04.11 - Revelation and Ethnic Religions

(11) Revelation and Ethnic Religions

Into a formal discussion of this question we do not now enter; we have not space or time for the discussion, nor for the consideration of the theory of the evolution of all religions from a common stock.

Suffice it to say that no view we may hold of these speculative questions can affect the uniqueness of Israel’s position and religion, or the supremacy of the revelation recorded in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. We must remember that the Old Testament Scriptures which contain the record of the revelation of God’s gracious purposes towards Israel and the race, also tell of the part played by Egyptians, Canaanites, Assyrians, and Chaldeans in the discipline and instruction of Israel, while the Prophets recognised the hand of God working with the nations and peoples of the earth. Paul also says that “ God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. Fur in Him we live and move and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said: For we are His offspring.” 1 If the revelation of God to the Hebrew Prophets did not teach new truths, truths other than those given to other nations and peoples, it did teach the truths generally known with greater emphasis and positiveness, placed them in clearer light, and invested them with greater spiritual significance and importance. Not only so, but the sacred writers in the Old and New Testaments had a stronger conviction, a fuller knowledge, and a more certain hold of the “truth as in Jesus,” and dealt with that truth in its bearings on righteousness and holiness in a way other systems of religion do not; which things give to those writings a pre-eminence over all others.