CHAPTER SIX

Words of Wisdom and Knowledge

"A WORD OF WISDOM" then is given by God to His people when they are faced with a problem beyond their power to solve by themselves. There is a good example of it in Joshua 8, where a defeated and humbled Israel is shown by the Lord what tactics to use against Ai, or in 2 Kings 3, when Elisha is enabled to tell the godly King Jehoshaphat what to do when the armies had no water to drink. So, too, in John 8, when Our Lord was cornered by the Pharisees over the woman taken in adultery He received a word of wisdom which put them to flight, even as Solomon had been enabled to solve the riddle of the two harlots by the wisdom of God (1 Kings 3:16‑28). In the same way Paul, when he was perplexed about his next step, was directed by the Lord to go, not to Asia, which he was to visit later, but to Europe, which was ready for his message (Acts 16:6‑10). Again, in Acts 15 when the Church was faced with a particularly grave problem, after all their disputing and coming to a decision, the Holy Ghost intervened (v. 28) and corroborated their findings with His own word of wisdom. It was this divine corroboration, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us", which the Apostles put first in their message to the Gentiles. So also it was the Holy Ghost who showed Philip to contact the