By J. Wiley Adams
We are glad to see this expression coming back into play. It is long overdue. We need once again to “speak as the oracles” and punctuate our teaching with a “thus saith the Lord” (1 Pet. 4:11). We need to revive the scriptural slogan that “we speak where the Bible speaks and we are silent where the Bible is silent.” Let us again decide to “do Bible things in Bible ways and call Bible things by Bible names” (Deut. 29:29).
We need to once again have the spirit of the apostle Paul when he was on the Damascus road. As he was confronted with the living Christ he said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6) It is the Lord’s will that we should seek to carry out and not our own.
Today we fear that many conservative brethren have started to drift with the tide of human tradition and opinion. Jesus declared, “In vain do they worship me teaching for doctrine the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:9). The affluency of our times and the intellectualism of our day has made not a few of us proud, arrogant, and much less than humble. Such have entered the highway of digression just as many have traveled it before and are on the road to becoming a denomination without doubt. Indeed, history tends to re-peat itself.
In today’s high tech society we have made the simple gospel of Christ so complex and complicated that it is no wonder we are not converting the lost. We now must stop and try to recover those who were saved but have drifted away.
The course of history (Bible history) will confirm that God’s people have always flourished when his will is done without fear or favor. It seems also to be the case that when we have less of this world’s goods to encumber us that we rise to our greatest heights in God’s service. Maybe we need to pray for God to strip us down to where we can move more freely in his service.
History will also reveal that when brethren become so high and mighty they differ little from the church at Laodicea. Let us not become lukewarm as did they. God was not pleased with them. We need the militant spirit that pervaded the early church as they went everywhere preaching the word (Acts 8:4).
Once again let us hear more and more of the old Jerusalem ring in the sermons of gospel preachers. We need to renew our desire to save souls above all else and be willing to sacrifice to bring it to pass. Back to the Bible, brethren! The gospel of Christ is still God’s power to save.
Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 7, p. 1
April 7, 1994