The written word of God is reverenced for
its vital importance to the welfare of the Church of Jesus Christ, but it was
never intended as a means of eternal salvation. Jesus said, "Search the
scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which
testify of me." - John 5: 39. Jesus Christ is the Living Word, and our
salvation is wholly and completely in Him.
The Law was revealed by God through an
intermediary. The Angel of Jehovah delivered it to Moses who delivered the Law
to Israel. God revealed His will through an intermediary to the prophets in the
Holy Spirit. All revelation stands on the basis that it must be compared in
relation to the Law and the Testimony. If a prophet does not speak according
to the Law and the Testimony there is no light in him (Isa. 8:20). Thus the
revelation of the NT must stand in relation to the Law and the Prophecy of the
OT and must be interpretative of the OT, not contradictory to it. In the same
way the Qur’an to be inspired must be interpretative of the Bible canon and not
contradictory to it.
The Old Testament Books
The Old Testament "oracles of
God" were providentially committed to the Jewish, or Hebrew people (Romans
3: 1,2). The ancient Massoretes (students of Moses' law) devoted their lives to
perfection in preserving and copying the Old Testament books. The story of
their work is a marvelous testimony to God's preservation of His word to all
generations. There is very little controversy regarding the Hebrew text.
(History of the Bible Robert L. Webb)
The New Testament Books
About 5,000 copies of the Greek text of the
New Testament exist in safekeeping around the world. The great majority of
these are identical or almost identical to the "received text" (also
called "majority text, "textus receptus," or "Byzantine
text"). This text was used by the Waldenses, and was preserved by the true
church through the ages. The King James Version in the English language was
translated from this text. Currently published copies of the Greek "textus
receptus" are readily available to be purchased by the inquiring student
The Roman Catholic Inquisition was one of
the greatest disasters ever to befall mankind. In the name of Jesus Christ,
Catholic priests mounted an enormous effort to kill all "heretics" in
Europe and Britain. Heretics are defined whichever way Rome wanted it defined.
There was a period in history when the
Christian church did not permit the laity to have access to the Bible. Only the
clergy had this privilege. Translation of the Bible into modern languages was
expressly forbidden by the Catholic Church. During the early thirteenth
century, copies of the Bible in the German language were burned by the order of
Pop Innocent III. Several owners of the foreign Bible were imprisoned, whipped
and sent to the galleys by the Roman Catholic Inquisition.
Preservation of the Bible by the
Waldenses; they lived and died for their faith.
Located in the valleys of the Alps lived a
people who set themselves apart from the world, living out their faith according
to the Bible. They were beloved of God but hated by the world. These men and
women have since passed but their heroic faith will live on forever.
The Spirit of Christ is also the spirit of
missionary work, so it was with the Waldensians. They couldn’t just keep the
truth they had learned for themselves, but they felt compelled to share it with
others. And when the Bible was forbidden they copied it and taught their youth
the true teachings from “The School of Barba”, in Pra del Torno. In the Dark
Ages the Bible was reserved for the Catholic priests and was forbidden to copy
it. Despite risking their lives they rebelled against these prohibitions, and
they copied and smuggled out the Bible.
“The mountains that girded their lowly
valleys were a constant witness to God's creative power, and a never-failing
assurance of His protecting care. Those pilgrims learned to love the silent
symbols of Jehovah's presence. They indulged no repining because of the
hardships of their lot; they were never lonely amid the mountain solitudes.
They thanked God that He had provided for them an asylum from the wrath and
cruelty of men. They rejoiced in their freedom to worship before Him. Often
when pursued by their enemies, the strength of the hills proved a sure defense.
From many a lofty cliff they chanted the praise of God, and the armies of Rome
could not silence their songs of thanksgiving.” (Great Controversy”, Ellen G. White, p.66, 1911.)
