Description
This book is not in any way intended to supplant the personal study of the Holy Scriptures in direct dependence upon the Divine Interpreter, the Holy Spirit of God, but rather to promote it. Teaching received as from men, good, gifted, and esteemed men though they be, will be received merely as the teaching of men. But teaching received as from God, by whatsoever means He may communicate it to us, will be received, “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thess. 2:13). Opinions may be derived from men, but convictions must come from God, and only convictions will preserve us from departure ourselves in a day marked by wholesale departure. One of the great tragedies of the present day is the number of children of godly parents who have departed from the way of their parents’ convictions, simply because they never became their own. They never had sufficient spiritual exercise to study the word of God for themselves, and so never obtained God-given convictions as to divine truth. They had all the light that even a Christian could wish, but they had no heart, no heart for God and no heart for His will made known in His word. And so they have departed. We would love to think that some of those wanderers may be recovered, that some who have never given these vital things serious consideration may be stirred up to seek into them, that some who would earnestly desire some help on collective testimony for God may find it, and that those who love these truths, and have stood valiantly by them for many a long year, may be gladdened and strengthened in a day of sadness and weakness by a fresh presentation of them. Our desire, and prayer, in short is the “perfecting of the saints for the work of service, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12).
