King's Business - 1914-02

66

THE KING’S BUSINESS this explanation to be a makeshift of theorists.” Now a glance at a concord­ ance shows absolutely nothing o f the kind, and a thorough examination of the concordance shows that Mr. Gelesnoff’s statement is utterly false. The best concordance that there is is Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. All other concordances are child’s play compared with this. Let any one look at this book and see the definitions of the Hebrew word given in the back of the book, these definitions being the usages of the words as found in the Old Testament, and let him also look up the passages cited in which the Hebrew word is used, and he will soon see how Mr. Gelesnoff has absolutely no stand­ in g ground for his statements. But we are not concerned so much with Mr. Gelesnoff’s reasoning as we are with his teaching. Any one who really knows God and is walking in fellowship with Him does not have to hunt through his concordance to know that the statements given above are the rankest blasphemy. Any one who has spiritual discernment will be shocked beyond measure by these wicked utter­ ances of this man. O f course, many others have given utterance to substan­ tially the same views. Gelesnoff’s position is the position held generally by Pantheists, Christian Scientists, R. J. Campbell, and others who are recog­ nized as gross^ errorists. The startling thing is that it should be advocated by one- who hitherto has posed as an orthodox teacher of the Bible. Our hearts are^sad. ^Mr. Gelesnoff was formerly a student o f our own at the Bible Institute in Chicago. He seemed at that time to be a humble seeker after truth., He came to us, if we remember correctly, from Rochester, from his tailor’s bench. We believe he had been led to an apparently sincere accept­ ance of Christ through the ministry of Mr. Gaebelein. Some years after he appeared as a teacher and seemed to have some peculiar gifts in that direction, but his head seems to have been turned by the appreciation that he received in certain quarters. There is a sad warning in it for us all. When we learned that he had been led to an acceptance of the position that the Church was not the bride of Christ, and that a new dispensation began in the closing verses o f the 28th chapter of Acts, we began to tremble for him;.for.we knew that a little leaven of false doctrine soon leaveneth the whole lump. When he came out with his gross errors of restitution we trembled for him still more, and he has now landed where might be expected. We wonder whether those teachers who were willing to follow him into his restitutionist’s error will follow him into the rank blasphemy to which he now gives utterance. We can scarce believe that some of them will, for while they have not been known as well-balanced teachers, we still have believed that they were true children of God. It is painful to be obliged to write these words concerning one we once knew and loved, but we live in perilous times and part of the duty of a faithful minister of Christ is to warn God’s children against false teachers. These blasphemies, as shocking as they are, may indirectly do good by opening the eyes o f those who are being misled to the real character of their leader.

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