How We Learn the Truth

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 12
 
After the Church is called to heaven the Jewish remnant may have the New Testament before their eyes, but there will be no power to apply the New Testament facts to their own souls, as far, at least, as present peace and communion are concerned. What a proof that not merely the Word is required, but the Holy Ghost to open it out, for the rest and enjoyment of the soul! Some of us, even as Christians, have had no light as to certain truths, until, in the grace of God, He was pleased to remove the film from our eyes.
And God does this ordinarily by specific means; for it is not His way to enable persons to take up the Bible and understand it independently of His provision for the perfecting of the saints. God teaches His children, but in general it is through those He has given for the good of the Church, and, though never tied down to that order, He does not set aside the wise and gracious arrangement He has formed and will perpetuate as long as the Church endures. Nourishment is ministered by joints and bands, and thus all the body, knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. That which would enable us to do without one another is a thing that God never gives or sanctions.
Suppose a person were cast upon a desert island, God would bless him in his solitary reading of the Word with prayer; but where there are other means and opportunities, such as assembling ourselves together for instruction, for reading the Scriptures, for public preaching, exhortation, etc., to neglect or despise them is the will of man and not the guidance of the Spirit of God.