Still another of the questionable things is the manner in which we patronize human greatness when we have no inward illumination. A system of literature has grown up around the notion that Christianity may be proven by the fact that great men believe in Christ. If we can just get the story of a politician who believes in Christ, we spread it all over our magazines, “Senator So-and-so believes in Christ.” The implication is that if he believes in Christ, then Christ must be all right.
Evil Consequences
by Dr. Don Dean

There are several evil consequences for believing that we can know God with our minds — our intellectual capacity.

First, the Christian life is conceded to be very much like a natural life, only jollier, cleaner, and more fun! The faith of our fathers has been identified with a number of questionable things. We must admit that one is philosophy, and I think that this modern neo-intellectual movement that is trying to resurrect the Church by means of learning is about as far off the track as it is possible to be, for you don’t go to philosophy to find out about the Lord Jesus.

Now, Paul did happen to be one of the most intellectual men who ever lived. He has been called by some to be one of the six greatest intellects who ever lived, but this man said to the church in Corinth, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom… but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” (1 Corinthians 2:1a, 4b)

If you have to be reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it! If you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Spirit so that by intuition you know that you are God’s child, you know it by the text, but you also know it by the inner light, the inner illumination of the Spirit, and no one can ever reason you out of it.

When I was a young man, I read most of the books on atheism. I had my Bible, a hymnbook, and a few other books, including Andrew Murray and Thomas à Kempis, and I got myself educated as well as I could by reading books. I read the philosophy of all of the great minds, and many of those men did not believe in God. They didn’t believe in Christ. I remember reading White’s Warfare of Science with Christianity, and if any man can read that and still say he is saved, his reading doesn’t save him. The Holy Spirit within him, telling him that he is saved, saves him! Actually, many of those philosophers and thinkers would try taking away all my “reasons,” and reduce me to palpitating ignorance if they could. On the basis of human reason, they would make many men get up, walk out and toss his Bible on a shelf saying, “There goes another one!” Do you know what I would do after I would read a chapter or two and find arguments that I could not possibly defeat? I would get down on my knees and, with tears, I would thank God with joy that no matter what the books said, “I know Thee, my Savior and my Lord!” I didn’t have it in my head. I had it in my heart. There is a great difference, you see. If we have it in our heads, then philosophy may be of some help to us, but if we have it in our hearts, there is not much that philosophy can do except stand aside reverently, hat in hand, and say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” (Revelation 4:8b)

Another of the questionable things is the manner in which we try to call upon science to prove Christianity. We have just come through one of those long tunnels when the evangelical church was running to science to get some sort of help, not knowing that science has no technique for investigation of all that is divine in Christianity.

The things that science can investigate are not divine, and the things that are divine, science cannot investigate. Some would say that this is circular logic, but in reality it simply confirms its own reliance upon truth that cannot be easily cast aside. Oh, science can make the satellites and the spaceships — many wonderful things in the human field — but all of that is really nothing in comparison to all that is eternal. Christianity is a miracle and a wonder. It is something out of the heavens, something let down like Peter’s sheet, not depending upon the world, or being a part of the world, but rather something from the throne of God like the waters of Ezekiel’s vision. Science knows nothing about that. It can only stand back, looking it over, and not know what to say. Those who do not have this inner intuition, and who do not have this comprehension of the miraculous, run to science. Some of those in this category say they want to believe in miracles. A fellow finds a fish washed up on shore, and he gets a tape measure and crawls inside the bony skeleton and measures its gullet. He finds out that it is as broad as the shoulders of a man and he says, “See, Jonah could be swallowed by a great fish!” Well, I believe the miracles—I believe them all, but I don’t believe them because science permits me. I believe them because God wrote them and detailed them in the Bible. If they are there, I believe them!

