759. Every church that is established by people who see the world through their own convictions appears to them to be the only church with any light; all other churches, which disagree, are in darkness. People who see the world through their own convictions are not much different from owls, which see light in the dark of night, but during the day see the sun and its rays as thick darkness. This is the nature of every church, both in the past and now, whose beliefs are false because its founders, who seemed to themselves entirely sharp-sighted, saw their own understanding as the morning light, and the Word as the shadows of approaching night.
Surely, when the Jewish church was in utter ruin, which it was when our Lord came into the world, its scribes and scholars were still loudly proclaiming that because it had the Word, their church alone was in the true light of heaven. Yet they crucified the Messiah, the Christ, who was the Word itself and was every detail in it.
The church that the prophets and the Book of Revelation call Babylon proclaimed itself to be the queen and mother of all other churches, and held that the churches that separated from it were illegitimate children from which it should dissociate itself. Yet it pushed the Lord our Savior off his throne and away from his altar, and set itself there instead.
[2] Every church, even the most heretical, once it is well established fills the towns and countryside with cries that it alone is orthodox and ecumenical and possesses the true gospel that was announced by the angel flying in the midst of heaven (Revelation 14:6). Then we all hear an echo of that voice coming back from the general population, saying, "That is the truth!"
Did the worldwide Synod of Dort see the concept of predestination as anything other than a shining star that had fallen from heaven into their heads? Did they not treasure that teaching as the Philistines treasured the idol of Dagon in the temple of Ebenezer in Ashdod, or as the Greeks treasured the Palladium in the temple of Minerva? In fact, [Calvinists] hailed predestination as the sacred central effigy of their religion. They did not realize, though, that their star is a mere shooting star. It is just a transient phenomenon that emits a dim, deceptive light. When predestination falls into the brain, the distorting effect it has can lend support to any and every false teaching. Over time its light is taken to be the truth and it is declared a permanent star. Eventually people swear that it is the most important star in the sky.
[3] Do any people express notions with more conviction than materialistic atheists, even though their notions are things they dreamed up themselves? Yet the same people heartily ridicule the divinity of God, the heavenliness of heaven, and the spiritual teachings of the church.
All lunatics believe that their foolish thoughts are wise and that wisdom is folly. Just by looking with the naked eye, can anyone tell the difference between the phosphorescent glow of rotting wood and a splash of real moonlight? Some people are actually averse to pleasant fragrances (as some women are when they have uterine diseases); they push such things away from their noses and prefer something rank. And so on.
I mention these illustrative examples to make it known that before the truth shines out from heaven in its own genuine light, when we are still in light that is merely earthly, we do not recognize that the church has come to an end - that is, that its teachings are all false. What is false does not see what is true; but what is true sees what is false. All of us have it in our nature to be able to recognize and understand truth when we hear it. But if we are convinced of falsities, we cannot import that truth into our intellect in such a way that it remains with us. We have no room for it inside. If it does happen to become part of us, a great throng of falsities gathers around and ejects it as a foreign object.
