About the Book

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

     

 Vol.7: Hidden Things of God's Revelation

Preface

     This volume of the Doorway Papers, like Volume VI, contains a variety of topics not specifically related to a theme. Yet second thought suggests that the nature of these biblical studies are such that most of them seem to give particular insight into God's ways with men in history and revelation. Here can be found surprising sources of delight. Each provides further proof that Scripture has infinite resources to challenge both the mind and the heart of the student who takes time to study even some of its less promising portions -- the genealogies, for example.
    The amazing thing is that Scripture has equal appeal to the unsophisticated mind of a child and to the revered scholar alike, the one being stirred in his imagination and the other challenged in his intellect -- often while studying the very same passages. Bearing everywhere the hallmarks of true inspiration, its words are for children, its thoughts are for men. No other such book as this was ever written.
     The sequence of these papers are presented here in virtually a reverse chronological order, taking the reader from the present New Testament age further and further back into the Old Testament and the distant past.
     The first paper, "The Silences of God," is so titled quite intentionally because I believe there are several different kinds of silence, all of which may challenge the faith of the child of God. There is the silence of displeasure, the silence of mercy, the silence of discipline, the silence of rebuke, the silence which is God's right whenever He chooses not to explain: but there is never a silence of admitted wrong, of acknowledged defeat, or of indifference. And there are two classes of silence, the private and the public. All these are grist for the mill. And the circumstances of the silences of God in the face of human

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suffering over the past two thousand years are given particular attention . . . along with the evidence that God is once again beginning to break that long silence in certain highly significant ways.
     The second paper, "The Harmony of Contradiction," is a beautiful illustration of how wise God is in His mode of illuminating the heart and mind by using a method that at first seems confusing or unnecessarily complicated. In the Gospels this has provoked the writing of "harmonies", a supposed improvement on the original. But in the end the original proves vastly superior in its power of communicating profound truths about the person and the character of the Lord Jesus Christ.
     The third paper, "Some Striking Fulfillments of Prophecy", might very well have been titled, "A Tale of Two Cities," since this is really what it is. The illustrations could be put on slides and used to show, along with the text, that certain prophecies of a most unusual kind were made and fulfilled in such circumstances that the fact of long-range detailed prophetic insights is absolutely unquestionable.
     The fourth paper, "Some Remarkable Biblical Confirmations From Archaeology," is a survey of certain less commonly reported details of confirmatory evidence, particularly relating to the earlier portions of Genesis and tending toward strengthening the faith of those who prefer to accept the statements of Scripture in a precise literal sense rather than in a generalized one. As will be seen, it is quite possible that this evidence now carries us back to Adam's immediate family -- almost therefore to the very threshold of man's creation.
     The fifth paper, "The Genealogies of the Bible," is a study intended to demonstrate that some of the apparently most dry and uninspiring parts of Scripture contain food for the soul as well as stimulation for the mind. The important thing is that we should rediscover the delight of Bible study even in these portions which we are tempted to bypass. They are, after all, as much part of the Word of God as Isaiah 53 or the first chapter of John's Gospel or I Corinthians 13 or Revelation 22.
     The sixth paper, "A Translation of Genesis 1:1 to 2:4 With Notes," reflects my own understanding of what the Creation Week really signifies: namely, a reconstitution of a world desolated in judgment just when man was about to be introduced to assume dominion over it. In a period of six days, working creatively at a highly accelerated rate, God restored the environment in one particular region of the world that was chosen to be the cradle of the race, making it a garden paradise. It was intended that Adam should

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expand the boundaries of this paradise until, with God's help, the whole earth would become a scene of beautiful harmony and peace. As I see the situation, the week of creation was thus a time of restoration and re-ordering after a catastrophic judgment, the details of which are not given in any depth except to tell us that ruin and desolation had existed (Genesis 1: 2) when the process of recovery began in Genesis 1:3.

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