Holy Holy Holy!

 

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!


Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.


Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,

Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.


Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

 

 

Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as parables of life. The wicked and proud tremble at its warnings, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice. It has woven itself into our dearest dreams; so that love, friendship, sympathy, devotion, memory, hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens, and the trembling pilgrim comes to the Valley named of the Shadow, he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, 'Goodbye; we shall meet again;', and, confronted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who walks through darkness into light.

   Henry Van Dyke  

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 He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all… Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.

 Samuel Adams "American Independence," August 1, 1776. Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia]

 

 It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible.

George Washington

 

The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.  

 Patrick Henry

 

I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world.  It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.

 John Adams, December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson

 

 

    Adams wrote a series of letters to his son on "The Bible and its Teachings" which were published in the New York Tribune, in which he stated:

 I have myself for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year. I have always endeavored to read it with the same spirit and temper of mind which I now recommend to you; that is, with the intention and desire that it contribute to my advancement in wisdom and virtue ... My custom is, to read four or five chapters every morning, immediately after rising form my bed. It employs about an hour of my time, and seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day.

John Quincy Adams

 

Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience. 

James McHenry, Signer of the Constitution

 

 With what book has so much fault been found, as with the Bible?  Perhaps, principally, because it so clearly and strongly enjoins men to do right.  How many, how plausible objections have been made against it, with how much ardor, with how much pains?  Yet the book has done more good than all the books in the world; would do much more, if duly regarded; and might lead the objectors against it to happiness, if they would value it as they should. 

John Dickinson, "Letters of Fabius" #4, 1788

 

Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience.

James McHenry Signer of the Constitution
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    After the death of Solomon and the division of Israel, the Scriptures were suppressed by many of the inferior kings.  It was King Josiah (II Kings 22&23) who lead his people in a revival and made known the Scriptures which he read to them in the temple.  The scrolls he read from were carried away and survived their seventy years of captivity in Babylon.

    When the Jewish exiles returned to their land in 536 BC, Ezra, the priest and scribe, gathered together all scrolls he could find and made them into one complete work.  Most Bible scholars persuade that Ezra, motivated by the direction of God, made additions and updates to the scrolls as he worked on connecting them into one edition.  He divided the one complete work into three sections: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings.

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The 66 books of the Bible, although penned by 40 authors over several thousand years, are an integrated message system. 


"The period between the Babylonian bondage and the times of the Great Synagogue during Ezra and Nehemiah (400 BC), appears as the conclusive stage of transcription of the Old Testament’s “canonical” books. The main protagonist in this enormous effort was the priest Ezra, the holy teacher of God’s laws (Ezra 7:12) In collaboration with the learned Nehemiah (creator of an extensive library), Ezra gathered “Reports in the writings and commentaries of Nehemiah; and how he, founding of the library, gathered together the acts of the kings, the prophets, of David, and the epistles of the kings concerning the holy gifts” (2 Mac. 2:13). He assiduously examined all prior God-inspired writings and published them in one arrangement, including the book of Nehemiah as well as his book, under his own name. As the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi were living in this era they, apart from undoubtedly assisting Ezra in his efforts, had their own books included in his writings. After Ezra, the Jewish people did not receive any more God-inspired prophets and consequently, all the writings that appeared from that point on, were not included as holy books."  http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/bible1_e.htm

Missionary Leaflet # E11
Copyright © 2000 and Published by
Holy Protection Russian Orthodox Church
2049 Argyle Ave. Los Angeles, California 90068
Editor: Bishop Alexander (Mileant)
 

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   The Jews combined several related books--such as I and II Samuel into Samuel, I and II Kings into Kings, and I and II Chronicles into Chronicles. They also joined Judges and Ruth, Ezra and Nehemiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations, and the twelve Minor Prophets.  Apparently, the Jews combined these books to reduce the number of scrolls in the Hebrew scriptures to twenty two, which is also the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Although the number of books in our Old Testament and their arrangement today has changed from ancient times, the text itself has not changed...not one letter, not one jot or tittle... from the Hebrew Bible.