Waldenses are traced back to the time of
the apostles. The name Waldenses means "men of the valleys". Known as
"people of the Book," scripture is what embodied the faith of the
Waldensians — they lived by it and died for it. They were tortured, exiled and
martyred, and still the faith that drove them from the Alpine Valleys of Italy to
the foothills of North Carolina survived. The Trail of Faith is their story —
each exhibit bearing witness to the journey that led them, from the time of the
apostles, one continent to another in search of religious freedom and a future
for their families.
The Waldenses believed the Bible was open
to interpretation by everyone and they took seriously the commission to share
the message into the entire world. For centuries, they sought to serve God,
sharing his love and spreading his Word. A peaceful people, they often found
themselves at war as they sought to be true to their faith. They worshiped in
secrecy for fear of being captured and killed, memorizing Scripture in
preparation of their Bibles being burned. More than once, rulers thought them
eradicated, but time after time, there arose a remnant to carry on.
“The Waldenses are remembered for their
great faith, doctrine, and way of living. The Waldensian way of life was
simple. Secluded from the influence of the world they could focus on living for
God and devote much time to study and missionary work. One great feat of the
Waldenses was their ability to memorize the entire New Testament and part of
the Old Testament. Not only did they memorize the New Testament but they were
instructed in Latin, Romane and Italian. Perhaps learning God’s Word by heart
and memory is what gave them their great courage and ability to live under the
persecutions they endured. They understood 2 Timothy 2:15 and took it to heart.
Without the influences of the world all they had was God and His Word”. (p. 3
Israel of the Alps)
There were many persecutions against the
Waldenses throughout the dark ages. On one account Pope Innocent III formed a
crusaded against the Waldenses in France in the year 1209. He was able to get
thousands in his crusade by promising forgiveness of sins. The crusade went on
for twenty years in which hundreds of thousands were brutally murdered and
tortured. They were thrown from cliffs, hanged, burned at the stake,
disemboweled, pierced through, drowned, torn by dogs, and crucified. In one
particular case 400 mothers with their babies took to the mountains and hid in
a cave. When the Catholic crusaders discovered them they set a large fire
outside the cave which suffocated all the refugees inside. (p.130-131 History
of the Churches)
No matter what the persecution the
Waldenses displayed great courage and faith in their Lord even unto death. One
man by the name Geoffrey Varaille whose father led a crusade and himself had
become a convert said this when his death sentence was announced to him,
"Be assured, messeigneurs, you will sooner want wood wherewith to burn us,
than ministers ready to burn in seal of their faith: from day to day they
multiply; and the word of God endureth forever." He was then burned on
March 29th 1558. (p.46-48 Israel of the Alps)
The Waldenses were hunted and killed for
several years during the Dark Ages. Religious suppression was their daily toil
for those who chose not to follow Catholicism. The Church was responsible for
deaths of more so-called ‘heretics’ than even the Roman Empire.
One example in France was when
approximately 70,000 Protestants were killed during a two month long massacre
arranged by the Catholic Church and King Ludwig XIV.
The massacre started on, ‘The Night of St.
Bartholomew’s’ signaled by the sounding of church bells. Protestants were
slaughtered in their bed, while the priesthood in Rome were jubilant.
The Waldenses of northern Italy were
foremost among the primitive Christians of Europe in their resistance to the
Papacy. They not only sustained the weight of Rome's oppression but they were
successful in retaining the torch of truth until the Reformation took it from
their hands and held it aloft to the world. Veritably they fulfilled the
prophecy of Revelation concerning the church which fled into the wilderness
where she hath a place prepared of God. Revelations 12: 6, 14. They rejected
the mysterious doctrines, the hierarchal priesthood and the worldly titles of
Rome, while they clung to the simplicity of the Bible.
