This is the first of a series of worship talks given at the General Conference, Takoma Park, Washington, D.C., by H. M. Tippett.
LET us consider God, the all-knowing One, the Omniscient Creator, who knows our downsittings and uprisings, our goings out and our comings in, the One who numbers the very hairs of our head and who understands our thoughts afar off.
This morning for our contemplation I wish to think with you about our knowledge of Him. Zophar, one of Job's counselors, propounded the question: "Canst thou by searching find out God?"
The rhetorical question suggests a negative answer, and Job acknowledged in the twenty-third chapter that although God called him a perfect man and full of wisdom, he was unable to understand God's ways. And he uttered the cry of the human heart in every age: "Oh that I knew where I might find him!" (verse 3).
As I grow older I am continually struck with the arrogance of human knowledge, the idolatry of intellect, the enthronement of science and its findings as man's best hope for human advancement.
Dr. Wernher Von Braun, whom I have quoted before, says that idolatry of our own achievements has been the greatest obstacle to human progress.
And objective science has tried to probe into man's mind to find those releases from tension and inhibitions that baffle his advancement. Hardly a week goes by that I don't find on my desk notices of courses that purport to unlock the secret of life's mysteries, that will "discover the god" in me, and give hope for realization of all those desires that have been denied me.
These, of course, are but the echo of Satan's lie in Eden: "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
I haven't time to read the references, but the messenger of the Lord says that the knowledge of God is lost by idolatry— whether it be of material resources, of methods, of scholarship, of prestige, or of tradition.
She says that the knowledge of God is also lost by disobedience, by pursuing knowledge for its own sake, by philosophic reasoning, by speculation, by adulation of men.
How then may we know God? These are the counsels of the Lord's servant: By faith in His revealed Word, by conformation of the life to His will, by contemplation of His works, by communion with His Spirit, by following the example of Christ. Furthermore, she says that all knowledge is in vain unless it is used to God's honor.
We have had an example of the futility of scholarship in discovering truth in the book on Adventism written by Mr. Martin. It makes us sad to think that a man could spend seven years studying our message and our movement and our written works and still contest the distinctive features of our belief that set us apart as a people. What an object lesson the book is to the truth that spiritual things are spiritually discerned.
Prof. Lester Harris, of Washington Missionary College [now Columbia Union College], a year or so ago lectured on the possibility of survival in the wilderness by eating the edible herbs by the way. But he reminds us we would need to have knowledge of what herbs to eat. Apparently they didn't have any expert botanist in the school of the prophets, for during the time of famine as they went out to seek herbs for the pot, they chose some that looked edible but were not, and they became ill.
It is only spiritual things that are spiritually discerned, and unfortunately for the sons of the prophets edible herbs did not come in that category. They could only be botanically discerned. And it was not until at the dinner table they discovered their error and cried, "There is death in the pot." So you see, scientific knowledge has its place, even in the work of God. But unless science and scholarship are mixed with faith, we may find human knowledge a snare.
Piety can be no substitute for knowledge, nor can science be substituted for faith. Piety can't be substituted for common sense or for study in preparation of sermons. There is such a thing as an intelligent worship of God. And the more one knows Him the sharper is his intellectual discernment. I am apprehensive of what seems to be a new trend in our theological scholarship, which in some cases steals from our faith the comfort we used to have in certain Bible texts.
How we have loved that statement of Paul's—"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." We are told that that doesn't mean what we have thought it meant, for in the context from which it is taken it refers to something different from our eternal home.
But I have faith enough to believe that many of the wonderful statements of the Bible still speak to the heart of devotion even when they stand alone, Greek and Hebrew scholarship notwithstanding, and I do not wish to disparage either one.
But tomorrow, the Lord willing, I'd like to tell you of how the Word of God has comforted me with texts all out of keeping with their context.
"If our love were but more simple, We should take Him at His word; And our lives would be all sunshine In the sweetness of our Lord."
—F. W. Faber