An email for a beloved brother

Halleluiah to God, dear brother,

I didn’t know what was taking place there when I sent the first email. I sent it to the whole group on Ps. H___’s address list and you and J____ replied. If I’ve been of help, it was God’s providential working. I’m thrilled to be part of His work.

We need to be careful about debates. We do it in all honesty and innocence, but we need to remember that real learning comes from the “doing” phase of investigation. Even Sabbath School can be a trap if we don’t put our study into practice. We can hammer out what we see in the scriptures, but then we must, I repeat, must, put it into the life. If it fits, then we can carry on carefully and meekly. Continuously examining ourselves whether we be in the faith. If our understanding of doctrine doesn’t work in the life and bring us victory and the blessing of God, then we need to go back to the drawing board. It’s like the math problems we did in school. You take the answer and plug it back into the equation. If 5=5 or 0=0 then the answer was right. But you have to plug your answer back into the equation to know that it was the truth. Truth in spiritual lines is no different, even more so are the consequences tragic if we don’t do this, eternally tragic to us and to God. “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”

Jesus was so far in advance of the religious leaders in knowing the scriptures, even at the age of 12, because He was made under the Law and obeyed it. We will have only a shallow, surface understanding of God’s will as expressed in the Bible if we only keep it at an intellectual level. That is why the common people go into the kingdom before the leaders. They “ignorantly” do what the scriptures say because God said it, while the theologians spend their time straining at gnats. It’s like a pastor I knew, once said to our lazy, lukewarm church, “Go out and work for the Lord. Even if you do it wrong, do something!” We can take what God says and go do it, knowing if we misunderstand and do it wrong, that in His grace, He will overlook our mistakes and He will correct us. Do we really trust His grace? Then we will go out and obey what He says, trusting in His love for us.

And if we’ve truly come to love Him, as all of Christendom professes, we will trust Him in His corrections. His love has humbled us and we don’t mind being corrected. Here is another insight into the character of the Old Testament and to our Testimonies for the Church. Much of it was hard-hitting correction. But that correction was a test to let us know if we were really in love with Jesus, and to see who was really disciples. That is the work that EGW faithfully did with the Testimonies, and also the prophets of the OT. This is particularly important today, in the time of the anti-typical Day of Atonement, our final probation period. The Testimonies certainly revealed who was who, and more importantly to us today, they are revealing who is who. The Law and the Testimony reveal who are true children of God and disciples, humbled by the grace of God, but it also separates those who say, “We will not have this Man rule over us.”

While all heaven is looking on during this final Investigative judgment, people are qualifying or disqualifying themselves for eternal life by their attitude toward the Law and the Testimony. Look around, Daniel, and you can see who humbly loves the truth by accepting correction, and who is not humble. Accepting correction reveals true humility, it unarguably shows that pride has been laid in the dust.

Thus, according to Jesus, we receive His approbation at the end, or He commands, “Bring all those My enemies who wouldn’t let Me rule over them, and slay them before Me,” “Let not one of them escape.” Lk. 19:27;1Ki. 18:40. That’s New Testament teaching and it’s also the Law. Nothing has ever changed about the way God views the sin problem and deals with it. But when Christ came and gave the clearest revelation of His Father’s grace, then He also uplifted the requirements. He didn’t come to make us more irresponsible or to let worship of God decline into a carnival as we’ve seen in some churches, but for true holiness, to make us more obedient, to teach us to afflict our souls and be more sanctified, more holy in preparation for the conclusion of the controversy of the ages. Only the perfect blend of grace and Law, mercy and justice, can accomplish that, especially when they are both magnified and exalted.

I am thankful that Jesus made Himself into the form of a servant, and under the Law, so that we could see how to be servants and to relate to the Law. He does make us free indeed, He does adopt us, but only after we truly come to Him in our distress over our sinfulness, and beg to be made one of His hired servants. Then and only then can we wear the robe of royalty, and maintain the fear of God, obedient to all His commandments.

Daniel, if you will be honest, you will come out of this experience a very wise man.

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;
surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do
if with His love He befriend thee.

Love,
Your brother David