The angels understand all the sciences, yet they consider salvation more worthy of their study than all of the other sciences put together. The prophets also considered it more worthy; and employed the others as a means to better understand salvation. And here is a man that understood the other sciences, and he says that the science of salvation transcends them all. Now I want you to see that God Himself on His own part, separated from all these, considers it just so.
See here: We just read that Solomon taught all these sciences. How much of these teachings have we written out for our study?--Not one. God did not bring to us any record or report of Solomon's teaching in botany. He did not bring to us, or put on record, a single lesson that Solomon ever taught in zo-ology, or any other one of these sciences. But he did, over and over, bring us lessons from Solomon, as well as all the rest, on the science of salvation.
Then, counting the angels as giving only an angel's opinion; counting the prophets as giving only a prophet's opinion, and Solomon as giving only a universal scientist's opinion; what is God's opinion?--It is that salvation is worth more to you and me, and is more worthy of our study, than all these other sciences, this knowledge of which He Himself gave.
This science that Solomon understood and taught was not such science as that of Huxley, Darwin, and the other scientists of his age. With the natural mind man can delve into natural sciences, and make many discoveries. And though they are not always correct, yet they can discover some points that are true.
But that was not Solomon's way. God gave to Solomon wisdom, so that he saw into all this by the light of God. He spoke of all this by the wisdom of God. Thus the science which Solomon taught was God's science. The botany that he taught was genuine, divine botany. The zo-ology that he taught was divine zo-ology. It was God's views, God's truth, God's science in all these things. It was not science falsely so-called.
Well, then, that being God's science, and it being divine in itself, why didn't the Lord give it all to us? Why didn't He give to the world Solomon's treatise on botany, and on all these other subjects?--There is a reason for it; and it is that that is not what the world needs first of all.
A man might have all that, he might understand all that, as did Solomon. Yet what good would it do him, if he did not have the science of salvation first of all? Solomon had it all; yet when he turned his heart from God, from the science of salvation, and from the study of that with all his heart, what good did his knowledge of the other sciences do him? How much of it was able to hold him back from sin? How much power was there in it to keep him back from his natural self, and from the deviltry and corruption that was in him?
You know that when he turned his heart from God's science, from the science of salvation, though he had all the others, he was just as bad, just as wicked, swallowed up as thoroughly in idolatry and every profane thing, as though he did not know the A B C of anything.
Thus we can see why it is that the Lord did not reserve to man all there is of science. Suppose they had it all, as Solomon did, and could teach it as Solomon taught it. With the heart not surrendered to God, what good would science do them? It could not refrain them from any kind of wickedness and corruption that is in the human heart.
These sciences are not what the world needs today. The heart needs to be purified, the soul needs to be saved, the whole character rebuilt, the mind transformed into the very image and glory of God, so that the life shall reflect His righteousness, to make manifest the knowledge of God alone to all the world. Though we have all that all the sciences can give, it will profit nothing without salvation; for it will be but a little while till we shall have none of it at all. This is worth thinking about for ourselves today, in all our studies, readings, and researches." A.T. Jones.
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