The Living Memorial of God by Benjamin George Wilkinson

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 2, 1903

The Living Memorial of God

By Benjamin George Wilkinson

B. G. WILKINSON

A LACK of confidence in the success of an enterprise will either hinder us from undertaking it or will render the enterprise distasteful. Thus a lack of confidence in the character of one we serve will injure the fullness of the service. For this reason God wished to establish the confidence of Moses in him, so he gave him the evidence of his divine leading. “And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.” Ex. 3:12. He who was called to write the first book of the Bible, that eternal book of truth, was to be filled with the fullness of confidence in him whose existence is eternal. The service in the mountain was to follow the success of the enterprise undertaken in faith. Just such service as this was to constitute an everlasting memorial of God. How?

“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” Ex. 3:14, 15.

The name of God is I AM. Now, the name of God is forever to be I AM. It is impossible that he should have any other name, because his existence is eternal. In the establishment of a family upon the throne of any nation, names are given to the successive ruling members of that family. Thus in the days of Moses the name of the Egyptian king, as believed by a large number of historians, was Rameses II. But Rameses II supposes Rameses I, a king whom history gives as a ruler before Rameses II. The monarch on the throne of England at present is called Edward VII; but there was an Edward I, an Edward II, an Edward III, and so on up to Edward VII. This numbering of rulers is an absolute necessity, because death imposes upon the first ruler, the succession of a second.

With God it is not so. His name is I AM; and that is his name forever. He has no successor. Earthly kings may lay marvelous plans, the accomplishment of which demands centuries of time; but they can never witness the completion of these plans. God is in nowise limited in his plans. He uses one generation as the builder of the foundation of his plan, and the development of that plan he carries forward in the generation following. It is folly to gauge our faith in God by the accomplishment of a certain event at a certain time. All the promises of God shall surely be fulfilled; for he lives, he is the I AM.

And this also is his memorial to all generations. The city of Rome abounds in the ruins of great temples and massive arches, which emperors and rulers had builded to serve in after ages as memorials of their existence and mighty deeds. But these memorials have enjoyed a precarious fortune. Few have been favored to remain to the present, while the great majority have ceased to tell their story, being destroyed in the passing of years.

God erects no such memorial as this. At times, within the lives of men, he works such mighty changes that they need no standing memorial of past ages to tell what God has done, and that now he exists. They know that he is—that his name is I AM. Again, God moves in mighty ways, producing great changes in the structure of society, or perhaps in the structure of the earth itself. We behold the works of the great I AM, and these are his memorials.

“That man is a soldier,” said a friend to his companion. “How do you know?” asked the other. “I can tell it by his walk,” was the reply. So the world can tell by our walk, when God has made us a memorial of his grace. This transformation was not accomplished centuries in the past. It is a present work of the I AM; this is his memorial to each and all generations.