Bible Commentaries
1 Corinthians 2

Verse 1

1. “ Indeed having come unto you, brethren, I came not unto you in the excellency of speech or wisdom, proclaiming unto you the testimony of God.” Paul was a double graduate, having graduated in the Greek colleges of Tarsus and the Hebrew universities of Jerusalem, a member of the Sanhedrin, standing at the front of the world, both literary and ecclesiastical. Yet he died to all the majesty and splendor of his former self, coming down to the level of the illiterate fishermen of Galilee. He appears before the people simply “ proclaiming the testimony of God.”

Verse 2

2. “ For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him having been crucified.” The whole Bible is but the biography of Christ the Old Testament, Christ Excarnate, and the New Testament, Christ Incarnate while the crucifixion is the grand central culminating fact of the Christhood, for which He vacated His heavenly throne and came to earth that He might redeem her guilty millions from sin, death, and Hell by His expiatory death on the cross. While this is the tragical history of our wonderful Christ, it is really but the primary hemisphere in the gospel school. The globe of salvation’s wondrous scheme must be consummated by the addition of the hemisphere of the experimental to the historical. This can only be done by following Jesus to the rugged cross and permitting the Holy Ghost to nail you fast to it till you suffer, bleed and die, and bury Adam the first so deep into His death (Romans 6:3) that all the powers of earth and Hell can never resurrect him.

Verse 3

3. “ Indeed I was with you in weakness, in fear and in much trembling.” Many years of hard toiling and terrible exposure had told on his bodily organs so that he was physically weak, and at the same time tremulous with solicitude in their behalf, lest they might reject his message, or, having received it, make shipwreck and be lost world without end.

Verse 4

4. “ My speech and my preaching were not in enticing words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and dynamite.” Dynamite is the greatest explosive and the most potent mechanical power in the material world. Judiciously did its discoverers, failing to find an adequately significant cognomen in the boundless vocabulary of the English language, go to the New Testament, and in the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, through His servant Paul, find the very word they needed to signify to the world this inconceivable physical miracle. As dynamite blows out everything with which it comes in contact in the material world, so the dynamite of the Holy Ghost blows all sin and all devils out of the human spirit, consummating in entire sanctification and culminating in the resurrection of soul, mind and body world without end. Paul went for “the demonstration and dynamite of the Holy Ghost.” Well are these words coupled together, vividly signifying the Pauline ministry, as dynamite is the most demonstrative thing in the universe, roaring like a volcano, pealing like the most terrific thunder-claps, throwing stones in all directions, and clearing everything before it. Whenever the gospel ceases to be demonstrative you may suspect a leakage in the vessel.

Verse 5

5. “ In order that your faith may not be in the wisdom of men, but in the dynamite of God.” Popular evangelism, with its superficial artistic methods, is prominent amid the withering curses which blight the fallen churches at the present day, gathering in vast multitudes of unconverted people to hang a dead weight on the ecclesiastical wheel, not only stopping the machinery, but reversing the power and running it down to Hell. This arises from the fact that they are converted to the evangelist, and not to God. So when the preacher goes away their religion is gone, and their “last state worse than the first,” “because their faith stood not in the power of God,” but in the wisdom of the magnetic speaker who conducted the so- called revival. There is no danger of these unhappy results if, like Paul, we will give up all human machinery and machination, eloquence, claptrap and manipulation, look the people squarely in the face, take Mt. Sinai for our pulpit, ask God Almighty to furnish thunder-bolts and earthquakes, and be courageous to hurl and heave them fearlessly at men and devils, sparing sin neither in pulpit nor pew, among the churchly bon-tons nor social upper- tens, thus fighting sin and devils like a dog in a yellow-jacket’s nest fighting for his life. In that case, you will render yourself so odious to fallen humanity, repellent to carnality, abominable to pseudo-Christianity, and antagonistical to the devil and all his coadjutors, that you may rest assured that nobody is going to put faith in you. If anybody, in that case, is converted under your ministry, it will be God that does it, for they will all feel like hanging you instead of becoming your disciple. Remember, the true gospel is irreconcilably obnoxious and intolerably repellent to carnality in all its forms and phases, slaying human pride, even though it be church pride (which is of the devil), without distinction or mercy. Hence a popular gospel is always diabolical.

