Truth Magazine

By Lewis Willis

I am having to deal with the proverbial “horns of a dilemma.” I am not in this by myself. You have got the same problem. I am certain that you have enough problems already – I know I do – but I do not see any way we can realistically avoid confronting the dilemma to which I refer.

It was not long after I arrived on this old earth that scientists developed the bomb that ended World War Il. Periodically since that time, situations have existed in the world that could have potentially thrust us into one mighty nuclear conflagration. Last night (11/20/83) ABC television aired a movie, The Day After, about such an event. I did not watch the movie. If a nuclear weapon is going to fry me like a french fry, I want to experience such only once! I have no interest in vicariously going through the experience numbers of times. And, admittedly, the thought does not exactly brighten my day. Our premillennial religious friends have capitalized on this possibility for many, many years. Most of them will tell you that they think the end of the world will occur as a result of such a war among the super powers. It is this kind of mentality that led to the building of bomb shelters several years ago. I never did really understand the rationale of such. If the world is going to end by the fires of a nuclear war, it will mark the end of the bomb shelters too. I fail to see, therefore, how such is going to help much.

But now we have got the other horn of that dilemma to take into consideration. The Akron Beacon Journal (I 1/ 15/83) printed an Associated Press article out of Sydney, Australia regarding the findings of an international scientific research team at the Australian National University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory. Dr. Bruce Patterson, head of the observatory, informed us “that the universe is infinite and will go on expanding forever.” The fact that the Bible says otherwise is meaningless to such men. Before you take too much comfort from their findings, however, you need to realize that “through a series of complicated calculations,” these distinguished scientists have established that “life will slowly die out in a dark, frozen waste rather than disappear in a final cataclysmic explosion.” I do not know if freezing offers me much more consolation than burning. The dilemma is rather obvious. Do we need a fan or a furnace? Now I don’t know what to do!

These “complicated calculations” of the scientific community on this subject do not exactly impress me. I am always reminded of the story of the fellow who walked through a cemetery one night and fell into an open grave. After trying unsuccessfully to get out, he just sat down to wait for the morning and someone to get him out. After a while another unfortunate fellow stumbled into that same open grave. He calculated, worked, figured and struggled in every possible way to get out. The first fellow observed his predicament and calmly announced, “You can’t get out of here.” But, he did! I guess that about sums up my attitude about either horn of this dilemma. I plan to get out and, so far, science has offered no viable escape mechanism or route. I think I’ll concentrate on a third alternative and forget about the fans, furnaces and bomb shelters. I recall that the apostle Paul once said that God would “destroy the wisdom of the wise . . . ” (1 Cor. 1: 19). He has systematically done this throughout history. If there were scientists in Noah’s day, their calculations would have considered the flood unlikely, if not impossible. What gathering of scientists would have agreed in advance that Israel could have escaped across the Red Sea as they did. The counsel of the wise led the majority of the people to reject Christ as the Messiah. And the Gospel was just too simple for intellectual men. But God destroyed all of that human wisdom and proceeded to do it as He desired – and He had the ability to do so.

The same God who executed all of those other wonders has announced that “The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Pet. 3: 10). Science can believe anything it wants to believe, but it has traditionally rejected the revelation of God. Nothing is too preposterous to be accepted so long as it takes issue with what the Lord says! Therefore, some conclude that man will destroy himself with his bombs and others conclude we’ll just freeze like popsicles on this earth one of these days. Peter affirms that “by the word of God” this world will come to its demise (2 Pet.

3:5-7). 1 have determined that I will accept the testimony of God about the end of these things. I will attempt my escape to that other realm by believing in Christ, obeying the Gospel and trusting the promises of God. Thus, when that great and terrible day of the Lord does come, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: . . . We shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality . . .” (1 Cor. 15:52-53). I was just thinkin’ – there must surely be sufficient comfort in this promise of God to enable us to totally trust Him in our deliverance from the end of this realm into the blessedness of the place prepared for us by Jesus (Jn. 14:1-3). So, forget the fans and furnaces!

