The Oberlin Evangelist

July 17, 1839

Lecture XII.

THE PROMISES--No. 5

by the Rev. Charles G. Finney

Modernized by Cliff Collins

“By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (2 Peter 1:14)

In my last lectures, I examined a few of the promises, with the purpose of showing that they are full and explicit enough to cover all our needs; and that they provide us with abundant means to conform to God’s divine nature or image. I shared that, all we have to do is realize, in our own experience, the fullness of the promised blessing, and to believe and receive all that is actually promised, in order to know, by our own blessed experience, what it is like to be made partakers of the divine nature. I could extend this examination of the promises to almost any length, as everyone who attentively reads the Bible knows. I have only quoted examples of different groups of promises that provide an accurate illustration of the extent and fullness of the salvation promised in the Gospel.

IV. According to my plan, I will now share with you some of the reasons why the promises are not fulfilled in and to us.

1. These promises are almost completely overlooked by the Church today. The Church, as a whole, doesn’t seem to know that promises like these even exist in the Bible. Now, since the fulfillment of a promise must depend on our knowing, understanding, and believing that promise, this is an obvious reason why these promises have never been fulfilled to multitudes of professing Christians.

2. Many who know that such promises are in the Bible, do not understand their application. Not long ago, I was amazed to hear a minister contend that the promise of the New Covenant, which I have so often quoted in these lectures, was made to the Jews, that since Israel and Judah are mentioned, we have no right to apply the promise to anyone but the Jews. He seemed to ignore the fact that these promises were made to the Israel of God, and more especially to the Christian Church than to the Jewish Church. Now it is perfectly clear that where ignorance like this prevails (and it very extensively prevails in the Christian Church today) that here is a natural reason why these promises are not fulfilled. They are not pleaded, believed, and applied by the Church to their own situations. Therefore, these promises are as ineffective to them as the Gospel provisions are to sinners who starve to death with the Gospel feast spread out right before them.

3. Another reason why so many people today do not receive the promises is because they will not believe that the promises mean everything they say. They reason like this: “The Christian Church is not wholly sanctified and never has been. Very few, if any, believers in Christ have ever been completely sanctified in this life. Therefore, either the promises don’t really promise entire sanctification, or God has not kept his word.” Therefore, they allow themselves to fritter away the meaning of the promises. Now, if the objection, that the promise can’t mean entire sanctification because entire sanctification has not taken place in the Church, is good for anything, it must amount to this: “nothing more is promised in the New Covenant than the Church has actually realized”. The whole objection can be summed up this way: “if God has not fulfilled all that He has promised, then His word is not true”. Therefore, the New Covenant cannot mean entire sanctification; but these promises of the New Covenant, and all the promises which I have quoted, mean nothing more than what the Church has actually realized. Now if this objection amounts to anything, it is this: that nothing more is promised than has been fulfilled; that the Gospel has done for the Church all that it can do in this world, and that every Christian has actually been at every moment just as holy as he could be under the provision of the gospel.

The first absurdity involved in this objection is that this objection makes the promises mean different things to different individuals, according to the measure of grace that each one has. For, according to their objection, if the promise has not been fulfilled, then God has broken His word. And if one Christian has had more holiness than another, it must be because God has promised more to one than to another. For, remember that this objection argues that God has fulfilled all His promises.

A second absurdity is that this objection assumes that these promises have no conditions, or that every Christian has complied with every condition. For certainly, you can’t assume that God violates His promises if He intends to promise entire sanctification, unless you assume that either the promises have no conditions, expressed or implied, or that the conditions have been complied with. But, these promises are all made on conditions, either expressed or implied. These conditions are to be recognized, pleaded, and believed. These conditions are often expressed along with the promises; and when they are not expressed, they are always implied. These conditions are not arbitrary, but they must be understood, believed, and personally applied as the indispensable means of receiving that state of mind that constitutes the divine image or nature in man.

An easy way to fritter away the promises of God is to overlook the conditions on which they are made, and contend that they can’t mean any more than the Church has actually realized, otherwise God has not kept His word. Now the reason, and a sufficient reason, why entire sanctification has not been realized by the Church, is that she has not believed and applied these promises according to their real importance.

I don't know how to leave this objection without saying it is truly ridiculous. Based on the principle assumed by this objection, there is no promise in the Bible that has become due that can be or should be pleaded by Christians because the promises must already be fulfilled. Otherwise, God has violated His word.

But to what I have said, people may object, saying that New Testament times have really come; that the New Covenant has actually been made with the Church; and those who have actually received it have not been entirely sanctified. To this I reply that the amount the Church has received of the New Covenant is precisely according to their understanding of the fullness of the promised blessings, and their faith in the promises. When God promised the New Covenant, he said, “Nevertheless I will be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them”. Now nowhere in the Bible does it say that the New Testament, or Covenant, has been fully received, although the time has come when it is offered to the Church. Under the New Covenant dispensation, it is promised that the fullness of the Gentiles shall turn to the Lord and that the Jews themselves shall be converted and receive this covenant. Now the fact that the Church has not actually received the blessing of sanctification, no more proves that that blessing is not fully promised in the New Covenant, than the fact that Jews and Gentiles have not been converted, proves that no such thing is promised. It is certain that the promises are not fulfilled concerning the world’s conversion, for the very reason that the Church and the world have not believed and applied these promises. The same is true of the New Covenant blessing of sanctification. This blessing has been received to a very limited extent by the Church because she has neglected to believe and apply the promise.

4. Another reason why the promises are not fulfilled in us is that we often fail to search out the promise that applies to our circumstances. There are promises adapted to all our circumstances and to all our states of mind. The only promise that will meet our need, for the time being, is the one promise that applies to our state of mind. This has often amazed me while earnestly trying to help anxious souls out of their difficulties. After determining, as clearly as I was able, their state of mind, I have presented one, and another, and another of the promises, and found that they would instantly perceive that none of these promises exactly met their need. But when the Spirit of the Lord directed me to select the right promise, I have often been amazed and delighted to see how instantly they would recognize it as exactly suited to their situation. It was as if the promise was made precisely for them in their state of mind; it met them where they are, and gave them just the help they needed. It is often most refreshing to see a person in such a state powerfully grabbing a hold of such a promise. It is a joy to see how, in a moment, that promise becomes an “anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast”, and how easily the person, when anchored down on such a promise, can look out on the storm that rages without, and smile through tears of joy. One of the great and sweet duties of the ministry is to search out and apply these blessed promises to the different states of mind that people are in; to feed the lambs and sheep with food suited to their age and their spiritual health. Anyone is surely ill instructed in the oracles of God, who does not have sufficient spiritual discernment, experience, and knowledge of the Bible, and of the laws of the human mind, to know how to search out the real state of different persons, discern, and apply the promises that belong to them. It is a most divine duty, and if ministers were much better fitted for it than they are, the weak ones of the flock would soon be strong.

5. Another reason why promises are not fulfilled is that we do not anchor down in naked faith on the promises. We are waiting for some state of mind to precede the exercise of faith, which we believe we must have before we are free to grab a hold of the promise. And often, the very state of mind that we believe must precede the exercise of faith, will be the result of faith, and can only be produced by it. When I speak of anchoring down on a promise in naked faith, I mean that we should take the promise and believe it, as a matter of fact, as the word of God, as infallible truth, entirely irrespective of any state of mind we may have at the time.

Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. A young man not long ago, had been anxious for a long time; and he went to one person after another inquiring into their experience, and how they obtained the blessing. When one had told him, he would think, “now I must get into that same state of mind and then I will have the blessing”. And when another had related his experience, he would strive to imitate that; and so he went from one person to another, but all was in vain. Finally, he came the conclusion that what the Bible said about Christ Jesus were matters of fact; that he would begin by taking these things as facts. He would not ask about this or that man’s experience, but would take the facts about Christ Jesus and the promise as certain truths. Now this is what I call naked faith. This immediately brought him into the state of mind he had been seeking after, and which, it seems, he expected to realize, at least in some degree, before he exercised faith in the promises. Now if we ever expect to receive the fulfillment of the promises, we must not wait for appearances or any indications that God is about to fulfill His promises, but must anchor right down on them in naked faith because they are the words of God.

6. We do not experience fulfilled promises because we do not believe that the promises belong to us. This was true in the case that I have mentioned, where one believed that the promise of the New Testament was only for the Jews. Now multitudes have never understood that the promises, made to individuals and to the Church under the Old Covenant, belong to the Church and to individuals under the Christian dispensation. They seem to have completely overlooked the fact that Christ and His apostles always spoke and lived as if the promises of the Old Testament belonged to Christians under the New dispensation. Now here is a good reason why many haven’t received the fulfillment of the promises. They don’t understand that the promises are for them. As a result, they don’t believe or apply them.

7. Very few people understand, that the promises mean everything that they say. The promises should be interpreted by the same rules that the commandments and other parts of scripture should be interpreted. For example, most people don’t think that the promise “and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,” means as much as the command “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength”. It is amazing but sad that so many individuals, who will contend for the literal meaning of the commandments, will fritter away the promises when the same words are used because they feel that they mean infinitely less than the language in the commandments means. It is as if an infinitely bountiful God means less by the promises of grace than by the requirements of justice. If the person who teaches others to throw away one of the least of the commandments of God shall be least in the kingdom of God, what shall be said about the person who not only throws away God’s promises, but also teaches others to throw away the promises of God? (See Matt 5:19) If this were the place, I could easily show, that it has been a common thing for those who have written against the doctrine of entire sanctification in this life, to interpret the promises by a very different rule than they use to interpret the commandments. Now I would humbly ask, where is their authority for doing this? Is not such a course clearly a violation of the Word of God?

8. Another reason is that we tend to limit their meaning to our own experience, or to the experience of others whom we esteem to be eminent saints. It is common for people to ask, “If these promises mean this, why didn’t President Edwards or his wife, or Mrs. Isabella Graham, or Dr. Payson understand them and experience their fulfillment”? Now we will likely allow examples like these to make us stumble, by assuming that they understood and applied the promises in all their length and breadth. Please understand that no one’s experience is the standard of truth. We must not interpret the Bible by the experience of anyone, but we must bring the experience of everyone into the light of the Bible. The plain meaning of the Bible as it reads is the standard, no matter what we may have experienced to the contrary. It is the practice of some men, in these days, when the full meaning of the promises of the gospel is contended for, to reply, by demanding an example. They say, show us an example of a perfect man. To this I reply,

(1) Even if I produced such an example, they would not admit that he was perfect. Christ not only claimed He was perfect; He really was perfect. But His claim was rejected by the religious teachers of His day, and He was considered a blasphemer, and possessed with a devil. I truly believe that there have been examples, and examples have existed throughout Church history. There are people who are alive today, who enjoy the blessing of entire sanctification, as I understand that term, and who nevertheless, have been and still are looked on, even by most professing Christians, as being so far from a sanctified state, that they even doubt whether they have any religion at all. In fact, the holiest people that I have ever seen have been the most maligned, persecuted, and denounced, even by many in the Church, as being almost anything else than what they really are. And this totally agrees with the Word of God. “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” (2 Tim 3:12)

(2) But another answer to this call for an example is that, even if we did not know of any examples, this would no more prove that an example did not exist, than the fact that Elijah did not know that God had reserved seven thousand men that had not bowed their knee to Baal, proved that they did not exist.

(3) If no such examples of people living holy lives ever existed, it would only prove that the gospel has not yet done all for the world and the Church that it was designed to accomplish. And who, I would humbly ask, believes that it has? Who believes that either the Church or the world has experienced all that the gospel is designed to produce? Even if you can’t find one completely sanctified saint, it certainly does not prove that the promises mean no more than we experience, but only that we do not believe the promises, and the Church has never experienced the fullness of their meaning.

9. Another reason why the promises are not fulfilled in us is a lack of perseverance. The Bible strongly insists on the importance of perseverance in prayer. Please read the situation of the “woman of Canaan” that the 15th chapter of Matthew records; and the story of the unjust judge in the 18th chapter of Luke. Many other instances recorded in the Bible place the importance of perseverance in prayer in a strong light. Often, individuals will pray with confidence for blessings for a while; but they become discouraged because the blessing does not come. Sometimes they believe that perseverance is unnecessary. They believe that the blessing will come in its time without persevering in prayer, and so they stop their efforts and wrestling, and, because of this, they limit their prayer before God. Now it is often true, that perseverance is naturally indispensable to our obtaining the blessing. Nothing else can prepare our minds to receive it; and it is often the situation that prayer can’t be granted, except through our own agency with long-term and agonizing efforts. There may be no other way to overcome some of the obstacles that may be either internal or external. As Christ one said, “this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:21)

10. Sometimes we hold on to a promise too long. In other words, we don’t go from promise to promise, taking hold of them as one need rises above another. Those who have experience on this subject know that the promises are adapted to all possible states of mind, from the lowest degree of grace, and from the lowest depths of despondency, step by step, up to the highest degrees of holy confidence and triumph that the human mind is capable of. It often happens, that when an individual has grabbed a hold of some of those promises that are designed to reach the Christian in his lowest state, he stops there. He grabs the promise, “He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength”, (Isaiah 40:29) or “a bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench, till He sends forth justice to victory,” (Matt 12:20) he stops and rests there. And because these promises comfort him, he does not continue to take hold of new promises suited to his state of mind as he changes. Therefore, he never quite rises out of the murky regions of his unbelief and selfishness, but he becomes satisfied with clinging to one or a few basic promises without rising any higher. A believer cannot remain stationary. He must go from strength to strength, or he will certainly decline. The promises are like a ladder that reaches from earth to heaven. The continuous cry is, “come up higher, come up higher”. Unless a person’s mind is occupied with viewing the heights still above, and looking at what can be attained, he will likely become proud looking down on those below him, and dwell on its own attainments; and once he is lifted up with pride, he will fall into the condemnation of the devil.

11. We do not properly consider how intimately God’s glory is connected with our receiving all that the promises mean. A sense of our unworthiness can easily consume us and once we focus on ourselves, we easily become discouraged. We don’t see that this same unworthiness makes it honorable for God to give us the fullness of His grace, and completely transform us into His own image. I love to contemplate the grace of God that Paul manifested. He was once, Saul, a raging persecutor who breathed out threats and slaughter against the infant Church. Afterwards, he was so changed by the grace of God that he became the wonder of the world in his remarkable resemblance of the Son of God.

God’s glory is His reputation or renown. And if, to bestow great and transforming grace on the children of men who are in the image of hell is designed to convey a high idea of the patience, forbearance, goodness and moral omnipotence of God, then certainly His glory is intimately connected with our receiving the full meaning and power of His promises.

12. Today, most Christians ignore the importance of becoming living illustrations of the power and the grace of God. There should be a holy ambition among Christians, each Christian should become a living, standing illustration of the full meaning of the promises, and of the provisions of the gospel to transform the soul into the divine image and make it a partaker of the divine nature. Anyone who has read the life of Mrs. President Edwards, has been encouraged, edified, and strengthened to press after higher attainments in holiness when they have seen what grace can do and what it actually has done, even in modern times, to transform and elevate the soul. Now as we prize the glory of God and as we desire to do good to the Church, instead of being satisfied with small attainments, we should reach after the highest measure of grace. We should try the full strength and intention of the promises, and ask God to give us all that He meant to promise for His own glory, so that the unbelief of the Church may be rebuked. Through God’s promises, may we so illustrate by experience, the fullness of gospel salvation, that the frittering away of the promises and paring them down to the legal experience of the Church in her present state may be done away forever.

13. If we hide the grace of God that we receive, God will not fulfill the promises. It may be through the suggestion of Satan that we will lose our present blessing, or perhaps, through the fear that people will think that we are egotistical and proud if we declare what God has done for our souls. The Psalmist says, “I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your loving kindness and Your truth from the great congregation”. (Psalms 40:10) And when God lifted the psalmist out of the horrible pit of muddy clay, and his feet placed on solid rock, and established his steps, and a put new song into his mouth, he said, “Many will see it and fear, and will trust in the Lord”. (Psalms 40:3) Christ has said that “men do not light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.” “Even so”, he adds, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matt 5:15-16)

Now it is not enough that we should merely behave right, but we should be prompt, plain, and simple-hearted in attributing all our good works to the grace of God within us, otherwise we, and not God, will receive the glory in the eyes of men. If we hide the loving kindness of the Lord, if we are ashamed, or afraid, or, for any reason, we neglect to give Him glory and declare what the Holy Spirit has done for our souls, we can expect what Malachi said will overtake us. “If you will not hear, and if you will not take it to heart, to give glory to My name”, says the Lord of hosts, “I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings.” (Mal 2:2)

14. A voluntary humility may prevent us from receiving the fulfillment of the promises. Many individuals seem afraid to hope or even expect to attain to any but the lowest measures of grace because of their great unworthiness. They feel as if it would be ambitious and out of place to ask for the children’s bread, and therefore they feel that they are doing God service by agreeing to live on the crumbs under the table. They read about the attainments of others, but ah! They think that those saints aren’t great sinners like they are. Therefore, they dishonor the grace of God, by somehow imagining that it was because those saints weren’t great sinners that they were so highly exalted. In other words, they insult the grace of God by considering the attainments of those saints they read about from the viewpoint of justice rather than grace, and thinking that it was because those saints were not as ill deserving as they are. Now this is wicked and shocking unbelief. It depreciates the grace of God, and ascribes to justice what really is the result of infinite grace. Besides, this is a most self-righteous wallowing in the dust, by a most God-dishonoring idea that the amount of our worthiness recommends us to the grace of God. Never forget that our worthiness recommends us to the justice of God and not to the grace of God, and that our deep unworthiness, while it places us under the condemning sentence of justice, recommends us to the grace of God. Therefore, let no one think that he is pleasing God, when he willfully consents to grovel in the lowest attainments, when he should rise into the full sunlight of God’s countenance and be filled with all the fullness of God.

15. Another reason the promises are not fulfilled is a God-dishonoring unbelief, that is expressed by inserting such words as “but” and “if” when pleading the promises of God. This implies insincerity on the part of God in making the promises. For example, Christ has said that God is more willing to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him than parents are to give good gifts to their children”. (See Luke 11: 13) Suppose we pray for the Holy Ghost, and begin and end our prayer by saying, “if it be thy will”. Now wherever there is a clear promise, to put in an “if” in this way, is to question the sincerity of God. Where He has made no conditions, we are to make none, unless we want to be guilty of adding to or subtracting from His word.

16. Another problem is, very few have ever learned how to use the promises. They have so little faith in them that they don’t even select them, nor have they committed them to memory, nor arranged them in any order in their own minds. Because of this, the weapons of their spiritual warfare are about as useless as if they were locked up in an armory. Now the promises of God should be so pondered, selected, arranged, and remembered, that they should always be ready and on hand, so the promise that we need may be presented at any time to quench the fiery darts of the wicked. To understand how to use the promises of God is a vast science, and it requires the highest exercise of our human faculties, always ready to be able to seize on the promise we need, for our own good or for others edification and support. I regard this as one of the principal qualifications of ministers. We need to know how, so we can apply the promises of grace and bring the Church from her low estate to those glorious heights promised to her.

17. Another reason is that, instead of applying the promises of God to help and edify the Church, the ministry is frittering away the promises of God. My soul is often sick to see the promises misunderstood, and explained away, and how the Church is robbed of its heritage and the sheep starved to death by those who are supposed to feed the flock of God.

18. Another reason the promises are not fulfilled is because we regard iniquity in our hearts. If we cherish any sin in our heart, if we spare any lust, if we plead for or defend our unholy indulgence, or we tolerate pride or sin of any kind, the Lord will not hear us. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me”. (Psalms 66:18)

19. Another reason is a common tendency to defer the fulfillment of the promises to the Millennium. I believe that this is the very reason why the Millennium has not already come, because the Church is waiting for the effect to take place before the cause. The Millennium will be the fulfillment of these promises. However, before they can be fulfilled, they must be believed and pleaded. But, the Church seems to be waiting for the Millennium to come first, and then they will lay hold of the promises. How long shall the Church act this way? How long will the promises, that are conditioned on our faith, remain dead Bible passages because the Church is waiting for their fulfillment before they are believed?

20. Many doubt that these promises will be fulfilled before we enter into eternity. For example, some say that the promise of the New Covenant has no specified time when it will be fulfilled. As a result, we don’t know that we have a right to expect the blessing until we arrive in heaven. Now, I could give you many answers to this statement. However, right now, I will only say the following:

(1) A promise where no time for its fulfillment is either expressed or implied is worthless. It is a ridiculous mockery. Should I promise to pay Mark, here, twenty-five dollars without saying anything at all about time, then he may call on me anytime, because my obligation is considered as on demand. But, if I should say that I will pay him sometime in the future, without specifying when, my promise would be worthless, since the time would never come when it would be considered due. This is true of the promises of God. When a promise is made in the present tense, it is always due. It may be pleaded at any time. If the promise is for some future time, it is not due until that time arrives. If a promise should be found (of which there is no instance in the Bible) in which no particular future time is expressed or implied, that promise must, from its nature, be null and void. Since faith is the condition, it is clear that the condition can never be fulfilled because there is nothing for faith to rest on, because it is impossible to determine whether the time has come or when the time will come that the promise was intended to be fulfilled. If it is said, as in the promise of the New Covenant, that, “after those days”, and “at that time”, which clearly refer to some particular future time when the promise should be fulfilled, then at the time it becomes due, and from that time forward, that promise can be pleaded as a promise in the present tense. The particular time referred to in such situations can be learned in general by the context in which the promise stands, or by reference to other parts of scripture.

