Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
Stephen's closing rebuke ended his historical defense before the high priest and council, spoken by the power of the Holy Spirit when he saw his fate in their faces and knew his voice would soon be silenced. To be stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears is to be stubborn, inwardly closed and corrupt, unwilling to listen, heed, obey and accept testimony about Jesus, which outward rites and office cannot hide. To always resist as the fathers did is to continue their rebellion by rejecting God's messengers, word and will while claiming to serve Him. Resisting the Holy Spirit is opposing the means God uses to save by rejecting truth, light, conviction and warning, refusing correction, reproof and repentance, and clinging to self-will and human ideas instead of yielding and submitting. Each refusal hardens the heart and lessens sensitivity, bringing blindness, distortion of evidence, loss of blessing, grieving the Spirit away and removal of God's restraint, and the blame rests on the sinner because God gives sufficient light and bears long without forcing truth.
Stephen's Trial and Martyrdom
The words are the closing climax and last testimony of Stephen's defense before the high priest, the council and his accusers. He spoke them by the power and at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, with a wisdom and spirit his opponents could not resist. He read his fate in the faces before him and perceived their resistance to his words.
In the midst of that defense he had been connecting Jesus Christ with Israel's history, with the prophecies and with teaching about the temple. Like Peter and Paul he used the Old Testament Scriptures to show Christ as the Messiah and to set forth His mission, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension. Although just in the middle of his sermon he abruptly broke away from the chain of history and turned upon his infuriated judges with direct rebuke. The judges' reaction to his teaching about Christ and the temple, and the priest rending his robe, was the signal that his voice would soon be silenced forever.
The charge does not end with resisting the Holy Ghost as their fathers did, but continues into the next verses. As their fathers persecuted the prophets who foretold the coming of the Just One and killed them, so these judges had now betrayed and murdered Him. Though they had received the law through angels they had not kept it. In repeating their fathers' persecution of God's prophets and messengers they committed the greater sin of rejecting and crucifying Christ.
When the council heard the charge they were cut to the heart and gnashed on Stephen with their teeth. Full of the Holy Spirit, he looked into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. The truths he spoke enraged them and led to his death. They stopped their ears, rushed upon him, cast him out of the city and stoned him, while he prayed for Jesus to receive his spirit and not to lay this sin to their charge.
Saul stood by consenting to Stephen's death and acted a part in that stoning. At that time he was a rabbi and statesman educated by Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, very zealous for the suppression of Christianity. Afterward he kept resisting by breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, seeking letters to bind men and women of this way and bring them to Jerusalem. After Christ was revealed to him he remembered Stephen's sermon presenting evidences from prophecy that the crucified Jesus was the Son of God, and words the priests had called blasphemy now appeared true, showing the foretold rejection, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. As Paul he now advocated in the same synagogues the same cause Stephen had died to vindicate, fearlessly proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God with the same prophetic evidences and with yearning for his brethren and former associates.
Meaning of Hardened Hearts
Stiffnecked describes stubbornness, and uncircumcised in heart and ears describes hearts and hearing inwardly closed to God and unreceptive to Him, unwilling to listen, heed, obey, and accept testimony about Jesus. The accusation was that the council stubbornly resisted the Holy Spirit as their ancestors had done, and their resistance was evident in opposition to Stephen's teaching about Christ and the temple when his voice would soon be silenced. It charged them with inward hardness and refusal to heed the Spirit, with persecuting the prophets who foretold the coming of the Just One, and with failing to keep the law received through angels though they had received it. Their outward religious identity did not keep them from this resistance.
Outward observance of rites and ordinances can hide corrupt hearts full of evil, and keeping outward ordinances did not prevent the leaders from resisting the Spirit. Their resistance repeated their fathers' cruelty toward the prophets who foretold the Just One, whom they killed, while the leaders themselves betrayed and murdered Him, committing the greater sin of rejecting and crucifying Christ. Being uncircumcised in heart is illustrated by Caiaphas, who though wearing the high priest's robes had no vital connection with God and was proud, overbearing, and unworthy of the office. His rejection of Christ as the Son of God showed how far the priesthood had turned from truth and righteousness.
