Is going to the doctor a sign of a lack of faith?

• About this site

Priscilla Van Der Hart

• About this site

Shad Sluiter

• About this site

Printable Activity: 8 page mini coloring book and full-sized pictures to tell the story of Peter preaching the gospel for the first time to Gentiles - Cornelius and his family.

• About this site

• About this site

Peter Brand

• About this site

• About this site

• About this site

Is there any scriptural authority for the assertion that Hezekiah wrote some of the Psalms?

Though ecclesiastical commentators seem to be attracted by such theories, we do not know of any authority, scriptural or other, for above assertion, It is enough to read an article in some Bible Dictionary, on the authorship of the anonymous Psalms, to be aware how precarious are the theories advanced. Some psalms speaking of desolation and judgment may be made to fit in with Sennacherib’s invasion, as also with any other invasion.
I believe it is possible to assign authorship to a few of the anonymous Psalms, following Psalms by well-known authors, on internal evidence. Thus it seems clear that Psalm 43" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 43: , is by the author of Psalm 42" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 42:  (the same phrase “Why art thou cast down, oh my soul?” occurring in both); Psa. 91, by the author of Psalm 90" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 90:  and Psalm 104" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 104: , by that of Psalm 103" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 103: , but as a rule it is safer not to attempt to be wise above that which is written. We believe the Holy Spirit spake by David and the other psalmists: that is the chief point. However, to return to our question, I read the following in a well-known Bible Dictionary,* as a whole reliable: “Book II. (i.e., of Psalms) appears by the date of its latest (I) psalm, Psalm  46: , to have been compiled in the reign of King Hezekiah.” We turn with interest to see on what this statement rests, and we find NIL. The real reason comes out later in the same article as to why Hezekiah’s name is brought in. It comes, I believe, from a misreading of the closing words of Psalm 72" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 72: , “the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” But there are at least fifteen subsequent psalms, e.g., Nos. 86, 103, 110, 142, which are entitled “Psalms of David,” i.e., these must be by some descendant of David, so the theory runs, Hezekiah, Josiah, or Zerubbabel, in fact you may take your choice. Now, this will never do, because in the case of Psalm 142" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 142: —the place where David wrote it is indicated, and the Lord definitely ascribes to David the authorship of Psalm 110" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 110: , and as far as we know, though Hezekiah wrote a prayer, neither he, nor the others wrote psalms, and certainly not in a cave. The explanation is simple: the word, Kãlãh, translated “ended” in Psalm 72" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 72:  means also fulfilled or consummated; e.g., Ezra 1:1;" TARGET="_blank">Ezra 1:1; Ezekiel 5:13;" TARGET="_blank">Ezekiel 5:13;  Daniel 11:36;" TARGET="_blank">Daniel 11:36; Daniel 12:7." TARGET="_blank">Daniel 12:7. The words then refer to the prophetic subject of the Psalm, the Millennial Reign of David’s “Greater Son.” In that hope David’s prayers reached their zenith. He could not sing of anything higher. That infinitely greater Kingdom—the mystery of God’s will—was unknown to Him, when “in the dispensation of the fulness of times (i.e., the eternal state and the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ) all things in heaven and earth shall be headed up in Christ” (Eph. i. io). David prayed many subsequent prayers, but he could never reach a higher level than in that psalm.

W.H.

• About this site

• About this site

• About this site

Can we approach the Lord Jesus to worship Him apart from the Father?

We are on holy ground when considering any aspect of divine truth, but especially do we need to approach “with unshod feet,” when it is a question of the Being of God! We can only know what He is pleased to reveal, and even then it is “as in a glass darkly,” and “in part.” There is one God—that is, one Divine Essence; but in that unity there are three Divine Persons or Subsistencies, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; co-equal, co-eternal, and co-substantial: that is, each of the three possesses the whole Divine substance. We must neither divide the substance, nor confound the persons.

These three Persons are in necessary relations to one another, and it is important not to confound these relations. Each possesses the Personal properties essential to Himself, and which cannot be predicated of or communicated to the others. Thus it belongs to the Father to “beget:” His are the eternal counsels; the Son is the Only-begotten, the Incarnate One; He alone suffered for sin. The Spirit proceedeth from the Father and the Son. The Spirit reveals the Son, by whom the Father is declared or interpreted. Now, it is not derogating from one Divine Person to refrain from attributing to Him what the Holy Scriptures assign to Another.

Thus we never read of worship being offered to the Holy Spirit, though He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, eternal, divine as the Father and the Son. But we do read, even in the days of His humiliation, of worship being rendered to the Lord Jesus, and He accepted it. And in Revelation 5:8-13" TARGET="_blank">Revelation 5:8-13 Divine worship is paid to the Lamb in heaven. Nevertheless, the Lord proclaims in John 4:23, 24," TARGET="_blank">John 4:23, 24, that the true Worshippers will worship the Father, and that it is the “Father who is seeking worshippers”—”God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” The apostle Paul indicates, too, in that pregnant verse (Eph. ii. 18), the true Divine order. “Through Him (Christ Jesus) we both (believers from Jew and Gentile) have access by the Spirit unto the Father.” The Lord is the way to the Father and the substance of worship; the Spirit the power; the Father the recipient of the worship of the people.”

