The Two Kinds Of Knowledge

Years ago in California, a miner found his claim was giving out. He had but a cabin. It had become a home to him. His heart was utterly discouraged. Prospect after prospect had failed him.Sitting in front of the cabin one morning he decided to plant some flowers. Taking his pick and shovel he began to work. He had worked but a few moments when he uncovered one of the richest veins of ore in that entire section.He had walked over it for years.

The same thing is true in regard to one of the most remarkable discoveries we have ever made in the Word.The difference between the miner and ourselves is this: we have known this fact in a vague way, but never realized its significance.We did not know that it solved the whole rationalistic attitude of the scholastic world toward the Bible.

We did not know that it solved the problem of Biblical interpretation.We did not know that it was the solution for the condition of the modern church.We did not know that it solved the problem of the apostasy of a large part of our theological schools.It is the amazing fact that there are two Kinds of Knowledge in the world today, and we have never contrasted them or compared them.

One is the Knowledge that we teach in our great universities, technical schools, and colleges.The other is Knowledge that comes from the book called the Bible.One is Knowledge that we have obtained through the Five Senses; the other is a Revelation from God.

It is an acknowledged fact that all the knowledge that the Scientific world, the Educational world and the Mechanical world have today has come through these Five Senses of Seeing, Hearing, Feeling, Tasting and Smelling,Every contact that man has ever had with the universe has come to him through his Five Senses.

He has gained no knowledge independently of them.We may illustrate the limitation of sense knowledge by the following example; A blind man who has never possessed the sense of sight, could never know anything of color; a deaf man who had never heard, could never know anything of sound.So we also with our Five Senses know nothing except as it has come to our minds through these five channels.In other words that vast body of knowledge has come through experimentation.

Our bodies have been the source of this knowledge.We call it Sense Knowledge.It comes through Sense Perception. Our bodies have really been experimenting stations.The vast knowledge of Chemistry, Metallurgy, and Mechanics has come through man’s persistent experiments.It is no wonder that these men who have only contacted the physical through their Sense Perceptions should deny the existence of God, because they cannot find Him in the material world.

They cannot find spirit nor soul through their experiments in Chemistry or Biology.You can see why they naturally would rule out the super¬natural, why miracles would be impossible to them.They do not realize the fact that there are just as great realities in the realm of the spirit as in the realm of the material.

They have failed to grasp the fact that man is a spirit being, and that a Revelation from God was imperative.This Revelation Knowledge leads us into the realm of miracles. By this Revelation we have come to know God as a real Father. We have been able to contact Him, able to bring Him into the material world where we have come to know Him. Sense Knowledge cannot know God, cannot find Him, cannot see Him, hear Him nor feel Him.

Consequently in their realm they deny His existence.You can understand now why a man who has never been Born Again cannot expound the Scriptures and give us their spiritual content.Only a man whose mind has been illuminated by the New Birth can know God or understand His Revelation.This explains why the church should not have taken so seri¬ously the criticisms of the Bible by men of great scholarship who had never been Born Again.Some of these men have even translated the Bible. We do not question their honesty or their scholarship.

They did the best that a man with mere Sense Knowledge could do. We would not feel like criticizing a blind man for his attempt to interpret one of our great masterpieces of art.This explains why Dr. Darwin gave to us the Darwinian Hypothesis of Evolution.Sense Knowledge is limited.

Natural man does not know the source of life, the source of matter, the origin of man, or the origin of the animal kingdom.He knows nothing of how creation came into being.He feels that he must give some explanation, and so he guesses.Evolution is largely made up of guesses.We have God’s declaration of how all these came into being.Sense Knowledge repudiates it, and we can understand that,It would be unnatural for them to do otherwise.We can see now the limitations of Sense Knowledge.

It is explained fully in 1 Cor. 2: and is climaxed in this; (14th verse) “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually understood.”We are told here that the natural man cannot know the things of God, because they are spiritually discerned.

He can only know material things. We can understand this, for we know that every contact the man has with the outward world is through his central nervous system and its five senses, (the sense of sight, hearing, touch,taste, and smell).

These senses belong to the physical body, and they can only contact matter.Therefore, man knows only that which is physically discerned. He has learned a great deal about the universe in which he lives but nothing about the Creator.

As Voltaire has said, he has been able to study the stars but himself he has not come to know.God has met man on his own level and given to him a revelation that he can contact with his five senses.1 Cor. 2:12, 13 tells us how He has done it: “Now we have received not the spirit which is of the world but the spirit which is from God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

Which things we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the spirit teacheth combining spiritual things with spiritual words.”This shows us that in words which man can see with his sense of sight and hear with his sense of hearing God has given a revelation of His plans and purposes to man.The question might arise in the minds of some: Why is it that God created man in such a way that it would be impossible for him to know Him without a revelation?

God created man, as we shall see more fully in a later chapter of this book, a spirit being and gave to him a body for the home of the spirit. Through his physical body man was to contact the outward world which was to be his home. This knowledge of this world was to come to him through the medium of his five senses.

The purpose of the nervous system was never to reveal God to man; man was to know God through his spirit.When man died spiritually, that is, became alienated from God, he was left without a channel through which he could know God.

It then became necessary foe God to meet man on the level of the medium through which he gained his knowledge.God has done this and this revelation is known to us as the Bible.The natural man, the physical man, the man with only Sense Knowledge cannot understand this Revelation of God.

He must be re-created, his mind illuminated before he can judge spiritual things.So the church need not be terrified by the new atheistic attitude toward the Bible.Practically all the modern scientists show in their writings a hunger for God, but they cannot find Him with Sense Knowledge.We have written this book to show the Sense Knowledge people the need of a Revelation, and the facts that are revealed in this Revelation.