Crozier Tech Baccalaureate

GOD’S INFALLIBLE BOOK

Dr. W. A. Criswell

2 Peter 1:21

1-20-57    7:30 p.m.

Usually, in delivering a baccalaureate message, a minister will give good advice to these young men and women who are commencing – and that is the reason they call it a commencement – who are commencing their life of work, and service, and toil, and effort out in the world.  That is the kind of a sermon that we usually expect when we come to church for a baccalaureate occasion.  But I could be forgiven, I pray, if I turn aside from that kind of a message about how you ought to be good, and how you ought to honest, and how you ought to be true, and how you ought to work hard, and how all of these things will be rewarded, and you will get to be rich, and you will get to be famous, and you will get to be president and governor and senator and representative, and own the bank, and own the corporation, and all those things; I thought I would turn aside from that tonight, and in your clemency and charity, I would like to preach a sermon on the infallible, immutable, inerrant Word of God.  And the reason I would like to do it is, first, I suppose, because in these recent days my studying has brought me much along those paths, not directly, but incidentally as I prepared these sermons for 8:15 o’clock Sunday morning each Lord’s Day.  And then the other reason: because you can’t live in this world, you can’t go to school, you can’t read, you can’t study, you can’t meet with your fellow men, not in a magazine can you read, nor in newspaper can you read without somewhere, sometime meeting this thing that the Bible is full of facts, and fable, and fiction, and many gross errors.

For example, I copied this: an eminent theologian apologizing for the Bible said – apologizing for the Bible, apologizing for the Bible – that eminent theologian said, apologizing for the Bible, quote, "Of course, there are scientific errors in the Bible.  However, we can excuse such mistakes on the ground that the Bible is not a textbook of science; and therefore we do not expect it to be scientifically accurate," end quote.  I ought to fumigate my hands, end quote.  Well, I have this to say in response: first, the Book says that "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" [2 Peter 1:21].  If there is scientific error or any other kind of error, if there is scientific error in the Bible, then the Bible is not the Word of God.  For God knew all of these things in the beginning of the creation.  When a man finds an atom, it’s a new discovery to him: but not to God; He knew it from the beginning.  When a man finds all about protoplasm, and all about nuclei, and all about cell structure, and all about metabolism, and all about embryology, that’s a new thing to a man: but not to God; He knew it all from the beginning.  And if this Bible is full of scientific error, or any other kind of error, God didn’t write it; and it’s a book produced by man, like any other book.

Shakespeare was inspired, and Milton was inspired, and Dante was inspired, and Goethe was inspired; but when we come to the inspiration of the Word of God, we mean an altogether different kind of inspiration.  The inspiro, the in-breathing that we refer to when we say God’s Book is inspired, is that God inspired men to write down those words; not some other words, those words; not some other message, that message!  And if God inspired men to write error, then I don’t understand the purpose and the character of God, who is the Lord of all truth.  So I say if that thing is correct, this thing, if that thing is correct, then a man wrote that Book and it is not the inspired, inerrant Word of God.

Now when you make an avowal like that, when you make a statement like that, you throw yourself open to great research, and sometimes scathing criticism.  But just two things about it: first, be sure that when you look at the Word of God through that eye of scathing criticism, be sure that you know what the Bible says.  That’s the first thing: be sure that you do.  Don’t base your conclusion on a man’s interpretation, or upon a translation sometimes; but base what you say on what is the truth of the message of the Word, of the text, that God has written in His Book.  Be sure you know the Word of God first!

For example, there was a man who advertised in newspapers, saying, "I’ll give anybody a hundred dollars if they’ll show me a mistake in the Bible, an error of science or any other kind of error in the Bible.  I’ll give you a hundred dollars."  Well, a graduate of the University of Michigan and a young lady who lived in Detroit, she wrote a letter, and she claimed the reward of a hundred dollars.  And this is what she said in that letter: she said:

Dear Sir, It has been proved by science that apples will not grow in the Mesopotamian Valley.  Now it says in the Bible that Adam and Eve were dismissed from the garden of Eden because they ate an apple.  And science shows there are no apples that grow in Mesopotamia where the garden of Eden was supposed to have been located.  So I want the hundred dollars!