Always resisting, as the fathers did, means repeating the rebellion of earlier generations and continuing the pattern of rejecting God's messengers. It is rejecting God's word to preserve human traditions, by which people harden their hearts against the Spirit and fail to recognize God's voice. It is opposing God's will while claiming to serve Him, and such rejection of Christ, God's chosen instrument, is also an insult to the Spirit of God, with the same spirit of opposition present in those who insist on their own will against God. The Jews rejected Christ so persistently that they deceived themselves into thinking His crucifixion was service to God.
What Resisting the Spirit Is
To resist the Holy Spirit is to oppose the very means God uses to save, by rejecting the truth, evidence, light, conviction and message He gives, stifling conviction, and refusing to repent, yield, admit and submit when called. The Jewish rulers had evidence that the apostles spoke and acted by divine inspiration, were at times convinced that Christ had risen and was the Son of God, and briefly recognized Him as such, yet they rejected the light, refused to admit the men charging them with crucifying Christ spoke by direction of the Holy Spirit, and abused the apostles who brought God's message. Their resistance was willful rather than inability, for they could have yielded, submitted to the convicting power and been pardoned, but chose not to, and it was that armed opposition and daily renewed rebellion, not merely guilt deserving death for putting the Son of God to death, that cut them off from salvation. Those who reject the light they have received turn toward darkness, while those who struggle against themselves show acceptance of the Spirit, and those who persist in rejecting offered mercy, truth and reproof are left unrestrained to continue their downward course.
It is to brace against the impressions of the Holy Spirit, as when sophistry prevails against truth in the mind, which puts the cause of God in great peril and places resisters where the Lord cannot use them as leaders of His people. Blinded minds measure heaven-sent messages by cherished ideas of truth, while harsh inflaming contention strengthens resistance, whereas a spirit shaped by Christ brings prayer and love to the examination of doctrine. It includes rejecting evidence of God's work and calling its gracious manifestations fanaticism, delusion and undue excitement, by which men lose the blessings that would make them wise unto salvation and prepare them for God's work, and set themselves against the very help that could save them from ruin. It includes opposing God's work through stubborn feelings even in ignorance, afterward to be confessed as warring against the Spirit, failing to recognize the True Shepherd's voice through blindness by evil, and instead following unbelief and hardheartedness, a strange infatuation and other minds, and dismissing light given through the Scriptures and the gifts of the Spirit as false or demonic, which leaves men in darkness and backsliding.
It is to harden the heart against God's appeal and voice and light, refusing correction, reproof, instruction, warnings and teachings of the Word. That refusal is pride refusing to humble the heart, confess sin, acknowledge wrong when false statements are shown false, come to the light, open the door of the heart to Christ, remove what blocks reconciliation, and separate from what grieves the Holy Spirit, while exalting self above the Spirit who holds evil in check by conscience, clinging to one's own will and righteousness and dress instead of Christ's righteousness, and rejecting God's law for human theories and satanic delusions. Humbling the heart and heeding instruction allows the Holy Spirit to work and bring perfect union, but sustaining a wrong course brings blindness, and each refusal makes further resistance easier and confirms in sin until warnings lose power, fear of God is lost, the heart of flesh becomes stone, and the cherished lie is believed as truth. God gives sufficient light and evidence to distinguish truth from error and leaves men free without forcing truth or decreeing blindness, yet fighting inch by inch after conviction, bracing against truth when brethren present facts, and striving more vehemently to justify the course even under almost overwhelming conviction, writes words spoken in public against God's work in God's book as spoken against God Himself.
It is to refuse the Lord's messages of warning after precious opportunities, having eyes but seeing not and ears but hearing not, remaining self-confident and unimpressed, nearly yielding yet strengthening self to resist, and holding stubbornly to one's own will instead of becoming teachable. It includes uniting with the archdeceiver in using hypnotic influence and spiritual science upon souls to deceive them, with those who sustain such a course guilty with him, bringing strange blindness of understanding in one who has known present truth, and doing the very work warned against. It is to refuse to walk in plain counsel and make light of the message from heaven sent for guidance of the church, which brings sure punishment, forfeits entrusted care of sheep and lambs, and will receive no greater evidence in the future than already given in the past. God has provided for every human need and difficulty, so students forming characters like God or degrading their powers, and all who cherish unbelief and resist for years until truth leaves the heart and unbelief appears in thought, word and act as in living as though the Lord's coming were delayed, are left without excuse at the judgment, with an influence that cannot be taken back.
