God's Book and His Controversy
By C. M. S.
IN a number of places in the Old Testament, Jehovah declares that he has a controversy with his people. In each such instance the reason of the controversy is plainly stated. God's people have failed to heed his warning, have turned away from his counsel, have turned their backs upon his Word and his law. In the vanity of their own hearts they have done this; in the loftiness of their own minds they have set their desires above God's purpose. God does not consider their course as a wise one, or conducive to their own safety. While speaking of this very demonstration on the part of his people, he says: — "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children." Hosea 4: 6. They who would be true instructors of the people are involved, with the people, in this unwise and dangerous attitude toward his Word; for he says, "And it shall be, like people, like priest; and I will punish them for their ways, and will requite them their doings." Verse 9. Considering its light, this generation of ours stands without a rival as a rejecter of God's Word, and will therefore be judged with most severe judgment.8 If God had a controversy with his people anciently because of their attitude toward his Word, surely in our day he has no less a controversy, when in so many of the great churches of the various nations, in so many of the popular religious journals, and in the theological seminaries and ministerial associations the Bible is discounted, and discredit is cast upon its most fundamental teachings. This is the age of great Bible distribution, of great pretense to piety, and with it all, doubt and infidelity. The powers from above are working, and the powers from beneath are not idle. While God has given us his Word, man has set himself up as its censor to declare what portions are true and what untrue, what necessary and what unnecessary, what portion wheat and what portion chaff and foul seed. In taking such a position, human beings have put themselves in the same attitude toward God as did Lucifer when he held the position of the covering cherub and determined to put himself above God himself. To sit in judgment upon God's own Word is to put oneself above God, and lay claim to greater wisdom and knowledge than he had who made the Book and inspired its wonderful counsels, prophecies, principles, and promises. The most ingenious trap that Satan has set for this age is the teaching of the human race to doubt God's Word. If he can teach men to believe that the precious promises of God's Book are founded upon nothing, then those promises will fail to appeal to mankind. That which would have saved them will then be cast aside, and they will pin their faith to that which will compass their destruction. He is playing a masterly hand in this particular, and with all too many persons he is winning. It was a masterly stroke to make the accredited ministers of the gospel his chief instruments in the deception. He no longer needs his Paines, his Rousseaus, his Voltaires, and his Ingersolls. He is reaching a much more select audience in the new way. Through the new method, he is putting doubts in the hearts of men who might otherwise teach other men to believe to the saving of their souls. In that manner he dams up the fountains before they have opportunity to spring forth, and his harvest of tares is therefore much more abundant. It is the design of God that his Word hid in the heart of men shall be a continual shield to them against sin. The inspired penman says: "Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." Ps. 119: 11. But Satan is determined that men shall not have such a shield. He is therefore using every possible means to prevent men from receiving God's Word into the heart. The apostle John writes: "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one." 1 John 2: 14. That is what Satan does not want; therefore the warfare to cast doubt, discredit, and reproach upon the Word of God. But as his purposes are never in the interest of men, it is absolutely necessary that they should perceive the deception, understand its purpose, receive the Word, and "overcome the evil one." The psalmist tells us also that God's Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Ps. 119: 105. As the purpose of God's lamp and light is to show men the way of salvation, to dispel the darkness created by the adversary of souls, we can understand the reason of Satan's bitter warfare against it. God has set his Word upon the very pinnacle of honor and glory. That was where Satan designed to put himself. The psalmist says: "Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." Ps. 138: 2. Is it any wonder, then, that he who had determined to exalt his throne above the stars of God, and make himself like the Most High (Isa. 14: 12-14), should strike his fiercest blows and level his deadliest shafts against that which God chose to put where Satan wanted to be? Knowing Satan's purpose and God's exaltation of his Word, the warfare now going on in this world against God's Word is easily understood. Now he who would be a true child of God must do with God's Word just what God did with it — exalt it. That will draw the fire and the antagonism of Satan; but with God's Word as our shield and buckler, with God's Word hid in the heart that we may not sin against him, with the love of the truth in our souls so that God will not permit us to believe a lie, we shall be able to withstand his attacks, and to come off more than conquerors through him that loved us, and there will be no controversy between us and the one who gave heaven's best gift to purchase heaven for us.