Personal Experience Necessary by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 23, 1909

Personal Experience Necessary

By F. M. W.

The Lord deals directly and personally with every one of his children. If this truth could be borne in mind, it would save many from discouragement. Again and again the Lord warns us against looking to our fellow men or taking them for an example; and in no department of human experience is this exhortation so pertinent and necessary as in the field of Christian experience. We compare ourselves among ourselves, we gage our own experience with the experience of others, and the devil leads us to feel that unless the experience given to us tallies with the experience given to some other soul, our experience is not a genuine one.

But this is a mistaken notion. Every man must give an account of himself to God. Every soul must stand or fall for himself. Every man or woman is responsible alone to God for the exercise of the ability that God has bestowed. The Lord does not deal with his church collectively, but with each individual member as a separate, personal actor. The relationship existing between God and every one of his children is just as distinct and independent as though there were not another soul in the world.

Suppose every human being but myself were cut off from this earth, and I stood alone as the sole representative of the human family. Then certainly I could not help but feel that the relationship between me and my God was an independent, distinct relationship. But even though I am not the sole representative of the human family, and though there are one billion and a half of people in this world, I still sustain precisely the same independent relationship to God; and every one of my fellows sustains the same.

I say there is comfort in this thought. To realize that the great God, in looking down upon the millions of earth’s inhabitants, can single me out, as he can every other soul, and think directly of me, and create an independent line of communication between himself and me,—in this thought there is comfort and encouragement.

And if we will but realize the privilege this gives us of direct audience with the Majesty of heaven, it will bring strength into our lives. We have not to wait in his antechamber for audience. We have not to do business with him through prophet, priest, or apostle. Our business is not to be inquired of by his chief clerk. But we can go directly to God for ourselves. We can gain an instant audience. We can stay as long as we may desire, and we may be sure that whatever we unburden to him of our trials and struggles, be they ever so minute, he will not turn a deaf ear, but will give to every one particular and patient consideration.

This independent experience in God is brought to view in the method of giving names, or of changing names, as in the cases of Jacob, Abraham, and others. When Jacob was born, by God’s direction he was given the name of Jacob, meaning “a supplanter.” This was indicative of his nature. It indicated the experience he would have in the flesh. He was true to his name,—he was a supplanter during all his early life; and during all his experience he had to fight against this evil trait. But there came a time when he gained the victory, and in commemoration of this triumph, and to indicate his changed nature and his changed relationship to God, the Lord bestowed upon him the name of Israel, meaning, “a prince that has power to prevail.” After Abram became the recipient of God’s promises and received them by faith, his name was changed to Abraham, indicating the change of relationship he sustained to the Lord.

To the overcomer, the Lord says, “will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” The new name, engraved in the white stone, conferred upon the believer, is a name indicating his experience, and as he has had an experience wholly his own, unlike the experience of any other soul, so it is that no man can know the name save he that receives it. No others have had the same experience; hence no others can understand the meaning of the name. It is written of those who are redeemed from among men at the second coming of Christ, the one hundred forty-four thousand who gain the victory over sin and over the power of sin, even to the extent of coming off triumphant over death, “They sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.” The same principle holds good here. The experience of the one hundred forty-four thousand will be unlike the experience of any other people who have ever lived on the earth. The song is the song of their experience, and none can learn the song only those who have had the experience to which the song relates.

Then it is not for us to become discouraged if God deals with us in such a way as he deals with no other soul in the world. Let him lead us where he will. Let him give us the trials that he sees will be for our good. Let us all the while follow trustingly, believingly, realizing that if we but submit to his providences, he can make no mistake in the treatment of our case. The members of the human family are all poor, sin-sick souls. They need the application of the one universal remedy, the grace of God. But the application of that grace must be made in wisdom, and only with the wisdom that God possesses. An intelligent physician may have a hundred patients suffering from the same malady, and yet, though every one is afflicted with the same general disease, he must treat every case upon its merits, administering remedies suited to the strength, the stage of the disease, and its various complications. For him to blindly apply the same treatment in the same degree in every case would be but to do machine work without intelligence or conscientiousness. We are in the hands of an intelligent, conscientious Physician for the soul and body. We do not even know what we ought to pray for as we ought. Of ourselves we can not discern between good and evil.

Then let us not repine, or murmur, or complain. One with infinite wisdom is leading. Let us patiently submit to the processes by which he shall fit us for the place he designs us to occupy in his eternal purpose. All the experiences of life

are his workmen, hewing, and scoring, and polishing us as rough stones taken from a quarry, to make of us beautiful pillars in the temple of our God. If we will but submit as clay in the hands of the potter, God will make of us vessels to his glory; and we shall see sometime, if not now, that all the way he led us was the way of wisdom, and only that which could work out in our lives and experiences his all-wise purpose.

F. M. W.