“Ezra returned to Jerusalem
after the Babylonian captivity and was ‘a ready scribe in the law of Moses,’
meaning he was an expert instructor in the Word of God," says Jordan.
"He’s been down in Babylon 70 years but Ezra’s got that Word—those birds
took it down there with them!
“From Daniel 9, it’s clear
Daniel learned from the Old Testament books he possessed during the length of
the captivity. Daniel had the books of Chronicles and Jeremiah there anyway,
and Ezra comes back to Jerusalem as a teacher; he’d had the Book over there to
study.
*****
"One of the key reasons
God separated out the nation Israel was so He’d have a vehicle through which to
communicate and preserve His Word.
“The idea was to have a certain
class of people charged with the job of collecting together, collating, and
laying out and copying the Word of God. Of course, God is the one who takes the
initiative in this preservation process. It’s not something He leaves for man
to do because man wants to do it. It’s His design, purpose and program.
"From Deuteronomy 31, we
know Moses was instructed by God to take the initial section of his writings
and put them in the Ark of the Covenant for safekeeping. Moses’
text-in-progress was committed to priests from the tribe of Levi, who were
singled out by God for the responsibility of keeping the Book.
“God told Moses to put it in
the ark and then He raised up a whole tribe of people to take care of the ark
and the Book in it—copying, preserving and teaching it to the nation.
*****
“The purpose of the Jewish
priesthood was to teach the people doctrine out of the Word of God. II
Chronicles 15:3 reveals how the priesthood became corrupt and ‘for a long
season Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest,
and without law.’
“What
happened is the priests forgot the doctrine, but kept the ritual. Now, where’ve
you ever seen that before? Most every Sunday, if you go to the wrong place.
“Malachi 2:7-9 demonstrates the
priesthood’s failure to do what God told them to do in teaching the Word: ‘For
the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his
mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.
[8] But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.
[9] Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.’
[8] But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.
[9] Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.’
“From this passage you see the
function of the priest and what he’s supposed to be about. It says ‘the
priest’s lips should keep knowledge.’ If you wanted knowledge from God, and you
wanted to know what God’s Word said, that priest of God was to preserve it and
have it ready for you when you needed it. He was to make it available at all
times.
"They’re to be able to come to
him and get it and, my friend, that isn’t just coming and saying, ‘What he’d
say?’ and having him repeat it to you. There were copies of the Old Testament all
over the world out there.
*****
“In Micah 3 is another great example
of the corruption of the priesthood: ‘The heads thereof judge for reward, and
the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money:
yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil
can come upon us.
[12] Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.’
[12] Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.’
“They ‘teach for hire,’ and the
prophets ‘divine for money,’ but they piously say, ‘Is not the Lord among us?’
Nuts!
“These
guys are thinking, ‘None evil can come upon us,’ but God’s going to destroy them.
What the priests had done—they had become a part of Satan’s policy of evil
against the Word of God. You see it in operation there when you see the judges
of the people doing it for money; the priests teaching for money and the
preachers preaching for money.
*****
“Do you remember that scribe
over in Jeremiah 36:12 who’s actually got a special chamber all to himself in
the king’s palace? Well, what in the world is the man of God doing in the
king’s palace?! Money.
“That fellow belonged down in
the temple. He was supposed to be writing out and copying that Book, taking
care of the thing and teaching it.
“Later in the chapter, we see
that the king begins to cut up the Word of God with his pen knife and destroys
it. The king’s destroying the Word of God and yet he’s got a scribe living in
his house with a special room for himself!
“Now that’s the policy of evil,
and what you’re going to find when you go out and study about the corruptions
of the Word of God on the market today, more often than not, the origin . . .”
*****
“I
have to confess to you, there was a time when I didn’t know anything about
these things. I was told by people who I thought knew what the truth was . . .
I was told a certain Bible was right, and I went around telling people it was
right but came to find out later I was wrong.
“I used to tell people the American Standard Version was the best
one on the market. Why’d I say that? My uncle went to New Orleans Baptist
theological seminary and you ought to know what’s best if you’ve been to
seminary, shouldn’t you? I mean, certainly they know in the cemetery, uh, I
mean, seminary.
