OUR FATHER | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 8, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 41.

“OUR FATHER.”

Do NOT put God far away. Do not conceive Him to be an impersonal nothing. Better to limit His sphere as did the ancient pagans, and leave Him a limited, living something, than to follow Theosophic and “Christian Science” fallacies and make of God (always in your own mind, of course) an impersonal nobody, everywhere in general, but nowhere in particular.

To some extent, at least, nature is an expression of God its Author. But nowhere in nature is there an exercise of energy, a display of force, a manifestation of power, that does not have its initial movement in a great center. Marconi, at an electric center in Cornwall, Eng., set in motion vibrations which extended in all directions, over 2,000 miles, and these vibrations were caught and read on the Newfoundland Coast, 2,000 miles distant. That was the radius of the circle which was cognizant to the imperfect senses of man through his imperfect machinery. The energy of the electric discharges at Cornwall may have extended much farther. So much finite man accomplishes with forces he so little comprehends. Can not the infinite God who dwells in the heavens, whose throne is over all, who controls all, the center of all nature, communicate with every part of the universe, and thus make present His power and intelligence?

Jesus Christ came to represent God the Father. He was before He came to this world, before He gave Himself in that far-off beginning; He was with the Father “as a master workman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.” Prov. 8: 30. Of the Son of God it is said that He was “the effulgence of His [the Father’s] glory, and the very image of His [the Father’s] substance.” Heb. 1: 3. Jesus came to this world from God. When Jesus left this world, He returned to God. He told the weeping Mary, “I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.” “The Ancient of Days did sit; and behold one like unto the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him.” Dan. 7: 10-13.

Now is all this language (and there is much more) intended to deceive? If there were no personal God, if His government had no center, no throne, surely God could have told His children that, as easily and as clearly as have Theosophists, Christian Scientists, or Theistic Evolutionists. But He has not spoken as have they. His Word tells us that God is: that He has an abiding place, the throne of the universe; that for a little while sin has forced Him to hide His glory from mortals lest they die; that from the great Center of life, and love, and knowledge, and power, pulses out to all parts of the universe the life and love and knowledge and power of God. He thus is everywhere present, everywhere potent, everywhere love and life to all who are His.

When He in whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead came to earth, the same power rested upon Him. The Roman centurion sent for Jesus to come and heal his servant. He recognized the God-power. He said to Jesus, “I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof; but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” Jesus spake the word, and miles away the servant was healed. Far away as well as near He is the same mighty God; but He was also the same personal Jesus, the beloved of the Father, the expression of a loving Father’s love for His alienated children.

Our Lord, as He declared, ascended into the heavens. He is there locally; but like the eternal Father He is everywhere present by the great streams of life, by the Spirit, the Comforter. And He consoled His disciples by the promise of this Presence in these words: “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, He shall bear witness of Me.” And so again He declares, “If a man love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

The infinite, eternal God is. He is somewhere as well as everywhere. This may be localization, but it is not limitation. It meets the child’s longing nature which the Father has given; and which is implanted in the hearts of all His creatures. Wherever He is, the child of God may know that the Father’s presence is there to protect, to teach, to guide; but that very presence speaks of the Father’s presence in the Home-land, the sometime Home-coming, the looking upon the Father’s face. “And they shall see His face; and His name shall be on their foreheads.” Rev. 22: 4; 14: 1.