I wish all church people might hear this, that the realm of the Spirit is closed to the intellect. It is not difficult to understand why. You see the spirit is the organ by which we apprehend divine things, and the human spirit is dead because of sin. Therefore, the human intellect is not the organ by which we apprehend divine things.
For instance, if a symphony was being played just now, you do not hear that symphony with your eye, because God did not give you your eye to hear with. He gave you your eye for vision, not hearing. If there were a beautiful sunset, you would not enjoy that with you ear because God did not give you your ear to hear sunsets with. He gave you your ear to hear music and the voices of your friends and the laughter of children and birdsong and all things beautiful and good. He gave your ear to hear all things that can be heard; He gave you your eye to see what can be seen. But He never confuses the two. You do not hear with your eye nor see with your ear.
If I stand up and say the realm of nature, the ear cannot apprehend visible nature. Nobody wonders, nobody jumps up and says, “That man is a mystic.” It is just common sense, it is ordinary scientific fact. So, when I say God did not give you your intellect to apprehend Him with, but He gave you another organ altogether, then there is certainly nothing profoundly unclear about it.
Look at this passage. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord, for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And 1 Corinthians 2, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.”
“The natural man,” that is, the man of mind and the intellect, cannot understand nor receive the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned. God gave us spirit to apprehend Him and intellect to apprehend theology. There is a difference.
And in John 16, Jesus said “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now, howbeit, when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak and he will show you things to come, he shall glorify me for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you.”
Now it is perfectly plain that the Spirit of God is the One who reveals God to us.
In 1 Corinthians 2, we have a passage there also that tells us: “Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: but as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”
Isn’t it strange how many times we stop when we should go on, we go on when we should stop. Here is one of the places where people stop; we memorize that verse and put a full stop after the word Him. God hath prepared for them that love Him and then we stop there, but the Bible does not stop there. It has a little conjunction “but” there. It says, “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. Eye hasn’t seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man understood but God has revealed it by the Spirit.” The eye does not apprehend the spiritual things; the ear does not apprehend them and they are not apprehended even by the intellect, but the Spirit reveals them, for the Spirit searches all things, yea the deep things of God. Then He uses an illustration and says, “What man knows the things of a man, save the Spirit of man which is in him.”
This is what we call intuition. You know what you are and who you are, and even if you did not know your name and even if you were visited with the disease that takes away your memory, you would still know you are you. You intuit it. You know you are alive, you do not reason that you are alive.
Rene Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” But that was silly because he knew who he was even before he ever reasoned it; he knew who he was by intuition. Now that is the problem with the church in our day. We forget that there is something you cannot get a hold of with your head. We run around with our heads always trying to lay hold of things with our minds. Now the mind is good. God put it there. He gave you a head and He did not give it to you so your glasses could be on it, or your hat. He gave it to you and He put brains in your head; and the organ we call the intellect has a work to do, but that work is not apprehending divine things. That is of the Holy Ghost.
That is why when a person is truly converted you cannot argue him out of it. While the world stands, he knows he is converted. He intuits it. The Holy Ghost tells him deep within his heart. He does not have to have three or four fellows beat him on the back and stick a marked New Testament under his nose. He knows he is converted by the inworking of the Holy Ghost that intuits it. He knows it. Now he said, “even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.” God knows himself and the Holy Ghost knows God, because the Holy Ghost is God and no man can know God except by the Holy Ghost.
To disregard what I am talking about, is to shut out spiritual things entirely from our understanding. Spiritual things are hidden behind a veil according to this, and the son of earth cannot get a hold of them; he comes up against a blank wall. He takes doctrine, texts, proofs, creeds and theology and he lays them up like a wall, but he cannot find a gate and he cannot find any light. He stands in the darkness and all around him is intellectual knowledge of God, but not the personal knowledge of God. There is a difference you know.
It is possible to grow up in a church, learn the catechism and get everything from sprinkling the baby on down to the last rites. After you have done all that, you may not know God at all. Because God is not known by those external things. You are blind, you cannot see because “the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.”
There has been a great blunder in more modern orthodoxy. It is the erroneous assumption that spiritual truths can be intellectually perceived, and there have been far reaching conditions resulting from this. It has shown itself in our preaching, in our praying and in our singing, and in our activity and in our thinking. It is an error to believe that Bible study can remove the veil. When you go to Bible school, you learn theology; New Testament introduction, Old Testament introduction, New Testament synthesis and Old Testament synthesis, and think you have something. You could have something provided you had the divine illumination of the Holy Ghost. However, until you receive that illumination, that inward enlightenment, you do not have anything, because Bible study does not of itself lift the veil and penetrate it.
Let me give you a little motto, before I can understand a Bible text it takes an act of the Holy Spirit equal to the act that inspired the text in the first place.
2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable...”
John 3:27 which says, “A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.”
