Christ's work of redemption in the flesh was only preparatory to His future indwelling us by the Spirit, so the written doctrines of Scripture are only a means to all that inward teaching and powerful working of Christ's Spirit within us. We must beware of resting in the mere letter without expecting through the indwelling Holy Spirit a real and living experience of all that Scripture holds out to our faith. (p. 35)

The life-giving power of Christ does not reside in Greek and Hebrew syntax, but in the quickening of the Holy Spirit.

Many profess a sound doctrinal understanding of the letter of Scripture, but at the same time they reject the very work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and lives to which the plainest meaning of the Scriptures they so zealously study and guard would point them!

Without the present inspiration of the Spirit, a man's knowledge of the letter of Scripture can be no more than ideas in his head.

Bible scholars are generally looked upon as having a divine knowledge when they are as ready at chapter and verse of Scripture as the learned philosopher is at every page of Plate of Aristotle. On the basis of a prescribed religious education, the clergyman is thought to be fully qualified to engage in that ministry for which the apostles had to receive an enduement of power from on high. This scholarly worship of the letter has greatly opposed the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and blinded men to the living reality which the gospel holds out to those who believe.

Flesh and blood may say to Christ, "Hail Master," and betray Him with a kiss; but no one can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

The natural man is everywhere in the church singing of his love for Jesus and calling Him Lord with his lips, while betraying Him to the world with his life!

Men are more concerned about proving who has the right doctrinal interpretation of Scripture than they are concerned with whether or not the reality of the gospel is being demonstrated in their daily lives. (p. 39)

One can be so proud of his doctrinal soundness that the Holy Spirit cannot convict him of the unsoundness of his life.

Vain men give to one another a special recognition as having great power and position in this heavenly kingdom by virtue of a proficient learning in languages and Biblical history, or skill in doctrinal analysis. If the faith of illiterate fishermen did more for the establishment of the church in a few years than centuries of prodigious scholarship, one may readily understand that a trust in the wisdom of men and the letter of Scripture has caused the church to fall from its first gospel state in much the way that Adam fell through eating of the same tree of knowledge.

The old Serpent has elevated many of his servants through this same subtlety into places of authority and influence within that which pretends to be the Church of Christ.

In this fallen state of the Church today, Bible scholars are everywhere given over to the self-assuming working of their own natural intellectual powers. Preachers and teachers come forth to play the orator with gospel mysteries as thought the kingdom of God were a kingdom of words, and not as it is in reality the inward work of the Triune God in the soul and spirit of man. (p. 42)

When Scripture creates a hunger and thirst to be filled and blessed with His divine nature through the Holy Spirit, then the letter kills not, but leads directly to life.

If the living Word, who is Christ Himself, is not living as Lord and Master in the depths of our spirit now, then those outward words He spoke can only condemn us in that coming day; and the more familiar we have been with the letter of doctrine, the treater will b our judgment for having neglected that reality which these words continually held out to us in the truths we professed with our lips but denied with our lives.

To justify the lack within his own heart of the fire of the Holy Spirit, the well-read theologian explains that the ancient way of knowing the things of God, taught and practiced by apostles and early Christians, is not for this present age. Primitive Christians indeed needed to have the fulness of the Holy Spirit's manifestation given to every man - but this was only for a time, until the completeness of the written canon of Scripture should give scholarship sufficient words to study and teach. Behold the folly of human reasoning! (p. 44)