Well, the fellow wrote back and said, "It doesn’t say in God’s Book that Adam and Eve ate an apple.  It says they ate fruit, ate fruit of the tree, fruit of the forbidden tree; doesn’t say anything about an apple" [Genesis 3:3].  Well, he didn’t hear from her for a long time.  And finally she replied, and said, "I can’t find it in the Bible where it says Adam and Eve ate an apple; but I know they ate the apple because my teacher told me so!"

All right, that’s the first principle: be sure that you know the Word of God.  That’s the first one.

All right, the second principle is this: be sure that the fact of science that you say contravenes the Word of God is an honest-to-goodness actual fact, and not a hypothesis, or a theory, or somebody’s deduction.  Be sure that it is an actual, honest-to-God fact; be sure for that.  For, listen to me, there is not anything in this world that changes like science.  It’s like a kaleidoscope: it’s just got all kinds of colors. It’s like a chameleon: it changes every day.  It’s like a chicken that’s molting all the time: it’s funny-looking, always changing.  The science of yesterday is obsolete today.  And the science of today, established fact, certainty, are tomorrow ludicrous and absurdities.  Did you know that in the Louvre, the great library of the Louvre in Paris, France, it is said that there are three and one-half miles of bookshelves filled with books of science that is now obsolete, and been made obsolete in the last fifty years; three and a half miles of those books.

Did you know, men have always wanted to correct the so-called errors in the Bible?  They’ve always wanted to rewrite the Scriptures and bring them "up-to-date."  What if men had done that in days past?  What if they had done that in 1000 BC?  What kind of a funny, absurd, ludicrous-looking Bible would we have?  What if they corrected the Bible according to the science of the day in 500 BC?  What if they’d done it in 500 AD?  What if they did it in 1000 AD?  What if they had done it in 1500 AD?  What if they had corrected the Bible and brought it up to the absolute established science of the day in 1660?  Or in 1760?  Or in 1860?  Or in 1950?  If they had done it in 1950, we would expect a new corrected edition of the Word of God in 1960.  It’s ludicrous.  It’s absurd.  This great Book that through the centuries and the centuries has remained unchanged could never be made to conform with the temporary scientific thought that is involved in any particular day.

Did you know that in 1861 the French Academy of Science published fifty-one certain, established, proved, demonstrable facts of science that controverted the Word of God, fifty-one of them?  And did you know that today not a single one of those fifty-one established facts of certain science is held today by any living man of science, anywhere, anytime?  Did you know that?  Did you know that?  It is a marvelous miracle, this Book that I have in my hand.  Science, kaleidoscopic science is a chameleon, science changes as we learn more, and as we progress more, and as you study more, and as we see more, and further and deeper and probe and learn; all of these things change.  But the Word of God changeth never!

And isn’t that a marvelous thing?  Isn’t that a miraculous thing?  Now I want you to see how miraculous that is.  This Bible was written thousands of years before modern science.  This Bible was written by men of every background and every culture that you can think of.  Way back yonder, over hundreds and hundreds of years, through all of those developing cultures of years, the Bible was written by men who came out of those cultures and came out of those backgrounds.  And yet, with all of the absurdities and all of the imaginative wild, weird explanations of things that were in those cultures and in those civilizations, Chaldean, and Babylonian, and Egyptian, out of all of that there is not any of it that is reflected in the Word of God, not any of it.  Isn’t that a miraculous thing?

This man Moses, it says in the Bible that Moses was learned in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians.  Well, he had every right to be: he was brought up to be the future Pharaoh.  He was the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and he was the heir apparent.  So he was trained in all of the rites, and all of the rituals, and all of the arts, and all of the sciences of the Egyptians [Acts 7:22].  Well, any modernist will tell you that these men in the Bible wrote according to the learning of their day.  That’s what they say.  So when we look at the culture of the Egyptians, we would expect to find in Moses’ writings what he learned there in the land of Egypt.

