Pleasing and Plausible

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Oct 5, 1905

Pleasing and Plausible

THERE is a way of expressing the modern idea concerning God and his relation to men and things which is both pleasing and plausible, but when it is analyzed, it will be found that it sets aside the revelation which God has made concerning the present condition of things in this world.

Here are some of the statements recently put forth in an editorial in one of the leading mouthpieces of this advanced theology:—

Between the faith that perceives God in all history, in all phenomena, in all experience, and the unfaith that perceives him in none, we can see no middle ground. . . . He is in the prophets of the twentieth century after Christ as truly as in the prophets of the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ. . . . If God were not in America to-day, it would be of little service to us that he was in Palestine twenty centuries ago. He is either all and in all, or he is not; he is everywhere or nowhere. He is the Force that is in all forces, the Life that is in all life. All the natural is supernatural. . . . Blessed is the man who knows that he is living in a divine world, and uses the divine forces of the world, of society, and of his own soul in divine fellowship and to divine ends.

Such teaching as this is pleasing. It has a strong flavor of religion in it. It appears to honor God by acknowledging him as being in supreme control in this world. It easily satisfies a kind of religious sentiment which is, after all, little different from superstition.

Such teaching as this is plausible. It appears to encourage faith as against unfaith. Some of the statements, taken apart from their general connection, seem to be quite in harmony with certain expressions in the Bible taken apart from their connection. One who does not study his Bible, and who does not base his ideas of God and religion directly upon the Scriptures, could very easily accept these assertions as light and truth.

But let us look a little deeper and see what is really involved in these statements. Experience has taught us that some who really desire to know and obey

the truth can be confused and befooled by just such sophistry as this, and it therefore seems necessary to point out its true meaning.

In the first place two alternatives are presented to us with an implied assurance that we must accept one or the other, and that to deny the ground taken by the writer of the article is the same as to deny that God has anything to do with the affairs of this world. This is an old fallacy, but it is often used quite successfully. But the fact is that neither one of the alternatives presented is a correct statement of the truth when taken in the sense indicated by the general trend of the article. It is certainly true that God's throne is in heaven, and that his kingdom ruleth over all, but it is equally true that there is another being whose relation to the affairs of this world must be reckoned with in order to give a correct solution to the problem with which we are dealing. Satan, who was recognized by Jesus as “the prince of this world,” has through the temptation and the fall gained a position where he is permitted to exercise for a limited time a limited power in opposition to God, and it is to this counterworking of the purpose of God that all imperfection is due. Wherever the tares appear, we may know that “an enemy hath done this.” But this new philosophy makes God “the minister of sin,” the direct agent in the perpetration of all forms of wickedness. The only way of escape from this conclusion is to declare, as is being done by many advanced thinkers, that there is no such thing as sin, and that all that is, is good. But this shows the true character of their philosophy and what is involved in their teaching about God.

But again: this teaching denies the inspiration of the Scriptures in the usual sense of that expression, and makes all teaching which is in harmony with the truth inspired in the same sense in which it is admitted that the Scriptures were inspired. The direct consequence of this philosophy of inspiration is that there is no authoritative standard of truth, and each one therefore appeals to “the voice within;” and each one who thus ignores the Word of God, and is deprived of its defensive power, will be sure to hear a voice within testifying that the Scriptures are unreliable, and that the religion of apostolic times is wholly out of date now. This is not a matter of theory, but of actual record. This is the inevitable result of this new conception of inspiration.

Furthermore, in the attempt to lift all things to the plane of the spiritual and the supernatural, this new philosophy really brings down the spiritual and the supernatural to the plane of the natural. In other words, so far as it is concerned, by breaking down the distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary working of God's power it eliminates the God of the Bible from the minds of its devotees, and substitutes in his place an Infinite Power, an Intelligent Force, which works everywhere. By claiming that every manifestation of this Infinite Power is a miracle, it confuses the minds of many concerning the miracles recorded in the Bible. But this is an utter perversion of the revelation which God has made of himself and of his working in the Scriptures. And on this basis spiritual things are simply the reasonings of the natural heart.

It must be pleasing to “the god of this world” to have professed representatives of the Christian religion designate this groaning creation, just tottering to its ruin, as “a divine world,” and to have them talk about “the divine forces of the world,” while at the same time they really set aside the divine revelation and the divine plan for recovering a lost world and restoring it to that original perfection, unmarred by sin and the curse, when it was in truth a reflection of the divine mind. We have certainly come upon perilous times, and it behooves us to hold fast that which has been revealed through the infallible Word of God, and to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth,” who has been sent to guide us into all truth. So only can we be saved from the deceptions of the enemy, and be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord.