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The Two Adams

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1902

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 79, No. 7.

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The Two Adams.

By M. G. Huffman

Elder M. G. Huffman.
(Concluded from last week.)
A PROPER perspective is necessary to understanding. Perspective is a word used by architects. It means to see the whole object, or building, before the observer. It refers to seeing things in proportion, and as they really are. We must get a conception of the nature of things that corresponds to the contents, order, and relations of the whole.
Truth cannot be arbitrarily created, nor can it be established by mere authority. The truths of the Bible are accepted because they have been found, through the experience of the most competent, consecrated men on earth, to be in accordance with an eternal, spiritual order. And any honest, earnest man who will put the teaching of the Bible to the test, will find this spiritual order verified in his own experience.
The man who does not see in the second Adam all things restored that were lost in the first Adam, does not see the plan of salvation properly. In the blessed Scriptures, Christ is presented as all and in all,—all things in glory, all things in creation, and all things in redemption. He is called the Alpha and the Omega, the origin of all visible and invisible worlds and creatures. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, whether pertaining to God or to man, to heaven or to earth, to providence or the future, are in Him. He is the head over all things, because in Him all the fullness of the Godhead has a bodily expression. Praise His name. He bridges all extremes, and mediates between all that is highest and lowest. While it is true we cannot exhaust the fullness of His being, yet we can know that He is in it, living and moving; and through the holy height of His life, we can look out upon God, and humanity, and the universe, upon the past and the future, and thus get a view that harmonizes all the facts of existence.
Christ is the prototype of every man who has been born into the world, and in Him God, the universe, providence, Scriptures, and humanity center. As the oak is in the acorn, so all humanity was in Christ before the world was. Christ sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied in the case of every man and woman who realizes the eternal, essential self within them, through faith in their Redeemer. The triumph of the whole creative, administrative, and redemptive process, is seen in the complete realization of the image of God in man.
Nothing absolutely can add to the significance, the majesty, the glory, and the wonder of the simple, silent, blessed, eternal, and universal truth, as it is, and as it always has been, and as it always will be, in Christ Jesus our Lord. No wonder the psalmist exclaims, “Let the heaven and earth praise Him.” “Praise Him in the heights.” “Praise the Lord . . . all deeps.” “Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children! let them praise the name of the Lord: for His name alone is excellent; His glory is above the earth, and heaven.” “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.” “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad.” In the heavens His glory hath triumphed, and in the earth His glory will triumph in the life of man.
In order that we may have a universal view of the plan of salvation, and see in the eternal purpose of God the two Adams, we must look at all things through a principle, a life, a personality, in which all things are summed up.
The universal life is in man, but it is in the valley, covered and held down by mountains of sin. In Christ the universal in man is triumphant, enthroned in glory. But when the universal in man triumphs through faith in Christ, then he has within himself a standpoint from which to get a universal outlook. For the spiritual nature of man is more universal than creation, and is as high and deep as eternity. It was in the Word, which was in the beginning, and which was the archetype of man. By faith we see this sin-cursed earth converted into a paradise; we see the desolate places of this lost world covered with verdure and filled with song. Blessed thought! there is a company who, through faith, are moving forward in company with their Lord Jesus Christ, the head, the administrator, and redeemer; they are journeying to a city with beautiful mansions, whose builder and maker is God our Father.
Praise God for His infinite gift, and for the glorious fact that there is no trial or sorrow which Christ, the second Adam, has not experienced in us in Him; no sickness of ours that He cannot heal, and no weakness that He does not feel. In Him we are complete.