Verse 6

6. “ We speak wisdom among the perfect.” “Perfect” is from the Latin per, “complete,” and facio, “make.” Hence it simply means “made complete,” i. e., Christ has done a complete work in you. What is the work of Christ?

“He came to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

All sin is the work of the devil. Therefore He came to destroy all sin. Since He is omnipotent, He is certainly abundantly able to do it. When that work is done in your heart, then you are what the Bible calls a perfect Christian. Perhaps you are but a babe in Christ, and have much to learn before you progress into spiritual adult age. “ And not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are destined to come to naught.” This belongs to the Satanic ages of the world, which began with the Fall and will wind up with the Tribulation.

“I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit” (Daniel 7:9).

In this and many other prophecies in the Old and New Testaments we see a corroboration of the Pauline prediction in this verse, setting forth the fact that the dominion of the world’s rulers, both political and ecclesiastical, is simply conterminous with Satan’s reign upon the earth. He is the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), ruling it through his human subordinates. When he is cast out (Revelation 20:0) all of his Myrmidons will go out simultaneously with the toppling and falling of all human thrones, amid the awful retributive judgments of the Ancient of days, who will come down in the great Tribulation, shaking every usurper from His throne (Acts 2:35), and thus preparing all the world for the coronation of His Son, King of kings and Lord of lords.

Verse 7

7. “ But we speak the wisdom of God which has been hidden in a mystery, which God before the ages predestined unto our glory.” Of course the knowledge of God is absolutely illimitable.

“Whom he did foreknow he did also predestinate” (Romans 9:28).

Hence we see the predestination is a corollary of the foreknowledge. Our choice is perfectly free and untrammeled. Yet God foreknows our decision, and appoints our destiny accordingly. It is our prerogative to receive the Bible as it is, and our glorious privilege to believe it all, whether we can satisfactorily comprehend the deep things of God or not. It is the very climax of rationalistic infidelity for us to reject the plain revelation of God simply because our poor little gourd-heads can not comprehend it. Let us remember when we pass beyond the veil we will learn more in a week than we have ever known in all this probationary life. It is very beautiful and inspiring to contemplate and recognize the fact that God, before the ages began their flight, saw me, commended my choice of the good way, and predestinated unto me the glory of this wonderful salvation which has been the delight of my heart for forty-nine years, and is daily accumulating new brilliancy along my shortening journey to the probationary goal.

Verse 8

8. “ Which no one of the princes of this age knew: for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” I doubt not but Caiaphas, the high priest of Jerusalem, and the Sanhedrin over whom he presided, in the full approval of their consciences, assigned the death-warrant of Jesus Christ, believing it to be their duty and that God was pleased with their decision. The devil had so succeeded in blinding their eyes that they could not see the Christ of God in Jesus of Nazareth. They could only see in him a disturber of the Church, a blasphemer and a traitor. What was the solution? The devil had achieved a complete victory over them, so thoroughly deceiving them that they were actually worshipping him for the God of Israel, faithfully doing his diabolical will, believing that they were doing the will of Jehovah. Has not the world since the Fall, when Satan’s reign superseded the Eden theocracy, been uniformly characterized by that very state of things? Two hundred millions of martyrs have sealed their fate with their blood, every one being put to death under charges of heresy. The leading men of the popular church, as in the case of Christ, became their murderers, and of course killed them in all good conscience, as the preachers killed Jesus, all under the charge of heresy. It is true they were all heretics for a heretic is one who separates, and these martyrs had all separated themselves from the church authorities, whether Jewish, Paganistic, Moslem or Roman Catholic, and these authorities had them put to death. But we know the solution of the whole matter. These great preachers, standing at the head and claiming the right to rule the church, were actually dominated by the devil, deceiving them, passing himself on them for God, and getting them to worship him and do his cruel will, believing that they were doing the will of their loving heavenly Father. When I was in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, I saw the bronze statue of St. Dominique, and an infuriated dog standing by him holding in his mouth a bundle of fagots. That angry dog represents the rage of this saint (really a devil), and the bundle of fagots was to burn the heretics, i. e., the martyrs. This saint was canonized for his authorship of the Inquisition. We must not think the world has changed, neither has the devil nor sin. The persecutors of God’s saints in all ages have been so blinded by Satan as to think that God’s people are the devil’s people, while they themselves are the very people whom they think they are persecuting. There is no remedy for this state of things. Spirituality can see carnality, but carnality can not see spirituality.

