04.03. Examples of Inspiration Explained

3. EXAMPLES OF INSPIRATION EXPLAINED

We will now take up the examples of inspiration. The best way to test anything is by the usage of the word. The first case of inspiration is in Genesis 2:7 : “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into [that is our word inspire] his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”

What is inspiration? The breathing on or into. What is inspiration in the Scriptural sense? God breathing on or into.

Now let us see what was the object of this inspiration. Here the inspiration of the Almighty not only imparts mere life to the inert body, but communicates an immortal soul, making the man dual in nature, body and soul, and thereby differentiating him from the animals that perish by a chasm infinite and impassable. The speculative philosophy which I discussed in the previous chapter attributes man to an evolution from lower forms of life, not mere monkeys, but even back to jelly-fish. It attributes man to an evolution from the lower forms of life. It is an unverified hypothesis, even according to its own advocates. There isn’t a case in the world where history could say. “Here is a monkey that has changed to a man.” Now, it does look like, as old as this world is, that somebody would have seen a case. Hence it is a theory, an hypothesis, and in the nature of the case it is an unverifiable hypothesis.

Now, to call such a case science is intellectual dishonesty. Science is something you know something that is demonstrated. It is science to put up a great building; it is science that makes the enormous bridges that span the mightiest rivers; it is science that makes iron ships that float, the airships that fly; this is science. We see this demonstration, but to call such a philosophy as this, science, is simply to tell a bald lie.

Now, what is the only evolution that is proven, demonstrated, that can become science? I will quote it for you; it is just what this Book says; everybody will admit that kind of evolution. Genesis 1:11-12 : “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so.”

Notice also . Genesis 1:24 : “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creatures after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so.”

Now, what can you develop, what can you evolve? You can only evolve what is previously involved. Take the acorn, and you have the true story of evolution. It is what is brought out of that acorn. I plant it, and it pushes up through the ground, a little leaf, then a bush, then a tree, and then the tree bears acorns. That is evolution. From the germ of that acorn has been evolved the acorn-bearing tree. But I venture that if you plant a persimmon seed you cannot from it evolve an orange. Hence the Bible says, “Do men gather figs from thistles?” Each thing after its kind; that is the true doctrine of evolution. It is the only doctrine that is provable. We may put monkeys on a lonely island for ten thousand years, and they will never evolve a man; no lapse of time and no environment will bring it about.

I said that the inspiration of the Almighty, the breathing of God into the nostrils of the body imparted an immortal spirit, making man dual: hence we find in Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 : “Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Then the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit, hall return to God who gave it.”

Now. that is the first example of inspiration, where God breathed into the nostrils of Adam’s body the breath of life and he became a living soul. To inspire means to breathe on or into. The first case of inspiration in the Bible, then, as we have just learned, was not merely giving life to a dead body, but the imparting of an immortal soul.

Now we take up the second case, which is in Exodus 31:1 : “And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him. with the Spirit of God. in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.”

Here is a case of inspiration, not as in the first case, in order to impart an immortal soul, but a workman is inspired, filled with the wisdom of inspiration so that in constructing the tabernacle, whether it was a piece of wood that was to be finished, or a brace secured, or a precious jewel to be cut and set-whatever it was, the artificer, through the inspiration of God. was enabled to do the work exactly right. Not approximately right, but precisely right.

Now bear this in mind while I quote the third case, as recorded in 1 Chronicles 28:19. David is here talking about the plan of the Temple. “All this,” said David, “have I been made to understand in writing from the hand of Jehovah, even all the works of this pattern.”

Now notice that the inspiration in the case of Bezalel was to enable the artificer to exactly fashion each constituent element that went into the tabernacle. In this particular case David received a plan for the Temple in writing from Jehovah.

Every building of any size and beauty is designed by some architect, as Sir Christopher Wren designed Westminster Abbey; as the architect designed the Seminary building; but in this case God’s inspiration brought about a document that showed the exact plan of the building that the architect was to erect.

Another Scripture shows the result that this inspiration brought about, viz.: 1 Kings 6:7 : “And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready at the quarry; and there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.”

