The Live Forever book, on pg 47, contains the following line of reasoning:
HAS JEHOVAH GOD given us information about himself? Has he told us what he has done and what he yet purposes to do? A father who loves his children tells them many things. And from what we have seen, Jehovah is indeed a loving father.The Knowledge book, typically, truncates this reasoning to a single statement:How could Jehovah give information to humans living in many parts of the earth and in different periods of time? A fine way would be for him to have a book written and then see to it that it was made available to all.
IT IS only reasonable that our Creator would provide a book of instruction and guidance for mankind.This always made sense to me. After all, if Jehovah's message to man was given to a particular individual, it would be lost in some degree for future generations. For some reason i never thought the reasoning through to its now obvious conclusion, a book is not the best way for god to communicate with man.
The analogy is made to a human father who 'tells his children many things.' Naturally, we expect a father to tell his children things directly rather than in written form. For one, he has fewer children than god would. And he is normally in direct contact with them. But what if he had an enormous number of children, or his children moved far away, or he wanted to leave a message to his future generations of children. Then maybe, he would write his instructions down, just as god apparently decided to do. Fair enough. It's not the best approach to education but it would be the best he could do under these circumstances.
But its not the best GOD could do! We are told that he is the hearer of prayer, incredibly, able to hear and process the prayers of millions of people in several languages, simultaneously, for no feat is too great for god. So why would he be limited like our human example and need to have the information written down when the flow of communication is going the other way? Why couldnt he communicate with all his children directly and simultaneously the same way, not in words but in pure thought? What an incredible experience that would be. (And im not particularly looking forward to hearing from those of you that think he DOES talk to you this way.) If you were the human father whose children moved far away, and you had the ability of telepathic communication, wouldnt you favor that over writing one letter to all your children?
Of course, i suppose one common theological answer is that we are poor pitiful fallen man, and god cannot lower himself to speak directly with us. Nonsense. he spoke to many people directly according to the bible. We are supposed to be able to speak directly to him by the grace of christ. Why shouldnt it work the other way? Was he incapable of coming up with a method to talk to us directly?
Once the truth is expressed, it is diluted. This is a simple fact of language. Whatever you are trying to express becomes locked in the biases of the language and cultural filters of the person expressing it AND the person reading it. Just the sheer number of people, and the many years of manpower spent by them trying to discern exactly what god meant in any particular passage of the bible should make it obvious that this was not the best choice for a communications medium. For many reasons besides this, the bible cannot be gods message to mankind.
mox