Verse 9

9. “ But as has been written: Those things which eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, and it hath not entered into the heart of man,” i. e., “ those things which God hath prepared for those who love him.” What are “those things”? Why, they are the deep things of God, the unutterable truths of the Almighty, the sweet, rich and unearthly things of the heavenly kingdom, the transcendent glories of the “coming age,” the supernal and unutterable realities of spiritual life, immortality and ineffable glory. A popular mistake has generally prevailed in reference to the allusions of this verse, i. e., that we have to die to receive these revelations. This delusion is swept away by the next verse.

Verse 10

10. “ But God hath revealed them unto us through the Spirit.” From this verse we see that the wonderful, invisible, inaudible and inconceivable glories of 1 Corinthians 2:9 are actually within our reach, not only in the world to come, but at the present time. The apostle now proceeds to a more ample revelation, touching these wonders which are unutterable and indescribable in human language, and can only be revealed to the human spirit by the Holy Spirit. While these Divine beauties, entities, profundities, altitudes, latitudes, longitudes and realities are revealed by the Holy Spirit to the human spirit, they are after all too heavenly to be uttered or communicated by mortal language, so I am now running into something better and easier experienced and felt than told, all language being utterly impoverished in the attempt to reveal these infinitesimal beauties, majesties, wonders, sweetness and glory. “ For the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God.” These “deep things of God” in beauty, sweetness, spiritual fascination and delectation have captured and enraptured the saints of all ages. For them the martyr has gladly hugged the burning stake and sung his death song amid devouring flames. They made the dismal dungeon of Madame Guyon, which she occupied four years, so bright that she said the very stones shone like rubies. They inspired John Knox to pray bloody Mary off the throne of England till she dropped into eternity.

Verse 11

11. “ For what one of men knoweth the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one knoweth the things of God except the Spirit of God.” That verse beautifully illustrates the example by a human being; e. g., no one knows my affairs but my spirit which dwells in me Neither is it possible for any creature in all the universe to know my affairs, unless my spirit make the revelation. Hence you see the utter impossibility for an one to know the “things of God except the Spirit of God who dwells in him,” and those to whom He makes the revelation. Since God is the only source of wisdom, knowledge, life and happiness for time and eternity, hence we all participate in those things proportionately as they are revealed to us by the Holy Ghost. It is utterly impossible for you to receive them by your intellect, because the intellect can only cognize human resources, which are utterly alien and infinitely inferior to the Divine.

Verses 12-13

12-13. “ But we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, in order that we may perceive the things which have been graciously conferred upon us of God. Which things indeed we speak not in the instructing words of human wisdom, but in the instructing words of the Spirit, expounding spiritual things to spiritual people.” Verily, our expositions of spiritual things are available only to spiritual people; who are so few in proportion to the population that out of a whole city we do well if we find a band of a few dozen who are spiritual enough to receive the Word of God, appreciate and utilize it, and profit thereby. It is in vain to expound these deep spiritual truths to the wicked, from the simple fact that a dead man will not eat his dinner; meanwhile we have but little encouragement with unsanctified Christians, from the simple fact that toothless babes can not feast on the “fatted calf.” We observe a most deplorable phenomenon in the churches relative to this great truth. An ex-India missionary said in my Bible readings in Seattle, Washington, that the heathens of India know more about the Bible than the Christians of America, from the simple fact that the missionaries conduct a Bible school daily, which the natives attend and receive instructions from the precious Word expository of the redemptive scheme, while in America they have nothing but the poor little degospelized Sunday sermonettes, so diluted with everything except the gospel that the people who are dependent on them literally famish for the “bread of life.” Suppose a city pastor of five hundred members should announce on Sunday a daily Bible school. I trow he would find himself teaching to empty walls and naked seats. The only chance is to begin at the foundation, use his membership as a missionary population and get them saved, proceeding after the apostolic manner with the school of Christ, daily feeding them on the “bread of life,” and building them up in the “deep things of God.” In that case he must of necessity lop off that routine of unscriptural institutions, invented by a fallen church in the vain attempt to substitute the Holy Ghost, who has been grieved away because they disobeyed Him and took the meetings out of His hands. These carnal institutions, worshipping paltry pelf, as if our God were poor, have taken all the time which God has given the people to study and be taught His precious Word, and to dive down into the deep things of God. Why will we not all lop them off, since they are not only useless, but injurious, and return to New Testament simplicity, and all delight ourselves in the school of Christ, studying God’s precious and wonderful truth, and sinking deeper and deeper into the “deep things of God”?

