Thinking Above What is Written. I. M. Haldeman, D. D. Pastor First Baptist Church, New York City.
a deep and earnest study of the written Word. The Christian who reads and studies everything under heaven but his Bible is like the soldier who exercises with everything else but his gun or his sword. When the enemy comes he is of no avail. The Christian who can not give a rea- sonable answer for the hope that is within him—and he can not if he does not study faithfully the written Word —the Christian who can not give that answer by a " t h us it is written," is defeated before he begins. Let a Christian study the written Word and it will be a test to his own heart, it will tell him how much spir- itual life he has in him by the response he makes to that Word. Study that Word, if it reveals you to yourself, as when you look within a glass, at the same time it will set forth the provisions of infinite grace and become to you the nourishment b / the way, giving you through the eter- nal Spirit the vigor required to live the spiritual life and make manifest your sonship with God, your partner- ship with the coming Christ. And, friend out of Christ. Out of Christ! what a phrase that is—it is time that you should arouse. Refuse, X pray you, to listen to these men who put a bar sinister on the Christ of God; who keep his grave filled with a dead man's dust; who smile and mock and while they smile, deny the only Word that can give you hope. What can science do for you? It can not minister to a mind dis- eased. It has no formula by which it can dissolve the sorrow, in a tear, no power by which it can lift the burden of the heart. When you stand by the grave of the dead it has no voice with which to speak the words of comfort to the listening soul. It has no light that will penetrate the gloom of death. It has no vision of the gates of life, it dare not bid you hope. It stands with its theorems and postulates and sees all its wisdom turned to folly in the presence of the great silence and the endless reach whieh, for want of a better name, we call eternity. No, science can do nothing for you. There is no light or hope in anything but the written Word of God. This
The Son of God has declared that as this dispensation draws to its end the assaults against the faith once deliv- ered to the saints will be made in his name and in the name of truth; that the perilous times of the church will not be because of the multiplication of iniquity and sin, but because of the claims of a Christianity not inspired of the Spirit; a Christianity that in the name of Christ shall do many wonder- ful works, wonderful enough to de- ceive, if it were possible, the very elect, -but against whose deception the Lord lias warned in earnest and unmeasured terms. He announces that at the close of this hour of grace and just before he descends to earth once more, the faith which he himself inspired will have waned and fallen away. This preaching then whieh seeks to exalt human wisdom at the expense of the written Word and makes use of the glamour of modern scholarship to de- ceive even earnest men, is a sign that the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh; that he is coming to repudiate the pro- fessing church as his witness in the world, take the true church to himself and then go forth in judgment on a materialistic and godless world. It is time, therefore, that the church should arouse. It is time that Christians should ex- alt the written Word as never before. Let every church write over its doors and over its pulpit, "Learn not to think above what is written." Let the ehurch make this written Word the test of membership and fel- lowship, refusing to admit to full asso- ciation any individual who repudiates its integrity, who does not accept its testimony. . Lot the church make submission to the written Word a test of the pulpit, allowing no man to enter it who does not base his speech unqualifiedly upon an unabridged " t h us saith the Lord." Let Christians study that Word as they never studied it before. Here only can the Christian meet the Devil and overcome him. This was the method of the Son of God. To every assault of _ Satan He answered, " I t is written." And this must be the method now. To achieve this method there must be
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