Guardian of Truth XXVIII: 7, p. 204
April 5, 1984

By Weldon E. Warnock

Fellow-Christian, do you have complete confidence that you are going to heaven? I am finding among Christians some reservations as to what their standing before God is. The reason for this uncertainty is the notion that there may be some sin in their lives of which they are unaware and their unconscious, ignorant, isolated sin alienates them from God, and, therefore, condemns them.

What unnecessary dread and fear because of a misconception of the grace of God. The gospel of Christ teaches assurance, joy and peace for God’s people – not doubt and despair. We sing:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

This great song expresses the settled, positive conviction of salvation through the redeeming love of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can confidently proclaim, “heirs of salvation,” because eternal life is so certain for the believer that it is spoken of many times as already possessed. John said, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John 3:36). Jesus said, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47). Other passages could be cited. Indeed, it is a blessed assurance!

The followers of Jesus are given eternal life and they shall never perish; neither shall any man pluck them out of Jesus’ hand (John 10:28). Of course, a disciple can quit following Jesus and forfeit eternal life, but the faithful saint is constantly safe in the hand of Jesus. A dedicated child of God is not in and out of the hand of the Lord, week in and week out. The Bible does not teach such a fragile plan of salvation.

For a faithful Christian to be lost and saved over and over and over and over reminds me of the game many of us have played with flowers as we picked off the petals and said, “She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not The idea of having to be aware of every sin and then specifically confess it, leaves those who would espouse it wondering where they are, spiritually, and saying, “He saves me, He saves me not, He saves me, He saves me not.”

God’s Security

Listen to Paul: “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. 1: 12). The beloved apostle was sure about his salvation. We can be, too — not, however, by sinless perfection through perfect law keeping (an impossibility), nor by being conscious of every imperfection in our past lives (another impossibility), but by God’s marvelous grace that forgives our isolated sins, our ignorant imperfections as a result of our abhorrence of sin and our humility to confess to God that we are sinners and we need His forgiveness. The publican prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner’ (Luke 18:13). He went down to his house justified (v. 14). We can go on our way, justified, by the same process. David prayed, “Cleanse thou me from secret (ignorant) faults” (Psa. 19:12). With an attitude like that, brethren, God takes care of us – forgives us, cleanses us through the blood of Christ, covers our transgressions and keep us under the shadow of His wings (1 Jn. 1:7; Rom. 4:7; Psa. 17:8).

Read the wonderful passage in Psalms 91:1-4. The Psalmist stated, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust …. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.” Yes, our heavenly Father forgives us continuously of isolated, ignorant sins of which we can never become aware, predicated, of course, on general confession. This is what keeps loving believers in God’s grace.

Our hope in Christ is an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast (Heb. 6:19). The Christian’s hope is solid and stable, not flimsy and wavering. Hope means “desire and expectation.” Hence, a Christian expects to go to heaven. He has the promise of God for it and he can, therefore, depend on it. All of God’s people have infirmities and are tempted in many ways, but God takes care of His own who have surrendered their hearts to Him. Through the years we have sung:

Safe in the arms of Jesus,

Safe on His gentle breast;

There by His love O’er-shaded,

Sweetly my soul shall rest.

Some of us are either going to have to quit singing this grand old song or change our thinking about the security of God’s children. How can we sing that we are safe and our soul is sweetly at rest while entertaining worry, anxiety and despondency about our soul? Is it that we are relying too heavily on ourselves rather than the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? When we do the very best we can, we still are unprofitable servants. Let’s assure ourselves that God’s grace does for us what we are not able to do for ourselves. We then can say with Paul, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:13).

Concerning the child of God who knowingly sins, whether deliberately or inadvertently, he is to immediately repent and confess his sins (Acts 8:22; 1 Jn. 1:9). God will abundantly pardon (Isa. 55:7). God loves us and wants us saved, for God is love (1 Jn. 4:8; 1 Tim. 2:4). We do not have to keep begging God to forgive us, nor do we have to appease Him. He is ready and willing to forgive (2 Pet. 3:9).