For example, many things are promised to be fulfilled “in the latter day”, “at the end of the world or Jewish age”, and so forth. From the Bible, it is abundantly clear that the latter day is the gospel age. The Bible also tells us that the end of the world, when the phrase is used to mean the end of the Jewish state, is also the beginning of the Christian era. Therefore, all the promises of blessings to be bestowed “in the last days” are now to be regarded as in the present tense, to be fulfilled at anytime and to anyone who will believe them. This is undeniably the understanding of the Apostle, when, in Hebrews, he quotes the promise of the New Covenant from Jeremiah, as a promise to be fulfilled at the coming of Christ, who was the mediator of the New Covenant. Now the coming of Christ was the particular time at which the promise made by Jeremiah, and so often repeated by the prophets, was to be considered as due, and forever after it must be treated as a promise in the present tense. Christ’s coming did not secure the fulfillment of the promise all by itself, irrespective of our own faith and agency, but it pointed out the time when the Church was to look for its fulfillment, and when its fulfillment should depend on their pleading it in faith.

(2) If there is no particular time in which a promise of God is to be fulfilled, I mean a promise that is in the future tense, then we can no more receive its fulfillment in heaven than we can here. For without a new revelation informing us that the time has come, we can never grab a hold of it as due. We can’t believe and receive its fulfillment. If the promise clearly belongs to the future, and no time is expressed or implied, when will it be fulfilled? When we have been in heaven myriads of ages, we will no more be able to grab a hold on the promise as due, nor as far as I can see, be any more certain that the time for its fulfillment is not yet future, than we are now.

21. Another reason why the promises are not fulfilled in us is that sometimes we are unwilling to have them fulfilled. Maybe we are afraid of being disgraced, being called fanatics, perfectionists, or something similar that we dread. Or we don’t want the promises fulfilled in us because we will have to abandon some particular indulgence, lust, or perhaps our favorite pursuit. Usually, we would be very willing to have the blessing of sanctification, if it did not imply that we must actually give up every form of sin. Many, who are praying for blessings, are still clinging to some form of sin.

22. Another reason why the promises are not fulfilled is because our motives are selfish. Under one form or another, selfishness is often lurking in our applications to the throne of grace for promised blessings. This does not fool God. And unless our eye is single, our whole body can’t be full of light.

23. Prayers that are inefficient because we offer them selfishly, discourages us, and we come to God in stubborn unbelief. We come to God selfishly so often and plead His promises, overlooking the wickedness of our motives, that we are ready to conclude that we have misunderstood the promises altogether. Perhaps we feel that the time has not come for their fulfillment, or for some reason our prayers can’t prevail, and therefore we don’t expect to receive the blessing. We are stressed by our selfish desires, and we cry out to God, but it is in the anguish of unbelief, and we are denied, of course.

24. A presumptuous misapplication of a promise renders that promise ineffective. For example, the promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”, (Hebrews 13:5) is so misapplied and misunderstood that we become presumptuous, and depart from Him instead of Him departing from us. The same is true with the promise in James. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5) This is sometimes so misunderstood that it leads people to expect wisdom without research.

25. People often tempt God, in asking the fulfillment of a promise without performing its conditions.

I could mention many other reasons, but these must suffice. And now I must end this discussion by saying, that I can’t tell you how much I felt shocked, when the question was brought up whether the grace of God was sufficient, as a matter of fact, for the entire sanctification of Christians in this life, and it was flatly denied. This question had never come fairly and fully before my mind as a subject of distinct consideration until the last winter of my residence in N. Y. And I cannot describe my astonishment and grief when I found that men in high standing in the Church of God flatly denied it. I have often asked myself, is it possible that these brethren can believe that if a man should believe and realize in his own experience the full meaning of the promises, and all that the gospel and the grace of God can do for a man in this world, that he would not be entirely sanctified? I would humbly ask, is there one among them that has tried this experiment? You can’t answer by turning around and asking, “have you received the fullness of the promise? Are you sanctified?” For, if I have not, and if there was no one on earth that has, that does change the meaning of the promise one bit. Neither does it prove that the promises are not sufficient to produce entire sanctification, as long as it is true that every one of those people must confess that they have never received or hardly begun to receive all that they themselves admit the promises mean.