The following ever-timely remarks on the folly of accepting human wisdom are made by the highly respected and long-deceased David Lipscomb in his Commentary on 2 Corinthians and Galatians. The following quoted comments were made on Galatians 6:8 (pp. 280-282).

". . . All the provisions of human wisdom for the advancement of the church of Christ result in evil, and not in good. The works that human wisdom devises for good bring evil to themselves and to the world.

"There never was a time when there were so many human helps and so much money expended at home and abroad as at present to hold and convert the people, and yet the churches are growing relatively weaker and are losing ground. This certainly shows that the Lord has taken the wise men of the churches in their own craftiness. They have thought that they could improve, by their wisdom arid craft, on the ways of God, and he has shown-them that they bring weakness to the churches and drive men away from God. The church of Christ, which is his temple, is defiled, and it is growing weaker under the addition of these human organizations and helps. They are parasites that sap the life from the church, while for a time seeming to add to its verdure and life.

"Yet with all these warnings of God in the scriptures confirmed by the example of the destructive effects of the human inventions, the churches and men claiming to be sensible and to believe in the Bible follow the same path of ruin. This is not an evil omen for truth. There has drifted into the churches an amount of unbelief in the scriptures. All dispositions to bring human organizations into the work and worship of the church comes from a feeling of worldly wisdom which is foolishness with God. It is a manifestation of unbelief, and this mus*( i thrust out of the churches before they can be blessed of God. It is not often that a church organization that starts wrong ever turns. They usually run the path of folly and ruin. Lack of confidence in the appointments of God is lack of faith in God. The introduction of every new society is a new declaration of distrust in God. Be not deceived as to these; God is not mocked. When a man or a church turns from God's appointed ways to man's he turns from God to man. But this falling away is no new experience in the church."

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XII: 7, p. 12
April 1968