By The Rev. CHARLES G. FINNEY

Modernized by Cliff Collins

“Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.” (Psalm 119:18)

V. WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF AN ANSWER TO THIS REQUEST?

1. We must believe that there are many wondrous things in the Bible, and that God is able and willing to reveal all these wonderful things to us. We must believe in the doctrine that I have been talking about, which is, that without divine illumination shed on the Bible by the Holy Spirit, we cannot understand the truths contained within its pages. God can so enlighten us that we will be able to behold wonderful things, new things and things we never knew before, things that are hidden from those whom the Spirit does not enlighten. In short, we must believe that the Holy Spirit needs to reveal the Bible to us. It is not good enough that these words are simply written down, and that we simply read these sentences, but there must be a personal application and revelation to us by the Spirit, in order to get beyond the letter which kills, and into the Spirit which gives life.

2. We need to be aware of our great ignorance and spiritual blindness in order for us to pray this prayer. No one will offer this prayer properly unless he feels that he is extremely blind; unless he realizes that he needs divine illumination and he realizes that his darkness is very great. Unless he realizes his ignorance of the spiritual truths of the gospel, he will never have the enlightening of the Spirit.

3. We must strongly desire this divine light. The desire for this divine light must be the leading and the controlling desire of our mind. Our ignorance weighs heavily on our soul. As a result, our soul is drawn out in mighty supplications; with lots of crying and tears, that God will give us light. The Prophet Jeremiah says, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart”. (Jer 29:13) There must be a heart-wrenching longing; our soul must be so set on that longing that our soul cries out after God. We need to be in the same state of mind that blind Bartemaeus was in. He was so inspiring, and his situation was so graphically described in the Bible that you seem to see it acted our before your eyes.

Jesus was walking along with a great multitude around Him. Everybody was excited. Well, as they came into a village, a blind man was sitting by the side of the road, where he often sat before. Bartemaeus was sitting there, as is common in the East even to this day. In fact, to this day you may see poor blind and lame people lying by the wayside, half-naked, famished, dying, and usually, no one pays any attention to them. Often, they are treated like animals. Anyway, there blind Bartemaeus sits and begs. He has heard about Jesus of Nazareth, and of His wonderful kindness, and His wonderful cures, and he longs to see Him. Well, Bartemaeus hears the noise and the excitement, and he asks, “What’s happening”? “Oh, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” He gets all excited. “Jesus, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” “Shut up, be quiet, you’re disturbing others.” But he cried ever louder. “Jesus, Jesus, Oh JESUS, Son of David, have mercy on me”. He must be heard. There was a great crowd, there was a lot of noise, and so he must be heard. He was blind and he must have his sight restored. Jesus could do it and he must get His attention. Even though they told him to be quiet, he only cried louder. However, Jesus did hear him. “Who is that”? Jesus said. “That’s only a blind man, Lord, no one but a poor blind beggar.” “Bring him here to me.” Bartemaeus stood up, and they brought him to Jesus. “What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus said. “Lord, that I may receive my sight?” Can you see the sweet mercy of the Savior? He restored his sight immediately.

Now you must feel as Bartemaeus did. You must have the confidence that he had. Can you see the confidence Bartemaeus had? He believed Jesus could heal him, and he wanted to give Jesus the opportunity. Oh, if he could only find Him, and when Jesus came that way how he cried out. And so this is how you must feel concerning your spiritual blindness. You must cry out to the Lord to give you spiritual sight.

4. Another condition necessary to have your spiritual eyes opened is that you must be willing to encounter all the consequences. I have already mentioned some of these consequences to you. You must be willing to encounter all the consequences, or you cannot be the subjects of God’s divine illumination.

