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One of the Greatest Political Events in the History of the United States
The 2024 election of Donald Trump is one of the greatest political events in the History of the United States. Whatever you may think of Trump, how bad you dislike him, this is a unique moment. It’s hard to say that anyone has been opposed by more people and to a greater extent than him. I could tell you of the very powerful people, institutions, investigations, trials, and events that went against him. You know it already. He still won. This win, I would say, tops 2016 too, which is hard to do.
Historical Precedent
Many people would say that Trump would either win or go to prison. Let that settle in once again. The other side was going to put him in prison. He’s already had at least two assassination attempts on his life, one of the bullets hitting him in the head.
Other presidents set themselves apart. Four were assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. I hope the Secret Service does a good job at guarding Trump, keeping a sharp look-out, because the threat is still there. What will set him apart is his resilience against the degree of onslaught.
When I declare the historical precedent of Trump’s election, president now number 45 and 47, this comes out of teaching history and government for over thirty years. I know American history. As a figure, Trump has risen to a level of greatness in United States history, compared to the events of American history. The country itself might not make it another one hundred years and it shrinks into oblivion next the kingdom of Jesus Christ and the eternal state. Still, you are witnessing something significant.
Resilience
People stuck with Trump in a major way because he wouldn’t and didn’t quit. I can’t envision anyone else standing against all this. Not only would no one else have continued, like he did, but much more than that. He won really against all odds.
What can people say? What can his enemies say? This is quite a win and quite a loss. Whatever comments someone may have even to this post — well, you lost. I’ve heard it all myself in the way of attack, nothing like what Trump has withstood.
Trump wasn’t alone. People stood with him despite the slings and arrows. It wasn’t easy for any of them to face the hatred they did. I’m happy for them, but now the hardest part, really.
Hope for the Future
I hope this victory will not be met by anything close to what happened in 2016. It shouldn’t. The American people have spoken, despite the absolute mockery and ridicule at unprecedented levels.
Things should change in the country. This ought to allow more freedom at least. Everyone reading here should think he can take this as an opportunity. When I say that, I mean for God.
Many reading here won’t like this, but it’s true. We should praise God that Trump won. God deserves the credit and the glory. I’m not endorsing Trump’s morality or testimony. Instead, it is something providential and can be very useful too.
It’s a good time to make a move on embracing everything about scripture. It is the truth. Men are men and women are women. It matches much of what God wants. Go at it with gusto and without apology. Do the will of God. Talk about Him. You’ve been given a great opportunity. Don’t let it pass you by.
What About the Accusation of So-Called “Mystical Explanation” or “Omniscience” Against a Perfect Original Language Preservation of Scripture?
A New Attack on Verbal Plenary Preservation of Scripture
Ross-White Debate
After the Ross-White debate, I saw one particular regular attack on the biblical and historical doctrine of the preservation of scripture. This is the perfect or verbal plenary preservation of the original language text of the Bible. Critical text advocates, who deny that doctrine, call the opposing position a “mystical explanation,” “omniscience,” the “Urim and Thummim,” or “Ruckmanism for all intents and purposes.” The part about Ruckman hints at double inspiration thinking. You say you believe the church possesses a perfect text of scripture in the original languages. They say that requires a work of God like inspiration or a mystical gift on the level of omniscience.
The historical doctrine of preservation says God preserved His Word. That is a supernatural explanation. God did it. Something supernatural occurred. Any claim of supernaturalism could be prey to the attack of mysticism, omniscience, saints possessing the Urim and Thummim, or the Ruckman charge. If copyists make errors and manuscripts have variants, how do believers know what the words are? Do they flop back into a trance-like state and their body moves like a puppet to the correct word?
The Imagery, a Mockery
The imagery painted by critical text advocates accuses men testing a variation between texts with a seer stone or divining rod. Someone printing a New Testament edition swoons into a condition where his body becomes taken over by God in the decision of a correct word in a text. It really is just a form of mockery, because none of their targets for this ridicule come close to this description.
The critical text advocates leave out a supernatural explanation. They don’t like that criticism. They don’t want theological presuppositions to guide, only the so-called science. Someone might claim perfection, if it’s God working. They rather defer to human reason as a tool. That allows for the error they favor as an outcome. They won’t say it’s God. At most, a few might say that God designed human reason like He did for the invention of a new vaccination.
The Providence of God
Used for Preservation of Scripture
The language used in the supernatural intervention in God’s method of preservation with and through His church is the “providence of God.” The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) reads:
The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.
You can read the language there, “God . . . by His singular care and providence.” In 1680 preacher of the gospel, John Alexander wrote: “seeing the Scriptures by the Providence of God kept pure . . . . seeing the Scriptures as they now are were transmitted to us by the Church, unto whom the Oracles of God were committed, and against whom the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.” In 1721 Edward Synge wrote: “Still it pleased God, by his overruling Providence, to preserve his Written Word, and keep it pure and uncorrupted . . . . by which means the Fountain, I mean the Text of the Holy Scripture, was kept pure and undefiled.”
Its Meaning
John Piper in 2020 wrote a very large book, entitled, Providence. In the first chapter, he gives a lengthy explanation of the word, concluding that it means concerning God, “He sees to it that things happen in a certain way.” He points to Genesis 22 as a classic description of providence, when in verse 8, Abraham says, “God will provide himself a lamb,” using “provide.” Later, verse 14 uses the root meaning of that word “provide”:
And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
In the word “providence” is the Latin vide (think video), which means, “see.” Notice in verse 14, “it shall be seen.” The idea is that God sees, but even further, “He sees to.” He saw the ram in place of Isaac and He saw to the ram for Isaac.