It is interesting to trace back the
Waldensian Bible which Luther had before him when he translated the New
Testament. Luther used the Tepl Bible, named from Tepl, Bohemia. This Tepl
manuscript represented a translation of the Waldensian Bible into the German
which was spoken before the days of the Reformation. (Comba, Waldenses of
Italy, p. 191.) Of this remarkable manuscript, Comba says:
When the manuscript of Tepl appeared, the
attention of the learned was aroused by the fact that the text it presents
corresponds word for word with that of the first three editions of the ancient
German Bible. Then Louis Keller, an original writer, with the decided opinions
of a layman and versed in the history of the sects of the Middle Ages, declared
the Tepl manuscript to be Waldensian. Another writer, Hermann Haupt, who
belongs to the old Catholic party, supported his opinion vigorously. (Comba, p.
190.)
From Comba we also learn that the Tepl
manuscript has an origin different from the version adopted by the Church of
Rome; that it seems to agree rather with the Latin versions anterior to Jerome,
the author of the Vulgate; and that Luther followed it in his translation,
which is probably the reason why the Catholic church reproved Luther for
following the Waldenses. (Comba, p. 192.) Another peculiarity is its small
size, which seems to single it out as one of those little books which the
Waldensian evangelists carried with them hidden under their rough cloaks.
(Comba, p. 191, Note 679.) We have, therefore, an indication of how much the
Reformation under Luther as well as Luther's Bible owed to the Waldenses.
“. . . down through the centuries there
were only two streams of manuscripts. The first stream which carried the
Received Text in Hebrew and Greek, began with the Apostolic churches, and
reappearing at intervals down the Christian Era among enlightened believers,
was protected by the wisdom and scholarship of the pure church in her different
phases; by such as the church at Pella in Palestine where the Christians fled,
when in 70 A.D. the Romans destroyed Jerusalem; by the Syrian Church of Antioch
which produced eminent scholarship; by the Italic Church in northern Italy; and
also at the same time by the Gallic Church in southern France and by the Celtic
Church in Great Britain; by the pre-Waldensian, the Waldensian, and the
churches of the Reformation. This first stream appears, with very little
change, in the Protestant Bibles of many languages, and in English, in that
Bible known as the King James Version, the one which has been in use for three
hundred years in the English speaking world.
The second stream is a small one of a very
few MSS. These last manuscripts are represented: (a) In Greek:--The Vatican
MS., or Codex B, in the library at Rome; and the Sinaitic, or Codex Aleph, its
brother (in the Russian Museum in Moscow). (b) In Latin:--The Vulgate or Latin
Bible of Jerome. (c) In English:-- The Jesuit Bible of 1582, which later with
vast changes is seen in the Douay, or Catholic Bible. (d) In English again:--In
many modern Bibles which introduce practically all the Catholic readings of the
Latin Vulgate which were rejected by the Protestants of the Reformation; among
these, prominently, are the Revised Versions.”
(Our Authorized Version Vindicated, 1930, Benjamin G. Wilkinson --p. 12,
13)
But let us see what the Waldenses believed,
according to their own historian, Jean Leger. Wilkinson, page 32, says:
“This noble scholar of Waldensian blood was
the apostle of his people in the terrible massacres of 1655, and labored
intelligently to preserve their ancient records. His book, the General
History of the Evangelical Churches of the Piedmontese Valleys, published
in French in 1669, and called "scarce" in 1825, is the prized object
of scholarly searchers. It is my good fortune to have that very book before me.
Leger, when he calls (Robert) Olivetan's French Bible of 1535 "entire and
pure," says: "I say 'pure' because all the ancient exemplars, which
formerly were found among the Papists, were full of falsifications, which
caused Beza to say in his book on Illustrious Men, in the chapter on the
Vaudois, that one must confess it was by means of the Vaudois of the Valleys
that France today has the Bible in her own language. This godly man, Olivetan,
in the preface of his Bible, recognizes with thanks to God, that since the time
of the apostles, or their immediate successors, the torch of the gospel has
been lit among the Vaudois (or the dwellers in the Valleys of the Alps, two
terms which mean the same), and has never since been extinguished."