These preceding things I firmly and deeply believe. I can find no alternative to keeping myself saved. I can find no other way to maintaining the joy of my salvation. But do not read into what I said as advocating God’s forgiveness of those who are ignorantly walking in sin or living in sin, whether it be immoral conduct or religious error, because the situations are entirely different.

Walking In Sin

The apostle John specifically deals with those who are walking in sin and he explicitly teaches they have no fellowship with God. John writes, “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (1 Jn. 1:6). Whether knowingly or unknowingly, if a person is walking in darkness he has no fellowship with God, regardless of what he claims to the contrary. The word, “walk,” means “mode of conduct or behavior.” Hence, if one’s conduct is persistence in sin, he has no fellowship with God. The blood of Jesus will not cleanse those who are walking in moral impurities and religious falsehoods.

Children of God, regardless of how sincere they may be, cannot go off on a tangent from divine truth and stay in fellowship with Almighty God. Those who use human innovations in worship to God, corrupt the organization of the church or pervert the purity of the doctrine of Christ are walking in darkness and John says they have no fellowship with God. Those who claim they do have fellowship, lie, and those who try to defend their sinful behavior on the basis of sincere ignorance, also lie. Nobody can live in sin and be right at the same time.

Only those who walk in the light, in the truth of God, have fellowship with God and they, and only they, are cleansed (continuous or repeated action) from all sin by the blood of Christ (1 Jn. 1:7), contingent upon the conditions already stated.

Let us learn all we can about God’s word, live as close to it as is humanly possible and say with the Psalmist, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psa. 119:11).

(Editor’s Note: The preceding article is another attempt by a faithful brother to deal with the question of the security of the believer who might be guilty of sins of ignorance or weakness. Brother Warnock states that the believer can be secure, which all of us believe. He finds this security in the grace of God who forgives isolated sins of ignorance and weakness based on a general confession of sin. He limits this forgiveness to an occasional sin in contrast to a general walk in some sin, whether that walk in sin be occasioned by ignorance and weakness. Brother Warnock has also written a second article, which will be published in a future issue, showing how he will answer the grace-unity advocates who use the premise that God forgives sins of ignorance, weakness, and inadvertence as a platform for fellowshipping those in the Christian Churches and liberal churches of Christ. Brother Warnock takes a different approach to the security of the believer than I do. Our conclusions and practices are the same. Both of us believe in the security of the believer. Neither of us believe that fellowship [whether limited or unlimited] can be extended to those who practice sin, defend it as righteousness, and encourage others to participate in it. We are happy to present his material for our readers’ consideration.)

Guardian of Truth XXVIII: 7, pp. 205-206
April 5, 1984

By Earl E. Robertson

John wrote, “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:11,12). This “record” is God’s witness or testimony, and it is abundant – especially noted in the gospel of John. This fact is affirmatively stated. Only those who have the Son have life; John testifies that life is in the Son of God. To those in the Son at Colosse Paul wrote, “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:3,4). There is life in the Son – only in the Son.

The nature of this life is eternal. Since only those who have the Son have life it is obvious that this life is conditional. All do not have this life, but the Lord wants all to have it (2 Pet. 3:9; 1 Tim. 2:3,4). If all do not have it and the Lord wishes all to have it we must conclude that it is conditional. The Christian has this life as he has the Christ and must understand its conditionality. He has it in promise declared the Lord and His apostles (Mark 10:29,30). Here Jesus says “in the world to come eternal life.” The apostle Paul lived in hope of eternal life (Tit. 1:2). He informed the Romans that hope realized is not hope (Rom. 8:24,25). John says, “And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life” (1 John 2:25). Inasmuch as this life is conditional on man’s part, it can be forfeited in sin and rebellion. As a believer ceases to believe he ceases to have Him who gives the life. Paul wrote Timothy concerning younger widows, saying, “Having damnation, because they have cast off their first faith” (1 Tim. 5:12). Rather than having salvation they have damnation.

