A Human Record with a Divine Watermark
By John Edward Fulton
That incontestably reveals a Supreme Mind at the controls of human destiny, and solves innumerable questions that daily tax the minds of scientists and philosophers. MEN are delving into the mysteries of electricity and a thousand wonderful things in nature long unknown to man, and these things are yielding up their secrets to him. It is right that these things should be known and be a blessing to man in a material way. But God is willing to make known to us great spiritual knowledge, more important than anything we can learn about nature and her marvels; and such knowledge is vital. The Bible is the source of this important knowledge. It is the Inspired Book that God has sent to teach us His ways, and time and space would fail us to list all the many important truths we should know that God's word reveals; but a few great facts may be noted. We should be acquainted with God. He is revealed in this Book as the First Cause, the Creator. (Genesis 1:1.) “Acquaint now thyself with Him [God],” says Job, “thereby good shall come unto thee.” Job 22:21. The great truth that God is, and that He is the Creator, is the first great revealed truth of the Bible. This is the most important primal fact to essential knowledge. It is a fundamental truth. It states the first cause, and is the explanation to a great series of important original facts which, if unobserved or not known, causes man to miss the way. Without God we cannot account for the universe about us, nor can we explain those spiritual longings in the heart. Without God the material world about us is an enigma; and setting aside the Bible, we are adrift upon a sea of uncertainty without chart or compass. Accepting the Bible as God's revelation, however, we find that He is revealed as the First Cause, and all is plain. Creation accounts for the earth and man in Eden upon it. The entrance of sin, according to the story of Genesis 3, accounts for another great fact,—the fall of man. As the result of sin—the wages of sin—came death, another great fact unaccountable except on the basis of the knowledge of sin and death revealed in God's word. If the story of the fall were not found in the Bible, in order to explain just what we see in the world, we would be compelled to insert the thought of such a tragic story. The fact of the Deluge as told in the Bible throws a flood of light on many questions that arise about conditions in the earth,—the great rocky mountain ranges, the buried forests, the beds of coal, the stores of oil, the internal fires, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Some godly and distinguished scientific men tell us that just such a catastrophe as the Flood is not possible but that such a historical event is strongly indicated, not only on the basis of the Bible record and the widespread traditions among both primitive and educated nations, but also because this terrible upheaval that buried great ancient forests, birds, animals, and men, is now made plain in the archeologicalPage Twodiscoveries that corroborate the Bible narrative. There is a wonderful correspondence of facts as set forth in the Bible. Again we say, the Bible contains in those early chapters the A B C of knowledge. Not to accept that part leaves us without the fundamental facts of such knowledge as God would impart to us. ‘The first leaf of the Mosaic record,’ says Jean Paul, ‘has more weight than all the folios of men of science and philosophers.’ Without this simple record, which bears the watermark of the Divine, we are left to vague, dreamy, and fantastic theories that have led men into various speculations of both the heathen and the civilized peoples,—some into the fields of fate and chance, others to the modern evolutionary teachings,—all of which sound a discordant note to that solitary and heavenly voice of Scripture which, in the stillness of that early morning of time, speaks in simple language to our hearts of a mighty God who made all things, and One full of mercy who has sent us a Saviour and to whom we can lift our eyes and direct our prayers and know we are His children. All this we may know and should learn. In the Scriptures we have a letter from God, well suited to our needs. It informs us of the great creative acts of God, and directs us along the way from the Eden lost by sin to the Eden regained by a divine Saviour. In connection with the story of sin's entrance, there is an early foregleam of the incarnation in the story of the ‘seed of the woman’ that bruises the “serpent's head;” and this is one of the greatest Bible facts, and a truth essential for all to know. The gospel of Jesus made known in this first promise of a Saviour was further made known in type and the fuller development of the gospel story in both Old and New Testament teaching. This is essential knowledge. ‘This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.’ John 17:3.