Minute Meditations

WE SOMETIMES CALL something other than what it is and hope that somehow it will become what we have called it. A small boy wants a horse. He finds a broomstick and straddles it and calls it a horse and, to him, it becomes a horse. We are wise if we confine this to childhood and with Paul say, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Sometimes we permit this childish habit to carry over into adulthood.

In material things our laws have made some progress in properly labeling the products we buy. The manufacturer must state in clear understandable terms the ingredients of his product. If it is all wool, the label must tell us, but if it isn't, the maker must list the various types of yarns used.

When it comes to worshipping God, we must be accurate and call things by their true name. So often we hear that every man has a right to worship God as he pleases. Saying this does not make it so. Man has a right to worship God only in the way God Himself has appointed. To say that we are free to worship God as we see fit is no more true than saying that the broomstick is a horse makes it one. Christ said, "In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."

Doctor John Thomas, who rediscovered the truth, once said, "We dare our opponents to hear us, and to compare what they hear with the things written in the Word of God. ‘To the law and to the testimony’; it is here we would meet the reader. By this we stand or fall."

While we may dare our opponents, we beseech you as our friends to "come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

Salvation lies in calling things by their true names, to read the Bible as it was written, "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."

We simply are not free to worship God as we see fit. We must worship Him as He has commanded and to find His commands, we must go to our Bibles with our minds ready to accept His teachings as they are written. To give the Scriptures of Truth our private interpretations or to allow someone else to read it and tell us what to believe is disastrous. The many churches of today are proof enough that many worship God in vain, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

When it comes to something as important as our eternal welfare, let us put away childish ideas and call things by their true names. Certainly we do not want to be found in the position of those who were condemned by Jesus when he said, "Why do ye transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? Ye have made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition."

Let us not worship God as we see fit but as He commanded us. May we search the Scriptures daily so that we will be numbered among those "That feared the Lord and spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him."