Your ShelfYour Projects

INFINITE THEMES

8%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 19, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 12.

Read the full edition

INFINITE THEMES

By L. A. Reed

“THAT which in the councils of heaven the Father and the Son deemed essential for the salvation of man, was defined from eternity by infinite truths which finite beings can not fail to comprehend.”
Here are the themes of Biblical literature—“infinite truths which finite beings can not fail to comprehend.”
Compare these themes with the themes that men may present. The themes of Biblical literature are infinite truths. Now an infinite truth has three dimensions, to use a figure,—length, breadth, and thickness. Or with a certain verse in mind, we may change the order, and say these dimensions are thickness (height and depth), and length, and breadth.
Its thickness: “It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?”
Its length and breadth: “The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.”
Deeper than hell, longer than the earth, and broader than the sea: these truths are measured only by the infinite. And yet there are hundreds who think they have got about all there is in some of the verses of the Bible. Think of it a moment. “It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?” When it comes to ascensions, the most of us can do practically nothing. We may get up to the top of some high mountain, and a few may ascend in balloons; but how far?—The distance upward that we can go toward God may be barely hinted at by the width of a hair as compared to the awful measures of interstellar space.
Thus it is with reference to the truths of God. We have not yet mounted the first step in the great staircase of infinite truth. And yet already some men have had enough, and settle down to men’s ideas; while the great truths of eternity, swinging out yonder into the infinitude of time and space and being, are left to swing to eternity if they choose, while men rotate on the pivot of self-interest until they wobble and tumble at last like spun-out tops into the quiescence of death.
Marvelous limits has God set to an infinite truth—high as the heights of heaven, deep as the depths of God’s mind, wide as the measure of His love, and long as the length of His unending life. And these are the unfathomed and unmeasured themes of Biblical literature.
And yet I would be misleading were I to stop here. There is more to the thought,—“Infinite truths which finite beings can not fail to comprehend.” It is not merely that we can comprehend them; it is more than that; we can not fail to comprehend them. But how? I answer, By faith.
God tells me what is so; this is the infinite truth. As fast as I learn what He says, it is my privilege by faith to re-echo His words, and say, too, that it is so. It may be years before I shall get the philosophy and explanation of the thing, to any large extent. But as the years roll on, no matter for how long, the philosophy will ever grow deeper and larger, and the explanation clearer.
And so, victoriously in Christ, as the old question is asked again,—“It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?”—we now may cry, “I can take it by faith.” It is “deeper than hell; what canst thou know?”—I can know it by faith.
Brethren, shall we not drink at the pure stream that flows from the throne of God? There is no water in the broken cisterns; they are “broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” L. A. REED.