In history it took form in rejecting Christ as the Son of God despite conviction and abusing the apostles who spoke by divine inspiration. It took form when, at the last General Conference, Christ was in the assembly with a message of mercy sufficient to convince all present, within reach of His uplifted hand and life-giving power where men could have received the Holy Spirit, but they would not hear, would not humble their hearts, turned from the light instead of coming to it, refused the robe of Christ's righteousness for their own dress, cultivated unbelief until harder and more unimpressible, opposed the message and made the testimonies appear unreliable, thereby forfeiting a Pentecostal blessing and keeping God from being glorified. It took form at Minneapolis in refusing light and evidence that God was working through Jones and Waggoner, making light of message and messengers, speaking against truth, resisting evidence that exposed error, and refusing to confess wrong. It took form at Berrien Springs in 1904 in placing self in opposition to God's general work, determining not to yield to His pleading to yield, slighting and rejecting invitations of mercy and offers of forgiveness, seeking to make things appear favorable when the opposite was true, acting out the tempter's devising with satanic and human agencies working together and blinding others, a wicked resistance and its resulting hindrance traced by the One in charge of the heavenly books where its result will appear at the judgment. Those who have experienced God's work and seen Scripture truth confirmed by the Spirit commit grave sin against the Holy Spirit if they deny that truth.
Consequences of Persistent Resistance
Resistance is a repeated choice that grows easier each time, for each refusal hardens the heart, renews rebellion, intensifies malignity and determination, and confirms the soul in sin and evil. The Jewish leaders had clear evidence that the apostles spoke and acted by divine inspiration and at times were convinced that Christ had risen and was the Son of God, yet pride in their own righteousness and settled opposition led them to stifle conviction, reject light, and refuse to repent and admit the charge against them. They could have yielded and been pardoned, but they would not, and by arming themselves with opposition and persisting in rebellion afresh every day they were cut off from salvation. They even deceived themselves into thinking the crucifixion was service to God, while accepting correction could still have turned the heart toward change. Continued impenitence confirms this resistance, and as the impenitent grow older their sensitivity to conscience and divine things and their responsiveness to religious influence diminish.
Such resistance brings blindness of understanding, so that the blinded fail to recognize the True Shepherd's voice and follow instead a spirit of unbelief and hardheartedness. Humbling the heart and heeding instruction would allow the Spirit to work and bring union, but sustaining a wrong course and bracing against His impressions forfeits blessings that would make wise unto salvation and prepare for God's work. Even with strong convictions of truth, men refuse to see the light until their souls are nearly ruined, their only hope being to gather up the rejected light, repent deeply, and turn. At last light fails to impress, warnings are ridiculed, reproof is refused, evidence and Scripture and appeals are misunderstood and distorted, commandments once upheld are disobeyed, and the lie cherished is believed as truth under Satan's leading and deceptive hypnotic influence. Those who unite with the archdeceiver in this work and those who sustain them share the guilt, which is strange in one who has known present truth.
Continued resistance places the sinner where the Holy Spirit cannot influence him and where the Lord cannot use him to lead His people, putting the cause of God in great peril. It grieves the Spirit away and forfeits a Pentecostal season of blessing, keeping God from being glorified. When restraint is removed sinners are left without power to control evil passion and without protection from Satan, left unrestrained to continue their downward course after persistently refusing offered mercy, light, and reproof. Wrath falls not merely for sins committed, even for putting the Son of God to death, but for choosing to continue resistance and repeat past sins in defiance of light when called to repent. God nevertheless showed mercy by giving further evidence and another call to repentance, as with physicians who brace themselves when sophistry prevails against truth.
The blame rests on the sinner and not on God, for no soul is destroyed by a divine decree that he cannot be saved or by impenetrable darkness placed before him. God gives sufficient light and evidence to distinguish truth from error without forcing truth upon anyone, leaves men free to choose good or evil, follows them with appeals and warnings and assurances of compassion until further opportunity would be wholly vain, bears long with rebellion, and after giving Christ holds back nothing of heaven's treasures. Forbearance has limits, there is no second probation, and those who refuse to walk in plain counsel and make light of heaven-sent guidance for the church will receive no greater evidence than has already been given and are forbidden to be entrusted with sheep and lambs and responsibilities they might have borne. By resisting today a person prepares the way for a second and stronger resistance when light comes with mightier power, passing from indifference to indifference until response ceases and ruin is final, while until then heavenly messengers guard and seek to draw him and no soul is finally deserted while hope remains. God has provided for every human need and difficulty, so students deciding eternal destiny and all others who cherish unbelief have no excuse at the judgment.
