EVIDENCES OF GOD by D. E. Scoles

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 33.

EVIDENCES OF GOD.

By D. E. Scoles

Walk abroad over the earth; behold her varied forms; tread her grass-carpeted and flower-decked prairies and plains; quaff the sparkling water from her bubbling springs; roam through her beautiful forests; wander by her crystal rivers; float upon her silvery lakes; sail over her boundless seas; climb her majestic mountains, which lift their eternal snows until they are lost in the ethereal blue; and view in all these things the handiwork of Him who weighed the hills and mountains in a balance, and measured the seas in the hollow of His hand, and stretched out the heavens as a curtain; then hearken to the voice of the soul in its cry after God, and you can but acknowledge that there is a great all-wise Master-builder—Saviour, God—controlling the universe.

It is the fool who has said, “There is no God.”

“The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.” The power that hung the earth upon nothing, balanced the clouds, gave the sea its commandment not to pass over, and established the orbits for the planets, takes man just as he is, gilded sinner of the metropolis or poor heathen from the jungle, white or black, learned or ignorant—the Gospel takes Him and reveals the deadly leprosy of the soul—sin—in him, and offers the cleansing fountain,—the blood of Jesus Christ,—and the healing balm,—the divine Son of God,—to all. From a position of slavery to appetite and passion, this power elevates man to a place of freedom, enlightenment, peace, and happiness. No human power can do this.

Another evidence is prophecy, which is history recorded before it transpires. To foretell the end from the beginning—to note in minute detail the history of a nation, the vicissitudes and final end of cities, the name and conduct of individuals—all this is beyond the knowledge of man. It proves the existence of a great God who reads the future as tho in the past, unto whom eternity is as present.

There is a prophecy made concerning the Jews (Deut. 28:64, 25, 37; Num. 23:9), saying that they should be scattered into all the world, that they should be a proverb and a by-word among the nations, yet they should remain a separate and distinct people. Let any other people be scattered among the nations and a few generations suffice to lose their identity, and they become amalgamated with that people. But not so with the Jews; while scattered to the four winds of heaven, in every habitable part of the globe, they remain separate and alone, as a nation. They were hoary-headed and ancient when Babylon reached the zenith of her glory. They witnessed her downfall, and saw Medo-Persia rise upon her ruins, flourish for a while, and, like a flower, wither and die. They saw the star of Grecian splendor blaze for a time in the political sky, then go out in darkness, as Rome arose in her might and took the throne of the Cæsars, the proud mistress of the world. Like silent sentinels the Jews stood unmoved and unchanged while they beheld the ever-shifting panorama in the vicissitudes of the Roman Government until it was swallowed up of the barbarians. Thus this strange and wonderful people have witnessed the rise and fall of nations and kingdoms, the setting up and overthrow of empires and thrones, and yet, after the lapse of centuries and ages, the Jews remain as distinct in physical outline and character as they were thirty-three hundred years ago, when Moses wrote of them in the Pentateuch, and Shishak recorded on the Sun Temple at Karnac his invasions of their land. They stand as a living testimony to the fact that there is a God.

Another prophetic statement is that Babylon, “the glory of kingdoms,” shall be as “when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah”—desolate and uninhabited. Isa. 13:19-21. This city, with its mighty walls, its brazen gates, its magnificent temples and palaces, and hanging gardens, was one of the wonders of the world, but to-day its ruins are not inhabited by a living human being. The prophecy has been definitely and literally fulfilled.

So we might go on indefinitely showing that prophecy after prophecy has been fulfilled in the most absolutely certain manner—as the fate of Tyre; the history of Egypt; the line of the Saviour’s ancestors; the time, place, and circumstances of His birth; incidents in His life; time and manner of His death, etc. In all these the wisdom of an infinite mind, even the mind of God, is shown.

Everywhere there are evidences of a supreme Being, whose power, wisdom, and love are ever manifest to us in the works of nature around us. In our bodies we find mysteries so great, mechanism so infinitesimal, and plans so stupendous, that we are awed at the traces of the divine workmanship in us; and as we see His wisdom, we reverently declare, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

This power knows no limits; and whether the work be the tiny animalcules (millions of which would not equal a grain of sand in bulk, yet each one possessed of the power of locomotion, digestion, and reproduction), or rolling orbs like Alcyone (which floods the interstellar spaces with floods of light equal to twelve thousand suns like ours), the same care and perfection are witnessed. The star-eyed daisy of the meadow and the mighty monarch of the forest alike bear record of His wisdom. In the pencilings of the rose and lily, and the painting of the heavens in the gorgeous sunset, we see the skill of the Almighty displayed, but, lo! these are but parts of His ways. “The universe is God’s name writ large;” and we may climb by His wonderful works as up shining golden stairs, until, if pure enough, we may catch the “music of the spheres,” and behold the glory of the eternal One. Looking away from our own world, we find suns and planets swinging through space, hung upon nothing, rushing ever onward at a speed incomprehensible to the human mind, yet oscillating in graceful curves in their orbits, never a second out of time nor an inch out of place. Such complicated mechanism, infinitely beyond the most intricate works ever made by man, was not arranged by chance. Some power started this wonderful machinery; some power still upholds the rolling spheres.

No definition of matter allows it to originate force. We may go back with our correlations through worlds, suns, constellations, revolving fire-mists, nebulae, and concretionary vortices, and beyond all this is the supreme Mind—God.

Go stand alone upon some mountain crag when the day is done, and the shades of twilight are softly falling, and the hush of night is over all the world; then gaze upon the glittering dome of the star-spangled heavens, and view the marshaled hosts of blazing suns and worlds in their swift, never-varying, eternal round of order and perfection, and he must be a madman who denies that there is a God; for here we behold the handiwork of the Ancient of Days, who inhabiteth eternity, “by whom all things consist,” and “because that He is strong in power not one faileth.” And He is God. D. E. SCOLES.