In the previous chapter I said that truth should not be passed out indiscriminately, but suited to the circumstances and needs of the hearers.
From the prophets we learn this and from the apostles, as well as from our Lord Himself.
These were never bound by a mechanical religious curriculum which dictated unintelligently that certain doctrines were to be taught at certain times regardless of conditions. They prescribed truth as a divine medicine to be proclaimed with emphasis when the needs of the people called for it. They preached hope when the morale of the nation was low, obedience when the people grew careless, purity when their morals began to sag, humility when they became proud and repentance when they fell into sin.
All was in accord with the total body of revealed truth, but the moral skill of these men of God enabled them to fit the message to conditions.
Otherwise a vast amount of truth could have been wasted and a world of prayer and hard labor rendered ineffective.
Today the religious situation cries out for the skilled moral physician who can diagnose our ills and prescribe wisely for our cure.
It is not enough simply to repeat correct doctrinal cliches.
It is imperative right now that we have the benefit of the piercing discernment of the Spirit.
We must not only know what God has said; we must hear what God is now saying.
verse
There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
— John 1:6-8
thought
How would we react today to a John the Baptist among us? He wouldn't be dressed right. He would seem tactless, terribly frank and outspoken. But he would be a "voice in the desert," thoroughly convinced he was the messenger not the message.
prayer
Lord, thank You for Your messengers over the years who have offended me by exposing my sin, yet have clearly prescribed Your remedy.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used.
If the Church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher.
The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting. Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne.
When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many), he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom.
Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other.
But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath. This is only to say that we need to have the gifts of the Spirit restored again to the Church. And it is my belief that the one gift we need most now is the gift of prophecy.
verse
Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
— Galatians 1:10
thought
Be assured that the prophet-preacher will not be welcomed by all those in the church pews. He is blunt and straightforward, seeking not to please people but God.
prayer
Lord, as Your servant, may I be lovingly candid in presenting Your Word and in applying it.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Not the fact that the churches are unusually active these days, not what religious people are doing, should engage our attention, but why these things are so.
The big question is: Why? And no one seems to have an answer for it.
Not only is there no answer, but scarcely is there anyone to ask the question.
It just never occurs to us that such a question remains to be asked.
Christian people continue to gossip religious shoptalk with scarcely as much as a puzzled look. The soundness of current Christianity is assumed by the religious masses as was the soundness of Judaism when Christ appeared.
People know they are seeing certain activity, but just what it means they do not know, nor have they the faintest idea of where God is or what relation He has toward the whole thing.
What is needed desperately today is prophetic insight.
Scholars can interpret the past; it takes prophets to interpret the present.
Learning will enable a man to pass judgment on our yesterdays, but it requires a gift of clear seeing to pass sentence on our own day.
One hundred years from now historians will know what was taking place religiously in this year of our Lord 1956; but that will be too late for us.
We should know right now.
verse
We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.
— Romans 12:6
thought
In capitalizing on the popular today ? short sermons addressed to felt needs, cell-grooup churches, contemporary music, entertaining "worship," paraded personality ? where is it leading us? To a revitalized Church or one ill with spiritual anemia?
prayer
O God, send us discerning prophets! In Jesus' name.
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There has probably never been another time in the history of the world when so many people knew so much about religious happenings as they do today.
The newspapers are eager to print religious news; the secular news magazines devote several pages of each issue to the doings of the church and the synagogue; a number of press associations gather church news and make it available to the religious journals at a small cost. Even the hiring of professional publicity men to plug one or another preacher or religious movement is no longer uncommon; the mail is stuffed with circulars and releases, while radio and television join to tell the listening public what religious people are doing throughout the world.
Greater publicity for religion may be well and I have no fault to find with it.
Surely religion should be the most newsworthy thing on earth, and there may be some small encouragement in the thought that vast numbers of persons want to read about it.
What disturbs me is that, amidst all the religious hubbub, hardly a voice is raised to tell us what God thinks about the whole thing.
Where is the man who can see through the ticker tape and confetti to discover which way the parade is headed, why it started in the first place and, particularly, who is riding up front in the seat of honor?
Not the fact that the churches are unusually active these days, not what religious people are doing, should engage our attention, but why these things are so. . . .
verse
It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up . . .
— Ephesians 4:11-12
thought
The Church today desparately needs prophets who can see where we are and give direction as to where to go; who understand current trends and discern their outcome.
prayer
Lord, for Your Church to be built up qualitatively, give us leaders who understand the present and the future and can apply Your Word accordingly. In Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
A prophet is one who knows his times and what God is trying to say to the people of his times.
What God says to His Church at any given period depends altogether upon her moral and spiritual condition and upon the spiritual need of the hour.
Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures without regard to the current religious situation are no better than the scribes and lawyers of Jesus day who faithfully parroted the Law without the remotest notion of what was going on around them spiritually.
They fed the same diet to all and seemed wholly unaware that there was such a thing as meat in due season.
The prophets never made that mistake nor wasted their efforts in that manner.
They invariably spoke to the condition of the people of their times. Today we need prophetic preachers; not preachers of prophecy merely, but preachers with a gift of prophecy.
The word of wisdom is missing. We need the gift of discernment again in our pulpits.
It is not ability to predict that we need, but the anointed eye, the power of spiritual penetration and interpretation, the ability to appraise the religious scene as viewed from God's position, and to tell us what is actually going on.
verse
Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, . . . to another prophecy . . . All these are the work of the one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
— First Corinthians 12:7-8, 10-11
thought
Prophecy is the evaluation of the present situation by looking into the past, peering into the future, or both. It is God who gives accurate evaluation.
prayer
Father, will You by Your Spirit, give to certain ones in Your Church the gift of prophecy.