Now, a marvelous thing has come to pass: because of the science of archaeology, and because of the spade digging down in those hermetically sealed sands, did you know we can read the same texts of science that Moses read?  We can read the same inscriptions, we can read the same Book of the Dead, we can read everything that Moses studied, and we can know exactly what Moses was taught as he was learned in all of the arts and the sciences of Egypt.  All right, let’s look at it for a minute.

The Egyptians had a developed science of cosmogony.  That’s the science of the creation and beginning of the world.  They had an established science in that.  And here was what they taught: the greatest scientific minds of the Egyptian world, when Moses went to school, was this: they said the world began with an egg that was flying and flying and flying through space; and it went around and around and soared around and around.  And while that egg, while that cosmic egg was flying around and around, why, the process of mitosis went on in the egg, and pretty soon the world emerged.  Now that was the latest science in Egypt in the days of Moses, the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.

All right, I turn over here to my Bible, and I expect to read about that flying egg, wouldn’t you?  Wouldn’t you?  Why, sure you would.  That was the science he was taught, and that was the latest thing of the day.  So I turn over in my Bible to read about the flying egg.  And lo and behold, instead of reading about a flying egg, my Bible starts off with the ten sublimest words in any language in this God’s earth: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" [Genesis 1:1].  What a difference!  What a gulf between!

But oh, that’s not the beginning.  Those Egyptians had a science of astronomy, and they said that the sun reflected the light from the earth.  So I turn over here in the Bible to read about how the sun reflects the earth’s light.  And to my amazement I find that Moses turns it around exactly opposite, diametrically so: "And He makes the sun to shine down upon this earth" [Genesis 1:16-18].

And not only that, but those Egyptians had a marvelously re-developed science of anthropology; that is, the development of man.  And did you know, way back yonder in the days of Moses, did you know that those Egyptians were naïve evolutionists?  Did you know that?  And the difference between them and the evolutionists of today is this: back there in the days of Moses, when Moses was taught the arts and the sciences of the Egyptians, back there they said this is the origin of man: the Nile overflowed, the Nile inundated all of the rich valley, and after the overflowing the Deluge of the Nile, why, there came up into the soil of the Nile, there came up little white worms; and out of those little white worms, men were evolved, men were born.  For, evidently this is the supposition for it, for evidently they had seen the metamorphosis of the little worms into moths and into butterflies.  And so based upon that scientific evidence, they deducted the conclusion that men also were evolved from little worms, little white worms.

Now you know what I think?  I believe that they’ve got a little better idea of it than the evolutionists of the day.  I don’t think it would be so bad – do you? – to be evolved from a little clean white fish bait that was there in the nice soil of the Nile.  And say, "Grandpa worm there, and Grandma worm there," I don’t think that’d be so bad.  But I tell you, to say this is my grandpa and my grandma, and it be some old flea-bitten ape in a primeval jungle, I’d rather have the white worms, hadn’t you?  Hadn’t you?  I believe I had.  I believe I had.  Walter, wouldn’t you rather come from a worm than a flea-bitten ape?

Well, that was the science of the day.  That was the latest thing taught Moses by the great masterminds of that hour.  So when I turn over here in my Bible, I expect to see something or to read something about white worms and about men evolving from them.  And instead of that, instead of that, I read the most matchless language ever penned by human hand: "And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness [Genesis 1:26].  So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him [Genesis 1:27].  And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.  And man became a living soul" [Genesis  2:7].  Majesty of thought, majesty of language, majesty of expression, and science of the highest order!  That’s of God.  And yet they say, "He just reflects the culture of the time."  Oh! What a marvelous miracle to read God’s revelation in the Book: so different, so utterly unlike the culture and the learning and the wisdom of the day in which the man wrote.

Why, bless your heart, you can go clear through the Bible like that, all the way through it.  If we had about five hours or ten, or a month or two here tonight, we might try that, and just look at the miracle of the Word of God, how it does what God says, who knew the end from the beginning, and in nowise is filled with those monstrous absurdities, which at that time were the latest scientific data.

