and Eternity," requires some stretching of one's thinking processes! It is an intriguing excursion into the question of the nature of TIME in heaven. It is well worth the effort it will demand if the implications of the lines of thought suggested in it are to be understood, and these implications are by no means purely academic or unrelated to present Christian experience.
     The second paper, "Three Trees and Israel's History," provides an illustration of how one Spirit has clearly directed and supervised and inspired the writing of Scripture throughout. From Genesis to Revelation certain symbols have been consistently employed with hidden meanings to which all writers subscribed, though they nevertheless nowhere indicate to the reader that they are employing these symbols in such complete concordance with all the writers who preceded them, often by many centuries. This is a powerful witness to the existence of a single guiding Mind throughout.
     The third paper, "Between the Lines: An Analysis of Genesis 1:1,2," is a study involving an issue which is highly controversial today because it appears to be a recent concession to modern     

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evolutionary geology by opening up a "time-slot" of any length that geology might ask. That this is a total misreading of the evidence is borne out by showing, not only that the Hebrew original virtually demands such an interpretation, but that the idea of a hiatus in time, of unknown duration, between Genesis 1:1 and 2 was recognized by Jewish commentators in the centuries before Christ and has been continually referred to by Christian writers from the earliest times to the present.
     The fourth paper, "The Omnipotence of God in the Affairs of Men," is a detailed study in somewhat concentrated form of the extent to which Scripture reveals that God rules or overrules in the affairs of men and in the calling and saving and positioning of the child of God within the Body of Christ. It is both a sobering and a comforting study -- deeply rooted in the Word of God.
     The fifth paper, "The Confusion of Languages," explores the fact that human languages do still indeed show many signs of having been developed from some one single original, and that this original was almost certainly a language belonging within the Semitic family, of which Hebrew is a member. The evidence suggests that in the confusion of tongues which put a halt to the building of the Tower of Babel, it was chiefly (if not solely) the members of the family of Ham whose speech was dramatically and very suddenly confused to such an extent that communication and further co-operation became impossible.
     The last paper, "Cain's Wife and the Penalty of Incest," is brief but informative. It shows how beautifully consistent Scripture is, both with itself and with the latest assured findings of research into the genetics of inbreeding. There is no need whatever to suppose that Cain married some non-Adamic creature or that Eve was not truly the mother of all living.

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