5. You must persevere in faith and prayer to have your spiritual eyes opened. You may not be enlightened immediately, anymore than Jesus answered the Syro-Phoenician woman immediately. Many mistakenly think that the very first exercise of faith brings the blessings promised to faith in their fullness. But, this is not true. The Syro-Phoenician woman had to ask again and again. Jacob wrestled all night with the angel even until the break of day. God has His reasons for delaying, and no doubt, they are good reasons. Therefore, you should not think that the answer will come instantly, as soon as you exercise faith. And just because the answer does not come immediately, don’t think that you are not praying in faith, but you must continue in prayer, hold on, and cling to the promises.

6. Right motives in asking are necessary to gain spiritual insight. I am not talking about a mere curiosity, but a real and true desire to glorify God to an even greater extent. I am talking about a desire for the light that you may walk in it, that you may glorify God and hold up the true light in your conduct, by your spirit, your manner, your preaching, and your everything. If you have unholy motives when you ask God to open your eyes, I can assure you that you will not obtain the light.

7. You must search the Scriptures, if you expect the light of the Spirit poured on their pages.

8. You must give up those selfish pursuits of yours, you must lay down that book you are reading, and remove those objects that draw your attention away from God and prevent you from giving your whole heart to the Bible. As long as other things draw your mind away from the Bible, as long as you are interested in those authors whose spirit is as directly opposite to the spirit of the Bible as heaven is to hell, how can you hope to have the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit? There are many writings out there, which, when they influence you, they will make you totally blind to the glories of the Scriptures. You cannot receive the Scriptures in such a state of mind. If you commit yourself to searching for the spirit of Byron, that spirit will come on you with little effort on your part. The spirit of the world is so pleasant and friendly to your heart in its selfishness and passion, that it will fall on you without you praying for it. But, when that happens, the Spirit of God will never enlighten you. Never! I believe that it is an unalterable condition of communion with the Spirit, that our minds must be broken off from communion with such corrupt and corrupting authors. We must break loose from them, or we will never enjoy the sweet light of God’s Spirit.

9. You must take advantage of all those aids within your reach that will lead you to a proper understanding of the Scriptures. I am not saying that you cannot understand the Bible, or that you cannot have spiritual illumination without using commentaries, concordances, and without some kind of knowledge of the original languages. If these helps are out of your reach, you may still become spiritually familiar with the Bible without these aids, if you dedicate yourself to searching the scriptures with a right spirit. But, if you can take advantage of the opinions of learned and godly men, you should do so. If you can gain a knowledge of the original languages, you should do so. If there is any other way you can get help from your fellow men, please do so. However, never forget, that these helps are not necessary to obtain the knowledge that is required for your usefulness and salvation, but these helps are very useful in their place when you can obtain them, and therefore you should use them with thanksgiving. If God places you out of reach of all these helps, then He will enlighten you without their aid, but if they are within your reach, He will not teach you those things that you are supposed to learn from those aids, if you do not take advantage of them.

10. It is necessary that we become child-like in our disposition. Now God does not teach, I suppose, by miraculous intervention, but when our mind is in a child-like state, the way is open for the Holy Spirit to present the glorious truth, and for our mind to naturally apprehend its deep and transcendent importance. Our eye is then open, and ready for God to shed His light on the objects that we are to see spiritually. But if our mind is committed, if we are determined to see things only in a certain way and in no other way, we will never be able to see the truth as it is in Jesus. Let me now wrap this message up with several

REMARKS.

1. I am well aware that there is a danger in preaching some of the spiritual truths of the Bible. It isn’t that they tend to lead people into error all by themselves, but because people are the way they are, a lot of them will certainly pervert and twist many of those precious truths. This has always been true, and it still is true concerning many doctrines. Oh, how so many have sadly perverted the doctrines of justification by faith and salvation by grace! Yet, they are the most precious doctrines! The same is true with the doctrine of spiritual illumination. Many will fall into a delusion listening to a message like the one I am preaching to you, or they will turn a message like this message into an opportunity to solidify a delusion that they already have. Many will grab a hold of some one or another of the consequences of spiritual illumination that I have shared with you, and finding such a fact in their own lives, they will conclude they are surely divinely enlightened.

