One of God's Tests

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 30, 1913

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 38

One of God's Tests

One of God's Tests.—This is the way Jesus expresses it: “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved. But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God.” (See John 3:18-21.) New light from God's word always means new test, because it always reveals new duty. The man who loves God will welcome the light, even tho it does involve new duty, and if it condemns the course that he has been following; but it does not condemn the disposition, the spirit which he has manifested. It shows that even tho he did not have all the light, yet his heart was in sympathy with God, and he himself was doing truth in the disposition that he manifested. But in the man who has the form of truth in his life, and yet who despises and rejects the new light which comes to him, it clearly reveals that even tho he has followed “the form of knowledge and of truth,” he has not been doing truth after all. Instead of looking upon the light as a blessed revelation to lead him on, he takes it as a condemner of his course in the past, and rejects it. But the sincere and honest who has had but one ray of light, perhaps, regarding the word of God, but who has followed that one ray with all his heart, welcomes the greater effulgence of increased light, because it reveals more and more of Him who is light.