E. W. KENYON
Author
( 1867 - 1948 )
Twenty-Fifth Printing
Copyright 2011
KENYONS GOSPEL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, INC.
Printed in U.S.A.
ISBN: 9781577700685
THE REASON WHY
The urge that makes one man a drunkard, another a philosopher the restlessness that fills the dance hall and the gambling resort, the roadhouse and the movies, and all the other places of pleasure is the hearts search for reality, that universal quest of the ages, the spirits search for the Holy Grail.
No one finds it until they contact the Man, Christ Jesus, and crown Him as the Lord of their life. That moment the search ends. They have arrived.
They may not be conscious of what it is, but they know that the pleasures that they once sought have lost their taste and attraction.
They did not know that the hunger was spiritual, that it was a search after something that only God can give.
No person reaches the place of rest in the spirit until they have made that contact.
Man is a spirit being. He has a soul. He lives in his body.
The real man can never be permanently satisfied with the things of the senses.
It is a fact that the boy or girl that finds this thing in the teenage never sows wild oats, has no great urge for the dangerous pleasures of the world. They have something that answers that cry.
This book is a study. It is a solution of the spirit problem. It is the first time that anyone has attempted to enter the realm and meet man on his own ground.
We invite you to read it carefully.
We wish we could get in contact with every person who does.
We want to know the reactions in your spirit.
We believe we have found the fount of eternal jo y.
INTRODUCTION
They had been fishing all the afternoon, now they are seated before the fire place at the camp. They were close friends. After a bit of silence, he said to his pastor:
Life has not been what I had dreamed it would be. I have never reached the goal that I set my heart upon in my younger days. I have never opened my heart to anyone about it, but I am going to tell you today.
I have always been religious. I have been a teacher of Bible Classes. I have been a superintendent of Sunday Schools. I have been an educator since I left college, but all these years there has been a secret background of unreality.
God has never been real to me. I have read the Gospels, I have lectured about them. But all the time there was a consciousness that I had not arrived.
That address you gave the other night revealed to me the thing that I have needed. In the early days we were never taught about Eternal Life. It was getting converted and joining the church. We were taught a little about Justification, but it was always a theological point of view. It had no sense of reality in it.
When I understood that one could receive Eternal Life the very nature of God, then I knew that this thing you have been telling us about Righteousness was real.
Like a flash, my theology and theories were striped away and I saw myself for the first time as I really was in Gods sight.
I had never honored what He had done in Christ.
I had never known what He had done for me.
I was a New Creation. I had the very life and nature of God.
I hardly dared to say it, I am the Righteousness of God.
I had never confessed it before.
I had never dared even think that I would ever be anything like that until after death.
Sin Consciousness had held me in bondage all these years. Whenever anyone preached against sin, I said, Thats me.
I knew sin. I had fought sin. I had suffered from its effects. But I did not know that when I was made a New Creation that the past had stopped being. I did not know that if I committed sin, I had an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. I did not know that when I was recreated I became the Righteousness of God in Christ.
I thank you for what you have told me.
MAN AS HE IS
Man has no approach to God.
The sense of condemnation has given to him an Inferiority Complex that makes him a coward. It robs him of faith in himself, in man, in God and in His Word. This Sin Consciousness holds him in bondage.
He has no right to approach God. He knows he is not good enough to pray and have his prayers answered.
If he does pray, it is the prayer of desperation.
This has led him into philosophy. He could no more keep away from the subject of God and religion than a hungry man can keep away from food.
The sense of guilt, inferiority, failure and weakness makes him reason, and that reasoning we call philosophy.
Because of this, Hage l eliminated God entirely from his philosophy. To him, God was a great mass mind without any brain center, without any personality.
In his philosophy, he also eliminated Satan.
If there be no Satan, then there can be no sin. If there is no sin, there is no sin consciousness. This would be fine if it were true, but it is just sense knowledge seeking a way of escape.
Then there would be no heaven because there is no life after death. Man floats out into a universal mind and is absorbed by it.
There is no Resurrection of the body, no judgment. Man simply disintegrates and becomes a part of the great whole. This is but the dream of a man who could not find God with his senses.
You can see why Christian Science grew out of Hagels philosophy.
If there is no Satan, there is no disease and no death. Yet they all die.
This is Sense Knowledge seeking for liberty and freedom that only God can give to man.
Man has a highly developed Sin Consciousness, a spirit inferiority complex, a sense of unworthiness that dominates him.
He is doubt ruled.
All he has is Sense Knowledge faith that cannot know God nor find Him.
This is man as he is.
Chapter I
WHY WE HAVE FAILED
T HE church has been very strong in teaching man his need of Righteousness, his weakness and inability to please God.
She has been very strong in her denunciation of sins in the believer.
She has preached against unbelief, world conformity, and lack of faith, but she has been sadly lacking in bringing forward the truth of what we are in Christ, or how Righteousness and faith are available.
Most of our hymns put our redemption off till after death.
We are going to have rest when we get to heaven.
We are going to have victory when we get to heaven.
We are going to be overcomers when we get to heaven.
We are going to have peace with God when we get to heaven.
There will be no more failings when we get to heaven.
We have nothing on this side except failure, misery, disappointment and weakness.
What does He mean when He says, Ye are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power?
When are we to be complete? Is it in this life or in the next?
What does he mean in Rom. 8:37, Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us?
When are we to be more than conquerors? Is it after death when we leave this vale of tears?
And Phil. 4.13, I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.
When is it that we are going to be able to do all things? Is it after we finish the course and stand with Him in the New Heaven and the New Earth?
He declares, Rom. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. When does this become ours?
We hear nothing but condemnation preached.
The ministry make no distinction between saint and sinner.
When does Rom. 5:1 become a reality?
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