WITNESSES OF GOD | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1901

WITNESSES OF GOD.

GOD writes twice every prophecy in His Word: once thru the prophets who spoke the God-breathed history of time to come, and again when in His overruling providence that prophecy is fulfilled. Thus with no possibility of collusion He presents the twofold, infallible witness of the divinity, authenticity, and infallibility of His Word. There are many instances of this in Scripture and history.

BEDOUINS OF THE DESERT, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH AT SILOAH, PALESTINE.

IT is said that Frederick the Great, of Prussia, once asked a minister of the Gospel for proof that the Bible is the Word of God. The good man sententiously replied, “Sire, the Jews.” And that people are not only proof that the Bible is the Word of God, they are a demonstration of the fact. In their history and country, in their loyalty and disloyalty, they have attested, oftentimes unwillingly, the truth of the “more sure word of prophecy.” Wherever one goes he meets the Jew. Hunted from nation to nation by intolerable decrees, driven from the land of promise by heathen, Moslem, and “Christian,” he has become a wanderer, without a home, without a country. But in poverty or wealth, hated or loved, persecuted or endured, the Jew is a witness that not one word will fail of all that the Lord God has spoken.

BUT the Jew is not alone. The Bedouin (outdoor) Arab of the desert shares with him, if not so prominently, the high eminence of a witness for God thruout the ages. He may not know it; in the vast majority he probably never heard of the place in court that he is filling; nevertheless he is there, as he has been for thirty-eight centuries, still occupying the witness chair, still testifying for God. And the old German preacher could have as truly answered, “Sire, the Bedouins,” as, “Sire, the Jews.” In the case of the Jew the evidence is more abundant, but not the less true and conclusive.

THE prophecy is found in Gen. 16:11-13. It is the word of the Lord concerning Ishmael, the child of rebellious Hagar, before Ishmael was born; “Behold, thou . . . shalt bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Ishmael. . . . And he shall be as a wild ass among men; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” R.V.

THERE are three predictions in this divine forecast of the future: (1) The character of Ishmael and his posterity, for the prophecy is not of the individual alone; (2) their relations to others; (3) their continuance. How specific and precise are these predictions! How unlike the uncertain, ambiguous expressions of heathen oracles! Let us study them for a little.

I. The Character of Ishmael and His Descendants. — “He shall be as a wild ass among men.” The wild ass is used as representative of a strong, obstinate, fierce disposition. From this son of the ambitious, vain, revengeful Hagar sprang the Bedouins of the Syrian and Arabian deserts. Houseless, homeless, dwelling in tents where night overtakes them, where the exigencies of nomadic life makes necessary, or where easy choice finds it desirable, the Ishmaelite has been as a wild ass among men, “alone by himself” (Hosea 8:9), untrained, obstinate, rebellious of all restraint.

2. Relations to Others.— “His hand shall be against every man.” How true it is of the Bedouins, the descendants of Ishmael, the wild, roving tribes of the desert! Sometimes engaged in merchandise, they trafficked in slaves. In fact, they stooped not to purchase and sell even one of their own kin,—Joseph. They are now, as for years, the robbers of the desert. Laying claim to all the great stretches of desert land to the south and east of Palestine, they lay tribute upon all caravans or travelers that pass them, and woe be to him who refuses the “backsheesh,” unless he is sufficiently strong to place successfully his hand against the descendants of Ishmael. The facts meet the prophecy.

3. Their Continuance.— “He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” The Philistines, who gave the name of Palestine to the wonderful land of earth, are passed away. The great nation of the Hittites, unless it is identical with the Armenians, is no more. Ancient Babylon, Assyria, Media, Egypt, and others as nations are but memories of history. But the Jew, the legal descendant of Abraham, abides, and in his presence, “before him,” dwells the Ishmaelite. Countless revolutions have swept over the land; nation and kingdom and tribe and people have risen to short-lived fame or sunken to oblivion, but he whose hand is against every man still abides, a picturesque witness for the truthfulness of the Word of God, and that part of the Word which the “higher critics” regard as wholly mythical or traditional.

WITNESSES for God, reader, are we all. It is an eternally true saying that “we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.”

“Truth crushed to earth will rise again, The eternal years of God are hers.”

It is ours to witness for God gloriously, grandly, as did Moses, demonstrating that God’s power thru faith is sufficient to save a man from selfishness and sin, to lift him above all mean ambition, and to give him a heart to pray for his detractors. It is ours to witness, as did Elijah, zealous for God when all others had proved disloyal, demonstrating by his physical translation his character translation from sin to righteousness. It is ours to let Jesus Christ live in us and witness in His members the same witness that he bore for God when in His own person He taught in the temple courts of Jerusalem, healed in the streets of Capernaum, prayed on the mountains of Galilee, or died a martyr (witness) to the truth on the cross of Calvary. These are the witnesses God desires us to be.

BUT if we will not be willing, glad witnesses to His power, His wisdom, His goodness and love, still we shall be witnesses, the unwilling. It is the divine, unchanging prophecy of the ages that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” Gal. 6:7, 8. “God is not mocked.” Not one word shall fail of all that He has spoken. Whoso shall heed it shall bear glorious witness for God. All who will not heed it shall “eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.” Prov. 1:31. They shall reap the divinely declared “wages of sin.” And thus even in unholy abasement will they witness for God. And when at last they stand before “the great white throne,” and the eye of the Eternal searches them to the very core, then “every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess to God.” Rom. 14:11.

“NO WORD of God shall fail.” It is your privilege, reader, it is that of every soul, to triumph with the Word, to bear joyful, glad witness for God both now and hereafter. We may be like Pharaoh or Moses, Saul or Samuel, Elijah or Ahab, Jesus or Caiaphas. We may declare Him and His Word false now. We may prefer to its holy instruction the hypotheses of knowledge-inflated minds; the lie may for a while seem to be successful; but “God is not mocked,” and sooner or later even the truthless life, to its everlasting shame, shall bear witness to the truth of the infallible Word. O soul, let that living Word in Christ Jesus into your heart now! Let it witness to you and thru you even now of the power and love of God to save from sin and death. We are all witnesses; let us be willing, glad witnesses for God in righteousness.