--Leger, General History of the Vaudois Churches, p. 165.
Wilkinson also shows (pp. 42-43) that
Erasmus recognized two parallel streams of Bibles:
THE
TWO PARALLEL STREAMS OF BIBLES
|
Apostles (Original)
|
Apostates (Corrupted
Originals)
|
|
Received Text (Greek)
|
Sinaiticus and
Vaticanus Bible (Greek)
|
|
Waldensian Bible
(Italic)
|
Vulgate (Latin). Church
of Rome's Bible.
|
|
Erasmus (Received Text
Restored)
|
Vaticanus (Greek).
|
|
Luther's Bible, Dutch,
French, Italian, etc.,(from Received Text).
|
French, Spanish, and
Italian (from Vulgate).
|
|
Tyndale (English) 1535
(from Received Text).
|
Rheims (English) from
Vulgate (Jesuit Bibleof 1582).
|
|
King James, 1611 (from
Received Text)
|
Oxford Movement.
Westcott & Hort (B and Aleph). American Revised 1901.
|
This should be sufficient to persuade the
reader not to regard these two streams of Bibles as equally pure or good.
Jesus said let your light so shine before
men so that they may see your good works and glorify God (Matt. 5:16). But the
world, mainly the Catholics hated the light (John 3:19). The Roman Catholics
made many false accusations against the Waldenses and attempted to destroy them
all. At the hands of the Roman Catholic crusades many Waldenses died a martyr’s
death. Jesus said I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. By looking at the aggressive spread of Roman Catholicism
and its heresies it would appear that the gates of hell did prevail against the
church. The Roman Catholics tried to extinguish the light that was shining from
the Alps. But God has kept His promise. He did not say there would be large
numbers (Matt. 7:13-14). The Waldenses of that time are gone from this world
but their light has not been put out, it still shines today.
Throughout the history there were honest
people called “the People of the Book” who saved the Word of God. They were
tortured, exiled and martyred, but still they kept their faith that they lived
by it and died for it. In 18th century we read about another honest
people who lived and dedicated their life for the truth of God. The Seventh -
day Adventist:
“…Elder Joseph Bates, Father Pierce, Elder
Edson, and others who were keen, noble, and true, were among those who, after
the passing of the time in 1844, searched for the truth as for hidden
treasure. I met with them, and we studied and prayed earnestly. Often we
remained together until late at night, and sometimes through the entire night,
praying for light and studying the word. Again and again these brethren came
together to study the Bible, in order that they might know its meaning, and be
prepared to teach it with power. When they came to the point in their study
where they said, “We can do nothing more,” the Spirit of the Lord would come
upon me, I would be taken off in vision, and a clear explanation of the
passages we had been studying would be given me, with instruction as to how we
were to labor and teach effectively. Thus light was given that helped us to
understand the scriptures in regard to Christ, His mission, and His priesthood.
A line of truth extending from that time to the time when we shall enter the
city of God, was made plain to me, and I gave to others the instruction that
the Lord had given me.” (White, Ellen G., “Special Testimonies,” Series B, No. 2, p. 57.)
“The past fifty years have not dimmed one
jot or principle of our faith as we received the great and wonderful evidences
that were made certain to us in 1844, after the passing of the time….Not a word
is changed or denied. That which the Holy Spirit testified to as truth after
the passing of the time, in our great disappointment, is the solid foundation
of truth. Pillars of truth were revealed, and we accepted the foundation
principles that have made us what we are--Seventh-day Adventists, keeping the
commandments of God and having the faith of Jesus.” {NYI, February 7, 1906 par. 4}
Even if the great majority of the
Christians went astray a portion of them stand for the right; they rehearse the
Signs of God all night long, they enjoin what is right and forbid what is
wrong, they are in the ranks of the righteous. The People of the Book are
on duty every time everywhere to protect the words of God.
