BIBLE PROOF OF INBRED SIN Part 3
The wisdom of the fathers
BIBLE PROOF OF INBRED SIN??Part 3
The crowning proof is seen in the expression, “stony heart.” This is felt to be left in the regenerated. There is a universal witness to this. What is meant by the stony heart? The Bible, of course, does not teach that there is an actual rock in the breast, but is speaking figuratively. A stone is something cold, hard, and heavy. Has the converted man at times a cold, hard, heavy feelings in his soul? Who will dare to deny it??
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It is not felt all the time. Some days the heart is light, tender, and warm. But suddenly, and at the most unexpected and undesirable of times, the stone is felt inside. The very gladness of others may bring it about. It is realized under some proposition from the pulpit. It leaps into being while kneeling at the altar. It has been strangely observed at the communion table just when one wanted to feel deeply. It arises at other times in the breast without any known cause.?
A leading member and steward of a large city church said once to the author: “Your sermon greatly touched me, but when you invited us to the altar my heart turned as cold as a stone!” O, the stony heart! One of the most prominent women in a Kentucky city withstood the power of a great revival meeting for eight days, but on the ninth day she flung herself at the altar with a loud, bitter cry that those who heard it will never forget: “O, my God I take out of me this stony heart!”?
The regenerated man who reads these lines knows that he has that stony heart. Child of God as he is, yet a hard nature is left in him or his own consciousness, and the experience of the Christian world amounts to nothing.?Ezekiel says that there is a blessed work of grace in which that “stony heart” shall be taken out. If God’s children still feel it remaining, then is there a blessing to be had that they have not yet obtained; for the prophet says that it shall be taken out. Notice that the stony heart is to be “taken out,” not suppressed or kept under. If taken out, we will certainly know it. Observe also that it is God who removes the trouble from the soul; not growth, not death, not purgatory. Listen! it is God speaking: “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh.”
(from "The Old Man" by B. Carradine)