John says God “gives” this life. This life is not earned or merited by the sinner. Paul says salvation from God is a gift (Eph. 2:8). The gift of life must, however, be received by the sinner. Does God force salvation upon the sinner? Does God save when one does not want to be saved? God never saves against the will of the -sinner! He saves only those who “obey him” (Heb. 5:8,9). He does not grant entrance into the kingdom to any save the ones who do the will of God (Matt. 7:21). He gives life to those who believe and are baptized (Mark 16:15,16).

Guardian of Truth XXVIII: 7, p. 206
April 5, 1984

By Daniel H. King

When I was a boy it was my pleasure to spend the night occasionally at my grandmother’s W house in West Tennessee. It was a great place to stay, although the facilities were far less civilized than most of us would like to have them be today. Just being out on the farm with her and my two bachelor uncles was sensational for a country boy who had been transplanted (against his will) to the big city.

I never gave too much thought to the fact that we had to carry in the water from the pump and drink from the same iron-encrusted dipper, even in the winter when little slivers of ice volunteered their presence about the edges of the bucket. It wasn’t even so bad that there was no indoor toilet. That amounted only to something “neat” that I could tell my friends about when I made it back to the city. They would all say “Wow!” and mean it when they heard how I had roughed it with the folks out in the “sticks.”

During the cold part of the year, however, this simple nuisance took on awesome dimensions. Waking up in the middle of the night with the urge to visit the little wooden “outhouse” (which was duly situated a goodly number of steps from the house), was an experience which, once lived through, would never be forgotten!

There is one thing, though, above all such related experiences, that drifts back into the memory with a special mixture of emotions. It is the sensation of putting on cold breeches. I remember awakening to the faint smell of bacon frying and buttermilk biscuits in the oven. My bedroom was located at the furthermost end of the house, far from the coal-fired stove in the front room. Some mornings it was so cold in the room that your nose was visibly red from it. And, the breath that issued from beneath the thickly-layered quilts atop the feather-bed could actually be seen as well as felt.

On such wintry mornings one held his breath as he dashed from out of the protecting covers and slid the icy pants that lay beside the bed onto his toasty-warm body. What a frigid reception they always gave their host! Those first heart-stopping moments were certainly no indication of the warmth they would later bestow. Only slowly would they begin to reflect the body’s self-generated heat back upon itself. At the first they certainly gave more pain than pleasure.

As I have considered more fully this experience of putting on cold breeches, I have often reflected that there are many things in fife that are like it. Such experiences start out giving pain but end in profit. Is this not so with birth?

One accepts the necessary advice of a physician, who takes a knife and cuts deeply into his flesh – a thing he would not imagine allowing to happen to him were it not for the hoped-for benefit at the end of this surgical operation.-In similar fashion, one opens his mouth widely while a dentist drills a gaping hole in his tooth all the way down to the nerve (at which time he usually wants to jump out of the chair). When this experience is over he cherishes the hope that his tooth will quit hurting and that he will never have to visit another dentist as long as he lives. But if he has another toothache, back to the dentist he will go! The benefit is worth the temporary discomfort. One would prefer to endure a few moments in the dentist’s chair than to lay awake all night long with a toothache.

Things are the same way in the spiritual realm. Because a few things in that department cause us some momentary discomfort or make demands upon us which would be more easily ignored or neglected than fulfilled, we would prefer not to have any part of them. That is the easy way, for now at least. It is also the most convenient way. But the way of hardship is often the only way to lasting satisfaction and happiness. It is said that Paul, after an unsuccessful attempt by his opponents on his fife, exhorted the disciples of Christ in Pisidia to continue in the faith, despite hardships, for it is “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). If anyone knew how true was this axiom, it was surely Paul!

We will not conceal the fact that your confession of Christ and stand in life for his teachings and principles will at times cost you. The duties of the Christian life are numerous and involve expenditure of time and money. We refuse to apologize for that. But, look at them like this: They are a lot like putting on cold breeches. At first they may make shivers run through you. But after a while you warm up to them. In heaven you’ll probably forget all about them: “For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18).

Guardian of Truth XXVIII: 7, p. 208
April 5, 1984