STARTPOST TITLE: I Care not What Course Others May Take AUTHOR: Larry DATE: 9.1.06 ----- BODY:

LIFE PROVED BY LOVE-- 1 JOHN 3:14

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I have heard it said, by those who would be thought philosophers, that in religion we must believe, but cannot know. I am not very clear about the distinction they draw between knowledge and faith, nor do I care to enquire; because I assert that, in matters relating to religion, we know; in the things of God, we both believe and know. If you will read this Epistle through, and with a pencil draw a line under the word "know" wherever it occurs, you will be astonished to see how continually John asserts about the great verities of our faith, "We know, we know, we know, we know." He does not admit that any one of these things is a subject of conjecture, but he asserts it to be a matter of positive knowledge. These philosophical gentlemen call themselves Agnostics; that is a word derived from the Greek, and has the same meaning as the word "ignoramus", which comes from the Latin, and is the English equivalent for a "know-nothing." Well, if they like to be called ignoramuses, I have not the slightest objection to their keeping the title, but they should never presume to argue with Christian men.
They put themselves out of court directly, for we say, "We know." They cannot deny anything we choose to affirm after that, because confessedly they do not know. If we do know, and they cannot allege against us that we are deceivers,-- if, in any court of law, they will admit that our testimony would be taken quite as quickly as theirs, and that our general repute is that we are as upright and as honest as they are,-- then they ought, in modesty, never to contradict us in anything, but to believe what we declare to be true. As they do not know anything themselves, let them be guided by those who do know. At any rate, whether they choose to agree with us or not, we shall always affirm that we do know what we do know; and there are some things about God, and about the future, and about prayer, and about the work of the Spirit of God in our own souls, which we do not fancy, or imagine, or even make to be merely matters of faith. We know them, we are sure of them, for we have felt them, tasted them, handled them, and we know them as surely as we know the fact of our own existence. My text seems to me to speak of four things about which believers in
(from Spurgeon's Encyclopedia of Sermons)

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