‘A great deal of the civilization of the present day is only a veneer,’ said a young Canadian soldier to me a short time since.
‘I quite agree with you,’ I said, ‘and there is also a great deal of religion which is only a veneer.’
‘But you go in for religion, don’t you? That seems a strange thing for a man to say that goes about preaching, and giving away Testaments and tracts.’
‘Probably it does, but there is a wide difference between teaching people to be religious, and seeking the salvation of their souls. One may be only adding to the veneering of things as you rightly termed it, and the other really begins by stripping the veneer off.’ .
‘Now you’ve got beyond me, I don’t quite follow you.’
‘Well, you see, the very fact that man feels his need of a religion of some sort, is evidence in itself of his consciousness of having to do with God. This is accompanied in all of us with another feeling, and that is that we are not what we ought to be, and are unfit for the presence of a God who is holy and righteous. So that if we come under the judgment of God, condemnation must inevitably follow.’
‘Now, Satan knows this as well as, and better than, we do, consequently he has a great deal to do with religion, and is ever ready with suggestions of a religious kind to hide from us our true state before God, and to induce us to adopt some kind of veneer or surface cover, to conceal the true state of things underneath.’
‘I never knew before that the devil helped to make people religious.’
‘Yes, I have no doubt that Satan has taken advantage of the fell need of man’s heart for something, or someone, to worship, in order to foist upon him what is false, and often the perversion of what is true in itself is more to be dreaded than positive evil and vice. But there are two marks of that true religion which is according to God, that cannot be gainsaid or misunderstood.
‘One is that it gives us what is true about God, and the other that it tells us what is true about ourselves. These two essential things are to be found in the Bible alone the only revelation from God. That is the reason why I distribute these Testaments the word of God that alone gives us the truth about these two things. There are numberless religions that fall far short of this, and many are only veneers that cover up instead of unfolding the truth about God, and the truth about man.
‘The truth about God is that He is light and that He is love, while the truth about you and me is that we are sinners and so under condemnation.. But the happy thing is that God loves sinners, but He does not, and cannot love or tolerate sin, as you know. To put it very simply, God loves the sinner, but he hates the sinner’s sins, so He sent His Son to die for the sinner, and make atonement for his sins, in order that He may take the sinner who believes in Jesus and His redemptive work, to heaven without them.’
‘Would you mind repeating that?’
‘Certainly. God loves the sinner, but He hates the sinner’s sins. So He sent His Son to die for the sinner’s sins, in order that He may take the sinner to heaven without them.’
‘All the value of the death of Christ is now reckoned to those who believe God, and, turning away from their sins, accept Christ as their Saviour.’
T. R.