Verse 14

14. “ The intellectual man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The word psychicus I here translate “intellectual,” from psychee, “the soul,” or “the mind,” which consists of the intellect, the judgment, the memory and the sensibilities; of which the intellect is the most prominent, and I suppose the most important. The truth of the matter is, we have no English word competent to convey the idea of the Greek psychicus, unless we Anglicize it and use the word psychical, which would be about as obscure as the Greek. Man is a trinity, according to Paul and Wesley, consisting of the pneuma, “spirit”; psyche, “soul,” and the soma, “body.” Thus he is a three-story building. The devil is very fond of blowing off the third story, in which case he becomes a demonized brute, or, rather, a brutalized demon. This follows as a legitimate sequence from the fact that the human spirit is the element on which the Holy Spirit operates, and through it reaches the mind and body. Hence, in the case of the unpardonable sin, the third story is blown off by the devil. An animal has a mind and body, but no spirit. Hence you can not possibly teach a horse or an ox anything about God, however much you may teach him about temporal things. The human spirit consists of the conscience, with affections or heart. The conscience survived the Fall, the voice of God in the soul; yet, in the case of impenitent sinners and deluded professors of Christianity, usurped by Satan, who is so fond of speaking through God’s telephone, and deceiving the people, as in the case of Paul, who lived in all good conscience while a vile persecutor, but after his conversion his conscience bare him witness in the Holy Ghost (Romans 9:1), which never occurred before the light broke on him on the Damascus road. The conscience of the sinner is on God’s side in conviction. 1 Timothy 4:2, “Having their conscience seared with a hot iron,” does not refer to men, as in E.V., but to those demons. This is a reason no evil spirit can be saved. They have no foundation, as man has with his guilty conscience, condemning him when he sins. The fearfully rapid multiplication of infidels is a prominent fulfillment of latter-day prophecies, ripening this wicked world for destruction. The effect of infidelity is to take off that third story, and put people where they are brutish with reference to God. In conversion, the will passes out of the hands of Satan to God; yet native evil abides (though subjugated) in the deep interior of the affections, i. e., the heart, until utterly expurgated by the cleansing blood and the refining fires of sanctification. The psychee, the “soul” or “mind,” includes the intellect judgment, memory and the sensibility. Hence this word psychicus. In E.V. “natural” is the adjective corresponding with the noun psyche, “the soul,” which has so many faculties that we cannot find any single word adequate to a full translation. In Jude 1:19 the same word is translated “sensual” in the E.V., which evidently is too low a meaning. In the Fall, death only supervened to the human spirit. If it had reached the mind, men would have become idiots; if the body, they would have dropped dead in their tracks. The great majority of theologians have always been dichotomists, i. e., dualists, believing in the two natures of man. Hence they have girdled the world with materialistic and intellectual religions; e. g., Paganism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, Mormonism, the Greek Church, and fallen Protestantism without spirituality, which is the essential element of God’s religion. Paul, Wesley, and all true exegetes, have always been trichotomists, i. e., Trinitarians, believing in the three natures of man, i. e., spirit, soul (or mind), and body. Since the spirit was deprived of Divine life in the Fall, the true salvation must begin with the resurrection, i. e., the regeneration of the Holy Ghost. Whereas all of these systems built on dichotomy leave out spirituality, and are independent of the Holy Spirit, as they build their ecclesiastical superstructures on the residuum of mentality and materiality, which survived the Fall. Hence, in their experiences, they dispense with the supernatural, or, rather, they have no experiences. With all their towering intellects and theological lore, they never can know the things of God, from the simple fact that they are not intellectual, but spiritual, and can only be spiritually discerned. These men are spiritually dead. A dead man does not discern anything, hence it is as impossible for the unspiritual, however intellectual and educated, to discern the things of God as it is for the horse to fly like the eagle. He has members well adapted to walking, but utterly incapable of flying. Hence none but the spiritual, i. e., those who have been quickened into Divine life by the Holy Spirit, can possibly discern “the things of God.” Thus we have the human trinity the pneuma, “spirit”; psychee, “soul” (or “mind”), and soma, “body.” The spirit is the man himself, the mind (or soul) and body being his appurtenances. The spirit is so called because homogeneous to the Holy Spirit, and constituting the doorway into the complicated labyrinth of humanity, the Holy Spirit entering the human spirit and then passing on into the mind and body, primarily assimilating the spirit to Himself and then lifting up the mind, with all its complicated machinery of intellect, judgment, memory and sensibilities, assimilating and subsidizing them to His heavenly administration; finally reaching the body and elevating it to the lofty plane of sanctified intelligence, thus triumphantly delivering it from every trend toward sensuality, debauchery and brutal selfishness, and making it truly the temple of the Holy Ghost. Every human spirit is either dominated by the Holy Ghost or one or more demons. In the case of grieving away the Holy Spirit, ultimating in His final departure, the demons come in and take possession of their victim, doing their utmost primarily to effectually lock the door against the future ingress Of the Holy Spirit, thus obliterating all apprehensions of God and susceptibilities of conviction. Then the demon fortifies himself in that human spirit which he has dragged down to the devil’s dirty level, by subsidizing the mind, darkening the intellect, warping the judgment, polluting the memory and debauching the sensibilities, so that all the mental faculties, with their educational enduements, become but the filthy implements of the indwelling demon. Finally, through the foul spirit and debauched mind, he literally captures the body, taking complete possession of all its members and degrading it below the dignity of the irrational brute, using its members as filthy sewers through which to imbibe the very dregs of the bottomless pit. Thus this miserable, God-forsaken victim of sin has his spirit demonized, his mind stygianized, his body brutalized, so that he is really a loathsome, demonized brute. As his bodily members constitute the only avenues of enjoyment, of course, when these are paralyzed in death, the last possibility of fruition, even in the lowest sensual sense, is forever swept away, and the hopeless victim, wrapped eternally in the fiery retributions of disappointed lusts, passions and appetites, is filled with his own Hell, and nothing left but to drop into the burning lake.

