SOME ENEMIES OF FAITH

SOME ENEMIES OF FAITH

THIS book would -not be complete unless we revealed to you some of the beautiful enemies of faith.
The first one is “Hope”. Hope
Hope is always in the future.
“I hope that I will be healed.”
“I hope that I will have money to meet my bills.”
“I hope that I will have strength to do my work.”
It is an enemy of faith. It stands in the way of faith.
I say to you, “Will you be healed when I pray for you?”
And you reply, “I hope so.”
That means you will not be healed.
There is no healing in hope; as far as faith is concerned, hope is a delusion.
Faith is always present tense. Therefore, because Hope is always future, it is a hindrance to Faith.
We have a hope of Heaven. When we reach Heaven we shall hope no longer.
Mental Assent
Mental Assent is another enemy, an adroit, dangerous enemy.
Mental Assent claims the whole Bible to be true. Mental Assentors say they believe every word of it, but they do not act upon it.
They simply assent to the fact that it is true.

I was called to pray for a woman with cancer. Both she and her husband had been outstanding Bible teachers for years.
As I sat by the bedside and opened the Word, she kept saying, “I have always believed that. I have known that Scripture since I was a child.”
I went away from the house baffled, defeated. I could not understand where the difficulty lay.
When I arrived home, I walked up and down my room saying, “Lord, why is she not healed? She is a good woman. She says she believes your Word and has been a teacher of it for many years.”
Then the Spirit made me see that she only mentally assented to the Word. She didn’t believe it! Believing is acting on the Word. She had never acted on the Word for her healing.
A few days later I went to the house again. This time I understood her case.
As I began to open the Word she said, “I have believed that all my life.” I told her, “No, you have never believed it, for if you had you would be out of bed doing your work. You only men-tally assent to it.”

Then I opened the Word again. She said, “That’s the truth. I don’t believe it. I can see now how I have never believed it. I have always assented to it.”
You will find that in many cases where men and women have mental assent instead of faith, their creed or dogma has taken the place of the Word’s reality.

Sense Knowledge Faith

Sense Knowledge faith requires Sense evidence.
This is the kind of faith Thomas had when he said, (John 20:24-29) “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Then Jesus suddenly appeared to him and said, “Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Here we see these two kinds of faith in contrast.
There is a Bible faith, and Sense Knowledge faith.

The faith that Mary and Martha and the others had in Jesus during His earth walk was Sense Knowledge faith. They believed in Jesus because they saw the miracles He performed.
The Jews said, “What doest thou for a sign that we may see and believe?”
This Sense Knowledge faith has almost driven real faith out of the churches.
This kind of faith does not give the Word its rightful place. Men carry the Word to Church, but they do not trust it. They trust in their feelings, in their emotions, in what they can see and hear, or taste, or smell.
Real faith is acting on the Word independently of any Sense evidence.
There are two kinds of unbelief.
The first is based on lack of knowledge. The man does not believe the Word because he knows nothing about it. So, he does not believe in the Father’s Revelation to him.

A great number of unbelievers are ignorant of the things to believe. They do not know, so they cannot believe.
The second type of unbelief is mentioned in Heb. 4:11. It is “unpersuadableness.”
“Let us, therefore, give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.” (The Greek word is translated “unbelief” in the King James version. It is “disobedience” in the Am. Rev. and means “unpersuadableness.”)
This means that the man is unwilling to allow the Word to govern him.
It is a refusal to act on knowledge.
He knows what the Word teaches, but he refuses to act on it.
Believing is an act of the will.
He can act on the Word if he will.
“Believing” is “willing” to do His will.
Disobedience is an unpersuadable attitude toward the Word.
Then unbelief is either ignorance of the Word or unpersuadableness to act upon it.