I said that those who are divinely illuminated will differ greatly in their views from others, that many around them will reckon their views as peculiar and strange, that people will think that they are deranged, and people will persecute them. Now we differ from those around us. Many consider us strange and fanatical. They call us crazy or scatter-brained. They persecute us for our opinions and our conduct. Even though we are spiritually enlightened, they will certainly abuse the doctrines of spiritual religion. However, that is no reason why we should not preach to them. These spiritual delicacies are the food of the saints. They are the bread of their souls; and shall God withhold these spiritual treasures from His saints? Even if others abuse these doctrines, can you prevent them from abusing these doctrines? We cannot withhold this spiritual nourishment from the true saints who are panting after it, simply because some people will abuse these glorious spiritual truths, and lose their souls as a result. It is far better to preach these spiritual truths for the good of the true saints, even though incidental evils may result to some, than to withhold these truths, starve the souls of the faithful, and thus curse the world.

I have often seen people confirming themselves in delusion this way. I can’t tell you how many times concerning this very subject, when I have met with people laboring under interesting delusions, and I have talked with them; they have quoted my own sermons and writings to support their fantasies. They will say, “You used to preach that men might be taught of God”. “Yes, I still preach the same doctrine today. However, just because God may teach a man by the Holy Spirit, does it follow that God has taught you your strange beliefs? Just because you may have your eyes opened so that you see wondrous things out of God’s law, are you sure that your wondrous things are contained in the Bible?”

A certain group of people will almost surely be deluded, and this will most likely destroy them. To such people, God says by the prophet Isaiah, “Look, all you who kindle a fire, who encircle yourselves with sparks: walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled. This you shall have from My hand: you shall lie down in torment.” (Isaiah 50:11)

2. This subject will lead many people astray in another direction. Becoming greatly excited or agitated, they get a wrong idea, and they seek after lots of excitement. You are to earnestly and sincerely seek, but the thing that you are to seek is not some feeling, but light, substantial light shed on the pages of the Bible.

3. Whenever people dedicate themselves to seek states of feeling, and to be carried away by a flood of emotion, they will always react, and this will result in plenty of trouble. Men need to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, and if they dedicate themselves to anything else, it may cause a lot of noise and a lot of loud crying, but it will never lead them to that state in which they are “light in the Lord”. (See Eph 5:8)

4. I understand that this divine illumination is a special gift from God. It is not the gift of miracles; nor is it conversion. The Apostles received it on the day of Pentecost. It is generally included in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is given in different degrees, and at different times. Men need it again and again, and they need more and more of it. People who have been enlightened constantly need more and greater illuminations as they go forward in their walk with the Lord.

5. Those whose eyes are not opened will probably speak “evil of things that they don’t understand”, and thus they damage their own souls and grieve the Spirit of God. It grieves me a lot to see people stumble over things, merely because those things are way ahead of their experience. Let me give you an example. There is a man, an elder in the Presbyterian Church, who has been an elder for nearly half a century, and who thought all religious excitement was fanatical. Well, some time ago, he was present at a meeting during a revival in a neighboring church. The Spirit of God came down with power. The elder was greatly disturbed. At the close of the meeting, a person in the assembly fell to the ground, overcome with the power of conviction. The elder cried out angrily, “Get thee behind me Satan”. Where is that elder today? He opposes everything that is good. He opposes all reformations, all progress of good, in a most obstinate and self-willed spirit, and he is apparently left to his own destruction. I know that many do not go as far as this; but it is astonishing to see how men will speak evil of things that they simply don’t understand. Perhaps, it will do them some good to read the solemn words of the Apostle Peter. “But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption, and will receive the wages of unrighteousness.” (2 Peter 2:12-13)

One of the greatest dangers that men are exposed to, is to oppose, and reject, and speak evil of things simply because those things are beyond their own experience. They seem to think that they know all that they can possibly know, and anything else must be fanaticism. People often treat as foolish, and visionary, and childish, and contemptible, the higher states of Christian experience, and only because they themselves have not advanced that far. You should be careful, brethren, lest you speak evil of and reject those very things which you must know if you are ever saved.

