Friday, November 24, 2023

L. Harold DeWolf on Prophets Not Being Perfect Interpreters of the Scripture Revealed Through THem

  

Man of old who received and reported God’s revelations to them and to their people were, like us, sinful, fallible men. Consequently they often failed to grasp the whole meaning of God’s word to them. Later, when they set down in writing their reports of the revelations they had received, their expressions of their understanding—though often exalted and marvelous—were still human and sometimes ambiguous or even misleading. In view of these human limitations and sometimes ambiguous or even misleading. In view of these human limitations Jeremiha’s description of his own writing takes on deep significance, both concerning that book and concerning the Bible as a whole. He wrote “The words of Jeremiah. . . to whom the word of the LORD came” (Jer. 1:1-2). The Bible is literally the words of men seeking to express the word of God which had come to them. (L. Harold DeWolf, “The Word of God,” in The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible [Nashville: Abingdon, 1971], 995, in Van Hale, Mormon Miscellaneous Note Cards, 3 vols. [Sandy, Utah: Mormon Miscellaneous, 1985], 1:93)