What is “Biblical History?"
Author: Rick Rainey
Date: April 7, 2021
Excerpted from Paul Smith’s book “New Evangelicalism: The New World Order” pages 28-29
Published in 2011 by Calvary Publishing (TWFT), Costa Mesa, CA.
“The children of Abraham were the first to recognize the real grandeur of history. They viewed it as a divine epic stretching back before the creation of man. The central figure was the personal infinite Creator God who has spoken to man through the Holy Scriptures and who will ultimately bring the conflict between light and darkness to a cataclysmic and final end. So it was not unusual for someone to write a history of the world from a biblical viewpoint, and integrate it with classical Greek and Roman history.
“The Bible is historical in a deeper sense. It teaches us that the destiny of mankind is located between the fall of man and the coming judgement. Biblical history tells us that life is a long adventure and every life is an individual pilgrimage. It is in time and history that the great drama of sin and redemption unfolds as the central axis of all biblical thought. (emphasis mine).
“...God acts in history starting with the supernatural. The secular mind thinks only in terms of the natural, and thus excludes God from the historical process. When the supernatural is omitted, then events like the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, His bodily resurrection from the dead, and His second coming are discarded as historical non-events or labeled as religious superstition.
“The biblical view of history begins with the presupposition that God is sovereign over all history, be it called sacred or secular. In the secular sense, history can be probed and written about. But behind so-called secular history, God is at work and in control of the levers of history.”
Date: April 7, 2021
Excerpted from Paul Smith’s book “New Evangelicalism: The New World Order” pages 28-29
Published in 2011 by Calvary Publishing (TWFT), Costa Mesa, CA.
“The children of Abraham were the first to recognize the real grandeur of history. They viewed it as a divine epic stretching back before the creation of man. The central figure was the personal infinite Creator God who has spoken to man through the Holy Scriptures and who will ultimately bring the conflict between light and darkness to a cataclysmic and final end. So it was not unusual for someone to write a history of the world from a biblical viewpoint, and integrate it with classical Greek and Roman history.
“The Bible is historical in a deeper sense. It teaches us that the destiny of mankind is located between the fall of man and the coming judgement. Biblical history tells us that life is a long adventure and every life is an individual pilgrimage. It is in time and history that the great drama of sin and redemption unfolds as the central axis of all biblical thought. (emphasis mine).
“...God acts in history starting with the supernatural. The secular mind thinks only in terms of the natural, and thus excludes God from the historical process. When the supernatural is omitted, then events like the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, His bodily resurrection from the dead, and His second coming are discarded as historical non-events or labeled as religious superstition.
“The biblical view of history begins with the presupposition that God is sovereign over all history, be it called sacred or secular. In the secular sense, history can be probed and written about. But behind so-called secular history, God is at work and in control of the levers of history.”
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