Elder J.L. Groce
5/04/12
“There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.” 1 Cor. 14:10
Picture, if you will, the placid face of a pool of water and observe the splash of a tossed small pebble and its resulting concentric radiating rings that issue forth from the point of impact of the pebble. Now picture another similar pebble cast into a different area of the same pool with the exact effect of the other pebble–now there are two impact points and two sets of radiating rings moving across the face of the once placid pool. Continue this thrown pebble scenario for, say, another 10 pebbles , each impacting the pool at different points, and soon you have convergent of the radiating rings all over the pool’s face. Each set of rings makes its expression on the water’s face and each is intersected and opposed by the expression of rings made by other pebbles. This “pool picture” is an apt portrayal, in a very small way, of the convergence of voices that nearly every human experiences in this voice-filled world–an incredible “vortex of voices.”
Paul’s comment to the Corinthians, once again, reminds us of the great cacophony of sounds that surrounds our environments but unlike the confusion that the inhabitants of Babel experienced due to not being able to understand certain voices it appears that there is an even greater confusion made possible by being able to understand the voices that deluge us. We, as humans, are not nearly as prone to be confused by ideas and theories that are delivered in an unknown language as we are to those same ideas and theories spoken to us that we do understand. We are doubtless confused, as the Babelites were, as to the meaning of the sounds of an unknown language but we are often even more brought to confusion when we understand the language with its meaning. Unable to discern the meaning of a language and understanding a language and confused by its meaning are two very different experiences.
“The Information Age,” so-called, has in reality brought about with its volcanic eruption, an age of misinformation on an unprecedented scale. Never before in human history has there been such a deluge of pebbles of error and partial-truths cast into the pool of human reasoning as being witnessed all about us today. And never before has the gospel, preached and expounded, been met with so many opposing ripples from so many divergent places. Truly, where sin does abound, grace does much more abound! The Gospel of Jesus Christ will prevail in all generations but be assured that it must be preached more profoundly and with more authority than ever before as it converges against the rippling effects of human reasoning, false prophets, demonic insult, so-called science, compromisers of ever imaginable voice and dissenting views of humanistic proponents.
We, as preachers today, no longer have nearly as a cloistered audience that our forefathers once enjoyed. People today are practically bombarded from all sides with opposing views to nearly every Biblical doctrine presented to them–they find themselves in a whirling vortex of voices. The once “how long is long?” question is meek and nearly affable compared to the quagmire of queries that we find ourselves sloughing through today. Seems that everyone has become a keyboard theologian.
It becomes increasingly apparent that prayer be made, as never before, for strong declaration of the Gospel to be made by strong and unrelenting preachers today! “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” Isa 58:1
-jlg-