# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the fifteenth convention

so the enthusiast heart here, too, will not go along and not understand that the brazen serpent is now only to be Nehushtan, or "little copper piece."

To set up worship not by God's Word but by one's own thoughts — that is what the Lord so often accuses his people of, threatening them with wrath and all judgments: that the Israelites despise his Word, as though it did not serve them, or were at least not the best means to all welfare, and on the contrary praise their own thoughts and follow them. Thus God complains through the prophet Isaiah 59:1–16 about his people, and in particular in verse 13 about their sin: "In transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing" (that is, turning away) "from our God," (and this is from his Word); "speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood." And 65:2 God complains: "I have spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, after their own thoughts."

Similar things we find in the prophet Jeremiah in chapter 3. God promises good if the people cease to walk after their own thoughts, verse 17. These were the thoughts by which they paid no heed to God's Word with its beautiful promises (verses 15–20), did not obey the voice of the Lord (verse 25), and, in terrible self-deception (verse 23), sought their confidence, rock and comfort in idolatry (verse 20).

But the people's own thoughts, the abomination of enthusiasm, which wants to find much more good through something other than God's Word, are most truly uncovered in Isa. 5:19–21; 8:10–12; 19:20; 28:9–19; and Jer. 23:21 ff.

In Isa. 5:19–21 God pronounces woe on the people who hold their own thoughts to be the highest wisdom and cleverness and accordingly lord it over the Word of God, so that they say one must not take everything said in the Word at full value (verse 19); one must interpret and accept it according to circumstances (verse 20), "to make sweet of sour, and sour of sweet," that is: to twist the words of God and rob them of their content, in order to adapt them to circumstances.

In Isa. 8:10–12 the people of Judah want to do what God does not want. "This people speaks of nothing but the league" (with Egypt). Judah wants to make an alliance, forbidden by God, with the heathen, for the rescue of Jerusalem and the aggrandizement of Israel. Why? The men of Judah have not only consulted their own wisdom, but still other ways, to come to knowledge of what is advisable. According to verse 19 they have asked the soothsayers and diviners, "who chatter and dispute," that all will turn out well. Yes, they have asked the dead. But God pointed them to his Word. "To the law and to the testimony. If they do not speak thus, they shall not have the dawn."