My God and My Country

 

Of the Knowledge of God Part One

By John Gill

Prefaced & Edited by Dr. Riktor Von Zhades

Preface

Brethren:

A quick summary if one might enjoy to present to you dear esteemed reader. The main point of this treatise by Reverend Gill is this; in order to worship our Creator we must believe that He is, for without this belief we cannot worship in truth. In fact our worship would be of no avail and would profit us nothing. Belief in a deity is naught but belief in a so called “higher power”, but it does not describe the attributes, nor make up of our Creator. One must understand that the Living God is one of love, holiness and righteousness. However, do not be deceived friends, for He will judge all on the last day, and as such, by your fruits; that is to say your actions and words of your lips shall you be judged as based upon His precepts of righteousness. Ergo, all of your worldly wisdom and carnal knowledge will be of no avail, for the righteous One that sits upon the throne will toss it all into the pit of eternal separation along with you. - Dr. RVZ

“Without faith, then, no human being can glorify Allaha. For a person is responsible for what is offered to Allaha, that is an indication of faith and a proof that those who love Him, He repays”

The Epistle to the Hebrews Chapter Eleven Verse Six – Aramaic Translation

Since the knowledge of God and of divine things is a part and branch of true godliness, or of experimental religion, and a very essential one too, it is first to be considered; for without it there can be no good disposition in the mind towards God; for "ignoti nulla cupido", there are no affections for nor desires after an unknown object. And as we have seen there can be no true worship of God where there is no knowledge of God, as the cases of the Samaritans among the Jews, the Athenians among the Gentiles, and their wise philosophers show; there can be no cordial obedience to him by those who are ignorant of him; the language of such persons will be like that of Pharaoh. It is a false maxim that "ignorance is the mother of devotion;'' it is so far from being true, that it is the parent of irreligion, will worship, superstition, and idolatry. Godliness, as has been observed, is an assemblage of the graces of the Spirit of God in the hearts of his people, in the exercise of which experimental religion or internal worship lies; now there can be no grace without knowledge, no faith without it; the object must be known, or it cannot be rightly believed in. The blind man's answer to Christ's question is a wise one [as read in], John 9:35,36. The Gentiles, who are described as such who "know not God", are also said to be "without hope", without hope and without God in the world; without hope in God and of good things from him now, and without hope of the resurrection of the dead, a future state, and enjoyment of happiness in it, [as such], an unknown object cannot be the object of love; an unseen person may, "Whom having not seen, we love"; but an unknown person cannot be truly and cordially loved; God must be known, or he cannot be loved with all the heart and with all the soul. The wise man says "That the soul be without knowledge is not good", or rather it may be rendered, "without knowledge the soul is disposed to that which is not good;" it cannot be well disposed towards God, nor be fit for any good work, or for the right performance of any religious exercise, but is disposed to that which is evil; where ignorance reigns no good thing dwells.

First, let it be observed, that while men are in a natural, unregenerate, and unrenewed state, they are destitute of divine knowledge; the time before conversion is a time of ignorance; this was not only the case of the Gentile world in general, before the gospel came unto them, but is of every particular person, Jew or Gentile, all the sons and daughters of Adam are in the same circumstances, for the illustration of which it may be noted.

Adam was created a very knowing creature, being made after the image and in the likeness of God,

which greatly lay in his understanding and knowledge of things; and while he continued in a state of innocence his knowledge was very great; it is not easy to say not to conceive how great it was; as he knew much of things natural and civil, so of things moral and divine; as he knew much of the creatures and their nature, so as to give suitable names to them, he knew much of God, of his nature, perfections, and persons, and of his mind and will, and of all necessary truths and duties of religion; for what by the light of nature and the works of it, and by the exercise of his own rational powers, which were in their full force and vigor, and by that nearness to God and communion with him he had, and by those revelations which were made to him by God, his knowledge must be very great.

[Now], our first parents not being content with the knowledge they had, but listening to the temptation of Satan, who suggested to them that if they eat of the forbidden fruit they should be wise and knowing as God, they sinned and fell in with it, and fell by it, and so lost in a great measure that knowledge they had; for "man being in honour", as he was while in state of innocence, and "understandeth not", so he became by sinning, "is like the beasts that perish"; not only like to them, being through sin become mortal as they are, but because of want of understanding; yet "vain man would be wise", would be thought to be a wise and a very knowing creature, "though man be born like a wild ass's colt", which of all animals is the most dull and stupid. Adam being driven from the presence of God, and deprived of communion with him because of sin, by which his nature was corrupted, darkness seized his understanding and overspread it, and greatly dispelled that light which before shone so brightly in him; and this is the case of all his posterity. The darkness of sin has blinded the eyes of their understanding, that they cannot see and understand divine things; it has left an ignorance of God in them, to which are owing their want of a disposition to God, an alienation from him, and an aversion to a life agreeable to him; and this is the state and case of all men, even of God's elect before conversion, who are not only dark but "darkness" itself, till they are made light in the Lord; and when the true light of grace shines, the darkness passes away. This darkness and ignorance are increased by a course of sinning. Naturally man "is in darkness", he is born in darkness and continues in it, "and walketh in darkness"; and by an habit and custom in sinning increases the darkness of his mind; for notwithstanding the fall there are some remains of the light of nature in man; some general notions of good and evil, according to which the natural conscience accuses or excuses; but sometimes through a course of sin conscience is cauterized, seared as with a red hot iron, so that it is become past feeling, and insensible to the distinction of good and evil.

There is in many an affected ignorance, which is very criminal; they are "willingly ignorant", as the apostle says of the scoffers who shall arise in the last time, or rather they are unwilling to understand what they might, "they know not, nor will they understand, they walk on in darkness"; they do not choose to make use of, but shun the means of knowledge, and shut their eyes against all light and conviction; they do not care to come to the light, and love darkness rather than light; they do not desire to know God and his ways, but rather that he would depart from them; with such as these wisdom expostulates, saying, "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity?—and fools hate knowledge?". Some, because of their sinful lusts they indulge themselves in, and their contempt of the means of light and knowledge, and the stubborn choice they make of error and falsehood, are given up to judicial blindness and hardness of heart; as many among the heathens, who because they liked not to retain God in their knowledge, were given up to a reprobate mind, or to a mind void of judgment, and so imbibed notions and performed actions not convenient, and the Jews, who rejected Jesus the Messiah against all light and evidence, had a spirit of slumber given them, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, nor understand with their hearts, and the followers of Antichrist, who received not the love of the truth, had a strong delusion sent them to believe a lie, others have been left under the power of Satan, the same with the power of darkness, who is the god of this world, and who is suffered to blind the eyes of them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them.

Now while men are in an unrenewed state, and in such a state of darkness and blindness, they are ignorant:

Of God, of his nature and perfections; for though they may by the light of nature, and from the works of creation, know that there is a God, and some of his perfections, as his wisdom, power, and goodness, which manifestly appear in them; yet not so as to glorify him as God, nor so as to preserve them from the worship of other gods besides him: indeed their knowledge of him is so dim and obscure, that after all they are said by their wisdom not to know God, the true God, this was the case of the Gentiles; and as for the Jews who had a revelation, yet they were "ignorant of the righteousness of God", which was the ground of their capital mistake in going about to establish their own righteousness and reject the righteousness of Christ. And carnal men are very apt to think that God is such an one as themselves, and they measure him by themselves, and fancy that what is agreeable to the reasonings of their minds is approved of by him; or that he takes no notice of men and their actions, but leaves them to act as they please; that "the Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not", and thus they live without God, or as atheists in the world; or they think that God is a God of mercy, and will have mercy on them at last, but never think of his justice and holiness.

They are ignorant of Christ, of his person and offices, and of the way of life and salvation by him; as they know neither the Father nor the Son, nor the distinction between them, so not the concern that each have in the salvation of men. "The way of peace they know not", how God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, forming the plan and scheme of reconciliation, and how Christ has made peace by the blood of his cross.

They are ignorant of the Spirit of God; "The world seeth him not, neither knoweth him", neither his person nor his office, as a sanctifier and comforter; not the operations of his grace on the souls of men; Nicodemus, a master in Israel, could not conceive how it should be that a man should be born again of water and of the Spirit. Nor can a natural man either receive or know the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually discerned, and he has not a spiritual visive faculty to discern them.

They are ignorant of themselves, and of their state and condition by nature; they think themselves rich and increased with goods, when they are wretched, miserable, poor, and blind, and naked; they fancy themselves whole, sound and healthful, and need not a physician for their souls, when they are sadly diseased and distempered with sin; they reckon themselves alive without the law, in a good condition, and in a fair way for life, heaven, and happiness, till the law enters them, and cuts off all their hopes of salvation by the works of it. They are upon the brink of ruin, like a man on the top of the mast of a ship asleep, or in the midst of the sea, insensible of their danger; they rush into sin like the horse into the battle, and hasten like a bird to the snare, which knows not it is for its life.

They are ignorant of sin and the sad effects of it; if they have any notion of the grosser sins of life, and the evil of them, they do not know that lust in the heart is sin; not the evil of indwelling sin and corrupt nature; nor consider that the wages of sin is death, eternal death; they are not sensible of their own insufficiency and inability to make atonement for their sins, nor to work out a righteousness that will justify them from their sins.

They are ignorant of the sacred scriptures, and the truths contained in them; though they are plain to them that understand, and right to them that find knowledge, yet they are like a sealed book to carnal men, whether learned or unlearned; the one cannot read them because sealed, and the other because he is not learned. The mysteries of the kingdom are delivered to them in parables, and they are riddles, enigmas, and dark saying to them; the gospel, and the doctrines of it, are hid from the wise and prudent; they cannot understand them, they are foolishness to them, and they pronounce them such.