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RobertW
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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 11)
R. A. Torrey

Suppose I should have found on Thanksgiving Day a poor, half-starved tramp and had taken him to my home, given him a good, well-cooked dinner of roast lamb, white potatoes, other vegetables, and pumpkin pie, and then he had gone and complained against me to some other tramp because I did not give him turkey and sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, mince pie, and plum pudding. Would he not have been an ungrateful cur? Yet not so, ungrateful as you are when you complain at the God who has given you taste, hearing, touch, feeling, and many other blessings, because He has not given you sight also. The poorest of us, the most suffering of us, have an enormous deal for which to be thankful and all of it came from God. Not only that, but you and I not only have these things that we possess to be thankful for but, furthermore, every man of us has trampled God's law under foot; every one of us has been a sinner justly condemned before God. But God, instead of dealing with us in stem wrath and judgment, as we all deserve, has not only given us all these blessings, but, in addition, has given His own Son to die on the Cross of Calvary in our place. He has given His best beloved, His dearest, His only begotten Son. But in spite of all that wondrous love that did not stop even at the sacrifice of His own Son, some of you presume to criticize God, who gave His Son to die for you. "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God?"


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Robert Wurtz II

 2005/3/10 16:07Profile
RobertW
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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 12)
R. A. Torrey

One of the greatest Italian statesmen of the last century, the greatest of his day but one, was devoutly loved in his youth by a young woman. When he entered the army of Garibaldi, this woman who loved him enlisted too, and fought in the war by the side of her lover, just to be near him. And one day he was shot and fell on the field of battle, and that woman who loved him rushed out beneath a rain of bullets, lifted her fallen lover from the ground; and, amidst a terrific storm of bullets, carried her lover to safety. Then she watched over him for days and weeks until she had nursed him back to health. Suppose he had deserted her then, what would the whole world have called him? In point of fact he married her, but afterward he divorced her; though he was one of the ablest statesmen of the century, Italy and all Europe, for all his brilliant gifts, never forgave him his treatment of the devoted woman who had risked her life to save his.


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Robert Wurtz II

 2005/3/10 17:06Profile
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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 13)
R. A. Torrey

But what has God done for you? The eternal God has consented that His heart should be torn and crushed to save you and me. Yet some of us dare to enter into controversy with this God of infinite love, to criticize that eternal God who consented that His heart be torn and bruised and crushed to save us. Oh, the desperate wickedness, the amazing folly of replying against a God of infinite majesty, infinite holiness, infinite wisdom, and, above all, of infinite love. "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God?"

Who Repliest Against God?
But who is replying against God? Who is entering into controversy with God? Who is criticizing or condemning God? Five classes are replying against God.

First of all, the men and women who complain of God's providential dealings with them are replying against God, are entering into controversy with God, are criticizing God and condemning God. Many a man or woman has said to me, "I think God is cruel." "Why do you think He is cruel?" One replies, "He has taken away my husband." Another, "He has taken away my wife." Another, "He has taken away my child. He has taken away the light of our home." Another, "He has brought me down from financial prosperity to financial failure. I once stood high in the business world. I now have to almost beg my bread, and I say God is cruel." Another says, "If God is good, why did He permit this awful disaster or that which laid waste a beautiful city or nation? I think God is cruel."

You do? You do? You think God is cruel! Who is God? A Being of infinite majesty, a Being of infinite holiness, a Being of infinite wisdom, a Being of infinite love, a Being who gave His own Son to die that you might be saved! "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God?"


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Robert Wurtz II

 2005/3/11 9:24Profile
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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 13)
R. A. Torrey

But you say, "I do not understand it." Why should you understand it? Who are you? If you were really wise, you would not ask to understand it. If you had really good sense, you would not feel any need of having it explained. You would say, "I know God is infinitely good and infinitely wise. I know He is infinitely loving, too. I know He gave His Son to die for me, and though I cannot understand it, nevertheless it comes from God's hand and I know it is all right. "Naked came I [into this world]: ... the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). 1 do not ask to understand; I am perfbctly content to trust in the dark that God who is so infinitely worthy of my trust.

I had two friends in England, very dear friends, who were beautiful Christians. They had a lovely daughter. She grew to maidenhood and was said to have been an unusually beautiful girl in both face and character. Some said she was the most beautiful character they had ever met. When this lovely daughter was seventeen or eighteen, she was taken with rheumatic fever, and, after awful suffering, died. The father and mother never complained. They kissed the hand that smote.

Some time after this sorrow had befallen them, I was talking with them about it. They told me how God had sustained them in that trying hour. Only a little while after this conversation, their second daughter, now grown to womanhood, was also taken down with precisely the same malady, rheumatic fever. Her fever ran up to 107 and stayed there day after day, and she seemed beyond all hope. Then the mother's faith gave way, and she said, "God is cruel to take my second daughter when I never complained about the first, and not only to take my second daughter, but to take her in just the same way He took the first." But God spared the child. She is well now, a devoted Christian woman in very active Christian work. And that mother has repented of her wickedness.


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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 14)
R. A. Torrey

Oh, friends, it was wicked, very wicked. Our hearts were almost broken in sympathy during the days that child hung between life and death. Telegrams kept coming to me telling of her condition, and my heart bled for my friends. But, nonetheless, I say that was wicked on the mother's part to say "God is cruel." That was exceedingly wicked, that was desperately wicked, to call God cruel. That same mother lost all three of her sons and her husband in the late war, but she has never again whispered that God is cruel. I had a letter from her only the other day that was full of trust and hope.

