Darkness and the Light Part 4 -- By: L. Paul Moore, Jr.

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 107:425 (Jan 1950)
Article: Darkness and the Light Part 4
Author: L. Paul Moore, Jr.


Darkness and the Light
Part 4

L. Paul Moore, Jr.

(Concluded from the October-December Number, 1949)

The Hostility of Unbelief

How dark do we think the darkness of man’s soul is? Is it really the blackness of darkness; or is there after all, in man, some measure of true knowledge which, once directed, will bring him into the light of God? “And no man, when he hath lighted a lamp, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but putteth it on a stand, that they that enter in may see the light” (Luke 8:16), the Bible says about the use of light. Was Jesus Christ therefore the light of the world in the sense that without him man would never, never have found his way back to God? Or is Jesus Christ just a luminary, one who has contributed some light so that man himself, by ingenuity of thought or soundness of logic, is able to bring true knowledge of God out of his own consciousness? In other words, is man wholly or only partially dependent upon Jesus Christ for his true knowledge about God?

In seeking an answer out of the Scriptures, let us note two things: (1) the sharp, trenchant declarations of our Lord to the Jews, declarations which, though spoken in love, define the natural aversion of the human heart and state that man is utterly unable to know God except as revealed to him through Jesus Christ. And this other thing, (2) that man’s immediate reaction to these declarations of our Lord was one of taking offense, with murder almost simultaneously welling up in the heart.

When our Lord, because of zeal for His Father’s house, struck at the very heart of the most glaring perversion of the worship of God, He made a scourge of cords and drove oxen, sheep and doves, together with the money changers, out

of the temple. “Take these things hence,” He said to them that sold doves; “make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise” (John 2:16). And what was the immediate reaction of the Jews in authority? “What sign [of authority] showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?”

When Nicodemus came at night with the declaration that “we [Pharisees] know that thou art a teacher come from God,” our Lord spared no word to make Nicodemus understand the true condition of their hearts; for He said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen; and ye receive not our witness” (John 3:11).

And after He had healed the incurable at the pool of Bethesda, the Jews persecuted ...

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