Choosing evil once makes the second choice easier and the third still more eager, until warnings lose power, fear of God is lost, the heart of flesh becomes a heart of stone, and the man is confirmed in evil. Resistance and unbelief thus ripen their own harvest of sinful indulgence, corruption, lawlessness, crime, and violence, as in the antediluvian world, and the seed sown by precept and example is reproduced in children so that the iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the children while others are led to follow the same resistance. It leaves men worse than if the message had never come, like Laodicea professing much while works deny profession, so that through unsanctified will and ways, cherished and talked unbelief, and hurt to themselves, the work that might have been done by church members, ministers, physicians, and others in responsible places is not done. Words spoken in public against God's work, refusal to heed His voice and Word, refusal to acknowledge wrong when false statements are shown false, refusal to come to the light and open the door to Christ, and bracing against truth when brethren present facts are written in God's book. Even when conviction comes with almost overwhelming power, some refuse to yield and strive more vehemently to justify their course, changing uniform as it were to join the rebel army to war against truth for pay while pretending satisfaction, and at Berrien Springs in 1904 this opposing of God's general work while seeking to make things appear favorable blinded others and acted out the tempter's devising with satanic and human agencies working together. All later hindrance to God's work growing out of such a course is its result, a history not understood till the day of judgment when the books are opened and every case stands clearly revealed.
Warnings for Later Generations
Stubborn opposition and unbelief is warring against the Spirit, and those who resist His work and are blind to His manifestations must acknowledge their error and stop grieving Him by that stubbornness. That resistance can persist through checked promptings from fear of others, and through coldness and unbelief, yet it ends when the error is recognized and the Spirit's influence is welcomed instead of opposed. It includes opposing God's work through stubborn feelings even in ignorance, but those who did so came to see their mistake and confessed that they had been warring against the Spirit and would grieve Him no longer by maintaining opposition. So it was with Brother R., whose opposition to the manifestations of God's Spirit gave way to repentance and praise when he stopped resisting and welcomed the light of Christ. So it was with Alice, whose heart had been hardened by resisting the Spirit of God until it softened when she was very weak and she asked to be baptized.
Those uncircumcised in heart are those who oppress and cast away the erring while refusing repentance, remorse and humility, even while claiming to have obeyed God's commandments, and their stubbornness and rebellion make them like those who resisted God in earlier generations. They are untrue in character, carrying on hidden dishonesty and deception in business dealings, failing to cherish the grace of Christ as a living abiding principle, approving and strengthening wrongdoing in others, and occupying positions without justice. They do not fall on the Rock and be broken, nor rend the heart in repentance with searching out of sin and restitution. While remaining in that state they can do a wrongdoer no good, only stirring up the worst passions of the human heart and confirming a wrong spirit, and unless their course is repented of it bars them from the kingdom of heaven.
All must guard their souls so as not to be found opposing the Spirit of God. That means heeding His tender convictions without delay, hearing God's voice and choosing life while responding to Christ's appeal, since resisting His striving and hardening the heart leads toward destruction. Refusing His correction and warnings through stubborn unbelief and refusal to confess wrongdoing repeats the resistance of earlier generations. Those who have trained themselves to resist God and follow their own unsanctified desires know the truth but do not practice it, and they suffer the loss of a broken law, a neglected gospel, and a rejected Saviour.
The generation before the Flood continually resisted the Holy Ghost during Noah's 120-year warning of the coming Flood and call to repent, believe and find refuge in the ark, with God's power attending the message as the voice of God through His servant to draw them to Himself. Some were deeply convicted and would have heeded, but they yielded to jesting and ridicule, partook of the same spirit, resisted the invitations of mercy and refused to reform. Those who once had light but resisted the convicting Spirit became the boldest and most defiant scoffers, for none are so reckless and go to such lengths in sin. While God drew them, they in rebellion drew away from Him, continually resisting the pleadings of infinite love.
