HUMAN FICKLENESS by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 1, 1902

HUMAN FICKLENESS.

By G.

NOTHING is made sacred by age; neither is youth or novelty of itself a virtue. Truth is truth, regardless of the era of its proclamation. Ignoring this fact leads men into many inconsistencies. On the one hand they will reject anything that has not been a recognized tenet of their church-creed for a long time, because the innovation is new; while on the other hand they will disregard or even denounce the law of God because it is old. To maintain that the Sabbath, which God instituted in the beginning and gave as a sign between Him and His people forever, is of binding force to-day, is deemed an evidence of ignorance or bigotry; but to show the people that “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” is frowned upon as a “new doctrine,” and therefore unworthy of notice.

The idea is abroad, and is growing in strength, that human beings of our time are different from those of old, and God must needs change His principles and His ways in order to gratify the requirements and win the confidence of a more enlightened population. When the fulfilment of prophecy pertaining to our day is openly portrayed, they do not want anything new; or the prophecies are all things of the past, and we can not understand them. It is the great boast that this is the day of Bibles, yet many will seek knowledge in any other way than by searching the Scriptures. That which is revealed by “science falsely so called,” or by the imaginary spirits of the dead, or by the reasoning of the human mind, is accepted in preference to the Word of God. The apostle Paul met the learned men of Athens; who spent their time in telling or hearing something new, yet they rejected the truth of the Gospel because it was (to them) a “new doctrine.” To them the resurrection of the dead was absurd.

Jeremiah said to the people of his day, “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” But they said, “We will not walk therein.” Yet when the same class of people were confronted by the Lord with (to them) new spiritual truths—words that were spirit and life—they became very tenacious of the prophets whom they had before rejected.

Human nature is always the same. “The carnal mind is [and always was] enmity against God; for it

is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” It is always either too old or too new. Peter says: “There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” But when the claims of God’s Word are presented with regard to duties there made plain concerning matters of continual obligation, then we meet the plea that “times are changed,” and that “God does not require those things now.”

Jesus well illustrated the fickleness of the human mind when He said of the Jews: “They are like unto children sitting in the market-place, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.” There are many “treasures” in the Word of God, both “new and old,” which all would do well to seek; not because they are either new or old, but because they are truth, and are essential to the salvation of the soul.