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The Heathen Know That There Is a God

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 21, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 3.

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The Heathen Know That There Is a God

By T. E. BOWEN

T. E. BOWEN
GOD says that it is because men do not glorify him as God that their hearts become darkened. It is not that men do not know of God, that there are so many who pass as heathen in the world today. They do know of God; but because they fail in glorifying him by following the light and knowledge God puts into every man's heart, they go into darkness. Then because of their continual refusal to heed the light, they go into that condition of gross darkness now termed heathenism.
Somehow God has a way of placing in every mind a seed-thought regarding himself, his greatness, his creative attributes, so that every one is left without excuse, because in that which is seen about him, in earth and sky, there is enough to convince every one that there is a God.
In evidence of all this, we cite the testimony of Dr. Robert Nassau, for forty years a missionary in Africa, who says that he has never yet been asked the direct question, “Who is God?” “He has never met any one who did not understand at once the distinction between God and all others, however great. ‘He is the All-Father,’ his auditors would invariably say. ‘He made these trees, that mountain, this river, these goats, and us people.’”
Some one may then say, “If this be true, why spend so much to take the gospel to such people? Why not let them alone?”
But what a pity to grope about even with this remote idea of God and be perfectly ignorant of his character, so full of goodness and love, or of his last message of mercy.
In common with other missionaries, Dr. Nassau, mentioned above, has found that beyond having a name for the God that made all things, and faintly grasping this fact, they are in ignorance. He says: “They know nothing of his love, his benevolence, his impartial justice, his infinite and intimate concern for every man. ‘Yes, he made us; but having made us, he is far from us. Why should we care for him? He does not help nor harm us. It is the spirits who can harm us, whom we fear and worship, and for whom we care.’” Thus reasons the poor benighted heathen.
Consequently some one who has experienced the love of God in his own soul, must go to these who have never had a taste of his goodness or his love and reveal God unto them. They need the warm touch of God through some other human soul, that they may see God as he is, not the “unknown God,” but he that “so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” to us.
No one who has not experienced the love of Christ in his own heart can therefore become a true missionary. No amount of learning can make up this lack. God has so planned it that the connection with the lost, those who are without God in the world, must be made by that human soul who has experienced the touch of divine love. For this touch the heathen wait.
Takoma Park, D. C.