p. 73 | EVER LEARNING-WHAT?

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 4, 1889

EVER LEARNING—WHAT?

The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy of some who would be "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." We have known some persons who gravely misapprehended this text, holding that it applies to those who are ever studying the truth, and ever learning some new things in regard to it. Those who hold such a view, do but wrest the scripture to their own destruction; for it is certain that nothing will more surely tend to one's destruction than to cease to learn new things from the word of God. The Bible is an unfathomable deep; no one can ever exhaust its treasures. Of the Bible it may truly be said: "If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." If anybody thinks that he knows all there is to learn from even the simplest text, he is greatly deceived. The man who is the best acquainted with the Scriptures is the one who is best prepared to study them with profit. The truths contained in the Bible will be the subject of earnest and delightful study throughout eternity, and then they will not be exhausted. Let no one, then, exclaim against continual study of that book, or against drawing hitherto undiscovered truths therefrom.

The class to whom Paul refers are those who are "never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," because that which they are learning is not the truth. It cannot be said of one who is ever searching the Bible for new treasures, that he is not able to come to the knowledge of the truth. He has come to the knowledge of the truth, and is so delighted with it that he wants more. But those who, in spite of their learning, are not able to come to the knowledge of the truth, are "men of corrupt minds, void of judgment concerning the faith." They know nothing whatever of the truth. Like the Athenians of old, they may ever be hearing or telling some new thing, but that new thing only increases their darkness. All the time that they are being "vainly puffed up in their fleshly minds," thinking that they are growing immensely wise, and that they are almost, if not quite, equal with God, they are getting farther and farther away from true wisdom. What a terrible deception! and what a terrible awakening there will be for such ones! Let us accept that truth which seems so simple to the mind of the natural man that it is considered foolishness, and then let us ever continue its study.