CHAPTER XV.

SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY FOR MY CHRISTIAN WORK.

There have been from the first time I started out persons who understood that God moved me.  These were students of the Old Scriptures.  Jesus told the people before the New Testament was written to “search the Scriptures—­these are they that testify of me.  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto every good work.”  To be thorough one must know the old as well as the new.  In all the sermons of Paul, Peter and the rest, they quote from old Scripture.  So did Jesus.  Read Peter’s first sermon on the day of Pentecost.  There is a tendency to study the New Testament more than the Old.  It is not possible to understand the New, unless we first study the Old.  One of my favorite books is Deuteronomy, the dying words of Moses.  He here repeats the great mercy, consideration and power of God’s dealings with his people.  Tells the kind of characters God will bless.  How God loves the pure and good.  How He hates the wicked.  We here see that God creates good and evil, and holds us responsible for the choosing.  While God rules in all things we have the power to bring on ourselves blessings or cursings.  This book declares the man or woman invincible that abandons himself or herself to do God’s will.

    “True merit lies in braving the unequal. 
    True glory comes from daring to begin. 
    God loves the man or woman, who reckless of the sequel,
    Fights long and well, whether they lose or win.”

In the seventh chapter of Deuteronomy, God commanded the children of Israel to “destroy the images,” “break down” the altars and “burn the graven images” of the Gods of the heathen.  This was smashing.  Also said to them:  “If you do not drive them out they shall be thorns in your sides.”  God gave them power and ability to do this, then he required them to do it.  God supplies man’s cannots, not his “will nots.”  In Numbers twenty-fifth chapter, Phineas was given God’s covenant of peace and the priesthood, because he slew the woman and man that were committing sin:  “Because he was jealous for his God and made an atonement for the children of Israel.”  This was smashing.  God himself smashed up Sodom and Gomorrah.  In the seventeenth chapter of Deuteronomy, God says:  “The idolator and blasphemer shall be stoned with stones till he die.  So shalt thou put away evil from you.”  This is smashing.  I could write a book recounting the incidents recorded in God’s Word.

“What is in thine hand, Abel?”

“Nothing but one wee lamb, O God, taken from the flock.  I purpose offering it to thee, a willing sacrifice.”

And so he did.  And the sweet smell of that burning has been filling the air ever since, and constantly going up to God as a perpetual sacrifice of praise.