HOLDING FAST
BY MRS. EDWARD MIX
Let us hold fast the profession of
our faith without wavering, for He is faithful that promised.
– Heb. x:23.
The apostle Paul had been telling the Hebrew brethren how inferior
were the rites, ordinances and sacrifices of the law to the sacrifice of
Christ, that the law had only “a shadow of good things to come,” and that
Christ was a perfect sacrifice; then, after telling them about the “new and
living way” provided once for all, he exhorts them in the language of the text
to “hold fast” the profession of their faith. But he says still more, exhort one another.
The let those of us who believe in “the faith once delivered to the
saints,” who believe in the diversity of the gifts of the Spirit, and have
experienced the wondrous workings of God’s power, or have been eyewitnesses of
this truth, let us exhort one another to “hold fast the profession of our
faith.”
When we read the twelfth chapter of first Corinthians and see the
different gifts to the Church, can any honest thinker close his eyes and ears
and say they are not for us? Is there any place between the covers of the Bible
where we are told that these gifts are taken away from the Church? In the ninth
verse of the same chapter we read of the gift of faith and the gift of healing,
and Paul, in speaking to the Corinthians, says: “Now, concerning spiritual
gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.” I think if Paul were to visit
the churches of today he would find them very ignorant concerning these
spiritual gifts, and why? It is not because knowledge and wisdom are not on the
advance, but because they close their eyes to the truth of the Gospel and call
it fanaticism.
We read in the fifth chapter of James: “They prayer of faith shall
save the sick.” To whom shall we pray? To God, and He says He will raise up the
sick “and if they have committed sins they shall be forgiven them.”-(Jas.V:14,15.). Who is it that forgives sin? You very readily say that God alone can
forgive sin. Who is it that raises up for the sick in answer to prayer? You
answer, God, and yet when your friends and neighbors around you are sick for
weeks and months and years, and the “arm of flesh” has proved too short to help
them, you do not think of applying to the “Great Physician,” with faith in His
power and willingness to heal.
And when the Lord impresses upon the mind of His suffering children
that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick,” and leads him to send for one
of God’s faithful followers, who is “holding fast the profession of his faith,”
to follow out the command in James v, to anoint him with oil in the name of the
Lord and to offer believing prayer, and when God answers that prayer and raises
up the sick one to His glory and praise, you are ready to call it all a humbug
and close your eyes to the facts.
O, let us who believe in God’s precious truths “hold fast the
profession of our faith without wavering,” let us not doubt His word, let us
put away all fear, and be “sound in the faith,” knowing that “He is faithful
that promised.” May the dear reader lay aside all preconceived opinions, all
traditions of early training that have warped his mind, and believe the whole Gospel. Believe God to be true
though it prove every man to be a liar.