6. The church body as a whole has always persecuted the spiritual members of the Church. The Bible will tell you that this is true, and all history declares the same thing. Those who are not spiritual have always misunderstood and persecuted the most spiritual ministers and members.

7. This should not discourage you from seeking spirituality, nor from being spiritual. Spiritual people will be neither surprised nor offended by what I say. They can understand very well why others speak evil of them and oppose them. The spiritual man discerns all things, but he himself is discerned by no man. The Bible teaches this, and he sees why this is true. He sees why they consider him a heretic, and are afraid of him. He sees where they are, but they do not see where he is. He understands their darkness better than they understand his light.

8. This subject accounts for a lot of the difference of opinion that people have concerning the meaning of the Bible. There will always be differences of opinion. It is absurd to think that there can be any system of stereotyped opinions that both the young convert as well as the mature Christian must believe alike. What? Are we supposed to have the full knowledge of the Bible as soon as we are first converted? Are we to make no advances in knowledge of divine things? Then, how are we, as stewards, supposed to bring from our treasure things that are both new and old? In many churches today, you are not supposed to bring forward anything new. O no! You must not learn anything new. You must not find anything that is not in their denomination’s doctrinal statement of faith. Everyone is sure that if it is not in their standards of faith, it must be wrong. Indeed, it is true that we all will agree in certain doctrines. However, it does not follow that we all will agree and believe everything that is taught in the Bible; neither is it true that we can’t be true Christians, and still be ignorant of many very precious truths taught in the Bible.

9. We all can now see why so many people are not very interested in the Bible. They don’t have their eyes opened. They don’t have the divine light shining on them to make the truths of the Bible interesting to them. They are like people passing a most beautiful region in the dark. They see no beauty because they have no light. Without this light from God, the Bible is a sealed book, and for all spiritual matters, it will not benefit them. And reading the Bible to obtain light is as dull and as boring as anything they could do. A man will read a chapter, and five minutes later, he has no idea of what he read. But, with the Spirit, the Bible becomes a world of wonders. The Bible is a gold mine, it is exhaustless; you may dig, and dig, and the deeper you dig, the richer the Bible becomes.

10. You may see the reason why too many ministers and young men preparing for the ministry have so little interest in studying their Bible. They lack the divine light that makes the Bible all glorious within. They lack the divine light that leads them into the depths of its hidden meaning.

11. Where people possess this divine light, you will never hear them complaining that they need to read other books to give their mind proper recreation. If they read other literature at all, it will not be for amusement, but for information. Such a man will not feel bound to read Shakespeare and Scott. He will back away from them as from an ocean of filth. I may say without extravagance, that to the person whose eyes are opened, the Bible will prove a more fertile source of improvement, both moral and intellectual, a more powerful spring of mental action than all other books put together. It opens up a world of thoughts on almost every subject; it starts ten thousand trains of thoughts. You tread through the Bible as if you were walking on enchanted ground. Whole masses of thought constantly rise from the bosom of the great ocean of truth; the Psalms, the Prophets, all point you to every part of the universe, the heavens, the earth, and the sea. But without the Holy Spirit, the Bible is devoid of this power.

12. I believe, that the more of the divine illumination that Christians enjoy, the less they read anything else other than the Bible. Or, if they read other things, it is because it will throw light on the Bible, or because the spirit of what they are reading is like the spirit of the blessed Bible. Ask the oldest saint, if he is tired of his Bible. “Tired of my Bible? My Bible? It is more and more my book every year I live.” “But haven’t you read it through many times?” “Yes, but it grows richer and richer every time I go through it.” “But do you not understand it all?” “Ah, I am always learning something new. I learn more now when I sit down to read my Bible than when I first began.” Now I know no end to this progression in divine knowledge for the spiritual mind. The Spirit keeps bringing up more and more, without end. The Spirit keeps bringing up new and more exquisite and glorious displays of the things of God’s law. The soul drinks and drinks, and drinks again, and the ocean is never exhausted.

