CNT-11 WHAT, THEN, ARE OUR CONCLUSIONS?

WHAT, THEN, ARE OUR CONCLUSIONS?

Briefly, the leading facts may be thus stated: We have hundreds of New Testament manuscripts from five to fif­teen hundred years old, gathered from widely different sources, which have been copied and transmitted to us with the greatest care, and with an accuracy which is ut­terly unparalleled in any department of profane literature. We have also translations of these same books in other languages, which translations are more ancient than any existing manuscripts of the New Testament, which strongly confirm the accuracy of our existing copies.

We also find that more than fifteen hundred years ago fifty copies of these same Scriptures were made by the authority of the Emperor of Rome, and placed for public reading in all the churches of his capital. We find that his predecessor was so well acquainted with these books, as the foundation of the Christian faith, that he issued an imperial decree for their destruction. We find that a series of Christian writers, reaching from the days of Constantine back to the lifetime of the apostles, received, believed, read, and quoted the New Testament so fully that there are not a dozen verses in the entire book but can be gathered up from the extant writings of those early fathers. We find that the apostolic writings were received from their authors, and handed down from gen­eration to generation, as the authentic productions of the apostles, and were regarded by all Christians as possess­ing divine authority.

We also find that the apostle Peter in his old age mentions the Epistles of Paul; counting them among the “other Scriptures,” and describing them as containing some things “hard to be understood.” We find that Luke, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, gives an account of the conversion and ministry of Paul, leaving him yet living and a prisoner at Rome; and that he also com­mences the Acts by stating that he had composed a “former treatise” giving an account of “all that Jesus began to do and to teach;” which treatise was evidently the Gospel by Luke. We find that the apostle Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, quotes from this Gospel by Luke, “The laborer is worthy of his hire” and declares that this passage was a portion of “the Scripture,” and it seems that Luke’s Gospel, which was written after “many” others had undertaken the work, was already recognized as “Scripture” before AD 65, when Paul’s death oc­curred; which was five years before the destruction of Jerusalem. But the twenty-first chapter of Luke contains our Lord’s great prophecy concerning the overthrow of Jerusalem, and destruction of the temple, the calamities to come upon the Jewish nation, their dispersion as captives among all nations, and the treading down of Jerusalem by the Gen­tiles until the time of the Gentiles should be fulfilled; which prophecies began to be accomplished almost imme­diately after the death of Paul, and have been most wonderfully fulfilled down to our own day.

We may hence conclude, and assert without fear of successful contradiction, that the books of the New Tes­tament which we have, were in the hands of the church before the death of the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is true that one or two of the later Epistles were not immediately received by all. Those churches would not be imposed upon. They had no such means of commu­nication as we have; printing-presses and mails were un­known; hence books made their way slowly through the world, and no book was admitted to that sacred num­ber until it could be positively demonstrated that it had a right to stand among the Scriptures of divine truth. But at last they were received, and have held their ground; while numerous other books, written in the next succeeding age, were rejected then, and have been rejected ever since, as spurious and unworthy of the confidence of Christian men.

It is true that the statement has been currently made that the early Christians rejected several books that are now received as parts of the New Testament. This asser­tion is, to some skeptics, a sufficient evidence that those books were spurious; and hence they conclude that all the other books bound up in the same volume are to be re­jected with them. How they arrive at such a conclusion, is not obvious to ordinary reasoners. Nevertheless the subject is important, and will repay careful attention.

If, then, we be asked, “How can we be certain that the writings contained in the New Testament are those which should have been preserved? Have not many of the Apostolic Books been lost? How are we to know that these books which remain are better than others which have perished, or than some which are now found in the Apocryphal New Testament? What certainty have we concerning these matters?” The answer in brief is, “The writings in the Apocryphal New Testament which bear the name of the Apostles are forgeries, and the genuine and authentic Epistles and other writings contained in that collection do not profess to come from the pens of the apostles, but were the productions of other early writers, and so have no claim to apostolic authority.” But this question is worthy of further consideration, and hence it will be proper to devote some attention to the evidences by which we distinguish between the Genuine and Spurious Books: