God's Cure for
Ignorance
But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. MATTHEW 24:37-39.
Several times in the New Testament (Rom. 11:25; I Cor. 10:1, 12:1; II Cor. 1:8; I Thess. 4:13; II Peter 3:8) we read, with slight variations, ''I would not have you ignorant.''
I am sure that the people of Noah's day must have been amused at this strange preacher who built an ark while he warned his generation of impending judgment. Today it would be a popular diversion to drive out on Sunday afternoons to watch this eccentric prophet build his oversized houseboat. But just the same, Noah was right and his contemporaries were wrong. They may have been intelligent and progressive but they were ignorant of God's program. They knew not.
Our Lord says that in the last days men will be just like that. Life will be a matter of ''eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling,
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planting and building.'' As it was in the days of Noah and Lot, so shall it be, said our Lord, and so it is today. The milling throngs on our crowded avenues do not know which way the wind is blowing, they do not know what time it is, they do not know what the score is. They know not.
Josh Billings used to say, ''I'd rather know a few things for certain than be sure of a lot of things that ain't so.'' It may offend some of the higher-ups, but the outstanding characteristic of this generation is ignorance. And yet there never has been a generation that prided itself more on its cleverness, smartness, and sophistication. We are the ''most-read,'' not the best-read, people in history. We never had more college students and never more ignorance, not only outside our schools but inside, because there is such a thing as educated ignorance. A leading American educator said, ''The intelligence of the race has failed before the problems which the race has raised.''
We never had so much smartness and stupidity at the same time. We know a lot about a lot of things, but of God's Word and will we are of all men most ignorant. And whatever else a man may know, if he does not know what God wants him to know, he is an ignoramus. Our Lord said, ''Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.'' When we are ignorant of these things, we live in error. We travel faster today than ever. John Wesley lived centuries later than Julius Caesar, but he could travel no faster. But what avails our speed if we are going in the wrong direction? In the last hundred years we have learned many interesting things about the world we live in, but we have not learned any better how to live in it. We correct one
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social evil, and a dozen more break out. We conquer one disease, and a new one takes its place. We build schools and churches on almost every other block, but our jails fill with young gangsters, and churches are deserted by a mad generation loving pleasures rather than God. Dress modern man in the latest attire, give him a college diploma, put him in a limousine with every new gadget attached, start him on an American highway, but, if he is left to himself, he is as dumb as a sheep; he wanders in a wilderness of error, and ends up in eternal hell.
The people of Noah's day knew not, and we know not. We are ignorant, we know not the Scriptures or the power of God. We know the baseball scores, but we cannot read God's scoreboard. The people of Noah's day scoffed at him, and Peter tells us that in the last days scoffers shall arise. He goes on to say, ''For this they willingly are ignorant of,'' that Noah's world was destroyed by water and ours will be destroyed by fire. Some people are ignorant because they want to be.
You will remember that, at the outset of Paul's voyage to Rome, he warned that there would be trouble. The captain of the ship advised otherwise. They listened to the captain of the ship and sailed away to shipwreck. Today men listen to captains of ships, to the expert instead of the prophet and—behold the consequences! Like Ahaziah, we consult Baal as though there were no God in Israel. And, true to form, the experts have landed us in that ''perplexity'' which our Lord said would be a mark of the last days—the state of one who has lost his way.
About the time of World War I, something snapped in America. Something went out of us that has never
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come back. Until then we were more or less old-fashioned. Progress had not run as crazy. We still had time to live. The old virtues were still preached and practised. It was still the custom for husbands and wives to live together. We still believed the Bible—at least we respected it. Then the world went crazy and we have been in a madhouse ever since. A new climate environed us. Evolution boasted that we were on our way from protoplasm to Paradise. Higher criticism denied the Scriptures, minimized sin, reasoned away the atonement, air-conditioned hell. Man was deified and God was humanized. Liberalism dismissed the devil, and now when we have more devil than ever, though we never had fewer people who believe there is a devil. Although modernism threw him out the door, neo-orthodoxy now tries to get him back through the window. Anyway, we decided we were able in ourselves to achieve our salvation. We started on a spree and have been reeling ever since.
They knew not. Paul speaks in Ephesians of the Gentiles ''alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.'' Peter says we are not to fashion ourselves according to the former lusts in our ignorance. By well-doing we are to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Paul says Israel was ignorant of God's righteousness, and he told the Athenians of the unknown god ''whom ye ignorantly worship.''
Who is ignorant? The man who does not know God's Word and will. Who is wise? The man who does know God's Word and will. Some who do know are well-educated, with as many degrees after their names as have been devised. But they did not learn it that way. They had to become fools to be wise. The wisdom of
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God is foolishness to men and is learned only in the school of Christ. The natural man can never know the Scriptures or the power of God.
We need not be ignorant. We can know whom we have believed. We can know we have passed from death unto life. We can know He abides in us by His Spirit. We can know that all things work together for good to us who believe. God has said repeatedly, ''I would not have you ignorant.'' He would not have us ignorant concerning spiritual gifts (I Cor. 12:1), concerning them which are asleep (I Thess. 4:13), concerning God's purpose with Israel (Rom. 11:25), concerning God's measurement of time (II Peter 3:8). Paul says ''we are not ignorant of Satan's devices.'' Certainly we should not be, but many of us are.
The answer to ignorance is Christ Himself, who is made unto us wisdom, for He is the Truth and Wisdom of God. A college student said, ''Education gives me spokes for my wheel but no hub.'' Jesus Christ is the Hub, by Him all things consist. That is why a janitor sweeping the steps of a library, if he knows Christ, knows more than a philosopher inside who knows not Christ. Head-knowledge is useful, but unless it is sanctified by the Holy Spirit it can be the most dangerous thing in the world. Germany had knowledge, but she wrecked our world. Hitler knew his program but not God's. At first he seemed to succeed. His war machine rolled over Poland and Norway and France and the Balkans and into Russia. But Hitler tackled one race of which it was said by God Himself, ''I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee'' (Gen. 12:3). When he tried to exterminate the Jew he ran
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into God's program, and no man can interfere with God's program and win.
I have heard of a spider that tried to build its web on the moving hands of a town clock. Just as futile is the plan of any man to build against God's plan of the ages or God's will for his life.
The only man who can understand the times is the man who views them in the light of the Living and the Written Word. Suppose, on a starry night, I found you on a hilltop viewing the heavens. Suppose I suggested to you, ''Friend, I have a telescope which you may use,'' and you replied, ''Oh no, why should I limit myself to that tube when I have two good eyes and can look everywhere unhampered?'' But you could see more in a moment by confining your view through the telescope than you could behold all night with your unaided vision. Just so do the wiseacres today scoff at restricting themselves to the Bible viewpoint. As well might a minnow complain at confining itself to the Atlantic Ocean!
No man with God's telescope need ask, ''What are we coming to?'' He knows. We are not of the night but of the day. We are not to be unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is. We are to walk circumspectly, not as fools but as the wise, buying up the opportunities because the days are evil.
God expects us to understand His program and get in step with it. He is not converting the world nor saving civilization. It has been said that Pentecost did not save Jerusalem from falling to the Roman armies, but saved people out of Jerusalem; that, on his voyage to Rome, Paul was not concerned with saving the ship but with saving the passengers. God is taking out a
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people for His name. Christ is the Great Gatherer, and he that gathereth not with Him scattereth abroad. We are not out to salvage a wreck but to save people out of the wreck.
Henry Ward Beecher once said of D. L. Moody, ''He is a believer in the second advent of Christ and in our own time. He thinks it is no use to attempt to work for this world. In his opinion, it is blasted, a wreck bound to sink—and the only thing worth doing is to get as many of the crew off as we can and let her go. I should be a burning fire all the time if I believed like that, though I do not say I must believe like that to be a burning fire.''
Well, Moody was like Noah and he was right. We live in a generation that knows not. Let us stand on God's sure Word, God's cure for ignorance. Then our hearts will be fixed, trusting in the Lord, not disturbed by evil tidings. For ''great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.''
