Obedience the Key of Knowledge
[The following paragraphs should have constituted the closing portion of Prof. G. W. Rine’s paper of last week. It was omitted by mistake, which we greatly regret. While it is complete in itself, it left his excellent article incomplete.—Ed.] Our Lord Jesus Christ explicitly taught that obedience is the one eternally requisite condition of spiritual knowledge. “If any man willeth to DO His [God’s] will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God.” John 7:17. God does not promise to reveal truth to the man who dreams or debates, but to him who keeps His commandments. It is only in the soil of obedience that the seeds of truth sprout. To submit our wills in loyalty to God’s law, is to open our minds to the light of His truth. Doing and knowing are blood relatives. Some one has aptly said, “The words of Jesus in the mind of a disobedient man are no more vital than wheat in the wrappings of a mummy.” It is because the religious teachers have closed their eyes to the claims of the divine law, and have turned to the commandments of men, and have, in so doing, removed their hearts far from God, that the vision (prophecy) has become to them as a book that is sealed. Their eyes are closed, their ears dull, and their hearts heavy, because they refuse to “hear the law of the Lord.” The Master is still asking, “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?” Moral disobedience means mental darkness. Our Lord teaches unmistakably that if we would “have right to the Tree of Life,” and “enter in through the gates into the city,” we must “do His commandments.” Rev. 22:14. Hence the remnant church, preparing to enter into the city of God, are keeping the “commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Rev. 12:17.