Stephen's closing rebuke ended his historical defense before the high priest and council, spoken by the power of the Holy Spirit when he saw his fate in their faces and knew his voice would soon be silenced. To be stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears is to be stubborn, inwardly closed and corrupt, unwilling to listen, heed, obey and accept testimony about Jesus, which outward rites and office cannot hide. To always resist as the fathers did is to continue their rebellion by rejecting God's messengers, word and will while claiming to serve Him. Resisting the Holy Spirit is opposing the means God uses to save by rejecting truth, light, conviction and warning, refusing correction, reproof and repentance, and clinging to self-will and human ideas instead of yielding and submitting. Each refusal hardens the heart and lessens sensitivity, bringing blindness, distortion of evidence, loss of blessing, grieving the Spirit away and removal of God's restraint, and the blame rests on the sinner because God gives sufficient light and bears long without forcing truth.
Stephen's Trial and Martyrdom
The words are the closing climax and last testimony of Stephen's defense before the high priest, the council and his accusers. He spoke them by the power and at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, with a wisdom and spirit his opponents could not resist. He read his fate in the faces before him and perceived their resistance to his words.
In the midst of that defense he had been connecting Jesus Christ with Israel's history, with the prophecies and with teaching about the temple. Like Peter and Paul he used the Old Testament Scriptures to show Christ as the Messiah and to set forth His mission, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension. Although just in the middle of his sermon he abruptly broke away from the chain of history and turned upon his infuriated judges with direct rebuke. The judges' reaction to his teaching about Christ and the temple, and the priest rending his robe, was the signal that his voice would soon be silenced forever.
The charge does not end with resisting the Holy Ghost as their fathers did, but continues into the next verses. As their fathers persecuted the prophets who foretold the coming of the Just One and killed them, so these judges had now betrayed and murdered Him. Though they had received the law through angels they had not kept it. In repeating their fathers' persecution of God's prophets and messengers they committed the greater sin of rejecting and crucifying Christ.
When the council heard the charge they were cut to the heart and gnashed on Stephen with their teeth. Full of the Holy Spirit, he looked into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. The truths he spoke enraged them and led to his death. They stopped their ears, rushed upon him, cast him out of the city and stoned him, while he prayed for Jesus to receive his spirit and not to lay this sin to their charge.
Saul stood by consenting to Stephen's death and acted a part in that stoning. At that time he was a rabbi and statesman educated by Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, very zealous for the suppression of Christianity. Afterward he kept resisting by breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, seeking letters to bind men and women of this way and bring them to Jerusalem. After Christ was revealed to him he remembered Stephen's sermon presenting evidences from prophecy that the crucified Jesus was the Son of God, and words the priests had called blasphemy now appeared true, showing the foretold rejection, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. As Paul he now advocated in the same synagogues the same cause Stephen had died to vindicate, fearlessly proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God with the same prophetic evidences and with yearning for his brethren and former associates.
Meaning of Hardened Hearts
Stiffnecked describes stubbornness, and uncircumcised in heart and ears describes hearts and hearing inwardly closed to God and unreceptive to Him, unwilling to listen, heed, obey, and accept testimony about Jesus. The accusation was that the council stubbornly resisted the Holy Spirit as their ancestors had done, and their resistance was evident in opposition to Stephen's teaching about Christ and the temple when his voice would soon be silenced. It charged them with inward hardness and refusal to heed the Spirit, with persecuting the prophets who foretold the coming of the Just One, and with failing to keep the law received through angels though they had received it. Their outward religious identity did not keep them from this resistance.
Outward observance of rites and ordinances can hide corrupt hearts full of evil, and keeping outward ordinances did not prevent the leaders from resisting the Spirit. Their resistance repeated their fathers' cruelty toward the prophets who foretold the Just One, whom they killed, while the leaders themselves betrayed and murdered Him, committing the greater sin of rejecting and crucifying Christ. Being uncircumcised in heart is illustrated by Caiaphas, who though wearing the high priest's robes had no vital connection with God and was proud, overbearing, and unworthy of the office. His rejection of Christ as the Son of God showed how far the priesthood had turned from truth and righteousness.
