TIME, PLEASE!
“Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.”–Psa. 119:160
Here is a story which is humorous and at the same time points a moral worth considering.
At almost the same hour each day a man’s voice would ask the telephone operator in a little New England town for the exact time. Day in and day out this went on. Finally, at the end of two years, unable to contain her curiosity any longer, the operator inquired, “Would you mind telling me why you call here every morning to ask the correct time?”
“Why, certainly,” the man’s voice answered; “I blow the town whistle at noon, and I want to be sure that my clock is right.”
“That is strange,” the operator replied. “For the last two years I have set my clock every day by the town whistle.”
That is what I call getting in a rut! But theirs was the sort of rut a merry-go-round would make if it had wheels— around and around and around.
To get the right time, one must go to an observatory clock. The observatory gets time from the stars; and to be absolutely correct, a clock must be set by this celestial time. God’s clock, the heavenly bodies, never gains or loses one second. Every timepiece which man has ever invented is fallible and variable, it is to be kept accurate, its time must be checked by the stars.
So it is with all things which man can devise. Social institutions, customs, morals, laws, governments—all these, if based wholly on man’s conceptions or on some other man-made institution, custom, moral, law or government, are quite as apt as not to be wrong. All human institutions and human concepts must, if they have value, be checked against the eternal verities of God’s Truth. The Bible gives us the divine standard.
As the time kept by the heavenly bodies is the only safe and accurate standard by which men’s clocks may be set, so is this Book the only unchanging and eternal standard by which institutions and customs may be measured. Principles of right and wrong are unchanging. That which was true five thousand years ago is true today. Men’s ideas of truth may change. Man’s standards may vary from generation to generation, but God’s Word is forever fixed in heaven. Only that concept or that institution which is based upon the truths revealed in the Word of God can make claim to Truth. — Bob Jones, Jr.
“Jesus, my Truth, my Way, My sure, unerring Light, On Thee my feeble steps I stay, Which Thou wilt guide aright.
My Wisdom and my Guide, My Counselor Thou art; O never let me leave Thy side, Or from Thy paths depart!”— Charles Wesley
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346
