Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - May/90

Contributor - Scott Molebean

Title - Tender Tips: The Newspaper as Guide

Topic -

In Acts 8:2640 we are told how Philip the evangelist was sent by an angel of the Lord to the road that ran from Jerusalem down to Gaza. There he caught up with a minister of the crown of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. Philip heard " man reading from the prophet Isaiah and wondered whether these words were clear to the minister. So he asked him. "Do you understand what you are reading?" This question continues to be important to all who read the Scriptures. Sometimes they seem so dark and incomprehensible. Then we look for help to explain them to ourselves. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as we look for help in the right place.

Unfortunately that does not always happen. A little over a year ago someone explained that the Lord Jesus would return very soon, for Satan was deceiving the nations once again by holding communism up as the way to freedom and the good life. We all know what has happened since, in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. His argument no longer holds because many people in those countries have concluded that communism is only a way to starvation and suppression. Now someone else claims that the Lord is coming soon because everybody is saying, "World peace is finally coming. The cold war is over." What is happening here? The people are trying to understand use the things that Scriptures. The headlines in light on God's word.

This does not only happen with the question as to when the Lord Jesus will return. The other day it was reported that new diggings at Jericho now confirm that the city was totally destroyed at the time that the Bible says it happened. For years we were told that the biblical date was out by at least 200 years. As a result many people believed that God's destruction of the walls of that city did not really take place. This happens again and again where science or historical research says that something could not have happened the way God's word says it did. Think only of the creation vs. evolution debate.

What really takes place in all these cases is that the newspaper or the scientific conclusions are placed above scripture. Scripture is called "the truth of God' in the Belgic Confession, one of our doctrinal standards. Thus the happenings of the day and the conclusions of people are placed above the truth of God. But the B.C. resolutely rejects this. We are not to consider any information of this world to be "of equal value with the truth of God, since the truth is above all; for all people are of themselves liars, and "lighter than breath." (Psalm 62:9; B.C. Article 7). We must not go with the world's 'light" to God's truth. That is like going with a candle to the sun. We are to go with God's fight to our lives. 'In thy light we see light.' (Psalm 36:9) We shall never learn from the newspaper at which point the Lord God is in the outworking of His plan and purpose. But we must ever anew understand where we are by the light of His infallible word.

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