But we are in a state where we believe we can talk each other up. We put things down on a level with man and say that a preacher is a salesman; he is out selling the gospel. I have even heard people talk about gossiping the gospel. Gossip the gospel. I think that is hideous. I would not use it in a graveyard for a stray dog. I do not like that at all and do not tell me that the methods of God and winning man are the same method that a Fuller Brush salesman uses in selling a back scratcher.
The Holy Spirit operates on another realm altogether, and the method of winning a man to God is a divine method and not a human one. But we can make proselytes and church members, and get people over on our side, join in our class and go to our summer camp and have done nothing to him but make a proselyte out of him. But when the Holy Spirit works in a man, God does the work, and what God does the scripture says is forever. But we imagine we can handle it by the flesh and so we do handle it by the flesh, and the Lord lets us do it.
We can hold the Christian Creed, not know God, know the doctrine of the Church and not know spiritual things at all.
Another fearful consequence is that many people know about God but do not know God. There is a difference between knowing about God and knowing God.
I can know about your relative in Saskatchewan, but not know him, never have met him, never know the touch of his hand or the look of his eyes, the smile of his face or the sound of his voice, only know about him. You can even show me his picture and describe the man to me and still I do not know the man, I just know about the man.
A scientist, for instance, knows bugs. He writes books on bees, on worms, other bugs and various kinds of creatures.
Faber never knew a bug. He never could get through to them. You can know all about your dog and never know your dog. He will smile at you, stick his red tongue out and pant. He seems intelligent, but he is a dog and you have no organ, no technique for getting into his world. Externally you can comb him, wash him and feed him, clean his ears; you can know him externally, but you never can know your dog and your dog can never know you. He can know about you. He can know when you are glad and when you are angry with him and know when he has done the right thing and the wrong thing. Sometimes I think a dog has a conscious almost as good as people, but still the dog dies and never knows the man.
You can know about God, you can know about Christ dying for you, and you can even write songs and sell them. Anybody can write them. I could write a yard of hymns between now and midnight, after church service and sell them. However, I would not do it. I would not be caught dead doing it, too many people are doing it now. But you can write hymns, you can write books, you can head this and be the President of that and found this religious thing and still never know God at all, because only by the Holy Ghost can we know God.
Another consequence with this error is that we have two Christs. The Christ of history and of creed and of story and song. The Christ we sing about, the man upstairs or the Baby Jesus. Then there is the Christ, which the Spirit reveals. You never can piece Jesus together out of historic knowledge. You can read your New Testament and still never find Christ in it. You can be convinced that He is the Son of God and still never find Christ. The Holy Ghost reveals Christ.
A revelation of the Holy Spirit in one glorious flash of inward illumination will teach you more of Jesus than five years in a theological seminary. However, I believe in the seminaries. We ought to read everything we can read about Him, for reading about Him is legitimate and good and a part of Christianity. But the Holy Spirit must do the final flash that introduces your heart to Jesus, or it is not done at all.
Remember this; you only know Jesus as well as the Holy Spirit is pleased to reveal Him to you, for He cannot be revealed any other way. Even Paul said, “Now know we Christ, no longer after the flesh.” The church cannot know Christ except as the Spirit reveals Him.
One more consequence is the blunder that modern Orthodoxy, modern fundamentalism, can know God with our minds. The Christian life is conceived to be much like the natural life, only jollier and cleaner and more fun. So the faith of our fathers has been identified with a number of questionable things.
A further one is philosophy. The modern neo-intellectual movement that is trying to resurrect the church by means of learning is about as far off the track as it is possible to be. Because you do not go to philosophy to find out about the Lord Jesus.
The Apostle Paul happened to be one of the most intellectual men that ever lived. A consensus among a great many learned scholars was that St. Paul was one of the sixth greatest intellects that ever lived. I personally think maybe he was the wisest and greatest intellect that ever lived, barring of course our Savior whom we never classify with other men. Even Paul said, “When I came to you I came not with wise words of men’s wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and the power.”
If you are reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it. But if you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Ghost so that by intuit, know that you are God’s child. You will know it by the text, but you will know it also by the inner illumination of the Spirit. Nobody can ever reason you out of it again.
Up until I was maybe thirty-three or thirty-four years old, I read more books on atheism than I did on Christianity. I had my Schofield Bible, my hymnbook and a few other books, Andrew Murray, Thomas Merton, and a few others, but I educated myself as well as I could by reading books. I read the philosophy of all the great minds of great men; all those fellows that, many of them did not believe in God, and did not believe in Christ certainly. I read White’s Warfare of Science with Christianity or Christianity with Science. If a man can read that and still say he is saved, his reasoning does not save him; the Holy Ghost in him that’s telling him he’s saved saves him. I used to read those books and I was a young fellow and did not know much and I do not yet, but they would take away all my reasons and reduce me to palpitating ignorance.
