The limits of the sense knowledge

Sense Knowledge is limited to what the Senses are capable of assimilating. If they are impaired by blindness, or deafness, or the loss of the sense of taste, or smell, the experimenter is handicapped. In the scientific world, man's body has become a laboratory, his brain is absolutely dependent upon his Senses. He can only know what he has experienced through these five channels from the outer world to his brain.

When he comes to problems like the Reason for Creation, the Origin of Life, Man, Motion and Matter, he is beyond his depth. He can only speculate. If it were a mere problem of odor, flavor, or sound, that could easily be cleared up; but here he is passing beyond the range and the reach of the Senses, consequently he must speculate.

It is a suggestive fact that no man becomes a philosopher until he attempts to know something that the Senses cannot interpret. Hagel's philosophy of the non-existence of a personal God was formulated because he could not find God with his eyes, hear Him with his ears, nor contact Him with his other Senses.

He was driven by Sense Knowledge limitations to leave the world an orphan, without a Creator, without a Ruler, for he had denied God's existence. The philosopher is always dangerous when he leaves Sense Knowledge facts and begins to speculate.

Nowhere does Sense Knowledge seem so utterly helpless as when it begins to discuss God, spirit, and the beginning of things.

Yet it recognizes that there is a hunger in man after God, call it a God hunger, that is ever searching, ever reaching out for something it cannot obtain through the Senses.

Because of this, we have Sense Knowledge religions beginning in idolatry and ending in philosophy and metaphysics. They all, like Hagel, deny the personality of God. The reason is this: Their Senses cannot register sensation of spirit.

They can register the beat of the heart, and they know that life is functioning because their heart beats register regularly. But they cannot see, they cannot hear, they cannot feel God.

You can see the absolute inability of Sense Knowledge to find God by itself.
You can see in the end how utterly desolate they become.

They form wonderful philosophical and metaphysical conceptions and teachings, and they have slogans and striking sayings and affirmations, but at the back of it there is no reality. They are the product of the knowledge of the Senses.

Their philosophy causes them to question the reality of satan (= not a name but a word meaning opponent, offender), of sin, of disease and temptation. In order to solve the problem they boldly declare the non-existence of a personal God, of sin and judgment.

In doing this, they hope to get rid of their Sin Consciousness and of their Inferiority Complex. This philosophy strikes at the very foundation of the Revelation of all that is given to us in Christ. It is attempting to give the Peace and Joy and Best of spirit that only Christ can give. The reason they do this is because the church has failed to teach Paul's Revelation about Jesus' finished work.

Had there been given a clear exposition of the finished work of Christ, as unveiled in Paul's epistles, these new Sense Knowledge religions would never have gained the ascendancy over the church that they have today.

By denying sin, they attempt to get rid of the need of the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. By doing this, they deny the efficacy of His blood and of His vicarious suffering.

Let us briefly notice what God gives us in the Pauline Epistles.

1.      First, He gives us a complete Redemption. Satan is conquered, brought to naught. He is stripped of his authority and dominion.

2.      Second, man is Redeemed from satan's authority and by a New Birth is translated out of satan's kingdom into the family of God.

3.      Third, he is not only declared Righteous, but he is actually made "the Righteousness of God in Christ."

a.      He has the position of a son in the family of God.

b.      He has authority over sickness and disease and the works of the adversary by the legal use of the Name of Jesus.

c.      He has the actual Indwelling Presence of the Holy Spirit in his body, until now he can say, "Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world."

4.      Last, when he has finished his course here, he has a home in Heaven with his Father.