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"About A.D. 1248 Cardinal Hugo de Santo Care, while preparing an index to the whole Bible, divided it into its present chapters, subdividing these into several parts by placing the letters A, B, C, D etc. in the margin at equal distances from each other. These divisions were later introduced into many printed editions such as Stephens' Greek New Testament of 1550, still without verse numbers.

Cardinal Hugo's divisions were used in many manuscript copies of the Latin Vulgate, and gradually found a place also in later Greek manuscripts written in Western Europe, and in the earliest printed and all later editions of the Greek New Testament.

The divisions made by Hugo with the letters of the alphabet, and those adopted by Pagninus in his Latin Bible of 1528, were inconveniently large, and Robert Estienne (better known to us as Stephens) introduced a system of numbered verse divisions in his Greek New Testament published at Geneva in 1551. For this he used as his model the short verses into which the Hebrew Bible had been divided by Rabbi Nathan in 1508, first printed in Venice in 1524. Henry Stephens, Robert's father, had introduced verse numbers in his 1509 edition of the Psalms."   http://www.holybible.com/resources/Trinitarian/article_462_5.htm    

For more information write to:
Trinitarian Bible Society
Tyndale House, Dorset Road
London, SW19 3NN, England
Telephone: 0 181 543 7857

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"A startling example of the accuracy of the Jewish scribes in copying and caring for their beloved Scriptures is the scroll of Isaiah, discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the late 1940's.  The date of this Scroll of Isaiah has been fixed at 200 B.C., while the earliest Isaiah manuscript we had known about before this discovery is dated A.D. 900!  Though 1,100 years separated the two manuscripts, they were virtually identical when compared with each other!"  Hal Lindsey, There's a New World Coming, (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1984) pg. 102

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls

    During the first Jewish revolt of AD 66 to 70, scrolls were hidden by the Jews as the Roman army advanced against them.  They were not discovered until 1947 in caves along the shore of the Dead Sea 13 miles east of Jerusalem.  Fragments of every* book of the Old Testament have been discovered.        *exception Esther

    The scrolls have tested and proven to be written from about 200 BC to AD 68.  Isaiah with its prophecies about the Messiah is dated to at least 100 BC.

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Isaiah 52:13--53:12

     Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.   As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:   So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.  

    Who hath believed our report?  and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:  yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
 All we like sheep have gone astray;  we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,  and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living:  for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors: and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

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  http://www.rae.org/bibref.html    "....the Bible has been shown to be historically reliable, and that its supposed "contradictions" can be explained. The discoveries of archeology and the preserved writings of various pagan historians mostly agree with it. Any remaining discrepancies are something apt even by secular standards to be resolved in the Bible's favor in the future, as Jericho's case shows. The Bible's text can be determined to be reliable, as the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries indicate..........Since the Bible is reliable in what can be checked, it's a perfectly rational inference (by induction) that what can't be checked (its specific miracles) did happen or is true. The majesty of Christian ethics, such as shown by its superior definition of love compared to Plato's dialog Symposium, is so different from the run of pagan Roman mystery religions! Higher critics, especially liberal Christians who don't believe Jesus was God and the Savior of humanity, have to face the implications of the great trilemma. They should explain who and what Jesus was --if He wasn't the Lord, He had to be a deceiver or a madman --and give the evidence from the pages of the New Testament for their choice. Higher critics should reply to the standard conservative/fundamentalist Christian scholarship, something which Bill Moyers' series on the Book of Genesis on PBS intentionally omitted. Judging from their poor track record over the past 150 years, it's time to be more skeptical of the skeptics themselves. Time and again, the skeptics' claims against the Bible have been proven false; Why should you believe in them instead of it? It's time to be open- minded towards, and accept, the Bible as the word of God."     

Below paragraphs excerpted from site Biblical Archaeology:  http://www.northforest.com/archaeology/index.html, year 2002

"Since there was so little archeological evidence in Palestine in comparison with the ancient palaces, temples and tombs in Egypt it was natural that there would be attempts to cross-reference discoveries in Egypt with the biblical history. The first premise of ancient world chronology was that Ramesses II was the Pharaoh of the Oppression in whose time the Israelites were under the lash of slavery in Egypt.  The second premise was that Shoshenk I should be identified with the biblical Shishak, king of Egypt. [1 Ki 14:25-26]  But this identification was based only on the name similarity.

