Acts 6:10

“And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.” Oh! what a contrast we here have between the wisdom, intellect, learning and resources of the world and the wisdom of God! Here, with the greatest intellectualist and scholar the world could produce, surrounded by a platoon of preachers, one humble, uncultured layman proves more than a match for them all; as the Holy Ghost says they were “unable to resist the wisdom and spirit with which Stephen spoke.” See the whole crowd with their mighty leader, Saul of Tarsus, put in total eclipse and literally snowed under by a solitary layman. Therefore, to their ineffaceable shame, they resort to bribery, raising up false witnesses that they may bring an accusation against him. Stephen preached the perfect sufficiency of Jesus, His vicarious atonement and cleansing blood, received and appropriated by the Holy Ghost, of course relegating the types and shadows of the Mosaic dispensation to bygone years, no longer significant because superseded and verified by the great Antitype. This they construed as inveighing against the law of Moses. This notable history has a thousand parallels at the present day. We can not preach the perfect sufficiency of Jesus only and the omnipotence of the present Holy Ghost in full salvation and the perfect sufficiency of God's Word, doctrinally, institutionally, legally and every other way, without at least indirectly reflecting on the human institutions and bogus legislation of fallen ecclesiasticisms. Then they cry out that we are inveighing against the church, whereas we are defending the church of God with all our might, precisely as Stephen did, when they charged him with disloyalty to the church and killed him for it. He was the first martyr, leading the way and showing the people how to die for the truth. Two hundred millions have followed in his bloody track, like Stephen, dying under charges of disloyalty to what carnal preachers call the church, as they did in case of Stephen. If they had the co-operation of the secular arm these defenders of what they call the church would kill us this day, as they did Stephen and the mighty host of his successors. Beware of the clamor of church loyalty! That is the very shibboleth that piled the rocks on Stephen, fed the martyrs to the lions and burnt them at the stake. It is impossible to be loyal to God and disloyal to His church. When they talk to you about loyalty to God, open your Bible and shout Amen! When they talk to you about loyalty to the church, look out! that is the old hackneyed cry of persecution, from Stephen down to the present day.