Heidelberg Catechism
As providence relates to scripture, God sees to it that every word is preserved and available to His people, just like the ram was provided and available to Abraham and Isaac. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) defines the providence of God:
The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.
Providence is not by chance. If God is keeping the original text of scripture pure by His singular care and providence, He is not leaving that to chance. Since He will judge men by every word, which He says He will (Matthew 4:4, John 12:48), He will provide every Word. He will “see to it.” I know the question then arises, “How did God see to it?”
Providential Preservation
Spurgeon
Men who believe in providential preservation do not believe that God requires a trance-like state to accomplish perfect preservation of scripture. If you asked, “How did the ram appear in the thicket to Abraham?”, you might find the answer difficult. “He just did.” He said He would provide, so He did.
C. H. Spurgeon in a sermon on the Providence of God says this: “If anything would go wrong, God puts it right and if there is anything that would move awry, He puts forth His hand and alters it.” This is how I read the description men who believed in providential preservation.
Capel
Richard Capel represents the position well (Capel’s Remains, London, 1658, pp. 19-43):
[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . .
. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.
You should notice that Capel uses the word, “providence.” This doesn’t sound like the exaggerated, deceitful attacks of the critical text proponents. I love the last sentence of that paragraph as an understanding. I ask that you read it again: “As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.” These are not words you will hear from critical text, modern version men.
God Keeps His Words
I say God keeps His Words. He uses His institutions to do it. I also say God keeps the souls of the saints. He uses many various means to do that. It is difficult to explain how that He does it, but He does. That too is supernatural. Do the opponents of perfect preservation believe that God sees to that? They do and they base that on presuppositions without resorting to words like “mystical explanation.”
The method God uses to preserve is a true one. It is true like innermost machinery and function of a cell. It occurs. The DNA strands of a human being, designed by God, result in a fully grown, healthy person. God did that. He keeps working in His world as He sees fit. His doing that with His words is also science. It is supernatural and it is science.
More to Come
Eras of Miracles and Divine Interventionism
Where my wife and I are staying, we have waited at one spot four different times for someone to pick us up and every time there on the top of a short brick wall sat a tiny toy figure. Three different days and four rides the same toy person was there. I guessed it was a Star Wars figure. Looking more closely, it seemed a young woman in a Star Wars-like outfit. In what I know of the Star Wars story, it was probably a jedi and maybe the one the story calls “the last jedi.”
If you don’t know the Star Wars story, because you’ve seen none of it, good for you, but let me explain. In a fictional cosmos, the jedi are warriors with supernatural power, who fight for what is called the light side of the force as opposed to the dark side. This fiction hearkens to God on the light side and Satan on the dark side. According to the fiction, the force connotes to something like a pantheistic view of God in which he is not a person, but some kind of mystical power. The fiction speaks of an existence of God, albeit a false one. This supernaturalism is crucial to the explanation of everything that happens in Star Wars fiction.
In the Star Wars story, only a few characters possess supernatural power to use either for evil or for good. Those without that power find themselves often in need of the abilities or gifts of those special individuals. Over aeons of time, certain ones through the story uniquely, even more greatly tap into the light side or the dark side of this supernatural force. These individuals come along once in a very long time with very special significance and they are usually prophesied. The needy natural ones place their hope in the coming of those to deliver them.
Fictional prophet-like characters predict the coming of the few supernatural characters, very often just one, with very special power. These prophets receive revelations from the same supernatural power, which is apparently God, and they know what will happen in the future. The spread of these prophesies over a fictional cosmos results in its people looking for the coming of these superior, supernatural figures, which will change the course of history.
I write all this to say that in general people who know the Star Wars story accept eras of supernatural intervention in their fictional cosmos. It makes sense to them. They agree both with the existence of supernatural power that works through men and that once in a great while this same supernatural power raises up a prophesied person who can use the power. In other words, they accept eras of miracles. They recognize the continuity of a natural world accompanied by rare times, moments, periods, or ages of supernatural intervention.
In a fictional Star Wars world, the divine always works to maintain and sustain, but also intervenes in a unique way. An unprecedented person comes along, who is not normal. He is far from normal and no one has been seen like him in ages. The maintaining and sustaining are continuity. They are normative. The rare one, however, is not. This is discontinuity.
Scripture gives (see especially 2 Peter) as a major reason for apostasy, a departure from the faith and the truth, the scarcity of evidence of divine intervention. God gives every good thing. He always intervenes in a providential manner, His good graces seen everywhere and at all times. God also though intervenes at times in unique ways. Men say because of the sparsity of the latter, they can’t receive the Lord. He must show Himself more to their liking. I call these showings, crown performances. If God doesn’t bring them a crown performance, they have their excuse for not believing.
God has intervened in a special, unique, and miraculous way throughout history. However, this kind of dealing is far less frequent. The word “miracle” is most often the same Greek word translated “sign.” Something isn’t a sign if it is the same as anything else that occurs on an everyday basis.
Through scripture, you can see eras of miracles. They mark extraordinary times and people, and these occasions, which are very rare through history, make a unique point, one that stands out very much. Certain names are associated in the Bible with these eras, including Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the Apostles.
One figure stands out above all of those functioning with supernatural power in an era of miracles: the Lord Jesus Christ. If these operations were normal occurrences, they would not stand out, and neither would Jesus. Jesus must stand out and He does stand out. He will show Himself in even greater glory when He comes the second time and in fulfillment of further prophecy. He is the greatest figure in all of world history.
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