Further archaeological discoveries were then fit into this chronological framework and this became the conventional chronology. However, as more discoveries were made in the 1900's it became clear the the biblical narrative did not match the conventional chronology. As a result, scholars and historians concluded that the Old Testament stories are a fictional composition written in the second century BC and that it would be a complete waste of time for anyone to attempt to confirm those stories through archaeology. They declared that the Old Testament has no value as an historical source.

Archaeologist David Rohl, in looking in detail at the assembled jigsaw which Professor Kenneth Kitchen presented in his book "The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt" (TIP), began to find pieces which simply did not fit together (other researchers were coming to similar conclusions). David also discovered a number of fundamental assumptions aClick To Downloadbout the structure of the TIP which, in his view, were not based on sound historical methods.  The evidence suggested that the time-span of the orthodox chronology was far too long.

In his book, David Rohl demonstrates that when the key archaeological links are corrected that the biblical text is factual, trustworthy and true. When David referred directly to the archaeological evidence without being burdened with the assumptions of the conventional chronology he discovered that there is a framework which produced clear links between the Bible and archaeology.  All events and persons described in his book then fit neatly into the timeframes readily accepted by evangelical scholars.

David's conclusion is that the narratives contained in the Old Testament are consistent with the general cultural setting revealed through Egyptian and Levantine archaeology -- once the correct chronology is applied."

Example:

"A fragment of a tablet found at Tell Dan in Israel mentions the House of David. It is dated to the 9th century BC. This does not sit well with the thesis that the Early Israelite Monarchy period is nothing more than myth and legend." -pg 34 of Pharaohs and Kings by D. Rohl.


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glueck052699  Dr. Nelson Glueck, internationally renown for his excavations, has reported that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a single biblical statement when properly understood. "To me, arc
Click To Downloadhaeology is like burning the mist off the Bible."

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    "In case after case where alleged historical inaccuracy was pointed to as proof of late and spurious authorship of the biblical documents, the Hebrew record has been vindicated by the results of recent excavation, and the scornful judgments of the documentarian theorists have been proved without foundation."
    Gleason L. Archer, Jr., A Survey Of Old Testament Introduction, Translated from the French by Ruby Miller (Chicago: Moody Bible Institute, 1974)

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    "Besides a clear presentation of atonement and judgment, behind the text are encrypted, in equidistant letter sequences: Yeshua's my name; Messiah; Nazarene; Galilee; Pharisee; Levites; Caiaphas; Annas; Passover; Moriah; the Cross; Pierce; the Atonement Lamb; etc. These, plus the names of everyone at the Cross--Peter; Matthew; John; Andrew; Philip; Thomas; two James's; Simon; Thaddeus; Matthias; and three Marys (one of which is cryptically linked with John); Salome--are all encrypted within the twelve verses of Isaiah 53."   Dr. Chuck Missler, Learn the Bible in 24 Hours, (Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 2002), pg. 128

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ARCHAEOLOGY:   "The heart cannot delight in what the mind rejects as false." 'Nowhere is the spate of evidence more compelling toward verifying the credibility of the Bible than in the scientific discipline of archaeology. Had the learned evolution proponents been right in their testimony before the Scopes Trial Court in 1925, sixty years of intensive world-wide archeological investigation surely would have borne irrefutable proof. However, the very opposite has been true. The discoveries of archaeologists have not in a single instance shown the Bible to be in error at any point. Rather, the digging of archaeologists has piled evidence on top of evidence proving the historical accuracy of the Bible!'  http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v11n3p25.htm  

"There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of Old Testament tradition."'William F. Albright (1891–1971), one of the world's most respected archaeologists.

“As a matter of fact, however, it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. They form tesserae in the vast mosaic of the Bible’s almost incredibly correct historical memory.

