God in the Bible | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1875

God in the Bible.

To THE Jews who were condemning and rejecting himself, our Lord said: "In your Scriptures ye think ye have eternal life." There is such a thing as thinking highly of the Bible, and yet missing its true purpose; there is such a thing as putting it in the place of Christ. Every word and letter of their Scriptures they esteem sacred; they inscribed them on their phylacteries; they, many of them, spent their time in reading and copying them. And yet, just because they rested in them, because they worshiped the book rather than him of whom the Bible spoke to them, it became to them a barrier between them and God; its sentences and pages shut them out from God, instead of leading them to him. And in this way they were willing to believe that in the early ages of their history God had actually spoken to and dealt with their fathers as a man speaks to and deals with his fellow, face to face.

They did not doubt that he had revealed himself, and made known his mind and will to the prophets and holy men of old. But they did not believe that he was still actually speaking to themselves, and dealing with them as he had done with their ancestors. All living belief in his active and immediate presence in the midst of them had faded out of their minds; they fancied that such revelations belonged only to the past. In place, then, of the recognition of a present personal God, they put the Old Testament scriptures. They put a description of God's character and a history of his dealings with their nation, instead of God himself; they said by reading this book we may learn about God; they failed to discern that the very object of the book was to enable them to acknowledge and know the living Jehovah for themselves that they might enter into close personal intercourse with him; might serve him, and love him, and walk with him as their fathers had done; they forgot that the God of Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob was still alive; that he was entering into communication with his creatures, and calling them to understand and trust him as much as he had ever done; nay, that what all their prophets in these Scriptures were anticipating and pointing to was the time—not when God should withdraw himself utterly from the earth, and should be known only through the words of a book, but—when he should come forth out of his place and manifest himself more perfectly; when the unseen King should at last unveil himself, and tabernacle as a man among men. And because they forgot this; because they closed their minds against all but a second-hand knowledge of God; because, so to speak, they read a biography of him, instead of seeking for personal acquaintance—their Scriptures became to them an idol; they used them as an end, instead of as a means; they trusted in them, rather than in God; they thought that eternal life was contained in the words and sentences of a manuscript, not in the great Source and Giver of all life and light.—Sel.