# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1860_S230
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

230 Instruction Against Doubt of the Divine Word and Its Truth.

...were taught. Whoever, therefore, wished to contradict this and to deny that the holy Bible is God's Word would thereby reject and condemn — so far as it lies in him — the whole believing Church of all the saints back to Adam, the first man, which, however, no one can do with any ground or truth; the holy Scripture therefore is and remains God's Word and truth.

Fourthly, this is confirmed by all the heretics in the Church, who, all of them together, whatever names they have ever had or still bear, have acknowledged this holy book, the Bible, as God's Word and truth, and have never contradicted it in this respect — a fact sufficiently well known and needing no lengthy demonstration. Would it not then be an altogether monstrous thing, that in this one particular an otherwise orthodox Christian should cut off more from the holy Word of God, and turn against it more, than the crude heretics of the Church did in their day?

Fifthly, and this is even more, it is confirmed also by Jews, Turks, and other heathen outside the Church. Behold, the Jews stand as far apart from us Christians in faith and matters of faith as heaven and hell may stand from one another; nevertheless they confess, first of all, Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms to be the holy Word of God, and it never enters their minds to think otherwise of it, still less to speak otherwise of it, and this is beyond all dispute. Further, concerning the New Testament and the Lord Messiah, they confess as follows: Josephus, an honest historian of the Jews, in his 18th book of the Ancient History of the Jews, chapter 4, records concerning this: There lived at that time Jesus, a very wise man, if indeed it is fitting to call him a man, for he did many wondrous works, and was a teacher of those who gladly received the truth, and had very many followers, both from among the Jews and the heathen. This was the Christ, whom, on the accusation of the foremost men of our people, Pilate afterward condemned to the cross. Yet those who had first begun to love him did not fall away from him at all, for he appeared to them again alive on the third day, just as the prophets, by divine inspiration, had foretold both this and many other wonderful things concerning him; and the race of Christians, so named after him, endures even to this day. Likewise, an old distinguished writer of the Jews, Philo, writes: In the days of Herod, a rumor arose that the Messiah had been born, by which the tyrant, moved by this, caused even his own son — whom a Hebrew woman had borne to him — to be put to death among the small, innocent children. The Turks confess that the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments was given to us from heaven, and state expressly in their Koran that Moses and Jesus Christ, as undoubted prophets, taught the way of God. Moreover, other heathen and their writers have likewise confirmed the truth of this holy Word, in that they described many biblical matters in their books, just as Moses had in his