Verse 15

15. “ The spiritual man discerneth all things, but he himself is discerned by no one.” This corroborates 1 Corinthians 2:8, which certifies that the murderers of our Savior committed the foul and atrocious deed under a Satanic delusion. Why? Because those great and learned pastors of the church which God had instituted could not see in Jesus the meek and lowly suffering Savior, dying for a guilty world, though they had read it in the prophecies all their lives. They could only see in Him a blasphemous disturber of the church, and an enemy to their religion. So it was with the two hundred millions who have followed Him in bloody martyrdom. The church rulers, clergy and laymen, who took their lives, saw in them nothing but fanaticism, heresy and insubordination. If they could have seen the beautiful and lovely grace of God in them they would have been far from hurting them. John Fletcher well says that “perfect love is an angel so beautiful and charming that the devil has to cover it with a bear skin before he can get his Hell hounds to chase it. During all the ages of blood and fire, the martyrs could look right through their carnal persecutors and see the very venom of Hell in them, yet they thought they were right and doing God’s service. This fallen world is irreconcilably opposed to purity, because it is a constant and withering rebuke to the impure. For this reason, when God sent his own pure and spotless Son into the world, they would not even let him live on the earth. His presence was a constant withering and scathing rebuke to the corrupt people of this fallen world. The true saints of all ages have had the spirit Christ manifest and predominant in their lives. For this reason the counterfeit saints, who are ignorant of purity, and rebuked and insulted by its profession, have made it a rule, so far as they could, to destroy all the people on the earth who had the spirit of God’s pure and holy Son. They do not persecute them with the understanding that they are good people, but believing that they are bad, because out of harmony with themselves, whom Satan has deluded with the idea that they are the people of God. There is no possible remedy for this irreconcilable antagonism. Jesus could not help it, but submitted to it while they nailed Him to the cross. If Omnipotence should interfere with the human will, He would dehumanize us, and defeat the very end of creation. This irreconcilable disharmony and irrepressible conflict between spirituality and carnality is bound to continue so long as Satan is in the world. This verse unlocks the whole mystery. Spiritual people see and read the carnal like we read books; yet the carnal can not see the spiritual, from the simple fact that their spiritual eyes are not opened. There never was an age in which ecclesiastical ostracism was more rife than at present, and doubtless will increase to the end of the “Gentile times,” which is certainly very nigh. This ostracism and clerical autocracy is the same spirit and in the same place which killed Jesus and all the martyrs. It is only now held in check by the civil law.