13. Spiritual guides whose eyes are not opened are blind leaders of the blind. I do not mean that a man must have all light in order to be a guide at all, a man may guide as far as he knows the way himself, but without enlightenment he can only lead a little way. So many ministers today are so blind that they can only lead a little way. Many cannot even bring sinners into the kingdom. They don’t even have enough knowledge of the way to carry a sinner into the kingdom and set him down within the gate. Others can take them through the gate, but can’t guide them any further. Ministers will labor in their way for years and years, and their church will make little or no progress at all. The reason is, their own eyes are not open, and what they don’t know they can’t tell to others.

14. You see how important it is that ministers should insist that God open their eyes, to enable them to behold wondrous things out of His law. A young man, who God calls to preach, may present that call before the Lord as a valid reason for the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and he is required to present his call. “Oh God, You have set me a watchman upon Zion’s wall, and will You not open my eyes. Oh, how blind I am! How blind the flock is! How they need enlightenment. My Father, please open my eyes.” A minister should earnestly present this before God, and insist on it, and every candidate for the ministry should press God with this prayer. The Church should pray with earnestness that God will open the eyes of their spiritual leaders and guides. Also, every Christian should pray for enlightenment, that they may understand God’s holy word.

15. Many pray to be enlightened who will not fulfill the conditions, who will not give up their own selfish goals and throw away their prejudices. Of course, they remain in the dark.

16. Many make a very serious mistake and suppose they are enlightened when they are not. Often, they desire a certain thing to be true. They take the Bible and try to make it support their loved doctrine, until they come to the place where they seem to see their loved doctrines mentioned everywhere. By long, hard labor, they associate their doctrine with all kinds of passages. Now they are enlightened. Oh yes, it’s as clear as day. No, they are not enlightened! They are very mistaken. Let me give you an illustration, a very interesting example. I received a book, not long ago, seriously given to me as if it was a revelation from heaven itself. The book was the work of some who belonged to a group of people called Shakers, and it claims to be a revelation from God to the effect that Christ has already come the second time, and that He came in the person of Ann Lee. In that book, they quote many passages to maintain the proposition that Christ’s second coming will be in the person of a woman! And all this by the teaching of God’s divine Spirit! Men think they have the witness of the Holy Ghost to something when they have no witness of the Holy Ghost to that thing. Brother Charles Fitch professed to have the witness of the Spirit that the second coming of Christ and the end of the world would occur in 1843. But he was wrong, as he also was concerning the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked. Oh brethren, don’t mistake the persuasions of a heart set in falsehood, nor the extravagant notions of a fanatical brain for the teachings of the Holy Ghost.

17. Many people do not care enough about understanding the Bible, to dedicate themselves to pray for the light of the Spirit. They have no real desire to know what is in the Bible. I know what that indifference is, and I also know what it is like to cry out from the bottom of my soul, “O God, open my eyes”. Listen to the Psalmist. “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1-2) Is there any fanaticism there, my brethren? Look at that scene. Look at that poor, tired deer. Its tongue hanging out, panting, leaping, panting in the desert, and there is no water. Is there not earnestness there? That is how interested you must be, your heart panting after God, crying out after Him.

Brethren, there are glorious things in the Bible. There are wondrous things in God’s law. We need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes that we may behold them. To obtain that light we need to pray the prayer of our passage; “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law”. Will you commit yourselves to pray and seek the Lord, for the light of His Spirit to shine on the word, to enlighten your eyes, and make you know God’s holy truth?