GOD'S BLESSINGS DO NOT INDORSE ERROR.
By G.
It is quite common for people to assume that this or that doctrine is right because God has blessed them while believing it; or that such and such habit is right, because they have had the blessing of God while indulging it. But the kind providence and forbearance of God is not necessarily evidence of His approval. “He maketh His sun to shine on the evil ‘and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and ‘on the unjust.” The crowning blessing bestowed on our sinful world was the gift of God’s Son, but this blessing was not because of His approval of the practice of sin. On the contrary, it was because He could not indorse our erring course, and would give us opportunity to form characters that He could approve. He spared Israel in their sinful practises because of his promises to their fathers, and He spared Judah because of His promise to David. He blessed all these, notwithstanding the many things in their lives that sorely grieved Him, because of His own eternal purpose to save all who would turn unto Him and be saved. The evidence of right and wrong on our part is not found in His long-suffering forbearance with our faults and false doctrines; it is found in His law. “Fear ‘God, and keep His commandments; for this is the ‘whole duty of man.’” This is the only rule of action that the Lord approves; and we are directed to His Word as the only source of true doctrine: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be ‘perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.’” “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not ‘according to this Word, it is because there is no ‘light in them.” But men presume upon the Lord’s forbearance when they assume to be righteous because He is patient with them. “Because sentence ‘against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in ‘them to do evil.’”