Cowley's Talks on DoctrineCowley, Matthias F. (Matthias Foss)
Religion
Cowley's Talks on Doctrine
Cowley, Matthias F. (Matthias Foss)
Latter Day Saint churches -- Doctrines
We have in the New Testament what is called I Cor. and II Cor., written
to the Saints in Corinth by the apostle Paul. In I Cor. chapter v:9,
we have this: "I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with
fornicators." This must have been previous to the one in which this
occurs, and yet such an epistle is not found in our New Testament.
In Col. iv:16, Paul says: "And when this epistle is read among you,
cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that
ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea." This refers to an epistle
from Paul to the Colossians, written from Laodicea, but which is not
found in the canon of Scripture as we have it. In II Tim., chapter
iv:13, Paul requests Timothy to bring him certain parchments; what
they contained we know not. Jude says: "And Enoch also, the seventh
from Adam, prophesied of these things, saying: 'Behold the Lord cometh
with ten thousand of His saints.'" How delightful it would be to read
the predictions and teachings of that great prophet Enoch, the man
who walked and talked with God 365 years, "and was not, for God took
him." Only a few verses in the Old and New Testament are all we have in
the canon of Scripture respecting Enoch and his city. What a glorious
flood of light will dawn upon the world when the writings of Enoch are
revealed! In the Old Testament may be found references to about thirty
books written by the Jewish scribes and prophets, but which have been
lost to the world, rejected and cast aside by uninspired, unauthorized
councils of men.
Suppose that all that is necessary so far as explanation of doctrine
is concerned is contained in the New Testament, we are then confronted
with man's inability to understand what has been revealed without
the light of revelation to guide the human mind in understanding and
applying the truth. As proof of this I will cite the testimony of Paul:
"For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which
is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of
God. * * * But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned." (I Cor. ii:11, 14.) Jesus said
to Nicodemus: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of
God." (St. John iii:3.) "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by
the Holy Ghost." (I Cor. xii:3.) The truth of these sacred sayings is
verified by the history of the world, which has languished in darkness
without revelation, as shown by previous quotations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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