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Sir Robert Anderson (1841-1918) was Head of the Criminal Investigative Division of Scotland Yard and a keen biblical apologist. He wrote 17 books in defense of God's Word, some of which are still in print. Perhaps his most famous work is The Coming Prince, wherein he defends the integrity of the book of Daniel against the heretics of his day, such as S.R. Driver. His sequel to this work is Daniel In The Critic's Den, in which he continues his assault against the heretics and rationalists. Both books are still considered as two of the all-time classic defenses of Daniel, and both demonstrate Anderson's skill as an apologete, as well as his zeal as a Christian. |
"In the Revised Version of the New Testament, textual criticism has done its worst. It is inconceivable that it will ever again be allowed to run riot as in the work of the Revisers of 1881." The Bible And Modern Criticism (from Which Version, p 119) |
"The question at issue between the majority of the Revisers, who followed Doctors Hort and Westcott, and the very able and weighty minority led by Dr. Scrivener, the most capable and eminent textual critic of the whole company, was one with which every lawyer is familiar, but of which the Revisers may have had no experience, and with which they were not competent to deal." The Bible And Modern Criticism (from Which Version, p 120) |
Acts 13:20 - "But here, in accordance with their usual practice, and in neglect of the principles by which experts are guided in dealing with conflicting evidence, the Revisers [Westcott & Hort] slavishly followed certain of the oldest MSS. And the effect on this passage is disastrous." The Coming Prince, p xvi |
"Christianity rests upon the Incarnation, and if the Gospels be not inspired, the Incarnation is a myth." The Coming Prince, p lvi |
"If the authority of the Scriptures be unshaken, vital truths may be lost by one generation, and recovered by the next; but if that be touched, the foundation of all truth is undermined, and all power of recovery is gone... Is the Bible a revelation from God? This is now become the greatest and most pressing of all questions. We may at once dismiss the quibble that the Scriptures admittedly contain a revelation. Is the sacred volume no better than a lottery bag from which blanks and prizes are to be drawn at random, with no power of distinguishing between them till the day when the discovery must come too late!... We refuse to surrender Holy Writ to the tender mercies of those who approach it with the ignorance of pagans and the animus of apostates." The Coming Prince, p 9 |
"The language of the Scripture is unequivocal that the power of the testimony to produce this change (the new birth) depended on the presence and operation of God... And if the new birth and the faith of Christianity were thus produced in the case of persons who received the Gospel immediately from the Apostles, nothing less will avail with us who are separated by eighteen centuries from the witnesses and their testimony. God is with His people still. And He speaks to men's hearts, now, as really as He did in early times; not indeed through inspired Apostles, and still less by dreams and visions, but through the Holy Writings which He Himself inspired; and as the result believers are born of God, and obtain the knowledge of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. The phenomenon is not a natural one, resulting from the study of the evidences; it is supernatural altogether. Thinking minds, regarding it objectively, may, if they please, maintain towards it what they deem 'a rational attitude'; but at least let them own the fact that there are thousands of credible people who can testify to the reality of the experience here spoken of, and further let them recognize that it is entirely in accordance with the teachings of the New Testament." The Coming Prince, p 13-14 |
"The Bible is far more than a textbook of theology and morals, or even than a guide to heaven. It is the record of the progressive revelation God has vouchsafed to man, and the Divine history of our race in connection with that revelation. Ignorance may fail to see in it anything more than the religious literature of the Hebrew race, and of the Church in Apostolic times; but the intelligent student who can read between the lines will find there mapped out, sometimes in clear bold outline, sometimes dimly, but yet always discernible by the patient and devout inquirer, the great scheme of God's counsels and workings in and for this world of ours from eternity to eternity." The Coming Prince, p 15 |
"As men now judge of revelation, Christianity dwindles down to be nothing but a 'plan of salvation' for individuals, and if St. John's Gospel and a few of the Epistles be left them they are content. How different was the attitude of mind and heart displayed by St. Paul!... Skeptics may boast of learned Professors and Doctors of Divinity among their ranks, but we may challenge them to name a single one of their number who has given proof that he knows anything whatever of these deeper mysteries of revelation." The Coming Prince, p 17 |