And any other way a man would just get down, walk out, close his Bible, toss it on the shelf and say now there goes another one that goes along with Santa Claus and Jack Frost and a few other things he used to believe in. But you know what I used to do after reading a chapter or two that I could not answer and have arguments that I possibly could not defeat? I would get down on my knees and with tears; I would thank God with joy that no matter what they say, “Lord, I know Thee my Savior and my Lord.” I did not have it in my head, I had it in my heart, and there is a difference there you see. If we have it in our head then of course philosophy will help us; if we have it in our heart there is not much philosophy can do except stand reverently, hat in hand, and say, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
Next, there is science. Science is called upon to prove Christianity. We just came through one of those long tunnels, when the evangelical church was running to science to get some sort of help, not knowing that everything that is divine in Christianity is exactly what science has no technique for investigating. The thing science can investigate is not divine, and the thing that is divine science cannot investigate. Science can make sputniks and science can make tape recorders. Science can do those things, but all that is nothing. Christianity is a miracle, a wondrous thing out of heaven, something let down like Peter’s sheet, not depending upon the world or being a part of the world. It is something from the throne of God, like the waters of Ezekiel’s vision. And science knows nothing about that. Science stands back, looks it over and does not know what to say. If we do not have this inner intuition, if we do not have this miraculous thing, then we run to science.
And the poor preachers, God help them; have tried over the last few years to prove miracles. They want to believe the miracles. I believe them all, but I do not believe them because science permits me; I believe them because God wrote them in the Bible and they are there. But some fellow finds a fish washed up on the shore and he measures its gullet. Gets himself a tape measure and craws inside the bony skeleton and measures its gullet and finds out it is as broad as the shoulders of a man and he goes out and says see, a great fish could swallow Jonah. See, the unbeliever is wrong; God did make a fish big enough to swallow Jonah.
Why go to tape measures and fish to find out whether what God says is true or not? If God did the thing, I could believe that.
Two scientists were walking down the street and one of them said, “You know that we have investigated, we have searched into and we weighed and measured, and we have found that the story of the donkey speaking is all false. The larynx of a donkey could not possibly articulate human speech.”
Finally, a Scotsman had all he could take; so he went up and he said, “Mon, you make a donkey and I’ll make him talk.”
There you have it brother, if God can make a donkey He can make him talk. Christianity stands or falls on Jesus Christ. Stands or falls on the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Peter could have reasoned until the cows came home and not known anything. Immediately when the Holy Ghost came on him, he jumped up and said, “God has made this man Jesus be crucified, Lord and Christ.” He knew by the Spirit that it was God.
Whole literature has grown up around the notion that Christianity may be proved by the fact that great men believe in Christ. If we can get a hold of a politician that believes in Christ, why we get him all over the front of our magazines and say, “Senator so and so believes in Christ;” and the implication is that if he believes in Christ, then Christ must be all right. When did Jesus Christ have to ride in on the coattail of a Senator?
You find some half-converted cowboy from that Sodom and Gomorrah called Hollywood, California; get him to say a nice thing about Jesus, go to the microphone and say everybody ought to go to Sunday school. Immediately it breaks into print and all poor dumb fundamentalists print his testimony. When did Jesus Christ have to come in on the testimony of a half-converted actor? No, no, my brother; Jesus stands alone. Let all the Senators and all the Presidents and all the Kings and Queens and Lords and Ladies of the world, along with all the great athletes and great actors, let them kneel at his feet and cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty.” Only the Holy Ghost can do this my brethren. For that reason, I do not bow down to great men. I bow down to the great Man. And if you have learned to worship one Man, you will not worship other men.
So, it is either the Holy Spirit or darkness. The Holy Spirit is God’s imperative of life. And if our faith is to be a New Testament faith, if Christ is to be the Christ of God rather than the Christ of history, then the illumination of the Spirit will tell our hearts and we are learning at the feet of Jesus, not at the feet of men.
Your knowledge of God is not taught to you from without; it is received by an inner anointing. You do not get your witness from a man; you get your witness from an inner anointing.
We have the mind of Christ. That is simple. Ah, what are we going to do now? Are we going to go home and argue about this and talk it over, say it was good or say it wasn’t good or say it was too long or too short or whatever? Or are we going to do something about it? That is what bothers me. Are we going to do something about this? Are you going to open the door of your personality? Are you going to swing it wide? And you do not have to be afraid, as I have said before, for the Holy Spirit is an illuminator. He is light to the inner heart. And He will show you more of God in a moment than you can ever learn in a lifetime without Him. Then, when He does come, all that you have learned and all that you do learn will have its proper place in your total personality and total creed and total thinking, so you will not loose anything that you have learned. And He will not throw out what you have learned if it is truth, but He will set it on fire. He will add fire to the altar.
How He waits to be honored, the blessed Holy Spirit. He waits to be honored and He will honor Christ as we honor Christ. He waits. And if you will throw open your heart to Him, a new sun will rise on you. I know that by personal experience. Some time maybe I will tell you. It is a sacred thing and I do not often tell it. Moreover, if there is anything God has done through me, it dates back to that solemn, wondrous hour; when the light that was never on land or sea, the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, slashed in on my darkness. There was not conversion; I had been converted, soundly converted. It was subsequent to conversion. How about you?