The Bible and the Books
While researching some historical background concerning the initial publication of Thomas B. Warren’s book, A Sun and Shield, I discovered another book that was published the same year (1963). The discovered book has a connection with the original publication of A Sun and Shield and is titled Christ, Our Contemporary—The Pepperdine Bible Lectures of August 1962 and March 1963.
In his preface to A Sun and Shield, Warren gave some details of the relationship between the two books. He wrote: “In the Fall of 1962, I received an invitation from Pepperdine College, Los Angeles, CA, to speak on the subject, ‘Christ, Our Contemporary in Suffering [and Death]’, during its Spring lectureship.” At the time, Thomas B. Warren was 42 years of age, and another book he authored was being released that same year (1962). The new book was Marriage is for Those Who Love God and One Another. In preparation for the Pepperdine assignment, Warren decided to prepare and deliver seven sermons on the general subject of human suffering. It was following this series of sermons and the lecture at Pepperdine that he said, “I decided to expand the material into a book.” Parts of seven decades in two different centuries have passed since the first printing of A Sun and Shield. It has been estimated that the book has been reprinted more than 25 times. This little book of some 100 pages has become a classic devotional volume on human suffering. I do not hesitate to recommend it to every person who reads this article.
The aforementioned book, Christ, Our Contemporary, includes what actually turned out to be a precursor to the monumental volume A Sun and Shield. However, it also includes 34 other writers who contributed to this historic lectureship book. Contributors included such names as Battsell Barrett Baxter, Gus Nichols, Jerry Jenkins, John Banister, Alan Highers, et al. The last lecture in Christ, Our Contemporary, is entitled “Vision for Forward Movement.” Written and delivered by the late Eldred Stevens, the lecture is a powerful biblical challenge for New Testament Christians to possess biblical vision. Stevens wrote, “Vision is a function of faith. It not only has conviction concerning the deity of an unseen Jesus Christ, and it not only has confidence concerning the unseen Heaven we hope for, but it also throbs with conviction and confidence concerning the great possibilities and challenges that lie before us in the realm of Christian service” (358)
I only heard Eldred Stevens preach one time. It was during my undergraduate studies at Harding College. I remember that he, during that time, was director of a school of preaching in Texas. He and three other faculty members of that school lost their lives in the crash of a private airplane in 1979. That tragedy must have resulted in a great loss to the church and the school where these good men of God were training other men to become gospel preachers (cf. 2 Timothy 2:2). Although Eldred Stevens is no longer on Earth, he still speaks much needed truth through the book Christ, Our Contemporary, published many years ago. He being dead yet speaks (cf. Hebrews 11:3). Stevens wrote, “[D]ivine truth was once delivered by special revelation (John 14:26; 16:13); now we have no special revelations, but we have precisely the same divine truth. In adequacy, accuracy, and power it is not one whit behind that of the first century . . . the light of divine revelation found in God’s holy book, the Bible. . . . [W]e do not receive direct divine revelations of religious truths today. However, the truths of divine revelation preserved for us in the Bible stir within our minds a consciousness of divine power and a realization of spectacular possibilities” (356-58). Remember the words written by Paul, the Lord’s apostle, who wrote, “You must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:14-17, NKJ).
Near the end of Paul’s letter to Timothy in which the preceding powerful affirmation of the inspiration and all-sufficiency of the Sacred Writings (the Bible) is located, the apostle also wrote, “Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come—and the books, especially the parchments” (4:13). F. F. Bruce, in his rich volume The Books and the Parchments, cites an interesting reference to this passage of Scripture from F. W. Newman’s Phases of Faith (1850). Newman said:
. . . I once said [to an Irish Bible teacher]: but do you really think that no part of the New Testament may have been temporary in its object? For instance, what should we have lost if St. Paul had never written the verse, “The cloak which I have left at Troas, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.” He answered with the greatest promptitude: “I should certainly have lost something; for that is exactly the verse which alone saved me from selling my little library. No! every word, depend upon it, is from the Spirit, and is for eternal service.” (Bruce 10)
Thank God for the Book of books (the Holy Bible) and good books that help us in our study of the Bible.