A whole lot of the men who wrote this Bible had a background from Chaldea, over there in Mesopotamia.  And those Chaldeans had a cosmogony and an anthropology; they had a science too.  And this was their science, this was their science: they said this earth is a great sleeping monster; and they said this great monster that is the earth has a hide, and what you see here, vegetation, is his feathers, and what you see here rock and soil is his skin.  And they said if you will dig down deep enough into his skin, you will hurt him, and he will shake himself, and the buildings will all fall down.  And they based that upon the latest scientific data: men did dig in the earth; they were hunting gold and silver and iron.  They did dig down in the earth.  And when they did dig down in the earth, the earth shook; there were earthquakes.  And when the earth quaked, buildings fell down.  QED, that proved the theory.  That was the latest science of the day.

And these Babylonians, they had a science of cosmogony and a science of anthropology.  And this was their science, the latest science of the day in which these men lived who wrote this Book; what they said was this: there was a great chaos monster named Tiamat, and there was a great god named Marduk; and Marduk the great god, and Tiamat this chaotic monster, had a fight.  And Marduk was victorious; and he slew Tiamat.  But he didn’t want to waste his body; so he flattened him out, he flattened him out, and that’s the earth.  That’s their cosmogony.  Then it says in the latest science of the Babylonian day, then it says that after Tiamat was slain and flattened out, there was made the earth.  Then it says Marduk spat on the ground, and whereever Marduk spat men came up, sprang up.  Then it says the men in their turn began to spit; and where they spat, women sprang up.  Like Jason sowing the dragon’s teeth, and soldiers stood up.  And then it says the women begin to spit; and where the women spat, all the animals came up.  And that accounted for the population of the earth.

You know, when I read that, there came to my mind this thing about a fellow who saw a sign in a big warehouse, and it said, "Don’t smoke – remember the Chicago fire."  And a guy took out his pencil and wrote underneath, "Don’t spit – remember the Johnstown flood."

I open my Bible here, and I would expect to read – wouldn’t you? – I would expect to read all about Marduk, and all about Tiamat, and all about that big monster that shakes himself and the buildings fall down.  I would expect to read that.  But when I open God’s Book, written by men with that culture and with that background, and in that age, nothing of that; not even a syllable, not even a hint, not even an approach to that do I read in God’s Word; nothing like it, nothing at all.

But instead, but instead – you listen to me – but instead, I pick up this Bible, and though it was written thousands of years ago, and it was written before the telescope was invented, and the microscope was invented, and all these marvelous things that God knew from the beginning, though all of these things came thousands of years after the Bible was written, yet I pick up that Book, and I find in that Bible the latest scientific sentences, and the latest scientific doctrine, and the latest scientific revelation.  Why, it’s a miraculous thing!  It’s an unbelievable thing!

Now if we had about a month we’d go through Bible and look at those: the instances of that are innumerable; they are vast.  But we’re going to choose just a few tonight, just a few.  Here’s one: in Job 26:7 it says, "God stretcheth out the earth over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."  Isn’t that a sight?  Isn’t that an amazing thing?  Job 26:7: "God stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."  Why, bless your heart, when Job wrote that, every man in this earth and every scientist that taught in the earth and every philosopher that was teaching in the earth, when Job wrote that, every man in this earth believed that the earth was resting upon a solid firm foundation.  The Egyptians said that this earth is held up by five great pillars; one at each corner and one in the middle.  Now isn’t that something?  A guy could peer over the edge of the earth and see the corners, and the four pillars there; but I tell you that fifth one in the middle was pure postulation, don’t you think?  But that was the latest Egyptian science; that was the newest thing.  In Egypt they said the earth is held up by those five great pillars.  Well, the Greeks didn’t say that at all: the Greeks said something else.  The Greeks said that the earth is held up by a great giant named – now do you remember his name?  What was his name?  That’s right.  Boy, you deserve to graduate.  That’s right.  He said, the Greeks said that the earth is held up by a great giant named Atlas.  And that was the latest Greek scientific explanation.  This great giant, with the earth on his back and his shoulders and his neck; had it on his neck, too; that was the latest in the world of the Greeks.

