Exalt the Word by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 28, 1913

Exalt the Word

By C. M. S.

Many of the records found in the Word of God were placed there as warnings that men might escape the consequences of an unwise course, or might refrain from taking a course which was bound to have disastrous consequences. But the Bible is not devoted wholly to these. Much of it is written that we might know the right by seeing it in active operation.

Inspiration says: “Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.” Ps. 138: 2. The record of that fact is given us that we, too, may exalt God’s Word. But the moment we do, we may expect opposition from him who is the enemy of God, of his Word, and of all God’s children. It is a remarkable fact that when Bible societies began to scatter the Word of God by the millions, Satan began an insidious, subtle, and persistent attack upon that Word, that its teachings might be discounted and discredited. This is more than a coincidence; it is an adroit move on the part of the enemy of souls. The deductions of science, which have been overthrowing one another year by year, are supposed to have overthrown the Bible; and among a great many educators the Bible is looked upon as the product of human thought and human aspirations in the childhood period of the race. Its high standard of morality is looked upon as merely the expression of local and human sentiment, and not as a binding obligation laid down by the King of kings, for whose transgression that supreme Judge will hold every individual accountable. Its record of the origin of man is scoffed at, and a humanly devised scheme which is dishonoring to both God and man, is thrust forward to take its place. Against every portion of God’s Word we find some self-appointed censor or sapper working away with desperate diligence, as if in the

overthrow of that portion of divine truth he would win the approbation of humanity.

If such persons could but see that they are being used by the adversary as mere pawns in his great game for the conquest of humanity, they would not feel that their position or their work is worthy of the honor or attention they now claim for it. God has set us the example in this matter which we should follow, and it is our only safe example in that matter. He has magnified, exalted, his Word. We must do the same.

God has placed in our hands his Book. It is his own gift to humanity. It reveals God the creator to man the creature. It reveals Jesus Christ the Saviour to men and women in need of salvation. It shows the way out of the wildernesses and swamps and deserts of this world, into the paradise of God. It is the most wonderful book that has ever come into the hands of man—and the most neglected book. And that paradoxical fact is the wonder of the ages—that we should neglect as we do that which means so much to us, and comes to us from such a Giver.

In that Book we learn what we are, and whence we are, and whither we go. In it we learn what we were, and what we became through sin, and what we may become through the unspeakable gift of God.

Being such a book as it is, how can we overestimate the importance of its study? No time is ever lost that is devoted to its perusal; and no time is ever gained that is gained at the expense of the study we ought to give that blessed Book. The farther we get away from that Book, the farther we get from the divine Author of it.

I repeat: from that book I learn whence I am. It declares: “And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion,” etc. “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Gen. 1:26-31.

In this record of creation man comes forth a complete man and “very good” right from the hands of God. There is something satisfying about that record. We do not read anything about a long upward climb of millions of years from protoplasmic jelly to the estate of manhood. But the great God himself fashions the human in the divine image, and places the divine hall-mark of his own approval upon the finished work of his hands. That is godlike. The divine and the human have come into very close relation. The Creator and the creature have been in closest contact and into the creature the Creator has breathed the breath of life. That is God’s record of his own doings; and the faithful child of God draws nearer and nearer to God as he studies and believes God’s own version of the origin of man.

But there is no portion of the divine Word that has been so persistently attacked as this record of creation. As Satan scoffed at God’s word to Adam and Eve in Eden, so does he and his assistants scoff today at God’s word to man concerning the origin of man. We are told that the Bible version of man’s origin is unscientific—as if God must be bound by some rule of “science” laid down by his own creatures.

The “scientist” therefore, starts the beginning of things with a bit of tremulous jelly slipping about among the slime and ooze of the ocean-bed, down under the dark waves of an untenanted sea. Through some process which even the scientist has never explained and knows better than to attempt to explain, that bit of jelly became inoculated with the principle of life. He does not know how it was done or whence it came. Right there with that failure the theory has hung itself; and yet men will continue their frantic efforts to make it live and move and control the world.

In God’s record man came fresh from the hand of his Maker; but in this substitute for the divine record, this contradiction of the Almighty, man’s origin reaches back through millions of years to a bit of protoplasm in the slime of the sea. There is a vast difference between the two statements of man’s origin, a difference as great as the gulf between God’s government and Satan’s counterfeit. In one, man is the child and handiwork of a loving Creator. In the other, man comes up from the slime of the sea, wriggles up into daylight for a time, and goes out into the darkness again. He comes from nowhere and goes nowhere and consumes millions of years in transit. Satan is shouting in our ears today what he whispered to Eve in Eden, a contradiction of God’s word, “Yea, hath God said!”

Yet ministers of the gospel are preaching that theory as a gospel today, and acquiescing in Satan’s sneer at the origin of the race. When Satan taught man that by disobedience he would evolve into a higher order of being, he was teaching the first lesson in evolution. That progress upward would come through disbelief of the word of God. So does the evolutionist today mount upward, in his own eyes, through casting aside, and turning his back upon, the Word of God. The exponents of that theory have boldly declared that “man will yet fling himself into the heavens and abide.” That was the aspiration of the Babel builders of old when they sought to construct a tower that would be for them the gate to heaven. The theories of man’s origin expounded today in pulpit and college class-room are but the renewal of that old contest of Satan against the word of God. There is nothing of the gospel in them. These theories do not start right to be a gospel. The gospel of God must start with God; for he only can lift man out of the pit into which his disobedience plunged him.

What is the meaning of this bitter attack in this generation upon the Word of God? It means that the culmination of the conflict is near at hand. By undermining the people’s confidence in the Bible, Satan weakens or dissipates the force of all its admonitions and warnings. They will not believe the fulfilment of prophecy or the significance of the signs which show the Saviour’s coming near, and the day of destruction for the ungodly.

At such a time it is the duty of every Christian to follow the example of God in exalting or magnifying the Word, and to study it more diligently that he may exalt it more understandingly and more forcefully. Inspiration furnishes the key to the situation: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” Hidden in the heart, it will show in the life and prove a savor of life unto life. Exalt the Word. C. M. S.