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Difference of opinions


Thurs­day. [James 1:19-27; Mark 10:17-27] Some­one turn­ed to the Lord with a ques­tion: emGood Mas­ter, what shall I do that I may in­her­it eter­nal life?/em What ne­ces­si­tated this ques­tion? Were there no scrip­tures? Was the law not read ev­ery Sat­ur­day for ev­ery­one? There was ev­ery­thing — both Scrip­ture and its in­ter­pret­ers; but in so­ci­e­ty dif­fer­ence of opin­ion went a­round and mud­dled ev­ery­one. The Phar­i­sees said one thing, the Sad­du­cees an­oth­er, the Es­senes, their own thing, the Sa­mar­i­tans their own. In Gal­i­lee, per­haps even pa­gan teach­ings were heard, and each put forth their own with a tone of con­vic­tion. Any­one who was zeal­ous for sal­va­tion nat­u­ral­ly came to the ques­tion: What should I do? What should I fol­low, that my soul not be de­stroy­ed? Our sit­u­a­tion now is very sim­i­lar those times. What teach­ings are not go­ing a­round our schools, in so­ci­e­ty, and in lit­er­a­ture! For the in­dif­fer­ent it is noth­ing; but they for whom ev­ery teach­ing is not the same can­not but seek an an­swer to the ques­tion, “What should I do?” So what is the so­lu­tion? The one the Sav­iour gave: Be­lieve and live as God com­mand­ed, and do not lis­ten to peo­ple’s talk; let them talk. The talk of sci­en­tists is like ru­mours and fash­ion: to­day they say one thing, to­mor­row an­oth­er. But you should heed on­ly God’s word, which a­bides un­to the ages. What the Lord com­mand­ed no phi­los­o­phiz­ing can re­voke. Ev­ery­thing must be done, and can­not be put off. The judg­ment in­deed will be ac­cord­ing to the word of the Lord, and not ac­cord­ing to our phi­los­o­phiz­ing.


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