“I remember I argued with a guy
once, ‘But you don’t understand. You’ve never been to school. Your problem is
you need more education. My Uncle Jim said because they told him in school . .
. and Dr. Roy Beeman says . . . Old Dr. Beeman knows it and he says the ASV is
the way to go.’ I reasoned, ‘I gotta believe that, don’t I?’
“Well,
some dear little old saint of God sat down with me one day, and instead of
kicking me in the shins and telling me I was a reprobate and a heretic, you
know what she did? She cried big old tears, and she said, ‘But if you would
just read this little (article).’ I said, ‘I don’t want to read that nonsense!
That crazy nut; he just hasn’t studied anything!’
“And she’d just cry, and
finally she provoked me into reading the thing. And you know what I found out?
I found out, ‘Hey, who I thought that (educated man of God) was over there
didn’t make any difference.’
“I began to see some distinct
differences between what I was saying was the best and the King James Version. And when I laid those differences out
side-by-side, I knew in my heart which one was right and which one was wrong.
“You didn’t have to give me a
lot of theological jargon. I tried to explain some of that stuff away but you
know you can only get so far with that. Your conscience won’t let you go but so
far in trying to explain stuff away.
“What
I’m saying to you, folks, the motive of the guy telling you the wrong thing
isn’t always . . . somewhere along the line people get duped. But when you go
back into the history and find the real roots for the error that’s being
taught, what do you find? Money and gain and status; that kind of thing. Pride.
That’s where you go back to.
“Now, that doesn’t mean
everybody you meet who’s got the wrong kind of bible in their hand is proud and
out for money. Don’t put that kind of nonsense in your mind. But it means the
system and the doctrine they’re propagating has that, and you love them enough
to tell them the truth in love and try to reach them with it . . .
“But, you know, folks, back
behind that evil . . . What happens is an unsuspecting person gets in it and
then he begins to get the gain. And the more gain he gets out of that system .
. . then when he sees the truth it’s a matter of giving up the gain.
“When you’re poor as Job’s
turkey and you don’t have a ministry, that’s one thing; you can be real brave.
But when you’ve got your life invested in something; you know, a pension plan, an
insurance policy . . .”
*****
“Hezekiah was a godly king with
faithful who wrote portions of the Word of God and was responsible in large
measure for much of the collecting together of it.
“We know from Isaiah 36:22 and
Isaiah 37:1 that it was during the reign of Hezekiah that Isaiah the prophet
prophesied.
“Isaiah, along with a great
number of other godly men, was in a situation where much of the Word of God was
being produced, and so there’s a great host of interest.
“From Proverbs 25:1, you see
Hezekiah has these men functioning in their job of copying and laying out and
collecting together the Scripture. Hezekiah has a guild of scribes; godly,
faithful men recognized by the crown who want see the Word prosper and
flourish. My point is there’s a faithful group of people even when the
priesthood is apostate.
*****
“David, for example, had his
very own scribe and II Samuel 8 refers to the official governmental position of
the scribe. I Kings 4 lists the scribes (plural) David’s boy Solomon had when
he set up his reign. They had the AUTHORIZED version, put it like that.
“By contrast, Jeremiah 8
reports, ‘How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo,
certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.’
“Jeremiah prophesies before the
Babylonian captivity hits and what he’s saying is, ‘You folks claim to be wise,
and you claim to know the Word of God, but if you’re so smart, and you know so
much about the Bible, why don’t you know judgment’s coming? I mean, even the
birds know the times, and the season’s change, and what’s going to go on, and
when it’s time to do this or that. If you guys are so cotton-picking smart,
well, why don’t you know the wrath of God’s fixing to fall on Israel? Why are
you standing up saying, [Peace and safety; nothing’s going to happen]’?
“Well,
if they’d known Deuteronomy 28-32, along in there, about all those curses, and
the things that are going to happen to the nation Israel, they’d have known God
Almighty was fixing to clean their plow to a fair thee well! But they didn’t.
“Notice he talks about the ‘pen
of the scribe.’ You know what he’s talking about? That’d be copies. They’ve got
copies of the law but they’re not heeding them. They reject them. Verse 9 says
‘they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?’ Now,
there’s a good verse to learn! They’ve rejected the Word, and, buddy, they
don’t have any wisdom!”
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