And then you had the Hindu explanation.  And the Hindu explanation is the best of all, I think.  They said that this earth is balanced on a great big elephant, and they said that great big elephant is standing on the back of an immense turtle, and they said that immense turtle was swimming in a cosmic sea.  Now that’s a pretty good explanation.  That’s all right, don’t you think?  They got it on something, that sits on something, that rests on something else.  They were doing pretty good, doing pretty good.

But here in the Bible, in the day when every man everywhere believed those monstrous absurdities, here in the Bible it says, "God stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing" [Job 26:7], just out here in the open space of God.  That’s what the Bible said thousands of years ago.

Let’s take another one of these.  Here in the Psalms – Dean if you don’t quit getting this church so hot, I’m going to melt down and flow away, do you know that?  Now if I weren’t nice, I’d take off my coat.  I didn’t use to be nice.  I’ve just got nice since I came to preach in this church.  I used to take off my coat and take off my tie and roll up my sleeves, and you could hear me ten miles on any clear night – can’t preach like I used to: you can only hear me about two or three miles now.

Let’s take one other instance of that and a few more if God will give us a moment. Here in the one hundred second Psalm, it says,

Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of Thy hands.

They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed:

But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end.

[Psalm 102:25-27]

This psalmist here, looking at this great universe around him, says it’s the work of God’s hand; and that work shall perish, but God shall endure, "Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment."  Did you know Sir James Jeans in that marvelous book on cosmogony that he wrote, he said that this earth and this world and this universe is like a great clock that somebody wound up, and it is running down.  And the scientific evidence and demonstration of that is this: wherever energy is released, it can never be recaptured, never.  You never destroy matter; it just changes form.  But you can never recapture the energy.  All of those releases of energy that come about in the breaking down of material particles is a release because of that breaking down from the complex to the simple.

For example, when you burn up gasoline, you change the atomic structure of the materialism in it; but you never get it back again.  You have broken it down from a complex form to a simpler form, and you can never build it up again.  Same way about uranium: uranium is an unstable element, and its atomic arrangement is very complex, and when you break it down, it comes into simpler form and energy is released; but you never build it up again, never.  The whole universe is like that: it is breaking down.  The sun is breaking down, the world is breaking down, the universe is breaking down, the whole thing that God has made is like that great scientist says, it is a clock that’s been wound up, and it is running down.

And that’s exactly what the Book says: "Thou hast laid the foundation of the earth, the heavens; the work of Thy hands.  They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure.  All of them shall wax old like a garment, as a vesture Thou shalt change them: but Thy days are forever" [Psalm 102:25-27].  That’s exactly what science says.  That’s exactly what the Book said thousands of years before.

Oh, that God would give us time.  Skip over that one.  Here is one in Isaiah: Isaiah, the fortieth chapter and the twenty-second verse, the eighteenth verse: "To whom then would ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto Him?" [Isaiah 40:18].  And then it describes God in the twenty-second verse, "God is He that sitteth above the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" [Isaiah 40:22].  God is He that sitteth above the circle, the roundness the Hebrew says, the roundness of the earth.  Why, bless your heart, it has been only in comparatively recent times that men have seen that the earth is round!  That’s a modern discovery; and yet back here seven hundred fifty years before Christ, this Isaiah the prophet of God is describing God as He that sitteth above the circle, the roundness, of the earth.

Paul says – and he’s a great cytologist, I tell you – "All flesh," in 1 Corinthians 15:39, "All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of a man, and another flesh of the beasts, and another of fishes, and another of birds," and he goes on.  Why, did you know, that in your lifetime, in your lifetime, when men began to discover cell structure, and protoplasm, and mitosis, and all of those things, there was a scientific doctrine that was everywhere current and everywhere accepted which said and taught that all life was made up of cells, and all cells are made up of protoplasm, therefore all life is the same?  All protoplasm is the same, and all cells are the same, therefore all life is the same.  Paul knew better than that, and he wrote two thousand years ago: "There is a cell, there is a cytology of men, and there is a cytology of beasts, and there is a cytology of fish, and there is a cytology of birds; there is protoplasm of a man which is different from the protoplasm of a beast, which is different from the protoplasm of a fish, which is different from the protoplasm of a fowl."  Paul said that two thousand years ago.  How’d he know?  Why, bless your heart, today you can take to any cytologist, you can take to any man learned in histology and give him a little piece of organic matter, any piece, give him a little piece of a bone, give him a little speck of blood, give him a little piece of skin, give him a hair, give him anything, and he’ll tell you exactly the kind of flesh that produced it.  It was a cow, or it was a sheep, or it was a dog, or it was a man, or it was a beast.  He can tell you.  God wrote that in His Book by inspiration two thousand years ago!