Always resisting, as the fathers did, means repeating the rebellion of earlier generations and continuing the pattern of rejecting God's messengers. It is rejecting God's word to preserve human traditions, by which people harden their hearts against the Spirit and fail to recognize God's voice. It is opposing God's will while claiming to serve Him, and such rejection of Christ, God's chosen instrument, is also an insult to the Spirit of God, with the same spirit of opposition present in those who insist on their own will against God. The Jews rejected Christ so persistently that they deceived themselves into thinking His crucifixion was service to God.
What Resisting the Spirit Is
To resist the Holy Spirit is to oppose the very means God uses to save, by rejecting the truth, evidence, light, conviction and message He gives, stifling conviction, and refusing to repent, yield, admit and submit when called. The Jewish rulers had evidence that the apostles spoke and acted by divine inspiration, were at times convinced that Christ had risen and was the Son of God, and briefly recognized Him as such, yet they rejected the light, refused to admit the men charging them with crucifying Christ spoke by direction of the Holy Spirit, and abused the apostles who brought God's message. Their resistance was willful rather than inability, for they could have yielded, submitted to the convicting power and been pardoned, but chose not to, and it was that armed opposition and daily renewed rebellion, not merely guilt deserving death for putting the Son of God to death, that cut them off from salvation. Those who reject the light they have received turn toward darkness, while those who struggle against themselves show acceptance of the Spirit, and those who persist in rejecting offered mercy, truth and reproof are left unrestrained to continue their downward course.
It is to brace against the impressions of the Holy Spirit, as when sophistry prevails against truth in the mind, which puts the cause of God in great peril and places resisters where the Lord cannot use them as leaders of His people. Blinded minds measure heaven-sent messages by cherished ideas of truth, while harsh inflaming contention strengthens resistance, whereas a spirit shaped by Christ brings prayer and love to the examination of doctrine. It includes rejecting evidence of God's work and calling its gracious manifestations fanaticism, delusion and undue excitement, by which men lose the blessings that would make them wise unto salvation and prepare them for God's work, and set themselves against the very help that could save them from ruin. It includes opposing God's work through stubborn feelings even in ignorance, afterward to be confessed as warring against the Spirit, failing to recognize the True Shepherd's voice through blindness by evil, and instead following unbelief and hardheartedness, a strange infatuation and other minds, and dismissing light given through the Scriptures and the gifts of the Spirit as false or demonic, which leaves men in darkness and backsliding.
It is to harden the heart against God's appeal and voice and light, refusing correction, reproof, instruction, warnings and teachings of the Word. That refusal is pride refusing to humble the heart, confess sin, acknowledge wrong when false statements are shown false, come to the light, open the door of the heart to Christ, remove what blocks reconciliation, and separate from what grieves the Holy Spirit, while exalting self above the Spirit who holds evil in check by conscience, clinging to one's own will and righteousness and dress instead of Christ's righteousness, and rejecting God's law for human theories and satanic delusions. Humbling the heart and heeding instruction allows the Holy Spirit to work and bring perfect union, but sustaining a wrong course brings blindness, and each refusal makes further resistance easier and confirms in sin until warnings lose power, fear of God is lost, the heart of flesh becomes stone, and the cherished lie is believed as truth. God gives sufficient light and evidence to distinguish truth from error and leaves men free without forcing truth or decreeing blindness, yet fighting inch by inch after conviction, bracing against truth when brethren present facts, and striving more vehemently to justify the course even under almost overwhelming conviction, writes words spoken in public against God's work in God's book as spoken against God Himself.
It is to refuse the Lord's messages of warning after precious opportunities, having eyes but seeing not and ears but hearing not, remaining self-confident and unimpressed, nearly yielding yet strengthening self to resist, and holding stubbornly to one's own will instead of becoming teachable. It includes uniting with the archdeceiver in using hypnotic influence and spiritual science upon souls to deceive them, with those who sustain such a course guilty with him, bringing strange blindness of understanding in one who has known present truth, and doing the very work warned against. It is to refuse to walk in plain counsel and make light of the message from heaven sent for guidance of the church, which brings sure punishment, forfeits entrusted care of sheep and lambs, and will receive no greater evidence in the future than already given in the past. God has provided for every human need and difficulty, so students forming characters like God or degrading their powers, and all who cherish unbelief and resist for years until truth leaves the heart and unbelief appears in thought, word and act as in living as though the Lord's coming were delayed, are left without excuse at the judgment, with an influence that cannot be taken back.
