Receiving Spiritual Truth--Limitations of Great Men.


If reason, even when based on revelation, still appears to you a very
fallible guide, will you please take note of some direct promises
contained in revelation itself? And I would ask you to consider how
these promises could ever come true apart from Restoration. There are
glorious promises that are partly or wholly of a local or national
character. These that I shall cite now are not to be so restricted. They
have a far grander sweep and application. No doubt the writers of them
may not have been conscious of their full import. But that is the nature
of revelation. It grows in meaning from age to age. And the noontide
glory of those promises is beginning to break on our larger vision.

Take the words spoken to Abraham: "In thee shall all the families of
the earth be blessed." To realize that this promise was of no mere
national importance, listen to the way in which Paul applies it in his
Epistle to the Galatians. He says: "The Scripture, foreseeing that God
would justify the heathen through faith preached before the Gospel unto
Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed."

Now has that promise been fulfilled? Since Abraham's time have not
millions and millions of the families of the earth passed out into
darkness unblessed? Other millions of families are passing away now,
without having once heard the Saviour's name. And other millions
deliberately reject Him. Certainly, all these millions are unblessed, In
their case the promise has not been fulfilled. But it will be fulfilled.
Beyond the bourne of time it will come true. This glorious enlargement
of the scope of the promise takes away all difficulty, and fills us with
joy and praise.