W.H.

• About this site

• About this site

• About this site

• About this site

BRITISH ISRAELISM
What are we to think of “British Israelism,” and what should be our attitude towards adherents of it?

The hypothesis is that “Anglo-Saxons are the lineal descendants of the Ten Tribes of Israel and inherit the wonderful promises made to them. These promises the Anglo-Saxons possess nationally.” This can hardly be “dignified” with the name of “heresy”; it is rather one of those “imaginations” which we are to seek to cast down in the Name of Christ. As far as truth is concerned, it is of “the stuff that dreams are made of;” a simile not so far-fetched, when we consider that the B.I. theory’s prime foundation stone is, as we shall see, confessedly, an invented dream.

Alas! how sad it is to see even pious Christians thus snared by the great fowler, as also numbers of wordlings, taking up as a sort of fashionable pastime the slogan, not “We are lost sinners,” but “We are the lost tribes.” It thus provides for the world another gospel, which captivates and hypnotises them with the thought of capturing great earthly blessings for themselves and the British Empire, apart from repentance and faith in Christ, as though He had never died and risen to procure us blessings, and we must needs make out a fancied identity with the lost tribes (bereft of blessings themselves) in order to get a few for ourselves and the British Empire. Certainly Christ did not die for the glory of the British Empire. If God has blessed our country so signally in the past, the reasons are not far to seek: (1) His Sovereignty; (2) the comparative good treatment England has bestowed on the Jews; (3) the fact that she has been a harbour of refuge for persecuted Continental Christians; (4) because, by His mercy, the Word of God was accepted at the Reformation, and became our national Book for centuries; (5) and because of His many people in our country and their prayers; though now she is on the way to forfeit all this by her national sins and apostacy.

But not one blessing did Britain ever inherit for the “British-Israel” reason, because even if she were the lost tribes, she has not kept God’s laws and statutes, the very condition of blessing (see Deuteronomy 28:15)" TARGET="_blank">Deuteronomy 28:15) and would have put herself outside the covenant, if ever under it, by neglecting circumcision. British Israelism is no mere harmless delusion; its logical effect is virtually to exclude Christ (not He, but the British Empire looms at the centre of things), and to supersede the gospel to sinners with some fancied national position, with its naked abandonment of the heavenly calling of the church and a complete confusion between her and Israel. Even, if we were Israel, she is set on one side nationally for the present so far as earthly blessing goes, and j so should we be. If space allowed, I would gladly take up the general arguments for or against the much vaunted “identifications,” but before . examining the ornaments of a building, it is well to enquire as to the foundation. I believe no castle-in-the-air ever had a flimsier base than this theory. Is there any historic proof that the ten tribes migrated from the latitudes where the Assyrians placed them, to England or anywhere else? There is not a scintilla. No mention is made of their doings either in Scripture or secular history from about 720 B.C., when their Assyrian captors settled them in Assyria, etc., though we have promises in the Scripture of their future restoration, e.g. Isa. i i • iz, where Jehovah promises to gather back again to their only land of blessing the “outcasts of Israel,” along with “the dispersed of Judah,” from whom they are thus carefully distinguished. We may be sure the Assyrians, as long as they had the power, would not allow their captives to wander away at their own sweet will to some other land. Until we have some serious proof that the ten tribes ever started on their journey for the British Isles, it is futile to spend time in proving they never arrived there. On what then does the B.I. theory rest? On a passage in an Apocryphal book, the 2nd of Esdras, (Eadras, Greek form of Ezra. ) purporting to have been written by Ezra the scribe, but really forged 700 years after the captivity by some unscrupulous impersonator living in Egypt. The passage (see chap. 13. 1-12 39-46) purports to be the interpretation of a fictitious dream ascribed to Ezra, to the effect that the ten tribes took counsel to leave the heathen country where they were in captivity and go off into a land where no one dwelt; where they might keep God’s statutes. They crossed the Euphrates miraculously and after a year and a half arrived at some unknown region called Arsareth. “Then dwelt they there until the latter time.” The whole chapter reads like an unholy parody of Scripture, as indeed it is, naturally bereft of all spiritual power, and bristling with the wildest improbabilities. And yet this fake dream and its fictitious interpretation is admitted by the writers of “British Israel Truth” (chap. 7.) to be the “one only tradition of their fate (i.e., of the lost tribes) which past ages have handed on to us.” That a whole system should rest ultimately on a “tradition” would be bad enough, but when that “tradition” is a dream, that nobody really ever had, the edifice must be in a parlous state. As to how to deal with a Christian “in fellowship,” who becomes inoculated with this unscriptural, unhistoric theory; it may be said that as far as is apparent, it does not effect directly fundamental truth as to the Person of Christ, though what it may lead to is difficult to say. Any attempt to propagate it in an assembly, could not be tolerated and anyone persisting in such a course would bring himself or herself under the open rebuke of the elders. Certainly the theory “causes divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine, which we have learned” and we should “mark” and “avoid” those who are in active sympathy with this sad delusion.

William Hoste

• About this site