The appearance of an angel from heaven could add nothing to the certainty of the declarations he has already put into our hands.

Not knowing doesn't mean you're condemned to anxiety; rather, not knowing calls for trust, and trust is crucial to good performance. Uncertainty is essential to the game.

Welcome to the human race. It is somehow essential to human life as God has ordained it that we can know the final score of yesterday but not tomorrow. It doesn't mean we're condemned to anxiety. It does mean this: If you're looking for certainty, you've chosen the wrong species. You can walk by faith, but not by sight; not down here.

And it struck me, in that year, how deeply both faith and doubt are part of my life. We often think of them as opposites. Many books argue for one or the other. But while in some respects they are enemies, in other ways they are surprisingly alike: both are concerned with ultimate issues; both pop up unasked for at unexpected moments; both are necessary. I

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

But a philosopher named William James responded that sometimes Clifford's advice is bad strategy. He said doubt is the wrong alternative when three conditions are met: when we have live options, when the stakes are momentous, and when we must make a choice.3

Theologian Lesslie Newbigin writes that we live in an age that favors doubt over faith.4 We often speak of "blind faith" and "honest doubt.

The pretended desires of many to behold the glory of Christ in heaven, who have no view of it by faith while they are here in this world, are nothing but self-deceiving imaginations.

The real view that we may have of Christ and His glory in this world comes through faith in the divine revelation of Scripture.

The intendment of all gospel revelation is, not to unveil God's essential glory, that we should see him as he is, but merely to declare so much of him as he knows sufficient to be a bottom of our faith, love, obedience, and coming to him

What we cannot comprehend in things divine and infinite, as unto their own nature, that we are not to believe in their revelation.

Faith is most satisfied and cherished with what is infinite and inconceivable, as resting absolutely in divine revelation.