The whereabouts of Solomon’s long-lost port city of Ezion-geber was for centuries an unfathomable mystery, because no one paid attention to the Biblical statement that it was located “beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom” (I Kings 9:26; 10:22). And that is exactly where we found it, in the form of the small, sanded-over mound of Tell el-Kheleifeh on the north shore of the Gulf of Aqabah, which is the eastern arm of the Red Sea. Memory of its location had been snuffed out like the flame of a gutted candle.

Assuming, however, as we did, that the Biblical statement was literally correct, it was not too difficult to rediscover it. Previous explorations had convinced us that the line of the present seashore had changed little since Biblical times, and that the land of Edom did indeed reach that far south, and also that the Nabataean=Byzantine site of Aila near Aqabah must be on or close to the site of ancient Elath. From that point on, there was little more to do than to stroll along the seashore and examine the only little tell there …

In a similar manner, our discovery of Solomon’s copper and iron mines in the Arabah rift north of Ezion-geber verified completely the sometimes questioned description of the Promised Land as being in part a land “whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper” (Deuteronomy 8:9). On the basis of that information, whose reliability we accepted as a matter of course, and acting on a “hunch” as to where to look, we were able to locate the ancient mines and furnaces and slag heaps and establish their dates by pottery finds.”

(Glueck, Nelson, Rivers in the Desert, New York: Grove Press, 1959, pp. 31-32.)

 

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         In 1812, President Madison signed a federal bill which economically aided the Bible Society of Philadelphia in its goal of the mass distribution of the Bible.    An Act for the relief of the Bible Society of Philadelphia” Approved February 2, 1813 by Congress.
  
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         AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY  1816 Founding of the American Bible Society in New York City.  Elias Boudinot was elected its first president.  JONAS GALUSHA (Governor of Vermont) was original Officer of the American Bible Society.  John Adams served as its chairman at one point.  1821 John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was elected president of the American Bible Society   "We have now, it Seems a National Bible Society, to propagate King James's Bible, through all Nations. Would it not be better to apply these pious Subscriptions, to purify Christendom from the Corruptions of Christianity; than to propagate those Corruptions in Europe Asia, Africa and America! ... Conclude not from all this, that I have renounced the Christian religion, or that I agree with Dupuis in all his Sentiments. Far from it. I see in every Page, Something to recommend Christianity in its Purity and Something to discredit its Corruptions. ... The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my Religion."
Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1816-11-04) from John Adams

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     Elias Boudinot descended from a French Huguenot family which left France to settle in New York in 1685.  Elias was sent to a school established by Benjamin Franklin, who was also his next door neighbor until his father was appointed postmaster at Princeton.  There he studied law in the office of Richard Stockton.

    He was a member of the New Jersey Provincial Congress and in 1777 was commissioned by George Washington as commissary-general of prisoners of war.  He was on the Continental Congress from 1777-1784 acting on occasion as president and as secretary for foreign affairs.

    Among public organizations, he was president of the New Jersey Bible Society, president of the American Bible Society, and a trustee of Princeton College.  The ten thousand dollar gift made by Dr. Boudinot essentially enabled the formation and early organization of the American Bible Society.

    Dr Boudinot had an unwavering faith that God had called the men of the Society to the work of making bibles available in America.  In his letter accepting the office of President, which he esteemed “the greatest honor that could have been conferred upon him on this side of the grave,” he wrote:

     I am so convinced that the whole of this business is the work of God himself, by his Holy Spirit, that even hoping against hope I am encouraged to press on through good report and evil report, to accomplish his will on earth as it is in heaven. So apparent is the hand of God in this disposing the hearts of so many men, so diversified in their sentiments as to religious matters of minor importance, and uniting them as a band of brothers in this grand object that even infidels are compelled to say, ‘It is the work of the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes!’ Having this confidence, let us go on and we shall prosper.

    A memorial tablet honoring Elias Boudinot's service to Princeton University is placed in Nassau Hall.

By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral subjects...It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published.  Benjamin Rush

The Bible is a window in this prison-world, through which we may look into eternity.  TIMOTHY DWIGHT
American theologian, scholar, and author  1752 - 1817