Some of you are passing through trials which, if the rest of us knew, would fill our hearts with sympathy and pain. But you are murmuring against God, and that is wicked, that is exceedingly foolish, that is desperately wicked; for "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God," against a God of infinite majesty, against a God of infinite wisdom, against a God of infinite holiness, against a God of infinite love, against a God who gave His only begotten Son to die for you? But you say, "I do not understand it." Why should you understand it? Why should you ask to understand it? Who are you that God should explain it to you? Oh, that we might always bear in mind who God is, and who we are; what God is, and what we are.


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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 15)
R. A. Torrey

Then there is a second class who are replying against God, who are entering into controversy with God, who are criticizing and condemning God, namely, those who are criticizing this Book and trying to pull this Book to pieces. This Book is God's Word. That is thoroughly established. When you criticize this Book, you criticize its Author, who is God. When you criticize this Book, you criticize God. But you say, "I do not believe it is God's Word." That does not alter the fact, not in the least. It is His Word-there is abundant proof that it is His Word. I have proved over and over again in this place that this Book is the Word of God. This Book is God's Word, and whoever ventures to criticize it ventures to criticize God. Never forget that. I repeat it, whoever ventures to criticize this Book ventures to criticize God, and the one who criticizes God is guilty of exceeding folly and desperate wickedness. You say, "I do not like that." I am sorry that you do not, for it is true, and I always feel profoundly sorry for the man or woman who does not like the truth. They are in a bad way.


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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 16)
R. A. Torrey

One night one of my workers in Minneapolis called me down to speak to a man who said that he was an infidel. "Why are you an infidel?" I asked. 'Because I do not believe the Bible," he replied. 'Yes, but why do you not believe the Bible?" "It is full of contradictions," he answered. "Show me one," I quietly said, and handed him my Bible to find it. He said, "It is full of them." 'Well," I said, 'if it is full of them, you ought to be able to show me at least one." "I don't pretend to know as much about the Bible as you do," he blurted out. I said, "Then what are you talking about it for?" I turned him to our Bible text of tonight, "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God" Then I turned him to Matthew 12:36, 'Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Then I said, 'The Bible is Gods Word, and you have said it is full of contradictions, and in saying that you have condemned the Author, you have condemned God, and Jesus said, Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day ofjudgment." You have criticized God, and you will have to give account of it in the day of judgment, of all these words, these idle words that you have just used." He turned pale, and said, "I did not mean to do that." "But that is what you have done." And it is what some of you have done in the last twenty-four hours. You have ventured to laugh at something in the Bible. When you did that, you laughed at God. You ventured to set up some opinion of yours against what God says in His Book. You ventured to enter into controversy with God, you ventured to criticize something in the Bible, and when you did that, you criticized the Author of the Bible, you criticized God. "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God?"


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Robert Wurtz II

 2005/3/12 13:13Profile
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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God (Part 17)
R. A. Torrey

There is a third class who are replying against God, who are entering into controversy with God, who are criticizing God, who are condemning God, and that is those who make light of the Bible doctrine of salvation by atoning blood, the Bible doctrine that we are saved through the shedding of the blood of Jesus on the Cross of Calvary. That doctrine so frequently and so unmistakably taught in God's Word is ridiculed today in many a so-called Christian pulpit. Any pulpit that ridicules the doctrine of salvation by atoning blood is not a Christian pulpit. A very noted preacher in New York City, whose books have a wide sale, was reported to me by one who took down his words in his classroom to have said, "The doctrine of blood atonement is nauseating to me." Any preacher who ridicules the doctrine of salvation by atoning blood is not a minister of Jesus Christ, he is a minister of Satan, no matter how genial and amiable a man he may be.


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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God? (Part 18)
R. A. Torrey

The Bible doctrine of salvation by atoning blood is ridiculed in this day on every hand. Some preachers have said it is foolish for me to preach this "old doctrine." Well, it is an old doctrine, but it is a true doctrine. And I would rather believe and teach the old that is true than the new that is false. I did not invent this doctrine. I do not know enough to invent it. I found it in that Book, and, thank God, I found it to be true in my own life; it saved me and I preach it, and it has saved thousands through my preaching of it. I preach it, but I did not invent it. God is the Author of this doctrine, and when you criticize the preaching of it, you do not criticize me, you criticize God. It would be a matter of no great consequence for you to criticize me or my preaching. Why should you not criticize me? I am not infallible. I cannot see why I am not just as properly an object of criticism as anybody else. It does not harm me, and it gives some people lots of fun. Sometimes it greatly helps me. But, ah, when you criticize this doctrine you are not criticizing me, you are criticizing God, and that is serious, tremendously serious. "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God?"


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Robert Wurtz II

 2005/3/12 19:13Profile
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 Re:

Are You Criticizing God (Part 19)
R. A. Torrey

Then there is a fourth class who are replying against God, namely, those who complain of the Bible doctrine of retribution for sin, the Bible doctrine of endless punishment. This is not my doctrine. I did not get it up. Some say that it is a medieval doctrine. No, it is not a medieval doctrine. They did not originate it in the Middle Ages. It is the doctrine of Jesus Christ, taught by Him, not in the Middle Ages but in the first century. Why will people who try to pose as scholars display such ignorance of the meaning of commonly used words?


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