From Bondage to Liberty in Religion: A Spiritual Autobiography

by George T. Ashley

The Book of Revelation is admitted to be the most mysterious book in the whole Bible. By whom and when written are both unknown. Tradition and its internal content is the only evidence that the Apostle John wrote it, and this would apply to any other John as well. It is evident that the same person did not write it and the Fourth Gospel. It was unknown in the church until near the middle of the second century; tho it bears internal evidence of having been written before the fall of Jerusalem. Most of the early Church Fathers rejected it, but it got into the canon;—and is therefore divinely inspired!

My study of "Harman's Introduction of the Study of the Holy Scriptures" was here finished. I have elaborated somewhat on these studies for two reasons: First, because the results that these studies produced in me, that I shall presently sum up, were the results of the whole, rather than any particular part of it, except those portions which I have already specially noted. Second, I desire to arouse a similar spirit of study and investigation in my readers; and I thus give this outline of study in detail, as a sort of basis from or upon which to work.

I have already indicated in part my feelings at this time. I summed the whole thing up briefly. The one great question around which it all hinged was this: If the authorship of the books of the greater portion of the Old Testament are wholly unknown, as well as the dates when they were written, and the same is true of several of the books of the New Testament, how are we to know these same books are divinely inspired, the infallible truth, the word of God? This is a fair question and a reasonable one.

I had set out in earnest and good faith to find the proofs of inspiration, in which I had always believed, and only found them wanting. Add to this the manifold discrepancies and direct contradictions which I now began to discover running thru the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and I found them wholly irreconcilable with any idea of divine revelation and infallible truth.

I here recalled a small book I had read some years before on Inspiration,—the author I have forgotten,—but I remember the three leading reasons for the inspiration of the Bible which he gave, and which, with my limited knowledge at the time, seemed satisfactory. These were: Tradition, Necessity and Success. The tradition of the Jews as to the authenticity and inspiration of the books of the Old Testament: it was argued, that whatever may at this time be the limits of our knowledge concerning these books, the ancient Jewish Rabbis knew just what they were, and if they had not every one been the word of God, these Rabbis would have known it, and they never would have been in the canon. The same doctrine of tradition was applied to the Church Fathers concerning the books of the New Testament. But I had here learned that these Church Fathers were by no means agreed as to these books. I began to see now that the same argument might be applied with equal force to the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, or the Koran.

The argument from necessity was based upon the assumption that man in his fallen and sinful state was by nature wholly unable to discover anything about God, or the means of his redemption. Therefore a divine revelation was necessary to meet man's needs in this case; and the Bible meets this necessity. Therefore the Bible is a divine revelation. But I here recalled that the only evidence we have of man's original perfection and fall is in the Bible itself; and that this line of argument must ultimately drive us back to the mere assumption of the facts upon which this supposed "divine necessity" was based.

The argument based upon success was that Christ and Christianity were not only the fulfillment of Old Testament promise and prophecy; but that it never could have made the success in the world that it has if it had not been of divine origin, the result of divine revelation. I was prepared at this time to look with some favor on the argument drawn from "promise and prophecy"; but if success was a true test I wondered if the same argument would not apply with equal force to Buddhism, with a third more followers than Christianity, or to Mohammedanism with half as many in a much shorter time.

These arguments could satisfy me no longer, in the light of the new facts I had learned. But I was not yet ready to give up religion and Christianity. I began to look for some new basis of interpretation. I asked myself the questions: May not Christianity be substantially true after all? Is not man a sinner? And as such does he not need a Savior? Does not Christianity meet this necessity? Is not the Bible after all, tho of purely human origin as I now conceived, a valuable book? May we not yet find much valuable truth in it, tho neither inspired nor infallible? May not the "great plan of salvation" be true after all? Is it not of vital importance to know? But if the Bible in which we find it cannot be relied upon infallibly, how are we to know?

In thus questioning myself I took into consideration my own personal experiences, those emotional impressions and manifestation which I had always been taught were the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit on my life and consciousness. I could not deny them, nor get away from them. They were real. It was years later before I learned to interpret them from the scientific standpoint of psychology. I determined to take a new course—a course I had never taken before. I had heretofore taken my religion on authority. This authority had now failed. I determined to apply the test of reason, with a firm conviction that in doing so God would guide me aright. "If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine."

I may say just here that I have never yet met a person who undertook to defend the "Christian System," or doctrine of sin and salvation, from the standpoint of its own intrinsic reasonableness. The only manner in which reason has been applied to its defence is, that it is a reasonable deduction from the divine revelation upon which it is based; which revelation must be accepted as true without question or equivocation. To doubt is to be damned. In fact, its unreasonableness, from any natural human viewpoint, was quite freely admitted. But it was argued that man in his fallen state was quite incapable of perceiving, or understanding, any of the great mysteries of God. "Great is the mystery of Godliness" was often quoted to me; as well as, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," saith Jehovah. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." This was the court of last resort and must be accepted, and to ask further questions was to blaspheme.