Such a thing never occurred before in the history of the world. To be sure, the sound of the hammer and the saw were heard while the building of our Seminary was going on.

Now let us go back to our definition of inspiration: It is a communication of supernatural power by the Holy Spirit so that the end may be accomplished (whatever that end may be), completely and perfectly accomplished, and so accomplished that no force resident in nature or combination of forces in any lapse of time or under any environment could have brought about that result, and so that no human gift of mere genius could have brought it about. There never was an earthly architect that devised so perfect a plan or so executed it that it could be put together without the sound of a hammer or saw: and so perfectly finished a building. As in the case of the plan given, the result intended by the inspiration was perfectly secured-secured in a supernatural manner.

Now we come to the fourth case, and I cite only two verses - Ezekiel 37:9-10. The case is this: God leads the prophet to look out into a valley full of dry bones, very many and very dry, and God asked the prophet, “Can these dry bones live?” And the prophet said, “Thou knowest, not any way that I know, but thou knowest.” And God said to the prophet, in the language that I here cite: “Then be said to me, Prophesy unto the wind: prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; come from the four winds. O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.”

Then follows a description, that as the Spirit breathed on the bones, sinews came on them, and then flesh and cuticle, and then life, and they stood up, a great army. Then God interpreted that vision. The prophet tells what it means.

It means that this valley of the dry bones represents the dispersed Jews, and spiritually they are dry bones, and this breathing on them represents their conversion. So this case is unlike any one that we have yet considered, and yet it is a plain case of inspiration that by the Spirit of the Almighty breathing on the spiritually dead soul it is regenerated.

Now consider a moment. No human power could bring about such a result. All the forces of nature resident and potential under any environment or combination can never regenerate a sinner, but the Spirit of the Almighty breathing on a sinner can regenerate him.. That was the puzzle in the mind of Nicodemus, as presented in John 3:1-36. He could not understand. Then Jesus explained that you hear the sound of the wind; you do not see it, and you cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth, and so it is of every one that is born of the Spirit. Now, nobody has ever seen such a thing as that, because it refers to the conversion of the Jews, in one day, as described by Isaiah and discussed by Paul, and that will take place when the fulness of the Gentiles has come. You will see the accumulated force of this argument as we go on with this discussion. The kind of inspiration we are talking about is the inspiration of the Scriptures; that whatever may be the various ends He has in view by inspiration (and they are various), in every case the inspiration is supernatural, superhuman power, and the result of it is perfect and absolutely certain, whether it is giving a soul to Adam or skill to Bezalel, or the written plan of the Temple to David, to the building of the Temple or to the brooding of the Omniscient Spirit over the dispersed world in one day, bringing all Israel to the knowledge of God.

We now take up the fifth case. When God communicated a soul to Adam, that was the first case of inspiration. That soul was upright, in the image of God, perfect, according to Paul in Colossians and Ephesians, in righteousness, knowledge and true holiness. That is the way it started. As a proof of that, he, without being taught by any one, named the animals that passed before him. In Ephesians 4:13-24, we have the new man of righteousness and true holiness. Christ’s image is formed in him, the hope of glory.

So, then, this case of inspiration is the counterpart of the old man of the first case of inspiration. It is the imparting of a soul imbued with righteousness and true holiness.

Now, approaching nearer to our subject, we come to the sixth case of inspiration. I quote this case from John 20:21 :

“Jesus said unto them [this is after His resurrection and spoken to His apostles], Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, be breathed on them [there is our word, inspiration; He inspired them], and said, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.”

Now, as a result of that, “Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them: and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” This is an inspiration that brings joy. You shall do just as I did when the Father sent me; you shall authorize, declare the terms of the remission of sin. There will be no doubt about it.” When the inspired apostle told a man what was necessary for the remission of sins, it was the same as if God had told him.

Now, this is a case of New Testament inspiration. God so inspired them that they became mouthpieces for Him, so that He spoke through them, and this kind of inspiration was the inspiration of all the prophets of the Old Testament, as I now want to prove to you from Exodus 4:12. This is illustrating bow the inspiration that Christ gave to His apostles, God is giving to inspire Moses: “Now therefore, go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt say.”