Verse 16

16. “ For who hath known the mind of the Lord, who shall give him counsel? But we have the mind of Christ.” This verse tells the deep secret. As no one but the spirit which dwells in a man can know the affairs of that man, unless his spirit reveals them, even so no one but the Spirit of God knows the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:11); hence the people who have not the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, which is peculiar only to the wholly sanctified, can not possibly know the mind of the Lord. You are surrounded by a grave council of men, pre-eminent for intelligence, learning and official position, yet they are as ignorant of the Lord’s mind in reference to the matter under consideration as the illiterate Hottentot, if the things of God have not been revealed to them by the Holy Spirit. Truly spiritual people have the mind of Christ only. The wicked have but one mind, and that is a bad one. The wholly sanctified have but one mind, and that is the mind of Christ; while unsanctified Christians have the carnal mind in a subjugated state, and the mind of Christ in its incipient manifestation. Hence they are the “double minded” people (James 1:4; James 4:8); while wholly sanctified people, having been completely delivered from the last and least remains of the carnal mind, have the mind of Christ constantly abiding in them; yet it is their privilege to receive the especial intent of the Lord in every emergency of probationary life, revealed to them by the Holy Spirit. It is nonsense to depend on human wisdom, as the mind of the Lord can not be reached in that way. No one can go up to the court of Heaven, and there ascertain the mind of the Lord with reference to any special matter. For this reason human counsel, independent of the Divine mind, is an utter failure, from the simple fact that the combined wisdom and learning of the world can never ascertain the mind of the Lord in a solitary instance. Then what shall we do? Why, the Holy Ghost is right here with us. He is none other than the Spirit of the Lord. Just as my spirit knows all about my mind and my affairs, and is the only being in all the world that does know, so the Holy Spirit alone knows the mind of the Lord, the “things of God.” Hence He alone can reveal them. If you do not have the mind of the Lord in all of your enterprises, aspirations and labors, you are moving at random. Here we have it positively revealed in these Scriptures that none but the truly spiritual can know the mind of the Lord. Here you see the reason why churches cease to be the light, life and power of God. They are usurped and conducted by carnal people, who can not know the mind of the Lord. The result is, the church is turned over to the devil, and becomes a persecutor of the Lord’s true people. The New Testament clearly specifies that all the church officers, even the deacons, who have charge, not only of the spiritual interests, but also the temporal, e. g., feeding the preachers and the poor, are to be filled with the Holy Ghost and wisdom, i. e., not only sanctified wholly, but endued with that spiritual gift (Ch. 1 Corinthians 12:8) called “wisdom,” and indispensable to qualify them for the duties of their office; while the episcopos, “bishop,” i. e., pastor, leader of the band, having charge of the spiritual interests, is not only to be filled with the Holy Ghost, i. e., sanctified wholly, but endued with such spiritual gifts as qualify him for his work, especially that of “prophecy” (Ch. 1 Corinthians 12:10). While the Holy Ghost is sole arbiter and ruler of God’s Church, He prosecutes His administration through His Spirit- filled officers, i. e., the bishop or pastor having charge of the spiritual interest, the deacons in charge of the temporal interest, and elders in charge of the general interest; all of these truly “spiritual,” i. e., filled with the Spirit, and thus qualified to receive from the Holy Ghost the mind of the Lord in every case, which is always in perfect harmony with His Word and Providence. Thus God has provided a perfect organization for His Church, so that it shall never go out of the hands of the Holy Ghost. If you want to see the glory of God and a Heaven on earth, just try this New Testament economy of running the church in the clear and unequivocal leadership of the Holy Ghost, through the Spirit-filled people to whom He incessantly reveals the mind of Christ, honoring and utilizing His infallible revealed Word, and harmonizing with current providential environments.