August 25, 2009 THE CAUSE OF RETARDED GROWTH by Cornelius R. Stam Printer Friendly Version In the physical realm retarded growth may be due to some mishap or may be simply one of the results of the curse, having no direct bearing on the behavior of the par- ents, and certainly not of the child itself. In the spiritual realm this is not so. God has made abundant provision for every child of God to grow to spiritual manhood, and Paul rebukes the Corinthian believers for not having grown. The trouble with the Corinthians was that they did not have much appetite for the Word; they did not have a pas- sion to know and obey the truth, for the babe in Christ who "desires" the pure milk of the Word will surely "grow there- by." This was the trouble with the Hebrew believers too, for when the Apostle would have gone further into the great subject of Christ as "an High Priest forever after the order of Melchisedec," he was forced to write: "Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull [Gr., nothros, slothful] of hearing" (Heb. 5:11). This is precisely the cause of the carnality among be- lievers today. During World War II there were several occasions when parents came to the writer with letters from their sons in the armed forces, explaining that a code had been arranged by which "Johnny" could let them know to which theatre of war he had been sent, but that now it was difficult to understand his letter. Together we would sit down and study the letter in detail in an effort to make out exactly what it was that "Johnny" was trying to make his parents understand. Such interest and concern over a letter from "Johnny"! And appropriately so, but do the majority of believers show such interest in the Word of God to them? They do not. They are satisfied with "the simple things," with knowing only a few passages which "warm their hearts." This is the root cause of the spiritual immaturity in the Church today. To the Reader: Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface: "It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles." We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.