KNOWING THE TRUTH by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1902

KNOWING THE TRUTH.

By L. A. S.

The truth is more than a theory. We may know the theory of the truth, without really knowing the truth itself.

There are many yet in bondage who know the theory of the truth, but the truth itself makes free the one who has it.

It is a very easy matter to rest satisfied with the theory of the truth, allowing it to take the place of that which is essential to our spiritual welfare. This will place us finally in that company who will say, “Lord, open unto us,” and receive the reply, “I never knew you.”

Theory is not faith. Christian truths are grasped by faith, and faith means more than a mere assent to or acknowledgement of the truth. Faith takes hold of the reality of things. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It is in making real to the believer those things which are beyond the reach of the physical senses or of the natural intellect, that faith differs from mere theoretical knowledge. And from this there comes into the life of the believer a power which no theoretical knowledge of the truth could supply. The man of faith does not merely know of the truth, but he realizes the truth. He sees that which cannot be seen. He is assured of things which no worldly wisdom could reveal to his mind.

“By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God; . . . for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.” Heb. 11: 24–27. No mere theory of the truth, however clear and logical in his mind, could have led Moses to forsake the throne of Egypt and identify himself with a despised race of bondmen, and undertake the work which he accomplished in their deliverance. He did all this not as one looking at a theory of the right, but “as seeing Him” who sits on the throne of righteousness. To Moses, the kingdom of God was as real as the kingdom of Egypt. And when Moses went in before Pharaoh, the presence of the Egyptian monarch was no more real to him than was the presence of the King of heaven, though invisible. In that presence he feared not the wrath of man, nor the difficulties of the way in which he had set out.

So it was also with Elijah. His words to Ahab.—“As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand”—revealed his sense of the continual presence of God. He also saw “Him who is invisible.” Many individuals know to-day, by theory, as no doubt many did then, that God “is not far from every one of us,” and that “in Him we live and move and have our being;” but with Elijah reality took the place of theory. When he stood before Ahab, he stood also before the King of kings. The natural eye beheld the earthly monarch, but the eye of faith beheld not less clearly the divine Sovereign, and saw Him not as one busied with the affairs of the universe, but as one before whom he stood alone, whose all-seeing eye was upon him, taking note of the smallest thing pertaining to the life and work of His earthly representative.

It is faith that makes real to us the things of God. Our knowledge of His truth must be such as faith, and not mere argument or statements of facts, can supply. By faith we, as did Elias, Moses, and others named among the company of the faithful,—men subject to like passions as ourselves,—must behold Him who is invisible. He is the truth in its reality, and seeing Him, we are looking at no mere theory with its framework of argument, no mere picture or conception of the mind, but at that which is as real as we ourselves and the mundane things that surround us; and even more so, since only those things which cannot now be seen are to endure beyond the end of time.

Faith is real; God is real; and the knowledge of God which is by faith is real. And the religion of him who has this knowledge is real Christianity. And nothing less than real Christianity—the real power of godliness—will meet the demands of the present hour.

L. A. S.