THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 15.

“THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE.”

GOD is the Source of all life. “For with Thee,” sings the psalmist, “is the Fountain of Life; in Thy light shall we see light.” Ps. 36: 9. “The Father hath life in Himself.” John 5: 26. “He is the true God; He is the living God;” and “He Himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” Jer. 10: 12; Acts 17: 26.

He is the Source and Giver of life in not only the sense that it springs from Him originally, but in the fullest sense that it comes from Him every moment. He not only made a living creature in the beginning, but He so constituted them as to make them receptive of His life, flowing out in ever-living floods from the great Fountain. He did not give to man to have life in himself, ever precarious, and finally running out at the end of a millennium, or threescore years and ten, but He so constituted man that fresh from the Fountain every day man receives his life. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Acts 17: 28. He is “the God in whose hand thy breath is.” Dan. 5: 23.

God has given us three striking illustrations of this normal, constant giving of life in His Word. These illustrations are in His material works, two of them as they were ordained at the beginning, before sin entered, and as they will be in the re-creation, after sin is forever banished. The other is a pledge of God’s restoring mercy and power. The first is found in Gen. 2: 10:—

“And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.”

The second is found in Rev. 22: 1:—

“And He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

The third is as follows:—

“Behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house [of the Lord]. . . . These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea; which being brought forth into the sea, the waters [of the sea] shall be healed. And it shall come to pass, that everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live; . . . and everything shall live whither the river cometh.” See Eze. 47: 1—12.

God’s life, like His love, is diffusive, expanding. His river of love does not ever gather to itself the fertility of all lands through which it flows, and pour it out into some great salt sea, but it ever spreads, and divides, and subdivides, carrying richness, life, blessing, wherever its waters flow. The life, the Spirit of God, is likened to the gentle dew, moistening in the time of drought both grass and flower. It is symbolized by rain, poured out in abundant, penetrating, all-pervasive showers. It is said to be as a water spring welling up into each heart open to receive it, and flowing out from thence into others’ lives, blessing, reviving, healing, in its influence.

All this is of the life of God as it comes from Him through Jesus Christ in its own normal way, in harmony with God’s law of life, His moral law. In the carnal heart the law of His life is perverted, by being turned inward. Men use it for selfish motives and purposes. They gather it to themselves for their own profit or pleasure. And as the purest water becomes putrid if it remains stagnant, so the best blessings of God become a curse when selfishly hoarded.

Reader, would you have the life of God?—Give and use for Him what you have. Would you have it more abundantly?—Use more abundantly. Consecrate all to Him; ask for His Spirit, that you may use it, and God will bestow it as the dew, as the rain, as a well-spring of life.