The Living God by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 8, 1909

The Living God

By William Ambrose Spicer

A PROTESTANT named Woodman was before the Bishop of London's court for heresy, in the days of Catholic Queen Mary. He used the expression, “the living God.”

“There,” said Dr. Story, “there is the evidence. You will find that all heretics talk about ‘the living God.’”

Woodman said he had but used the words of the Bible. Dr. Story replied: “Bible-babble! There is no such word in all the Bible.” Woodman quoted the scripture, “My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” The doctor only abused him the more violently for his acquaintance with Scripture, and cried out, “Send him to prison!”

How was it that this phrase, “the living God,” had become to the persecuting ecclesiastic a sign of heresy? Evidently the Protestant believers of those days, turning from the man-made deity of the mass, and the far-removed unseeing deity of scholastic theology, had laid hold with all their hearts upon the truth that the true God is the living God, a present help, a Saviour in time of trouble, one with whom a needy sinner may commune in prayer, with no

order of priests, or saints, or angels between.

In those times of storm and stress they needed a living God, able to do things for his children, to bring actual salvation from sin, and deliverance or sustaining comfort and grace amid peril and persecution.

I am glad the bishop’s chancellor has left the record that those early Protestants loved that blessed truth so much that the phrase, ‘the living God,’ came ever naturally to their lips.

We, too, need to know by experience that God is the living God, whose voice speaks in the living Word. He has a work, a special work, in the earth, and as truly as he led Israel of old in the exodus movement from Egypt to Canaan, so truly is he leading in the advent movement in these last days.

The God who led his people of old, who actually did things on earth for those who needed help and put their trust in him, is the living God to-day. He is able to send deliverances and to work wondrously by his intervening providences.

Believers too often, perhaps almost unconsciously, feel in their hearts that it was all divinely natural that in Bible times angelic messengers were sent to help and deliver, prison doors were swung open, food was sent by ravens, or the deadly viper was shaken off the apostle’s unscathed hand; but that now, since Bible times, these special interpositions of God’s providence are hardly to be expected.

We shall print each week, for some time, incidents gathered from the history of Reformation times and from the story of missions, bearing testimony to the fact that since the Bible record closed, the Lord has been continually, as to his glory, helping and delivering and sustaining his children and the cause of truth by special manifestations of his intervening providence.

And while these incidents are being printed, I hope our missionaries and other readers will call to mind special providences and deliverances in our own work, and send in briefly written reports of such experiences for later use in the REVIEW. We can not, of course, give space to all those continual providences and evidences of divine care and answers to prayer in the experiences of our brethren. Day by day the Lord has been to us the living God.

But many experiences, especially in mission fields and in pioneer work, showing special interpositions of God’s providence in delivering from danger, in opening ways for the truth to reach the people, or in bringing people to the truth, might be told in a few paragraphs, and would be a blessing to our readers.

The coming of the Lord is at the door. There is a great work to be done. We gain confidence and strengthen faith by recounting the delivering and guiding mercies of the Lord as he has wondrously worked in all past time. The Lord himself puts into the mouths of the advent believers the prayer for these last days: ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab [Egypt], and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?’

And the Lord responds: ‘Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away. I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be as grass; and forgettest the Lord thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth?’

The threefold message of Revelation 14 is to call all men to worship and give glory to God, who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water, ‘the living God,’ whose sign that he is the living God is his holy Sabbath. He is our leader and our King.

W. A. S.