"When David reached the throne of Israel and came to choose his generals, he named for the chief commands the men who had made themselves conspicuous by feats of prowess or of valour. Among the foremost three was one of whom the record states that he defended a tract of lentiles, and drove away a troop of Philistines. To others it may have seemed little better than a patch of weeds, and not worth fighting for, but it was precious to the Israelite as a portion of the divinely-given inheritance, and moreover the enemy might have used it as a rallying ground from which to capture strongholds. So it is with the Bible. It is all of intrinsic value if indeed it be from God; and moreover, the statement which is assailed, and which may seem of no importance, may prove to be a link in the chain of truth on which we are depending for eternal life." The Coming Prince, p 18 |
"But though monarchs seem to owe their thrones to dynastic claims, the sword or the ballot-box -- and in their individual capacity their title may rest solely upon these -- the power they wield is divinely delegated, for 'the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will.'" The Coming Prince, p 41 |
"It is legitimate to inquire how the believing Jew, intelligent in the prophecies, could have expected the kingdom [to come immediately], seeing that the tenfold division of the Roman empire and the rise of the 'little horn' had to take place first. The difficulty will disappear if we notice how suddenly the Grecian empire was dismembered on Alexander's death. In like manner, the death of Tiberius might have led to the immediate disruption of the territories of Rome, and the rise of the predicted persecutor. In a word, all that remained unfulfilled of Daniel's prophecy might have been fulfilled in the years which had still to run of the seventy weeks." The Coming Prince, p 48 |
"The writings of Daniel have been more the object of hostile criticism than any other portion of the Scripture, and the closing verses of the ninth chapter have always been a principal point of attack. And necessarily so, for if that single passage can be proved to be a prophecy, it establishes the character of the book as a Divine revelation... The prophecy has suffered nothing from the attacks of its assailants, but much at the hands of its friends. No elaborate argument would be necessary to elucidate its meaning, were it not for the difficulties raised by Christian expositors. If everything that Christian writers have written on the subject could be wiped out and forgotten, the fulfillment of the vision, so far as it has been in fact fulfilled, would be clear upon the open page of history." The Coming Prince, p 120 |
"There is, indeed, in our day a spurious liberality that would teach us to forego the indictment which history affords against the Church of Rome... They do good service, therefore, who keep before the public mind the real character of Rome as the present day development of the apostasy... the Church of Rome displays the chief moral lineaments of the Man of Sin." The Coming Prince, p 133-134 |
"There is not a single prophecy, of which the fulfillment is recorded in Scripture, that was not realized with absolute accuracy, and in every detail; and it is wholly unjustifiable to assume that a new system of fulfillment was inaugurated after the sacred canon closed... these prophecies of the advent and death of Christ received their fulfillment in every jot and tittle of them. Literalness of fulfillment may therefore be accepted as an axiom to guide us in the study of prophecy." The Coming Prince, p 147-148 |
"These Scriptures again most clearly prove that it is His believing people who shall be 'caught up', leaving the world to run its course to its destined doom; while other Scriptures as unequivocally teach that it is not His people but the wicked who are to be weeded out, leaving the righteous 'to shine forth in the kingdom of their Father'... These difficulties admit of only one solution, a solution as satisfactory as it is simple; namely, that what we term the second advent of Christ is not a single event, but includes several distinct manifestations. At the first of these He will call up to Himself the righteous dead, together with His own people then living upon earth. With event this special day of grace will cease, and God will again revert to the covenants and the promises, and that people to whom the covenants and promises belong will once more become the center of Divine action toward mankind... The sufferings of Christ and the glories which should follow were foretold in such a way that superficial reader of the old Scriptures would have failed to discover that there were to be two advents of Messiah. And even the careful student, if unversed in the general scheme of prophecy, might have supposed that the two advents, though morally distinct, should be intimately connected in time. So it is with the future. Some regard the second advent as a single event; by others its true character is recognized, but they fail to mark the interval must separate its first from its final stage. An intelligent apprehension of the truth respecting it is essential to the right understanding of unfulfilled prophecy." The Coming Prince, p 154-157 |
