Twice Written

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 6, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 39.

GOD writes all His Word twice. He not only does not leave “Himself without witness” in the beneficent course of nature, but He leaves not His Word without witness. That Word is in general composed of historical, ethical, or moral, and prophetic writings.

The history records actual events which took place in connection with men and nations in their relations with God and with each other. They show the working out of principles of truth, and the result of the rejection of those principles. They are prophecies of principles and of similar circumstances yet to rise. They show, and are designed to show, to those who follow, that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;” that certain causes produce certain results; that he who transgresses God’s law, the law of life and being, must certainly reap the sure result, deterioration, utter ruin, and death; and that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will.”

The moral portion of God’s Word, interwoven with every other part, is in words the expressed character of God. It is a declaration of what God requires of men, a promise and prophecy of what God will make all who will yield to Him. All His holy precepts and requirements were gloriously fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ, the true witness to God’s character; and the beauty of all will be manifest in the true people of God through Christ. Every true Christian is a witness to the truth of God’s Word. He, his life, is a visible manifestation to the world of the power of Christ over sin and sinful flesh. The true Christian is a “living epistle,” portraying in human conduct the eternal truths of the Decalogue. This is a confirmation to him of his hope in God; it is a witness to the world of the living truths of God’s law.

The prophetic portion of God’s Word is the history of the world, of nations, of peoples, of cities, of individuals, in advance. It is God telling beforehand just what will be. When the time comes for its fulfilment, God, in His overruling providence, writes it again, in nations, in events, in men, that all who know His prophecy may read again His Word, may shun the dangers, and may find in Him salvation.

Do you wish to read God’s word in the strange providences around you, in the characters on every hand, in the history of the world at the present time?—Study first of all God’s Word. Be filled with it, saturated through and through. And in the trying times before us we shall be able to read God’s word in the events of every-day life, in individuals, in nations. Laid up in the heart, it will keep us from falling, make us wise unto salvation, and preserve us unto His heavenly kingdom.