Later we will have something more to say about verbal inspiration. God certainly gave Moses verbal inspiration: “I will be with thy mouth [that is the speaking part of Moses], and I will teach thee what thou shalt speak.” To illustrate by some other Old Testament examples, I will take 2 Samuel 23:1, all under this same head. We come to the inspiration of David:

“These are the last words of David.

David the son of Jesse saith, And the man who was raised up on high saith, The anointed of the God of Jacob, And the sweet singer of Israel:

‘The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, And His word was upon my tongue.’”

Notice the bearing of that on verbal inspiration. In Mark 12:1-44, our Lord, referring to this case of David, says, “The Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David, saying,” etc.

Before leaving this point, and by way of illustration, take another Scripture as touching the general subject of inspiration. Commence at the first of the letter to the Hebrews:

“God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions, and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us by his Son.”

Or, as Peter expresses it:

“Men spoke from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” The case we are speaking of is Christ’s breathing on His apostles, which breathing is the inspiration, and that is similar in kind to the inspiration of every Old Testament prophet, or other Old Testament writer. Whether he wrote history, or poetry, or allegory, or proverbs, or foretold future events, the record is the result of the inspiration of the speakers or writers.

You will find in some of these cases of Old Testament inspiration where the devil speaks. A man once said to me, “Do you think the devil’s speech is inspired?”

“No, but the prophet’s words are inspired.”

“Do you think that the sayings of wicked people, which they spoke to God’s people, were inspired?”

“No, but the record that God says that they said those things is inspired.”

Now we come to the main passage that most nearly touches our case. The most relevant of all these is that passage, 2 Timothy 3:15-17, which I discussed in the dosing of the last chapter, leading up to my definition of inspiration. Let us see what we have found in it and see bow it illustrates my definition. This makes the seventh case of inspiration. I selected seven, in order to give all the different kinds of inspiration, where the ends are different. One might be inspired to speak and not inspired to write.

Now, this is an unanswerable passage, and I never knew a man that could stand before it. I give you my translation or paraphrase: “From a babe thou hast known the sacred writings.” We have shown that writings or scriptures mean any kind of writings, but sacred or Holy Scriptures means writings that are superhuman: that the whole selection is spoken of as to hiera grammata, the Holy Bible; that to grammata is collectively speaking, and pasa graphe is distributively speaking. All these words in these writings are God-inspired, God-breathed on. This is a clean-cut definition that covers every book in the Old Testament, and they had the Old Testament just exactly as we have it now. No man denies that the canon of the Old Testament was as we have it now. The whole collection is holy, and every book of the collection is God-inspired, whether it be Job or Ruth or Chronicles or the Songs of Solomon or Exodus every one of them is God-inspired.

I also called attention to the object of this inspiration. The design of it is set forth here. I will paraphrase and state that design: “Every one of them is God-inspired and is also profitable for teaching what a man should be and believe and do and think, righteously.”

It is to be a perfect standard of instruction. Then it says. “for conviction,” that is, it is to be a perfect standard by which any aberration in the matter of right being, right thinking or right doing religiously may be made manifest to the one committing the error.

Then he says that it is profitable for correction that when a defection has been pointed out through this standard, when the light is held by the side of the standard, and the word or thought or deed or the defect has been demonstrated, then this standard is inspired so as to correct that defection.

Then it goes on further to show that the standard is for instruction which is in righteousness, or training which is in righteousness, from being such as I am, thinking such as I do, saying what I say, and doing what I do to a perfect or mature man in Christ. And I want to know if there is any sure, absolute, correct standard that shall teach me what is right being right, doing right, talking right, living righteously. These Scriptures are theopneustos (inspired of God), that such a standard may be a perfect standard-that the man of God may be perfect. The object of applying the standard of perfection to the man is to make him perfect that he may be perfectly equipped, with a perfect standard as a perfect man-equipment to do any good work.

Now, let us go back to the definition of inspiration. When God does the in-breathing it communicates supernatural spiritual power that -in every case secures, with absolute certainty and infallibility, the result aimed at, without any error and in such a way that no mere genius like Shakespeare, Poe, Shelley, Ovid, Homer or Virgil could have attained.