On my recent vacation to the lake, I met a young man in his early 30s. He was sitting beside a communal fire where one could make s’mores, that great American favorite. As I sat down beside the fire I introduced myself and we began to talk. It turns out I was talking to a theologian. He had two masters degrees in divinity and theology and was in the process of getting his doctorate. He was also an ordained elder of his local Presbyterian church. His day job was computer programming. And so our discussion began.
The Lord laid it upon my heart to speak about John chapter three and the love of God for the world that motivated Him to send His only Son to die for the whosoever and the necessity of being born again. I really could not have guessed at his reaction. He spent most of the rest of our conversation trying to prove that God hates, and quoted psalm 5. He agreed with me that the Scriptures are not broken but insisted that God hates sinners. Hard as I tried, I could not persuade him otherwise, and talk about the Old Covenant and the New yielded no fruit. So I tried another tactic. I asked him if he could tell me about his own new birth, about him being born again.
He told me that when he was 16 or 17, he was asked what salvation meant by some of his high school friends. Despite growing up in the Presbyterian, he was ashamed to admit that he did not know. So, he went and educated himself as to what the Bible says about salvation. That was it, that was his “salvation.” Education, knowledge of facts. A mental assent to a series of abstract truths. Now we know that the Devil himself knows and gives assent to Biblical truth, and trembles. Oh that men would tremble at the truth of God. Here is what Tozer says about truth. “Divine truth is of the nature of spirit and for that reason can only be received by spiritual revelation….Gods thoughts belong to the world of spirit, man’s to the world of intellect. And while spirit can embrace intellect, the human intellect can never comprehend spirit.”
Everything this young man had was in his head. It was all human knowledge. His reason and his intellect caused him to know about God, but not “know,’ Him. Therefore he had an inability to talk about God the Father or Jesus or the Holy Spirit in any intimate way whatsoever. The intellect is not how we “know,’ Jesus. It is by the work of the spirit and of revelation. Yet for centuries Christendom has been dominated by “theologians.” And the interesting thing about theologians is that they are wall builders and historically people burners. Of all of the hundreds of thousands of martyrs in the last two thousand years, no one was every martyred by a “layman.” Every denomination has its own theologians and each of them build walls of theology, bulwarks if you like, against others of differing views on the same Scriptures. Their weapons are proof texting and they are not afraid to use them.
As an old stonemason, its ironic that I would echo Kennedy in saying “tear down that wall.” We are spiritually led. The Holy Spirit leads and guides us into all truth. Does He use teachers? Yes, he often does use them, but He uses those whom He trains and raises up. How the educated class marveled at the unlearned men such as Peter and other fishermen. Where did their knowledge come from? Did Jesus not open up the Scriptures to the disciples on the road to Emmaus? Did not their hearts burn within them? These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.(1Jn 2:26-27)
Builders of walls, builders of kingdoms, builders of denominations, builders of fires. We have not been called to build walls or kingdoms or fires brothers and sisters. What we learn from the Holy Scriptures by and through the Holy Spirit and teachers He raises up, is not what a theologian would call “hermeneutics,” which is to say the art and the science of studying the Scriptures based on human reasoning. What the Holy Spirit teaches is neither art nor science. “Man cannot know God, he can only know about God………..Man’s reason is a fine instrument and useful within its field. It was not given as an organ by which to know God.” (A.W.Tozer) And so I think it was no mistake that I met this young man around a fire. I have no doubt in my mind that if we had met 500 years ago, it would also be around a fire and he would have given his consent for me to be burned as a heretic. Take this to the bank brothers and sisters, no genuine born again Christian down through the corridors of time, ever burned another human being to death, let alone someone who called himself after the Lord’s name.
A Call To The Remnant 