"It must be clearly recognized that in the twenty-fourth of Matthew, as in the book of Daniel, Jerusalem is the center of the scene to which the prophecy relates; and this of necessity implies that the Jews shall have been restored to Palestine before the time of its fulfillment... Israel's history has yet to be completed; and when that nation comes again upon the scene, the element of miraculous interpositions will mark once more the course of events on earth... Judah shall again become a nation, Jerusalem shall be restored, and that temple shall be built in which the 'abomination of desolation' is to stand." The Coming Prince, p 165-170 |
"Fitness for dealing with evidence depends upon qualities to which Hebraists, as such, have no special claim. Indeed, their writings afford signal proofs of their unfitness for inquiries which they insist on regarding as their special preserve." Christ And Criticism |
"As critics they brand the Pentateuch as a tissue of myth and legend and fraud, but as religionists they assure us that this implies no denial of its inspiration or disparagement of its contents... To characterize the writings of these scholars as they deserve is not a grateful task, but the time has come to throw off reserve when such drivel as this is gravely put forward to induce us to tear from our Bible the Holy Scriptures on which our Divine Lord based His claims to Messiahship." Christ And Criticism |
"The fact that sacrifice prevailed among all races can be explained only by a primeval revelation. And the Bible student will recognize that God thus sought to impress on men that death was the penalty of sin, and to lead them to look forward to a great blood shedding that would bring life and blessing to mankind. But Babylon was to the ancient world what Rome has been to Christendom. It corrupted every divine ordinance and truth, and perpetuated them as thus corrupted. And in the Pentateuch we have the divine re-issue of the true cult. The figment that the debased and corrupt version was the original may satisfy some professors of Hebrew, but no one who has any practical knowledge of human nature would entertain it." Christ And Criticism |
"The only foundation for the "assured results of modern criticism," as they themselves acknowledge, consists of "grounds of probability" and "plausible arguments"! In no civilized country would an habitual criminal be convicted of petty larceny on such evidence as this; and yet it is on these grounds that we are called upon to give up the sacred books which our Divine Lord accredited as the Word of God and made the basis of His doctrinal teaching." Christ And Criticism |
"To deny that the Spirit of God could thus communicate truth to men, or, in other words, to reject verbal inspiration on a priori grounds, betrays the stupidity of systematized unbelief... It is amazing that any one who regards the coming of Christ as God's supreme revelation of Himself can imagine that (to put it on no higher ground than Providence) the Divine Spirit could fail to ensure that mankind should have a trustworthy and true record of His mission and His teaching." Christ And Criticism |
"The dethronement of the Bible leads practically to the dethronement of God; and in Germany and America, and now in England, the effects of this are declaring themselves in ways, and to an extent, well fitted to cause anxiety for the future." Christ And Criticism |
"Spiritual discernment and ordinary intelligence are needed in the study of Holy Scripture. Spirituality is the prime essential, for spiritual truths are spiritually discerned; but common sense, to use the popular phrase, will generally save us from the follies of false exegesis. And false exegesis, I repeat, affords a vantage-ground for skeptical attacks on Scripture." Forgotten Truths |
"The great birth in Bethlehem heralded the fulfillment of all that God had promised of blessing to the world." Forgotten Truths |
"This spiritualizing, as it is called, of the Hebrew Scriptures has given the Jew a fair ground for rejecting the Christian's appeal to the Messianic prophecies... Let us then be done with it once for all; and rejecting absolutely the popular canon of exegesis, that Holy Scripture never says what it means, and never means what it says, let us learn with humility and reverence to accept all the Divine words at their face value... Remembering, then, that these Scriptures are the Word of Him with whom both the past and the future are a living present, let us read them with the settled conviction that every promise, and every prophecy, relating to earth and the earthly people must be fulfilled as definitely as were the seemingly unbelievable prophecies and promises about the birth and death of Christ." Forgotten Truths |
"The writings of the Latin Fathers afford a vantage-ground both for Romish attacks upon the citadel of Divine truth, and for the insidious efforts of German skepticism to undermine its very foundations." Forgotten Truths |
"Blessing for Gentiles is not a New Testament truth. It was assured by the promise to Abraham, and explicitly foretold in Hebrew prophecy." Forgotten Truths |
"The moral government of the world is not in abeyance, and men reap what they sow; but all direct punitive action against sin awaits the day of judgment. For in virtue of the Cross of Christ the throne of God has become a throne of grace. And the silence of heaven will be unbroken until the Lord Jesus passes to the throne of judgment." Forgotten Truths |