You may have heard of the two scientists who reported that the story of Balaam’s ass speaking to the prophet is false because “…the larynx of a donkey could not possibly articulate human speech.” A thoughtful Scotchman overheard them and he walked up to them and said, “Man, you make a donkey and I’ll make him talk.” There you have it, brother. If God can make a donkey, God can make him talk. Christianity stands or falls on Jesus Christ—stands or falls on the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Peter could have reasoned until all reason had been exhausted, and still not known anything for sure, but suddenly, when the Holy Spirit came upon him, he jumped up and said, “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:36) He knew that by the Spirit of God.

Still another of the questionable things is the manner in which we patronize human greatness when we have no inward illumination. A system of literature has grown up around the notion that Christianity may be proven by the fact that great men believe in Christ. If we can just get the story of a politician who believes in Christ, we spread it all over our magazines, “Senator So-and-so believes in Christ.” The implication is that if he believes in Christ, then Christ must be all right. When did Jesus Christ have to ride in on the coattail of a senator? No, my brother! Jesus stands alone, unique and supreme, self-validating, and the Holy Spirit declares Him to be God’s eternal Son. Let all the presidents all the kings and queens, the senators, the lords and ladies of the world, along with the great athletes and great actors, let them all kneel at His feet and cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!” (Revelation 4:8b) Only the Holy Spirit can do this, my brethren. For that reason, I don’t bow down to great men. I bow down to God, and if you have learned to worship God, you won’t worship other men. You see, it is the Holy Spirit or darkness. The Holy Spirit is God’s imperative of life. If your faith is to be a New Testament faith, if Christ is to be the Christ of God rather than the Christ of intellect, then we must enter in beyond the veil. We have to push in past the veil until the illumination of the Holy Spirit fills our heart and we are learning at the feet of Jesus rather than at the feet of men.

Now, consider with me the words of First John 2:27, “As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.” What does that mean—”you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you…”? The man who wrote that was a teacher, and we do not rule out the place of the teacher, for one of the gifts of the Spirit is teaching. What it says is that your knowledge of God is not taught to you from without. It is received by an inner anointing, and you don’t get your witness from a man. You get your witness from an inner anointing.

Paul said, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: `I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate’ “ (1 Corinthians 1:18–19). And, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him” (1 Corinthians 1:21a). And, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

Paul also assures us that “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” (1:27–29) You see, the Holy Spirit rules out and excludes all Adam’s flesh, all human brightness, all that scintillating human personality, human ability and human efficiency. It makes Christianity depend upon a perpetual miracle. The man of God, the true Spirit-filled man of God, is a perpetual miracle. He is someone who is not understood by the people of the world at all. He is a stranger. He has come into the world by the wonder of the new birth and the illumination of the Spirit, and his life is completely different from the world.

If you want a scriptural basis for this thought, Paul said in First Corinthians 2:15, “The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment.” The spiritual man has a penetration that judges everything, but he himself cannot be judged by anyone, “’For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:16) That’s simple. Now, what are we doing to do with this truth? Are we going to argue about this? Are we just going to say that it was good? Are we going to do something about it? Are we going to open the door of our personality — fling it wide? Oh, we don’t have to be afraid. The Holy Spirit is an Illuminator. He is Light to the inner heart, and He will show us more of God in a moment than we can learn in a lifetime without Him. When He does come, all that we have learned and all that we do learn will have its proper place in our total personality, creed, and total thinking. We won’t lose anything by what we have learned. He won’t throw out what we have learned if it is truth. He will set it on fire, that’s all. He will add fire to the altar.

The blessed Holy Spirit waits to be honored. He will honor Christ as we honor Christ. He waits, and if we will throw open our hearts to Him, a new sun will rise on us. I know this by personal experience. If there is anything that God has done through me, it dates back to that solemn, awful, wondrous hour when the Light that never was on land or sea, the Light that “gives light to every man who comes into the world,” (John 1:9, margin) flashed in on my darkness. It was not my conversion. I had been converted, soundly converted. It was subsequent to conversion. How about you?

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