16
Selected Messages Book 1
and as a man He talked with them. Beginning at Moses and the
prophets He taught them in all things concerning Himself, that His life,
His mission, His sufferings, His death were just as the Word of God had
foretold. He opened their understanding that they might understand
the Scriptures. How quickly He straightened out the tangled ends and
showed the unity and divine verity of the Scriptures. How much men
in these times need their understanding opened.
The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of
thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not
represented. Men will often say such an expression is not like God.
But God has not put Himself in words, in logic, in rhetoric, on trial in
the Bible. The writers of the Bible were God’s penmen, not His pen.
Look at the different writers.
It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men
that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his
expressions but on the man himself, who, under the influence of the
Holy Ghost, is imbued with thoughts. But the words receive the
impress of the individual mind. The divine mind is diffused. The
divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and will;
thus the utterances of the man are the word of God.—
Manuscript 24,
1886
(written in Europe in 1886).
Unity in Diversity
There is variety in a tree, there are scarcely two leaves just alike.
Yet this variety adds to the perfection of the tree as a whole.
In our Bible, we might ask, Why need Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John in the Gospels, why need the Acts of the Apostles, and the variety
of writers in the Epistles, go over the same thing?
The Lord gave His word in just the way He wanted it to come. He
gave it through different writers, each having his own individuality,
though going over the same history. Their testimonies are brought
together in one Book, and are like the testimonies in a social meeting.
[22]
They do not represent things in just the same style. Each has an
experience of his own, and this diversity broadens and deepens the
knowledge that is brought out to meet the necessities of varied minds.
The thoughts expressed have not a set uniformity, as if cast in an iron