The Doctrine of Revelation - Introduction and Part One, The Existence of God - Booklet One

Extract

The Doctrine of Revelation – Booklet One
A. W. Pink

Introduction

Part One
1. The Existence of God as Manifest in Creation

Introduction
During the past 15 years we have devoted nearly a quarter of each issue of Studies in the Scriptures to an expository unfolding of some portion of doctrinal truth, and were it possible to relive those years we should not alter that plan. 2 Timothy 3:16, 17, mentions some of the principal uses and values which the sacred Scriptures possess for us, and the first mentioned is that they are “profitable for doctrine.” There is an inseparable connection between doctrine and deportment: our convictions mould our characters—what we believe largely determines how we act—“as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). To be soundly indoctrinated and to be well-grounded in the Truth is one and the same thing, and nothing but the Truth operating in the soul will preserve us from error, either theoretical or practical. Of the primitive Christians it is said, “They continued steadfastly [1] in the Apostles’ doctrine, and [2] fellowship, and [3] in breaking of bread, and [4] in prayers” (Acts 2:42), which at once indicates that they esteemed soundness in the Faith as of first importance, and were of a radically different spirit from those who are so indifferent to the fundamentals of Christianity, insinuating, if not openly saying, “It matters little what a man believes if his life is good.”

The relation between sound doctrine and godly deportment is like unto that between the bones and flesh of the body, or between the tree and the fruit which it bears: the latter cannot exist without the former. The first Epistle of the New Testament exemplifies …