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. . . there is at the root of true religion an inward witness, an awareness of God and Christ at the farthest-in core of the renewed Christian's spirit given to him by the Spirit of God.
This experience results from faith in and obedience to the Scriptures.
It is the end result of Bible doctrine but it is not that doctrine. It is a consciousness of God and spiritual things too deep and wonderful to utter or even think. If this sounds too extreme or mystical let me remind my readers that it was once an accepted and expected phenomenon in most Protestant churches.
In happier and holier times conversion was held to be (among other blessed things) an immediate acquaintance with God in living, spiritual experience.
This came about as the result of the Word preached in the power of the Spirit. And let's remember one thing more.
Even today there are those who can testify that they too know what I am talking about here.
We do not need to appeal to the dead past for support of our teaching. God still has His thousands who know what the inner witness is.
verse
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
— John 17:3
thought
Eternal life is
prayer
O Spirit of God, show me Christ and the things of Christ.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Knowledge by spiritual experience is not mental, it is intuitive.
It is consciousness, it is acquaintance with something or someone by direct awareness.
It might help the reader to understand what we mean by such words as awareness and consciousness if he were to ask himself how he knows he exists, how he knows he is himself and not someone else, how he knows he is alive and not dead. The answer is simply that he knows these things by conscious awareness of which reason is no part.
Let him attempt to prove to himself that he exists, for instance, and he will find that the he who is doing the demonstrating must first be aware that he exists before he can begin to prove that he does. When the French philosopher, Descartes, sought to get to the root of all knowledge he thought away all accepted facts, went back till he found the one irreducible element of knowledge that could not be challenged and came up with his celebrated Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am.
But let no one imagine for a moment that with his little syllogism Descartes went all the way back. He did nothing of the kind. The truth is that he was by intuition aware of his existence before he ever began to notice that he was thinking. His self-knowledge antedated thought and all he did was to prove to reason that he existed by proof that it could understand: I think, therefore I am.
This illustrates but does not explain what we mean by religious knowledge by direct spiritual experience. Stated in other language this means simply that there is at the root of true religion an inward witness, an awareness of God and Christ at the farthest-in core of the renewed Christian's spirit given to him by the Spirit of God. This experience results from faith in and obedience to the Scriptures.
It is the end result of Bible doctrine but it is not that doctrine.
It is a consciousness of God and spiritual things too deep and wonderful to utter or even think.
verse
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
— Romans 8:16
thought
As we, by faith and in accordance with scripture, open our hearts to God, the Holy Spirit witnesses to our spirit that we are children of God. God's inner witness to us!
prayer
Abba, Father, thank You that I am Your child.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
In a recent letter a man from Jamestown, NY, quoted a statement from an editorial, Three Degrees of Religious Knowledge, . . . and asked for clarification.
The quotation was taken from that part of the editorial dealing with the third degree of knowledge: . . . it is knowledge by direct spiritual experience . . . Since it was not acquired by reason operating on intellectual data, the possibility of error is eliminated.
The letter comments on this as follows: This statement seems to me to parallel the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility. I was always taught that the holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and life. My observation has been that most of the false cults base their so-called doctrines and revelations on personal spiritual experience. I would appreciate your further clarification on this editorial statement . . . defining the boundaries with which `direct spiritual experience can be depended upon without danger of departure from the revealed Word of God as contained in the holy Scriptures and as projected in the earthly life of Christ.
This matter deserves further explanation and I'll be glad to make it.
In my editorial I said that there are three degrees of knowledge open to Christians.
The first is the common knowledge shared with all normal persons, namely, the data furnished by the senses and by reason operating upon such data. This embraces all knowledge of natural things from the first scrap of knowledge enjoyed by an hour-old baby to the highest reaches of scientific information acquired by the pooled efforts of the race.
The second is the knowledge received by faith. It consists of data given by divine revelation and received by the believing mind without proof. It is taken on trust and cannot in the very nature of it be demonstrated as being true. Were proof possible then it would belong in the first category and faith would be unnecessary.
The third kind of knowledge is that given by direct spiritual experience. This differs radically from both of the others.
It has nothing to do with the senses and so is not physical or natural data. It has nothing to do with ethics or doctrine and so is not moral or theological knowledge. I do not believe that God teaches doctrine by direct unmediated experience. The exact opposite is true.
The Scriptures are the source of all rational knowledge about moral and religious things, except those things that are revealed by nature as mentioned in Psalm 19:1-4 and Romans 1:19-20, and they are few and inadequate.
verse
The man who thinks he knows something does not know as he ought to know.
— First Corinthians 8:2
thought
There is head knowledge, head and heart and just heart knowledge. In knowing God (not just about Him) the heart must be involved.
prayer
O God, I want to know You! Take me beyond intellectual knowledge to that of the heart. In Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Our constant effort should be to reach as many persons as possible with the Christian message, and for that reason numbers are critically important.
But our first responsibility is not to make converts but to uphold the honor of God in a world given over to the glory of fallen man.
No matter how many persons we touch with the gospel we have failed unless, along with the message of invitation, we have boldly declared the exceeding sinfulness of man and the transcendent holiness of the Most High God.
They who degrade or compromise the truth in order to reach larger numbers, dishonor God and deeply injure the souls of men.
The temptation to modify the teachings of Christ with the hope that larger numbers may "accept" Him is cruelly strong in this day of speed, size, noise and crowds.
But if we know what is good for us, we'll resist it with every power at our command.
To yield can only result in a weak and ineffective Christianity in this generation, and death and desolation in the next.
verse
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
— Colossians 2:6-7
thought
Receiving Christ as Lord and continuing to live in Him is the way to life transformation. To preach Him and receive Him as less than Lord is to seriously modify the Good News.
prayer
May I personally experience and share with others the Good News, Father, without modifying it in any way for whatever reason.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/