In history it took form in rejecting Christ as the Son of God despite conviction and abusing the apostles who spoke by divine inspiration. It took form when, at the last General Conference, Christ was in the assembly with a message of mercy sufficient to convince all present, within reach of His uplifted hand and life-giving power where men could have received the Holy Spirit, but they would not hear, would not humble their hearts, turned from the light instead of coming to it, refused the robe of Christ's righteousness for their own dress, cultivated unbelief until harder and more unimpressible, opposed the message and made the testimonies appear unreliable, thereby forfeiting a Pentecostal blessing and keeping God from being glorified. It took form at Minneapolis in refusing light and evidence that God was working through Jones and Waggoner, making light of message and messengers, speaking against truth, resisting evidence that exposed error, and refusing to confess wrong. It took form at Berrien Springs in 1904 in placing self in opposition to God's general work, determining not to yield to His pleading to yield, slighting and rejecting invitations of mercy and offers of forgiveness, seeking to make things appear favorable when the opposite was true, acting out the tempter's devising with satanic and human agencies working together and blinding others, a wicked resistance and its resulting hindrance traced by the One in charge of the heavenly books where its result will appear at the judgment. Those who have experienced God's work and seen Scripture truth confirmed by the Spirit commit grave sin against the Holy Spirit if they deny that truth.
Consequences of Persistent Resistance
Resistance is a repeated choice that grows easier each time, for each refusal hardens the heart, renews rebellion, intensifies malignity and determination, and confirms the soul in sin and evil. The Jewish leaders had clear evidence that the apostles spoke and acted by divine inspiration and at times were convinced that Christ had risen and was the Son of God, yet pride in their own righteousness and settled opposition led them to stifle conviction, reject light, and refuse to repent and admit the charge against them. They could have yielded and been pardoned, but they would not, and by arming themselves with opposition and persisting in rebellion afresh every day they were cut off from salvation. They even deceived themselves into thinking the crucifixion was service to God, while accepting correction could still have turned the heart toward change. Continued impenitence confirms this resistance, and as the impenitent grow older their sensitivity to conscience and divine things and their responsiveness to religious influence diminish.
Such resistance brings blindness of understanding, so that the blinded fail to recognize the True Shepherd's voice and follow instead a spirit of unbelief and hardheartedness. Humbling the heart and heeding instruction would allow the Spirit to work and bring union, but sustaining a wrong course and bracing against His impressions forfeits blessings that would make wise unto salvation and prepare for God's work. Even with strong convictions of truth, men refuse to see the light until their souls are nearly ruined, their only hope being to gather up the rejected light, repent deeply, and turn. At last light fails to impress, warnings are ridiculed, reproof is refused, evidence and Scripture and appeals are misunderstood and distorted, commandments once upheld are disobeyed, and the lie cherished is believed as truth under Satan's leading and deceptive hypnotic influence. Those who unite with the archdeceiver in this work and those who sustain them share the guilt, which is strange in one who has known present truth.
Continued resistance places the sinner where the Holy Spirit cannot influence him and where the Lord cannot use him to lead His people, putting the cause of God in great peril. It grieves the Spirit away and forfeits a Pentecostal season of blessing, keeping God from being glorified. When restraint is removed sinners are left without power to control evil passion and without protection from Satan, left unrestrained to continue their downward course after persistently refusing offered mercy, light, and reproof. Wrath falls not merely for sins committed, even for putting the Son of God to death, but for choosing to continue resistance and repeat past sins in defiance of light when called to repent. God nevertheless showed mercy by giving further evidence and another call to repentance, as with physicians who brace themselves when sophistry prevails against truth.
The blame rests on the sinner and not on God, for no soul is destroyed by a divine decree that he cannot be saved or by impenetrable darkness placed before him. God gives sufficient light and evidence to distinguish truth from error without forcing truth upon anyone, leaves men free to choose good or evil, follows them with appeals and warnings and assurances of compassion until further opportunity would be wholly vain, bears long with rebellion, and after giving Christ holds back nothing of heaven's treasures. Forbearance has limits, there is no second probation, and those who refuse to walk in plain counsel and make light of heaven-sent guidance for the church will receive no greater evidence than has already been given and are forbidden to be entrusted with sheep and lambs and responsibilities they might have borne. By resisting today a person prepares the way for a second and stronger resistance when light comes with mightier power, passing from indifference to indifference until response ceases and ruin is final, while until then heavenly messengers guard and seek to draw him and no soul is finally deserted while hope remains. God has provided for every human need and difficulty, so students deciding eternal destiny and all others who cherish unbelief have no excuse at the judgment.
