Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 20
February 13, 1969
NUMBER 40, PAGE 3b,5a

God's Rule

Dale Smelser

As I observe sophisticated, highly educated, modern man and the mess he is making of the world, a scriptural truth is more firmly being impressed upon my consciousness; "0, Jehovah, I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps" (Jer. 10:23). The more man rejects ancient verities and relies upon his senses to guide him, the greater his plight. Humanistic irreligious America is a case in point.

Since sin is not imputed where there is no law (Rom. 5:13), and yet man was held responsible for his behavior before the giving of the law of Moses (the flood, Sodom), it follows that a law of moral behavior has existed from the beginning, and that all mankind had a common standard originally. There is evidence of this in the universal concepts of some sort of deity and virtuous conduct. Idolatry and assorted moral codes are only perversions and approximations of original truth.

The more closely man's conduct paralleled this pattern now revealed in the scriptures, the more civilized he became and the more orderly was his society. The further he drifted from this standard the less civilized was he and the greater the chaos that surrounded him. This is so consistently factual that it takes the proportion of law. And if it is a law, there is of necessity a law giver; there is of necessity an intellect transcending man's, with the power to enforce its determinations. God's being is inevitable, and this situation cannot be explained without Him.

This cause and effect relationship between man's behavior and orderly progress is taught in the scriptures (e.g. Prov. 14:34). It is verified in history, as is the futility of the guidance of human intellect, in the following qualified observation summarizing the history of civilizations:

"...the intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and — after some hesitation — the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anti-clerical. The movement of liberation with every dogma and epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death. Meanwhile among the oppressed another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization". (Durant: Our Oriental Heritage, p. 71)

Written years ago, this observation sounds like a prophecy of the present. After a period of debunking the gospel of Christ, ancient virtues are ridiculed and a "new morality" has taken their place. For all its seductiveness it has not proven satisfactory. Man's dissatisfaction is seen in riotous chaos fomented by both the poor in the "ghetto" and the wealthy on college campuses, and by youth who have found wealth alone vain and turned to drugs to escape the lack of meaning in life.

We hasten to specify that we do not consider the scriptures a myth. The truth therein constitutes the original base from which the counterfeits have sprung. But what truths the counterfeits retained were to the temporal good of the people they influenced. The error in religious myths was and is detrimental. So, the closer man has approximated the gospel, the more secure he has been. We may thus say that no religious system has the historical validity that the gospel of Christ has. And, no wonder; it is from God Himself!

— P.O. Box 95, Zion, Illinois 60099