Natural Laws by G. B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jul 14, 1904

Natural Laws

By G. B. Thompson

G. B. THOMPSON

It is not a new thing for the Word of God to be arraigned at the tribunal of human criticism. The shore of time is strewn with these rudderless wrecks which have gone to pieces on the impregnable rock of God's Word. But that the Bible should be betrayed in the house of its professed friends is somewhat new, and a sight which is unspeakably sad. Through what is called “higher criticism” the statements of the Holy Scripture are being subjected to a scrutiny which is illuminated only by the uncertain light of mortal wisdom; and that which can not be explained through the deductions of human philosophy, and accounted for in harmony with what they know about the so-called “natural,” or “fixed,” laws is rejected as not inspired. The trend of much of the theological teaching of the present time is to find out and understand God through a study of these “fixed laws,” and limit his operations in harmony with the little which they understand in reference to these laws.

But the effort is vain. As well might we expect to ascend into heaven by going down into a bottomless pit, as to search out the infinite God through the mist and fog of human reason. From this has resulted all the heathenism which has darkened the earth since the fall of man. Forgetting that God is incomprehensible and omnipotent, and professing through human wisdom to find him out, man's foolish heart was darkened, and his imaginations becoming wicked and vain, he “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” And why not? for a God whom we can fully understand through a study of his works is no greater a being than ourselves; and having formed in our minds such a conception of Deity, it is but a step further to formulate our idea of him into an image, and worship it.

God can be known to man only by a

revelation which is received by faith. We can never find him by reason. His ways are past finding out, and his wonderful acts can never be explained by a study of “fixed laws.” The Lord is not circumscribed in his workings by any such laws. He is the author of all law, and can work independent of, and apparently contrary to, any law known to man. All that God does is incomprehensible, and consequently beyond the range of man's investigation.

The God of the Bible works “contrary to nature.” It is not natural for a sea to divide, and form a solid wall on either side of a path while a nation marches through its midst. But it did this once when the hosts of Israel came out of Egypt. It is according to “fixed law” for the waters of a swollen stream to flow on without a moment's pause, but this natural law was interrupted once at the Jordan when the children of Israel entered Canaan. It seems to be natural for fire to devour wood, but Moses upon a certain occasion witnessed the strange sight of a bush in the flames, yet it was not consumed. The Hebrew worthies lived in the fiery furnace unharmed, their clothing not even being burned, though the fire destroyed those who cast them in. Men erect in large cities immense structures from seemingly indestructible material, and call them “fire proof.” According to “natural law” they are, but in the days of Elijah fire came down from heaven and burned up both water and stone. The sun in the days of Joshua was stayed in the heavens for the space of a whole day, but no disarrangement of the “fixed laws” which govern the planetary system has ever been discovered and reported through astronomical science as a result of this. And in the days of Hezekiah the sun not only stopped, but it went back “ten degrees” in the heavens, Isa. 38:8. But we do not find that this reversal of the workings of the “fixed laws” threw the great clock of the heavens out of time a single second. The machinery of the universe is controlled by its Architect, and he is not bound or hampered in his supernatural operations by any unchangeable law.

It is through faith that we understand, and it is much better to walk in its sunlight than to wander in the haze and gloom of human speculation.