Choosing evil once makes the second choice easier and the third still more eager, until warnings lose power, fear of God is lost, the heart of flesh becomes a heart of stone, and the man is confirmed in evil. Resistance and unbelief thus ripen their own harvest of sinful indulgence, corruption, lawlessness, crime, and violence, as in the antediluvian world, and the seed sown by precept and example is reproduced in children so that the iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the children while others are led to follow the same resistance. It leaves men worse than if the message had never come, like Laodicea professing much while works deny profession, so that through unsanctified will and ways, cherished and talked unbelief, and hurt to themselves, the work that might have been done by church members, ministers, physicians, and others in responsible places is not done. Words spoken in public against God's work, refusal to heed His voice and Word, refusal to acknowledge wrong when false statements are shown false, refusal to come to the light and open the door to Christ, and bracing against truth when brethren present facts are written in God's book. Even when conviction comes with almost overwhelming power, some refuse to yield and strive more vehemently to justify their course, changing uniform as it were to join the rebel army to war against truth for pay while pretending satisfaction, and at Berrien Springs in 1904 this opposing of God's general work while seeking to make things appear favorable blinded others and acted out the tempter's devising with satanic and human agencies working together. All later hindrance to God's work growing out of such a course is its result, a history not understood till the day of judgment when the books are opened and every case stands clearly revealed.
Warnings for Later Generations
Stubborn opposition and unbelief is warring against the Spirit, and those who resist His work and are blind to His manifestations must acknowledge their error and stop grieving Him by that stubbornness. That resistance can persist through checked promptings from fear of others, and through coldness and unbelief, yet it ends when the error is recognized and the Spirit's influence is welcomed instead of opposed. It includes opposing God's work through stubborn feelings even in ignorance, but those who did so came to see their mistake and confessed that they had been warring against the Spirit and would grieve Him no longer by maintaining opposition. So it was with Brother R., whose opposition to the manifestations of God's Spirit gave way to repentance and praise when he stopped resisting and welcomed the light of Christ. So it was with Alice, whose heart had been hardened by resisting the Spirit of God until it softened when she was very weak and she asked to be baptized.
Those uncircumcised in heart are those who oppress and cast away the erring while refusing repentance, remorse and humility, even while claiming to have obeyed God's commandments, and their stubbornness and rebellion make them like those who resisted God in earlier generations. They are untrue in character, carrying on hidden dishonesty and deception in business dealings, failing to cherish the grace of Christ as a living abiding principle, approving and strengthening wrongdoing in others, and occupying positions without justice. They do not fall on the Rock and be broken, nor rend the heart in repentance with searching out of sin and restitution. While remaining in that state they can do a wrongdoer no good, only stirring up the worst passions of the human heart and confirming a wrong spirit, and unless their course is repented of it bars them from the kingdom of heaven.
All must guard their souls so as not to be found opposing the Spirit of God. That means heeding His tender convictions without delay, hearing God's voice and choosing life while responding to Christ's appeal, since resisting His striving and hardening the heart leads toward destruction. Refusing His correction and warnings through stubborn unbelief and refusal to confess wrongdoing repeats the resistance of earlier generations. Those who have trained themselves to resist God and follow their own unsanctified desires know the truth but do not practice it, and they suffer the loss of a broken law, a neglected gospel, and a rejected Saviour.
The generation before the Flood continually resisted the Holy Ghost during Noah's 120-year warning of the coming Flood and call to repent, believe and find refuge in the ark, with God's power attending the message as the voice of God through His servant to draw them to Himself. Some were deeply convicted and would have heeded, but they yielded to jesting and ridicule, partook of the same spirit, resisted the invitations of mercy and refused to reform. Those who once had light but resisted the convicting Spirit became the boldest and most defiant scoffers, for none are so reckless and go to such lengths in sin. While God drew them, they in rebellion drew away from Him, continually resisting the pleadings of infinite love.