May I have just one more, and that will be all?  This atomic theory is a brand new thing, isn’t it?  Oh, we’re much enamored with our amazing discoveries in the world of atomic molecular structure.  Well, over here in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews and the third verse, it says, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."  Now here is as good a Greek translation of that as any other: "so that the things that are seen, so that the visible things, are made up of entities that are invisible."  All of these things that we see, Hebrews 11:3 says all of these things that we see are made up of things which are, are made up of entities, are made up of infinitesimal particles which are invisible, all of it, this, that, and everything we see.  Why, we’ve just come to see that.

You know what an atom is?  An atom is a little piece of nothing, a little skin, a little globule, a little something of nothing, and it’s got satellites of nothing whirling around a little nucleus; except it doesn’t have a skin.  It’s just nothing with nothing whirling around in it, around a little nucleus.  Did you know you could take a two hundred pound man, a two hundred pound man, a great big strong man two hundred pounds, and if you were to squeeze out of him all of the space in the atoms in him, did you know you wouldn’t have enough stuff left to cover the head of a small pin.  Did you know that?  Next time somebody, your wife or sweetheart or somebody gets mad at you, and say, "Why, you old big piece of flubber, you’re just full of hot air!" that’s exactly the truth, you are, you are.  Every one of you.  That’s exactly what we are, just little things of nothing whirling around nothing.  And that’s exactly what the Book says: that the things which are seen, what we can see, are made up of little infinitesimal entities that are invisible.  And science says we will never be able to see an atom; it’s beyond the scope of human imagination that we could.  How’d he know that?  Written thousands of years before the day of modern invention.

Young people, you will hear a lot about the Word of God: fable, full of mistakes and error, all kinds of scientific inaccuracies.  You’ll meet that all of your life.  But how earnestly I could pray that you remember the message this pastor delivered on the day of your baccalaureate.  That Book is the immutable, unchanging Word of God.  And if there is a scientific theory that contradicts it, give us another tomorrow, and the scientific theory will wax old and pass away; but the Word of God, truth, will abide forever [Isaiah 40:8].

You can build your life on that Book.  You can build your home on that Book.  You can build every aspiration, every holy desire, on that Book.  The church is built on that Book.  Our hope of heaven is found in that Book.  "It is a light unto our feet, and a lamp unto our path" [Psalm 119:105].  "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" [Matthew 4:4].  We can live by it; we can die by it.  It can be a foundation for our feet.  It can be the beacon and guiding light of our future days.  It is our hope and promise of the world that is yet to come.

God bless you.  God bless us all as in our devotions, in our lives private and hid away, and in our lives open and public, we open our hearts unashamed, unapologetic to the truth of the revelation of God on the sacred page of His Holy Book.

Thou truest friend man ever knew

Thy constancy I’ve tried;

When all were false I found thee true,

My counselor and guide.

The mines of earth no treasures give

That could that volume buy:

In teaching me the way to live,

It taught me how to die.

["My Mother’s Bible"; George Pope Morris]

Now, Mr. Souther, let’s sing a stanza of a song.  And while we sing the song, somebody you give his heart to the Lord, or come into the fellowship of the church.  As God should say the word and lead the way, would you come?  Anywhere, in the balcony around, down these stairwells and down to the front; or this great host of people on this lower floor, into that aisle and down here by me; anywhere, while we sing this song and make this appeal, would you come?  Would you make it now?  Would you make it tonight, while we stand and while we sing?