Your ShelfYour Projects

REVEALING GOD

9%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 32.

Read the full edition

REVEALING GOD.

[See Sabbath-school Lesson, and Dan. 2: 14-30.]
ALL truth comes to man by revelation. Searching by his own unaided knowledge for millenniums, he has apart from God evolved only deeper darkness. Searching after a god of his own liking, he has revealed only more and more of incarnate lust and human degradation.
The question, “Who by searching can find out God?” is still as relevant as when asked by the old Idumean. It is forever true that “no one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.”
That which only God could reveal, Babylon’s wise men sought by magic, by incantation, by their various sciences, arts, and devices, and failed. Moreover they confessed that only “the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh” could show it before the king. They therefore admitted that the God of all knowledge and revelation did not dwell with them. A great gulf yawned between man and the only God who could help them.
So it has been held by false religionists of all time; and men have tried to bridge that gulf by priest-craft, by demons, saints, angels, holy virgins, that man in some vague uncertain way might by proxy get access to God, when the great loving God, the Creator and Saviour of men, has been ever waiting to manifest Himself in human flesh. The schools of Babylon held to the former theory; Daniel and his companions knew the latter, knew that God by His Spirit made His abode in every heart open to receive Him. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show them His covenant.”
“For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” And this Daniel the humble knew, and in him God demonstrated its truth.
Daniel and his companions humbly sought God. Into the clean, sensitive heart God’s revelation came. No glory did they take to themselves. They gave no glory to evolution, or to astrology, or to divination, or to science, or to magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, or Chaldeans. To God alone did they give the glory, who revealed the secret to Daniel the most humble.
Note the prophet’s ascription to God: (1) “Wisdom and might are His.” He knows how; He has power to do. (2) Therefore “He changeth the times and the seasons,” whatever man may plan or perverted nature turn. (3) “He removeth kings and setteth up kings;” the Most High rules in the kingdom of men. (4) “He giveth wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.” In other words He multiplies the stewardship of those who wisely use His gifts. (5) “He revealeth the deep and secret things;” for they are all His to reveal. (6) “He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him.” “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” (7) And best of all He revealed to Daniel the desire of his heart, and demonstrated that the fear of the living God was more than all the wisdom of the world. Such God will be to every soul who relates himself to God as did Daniel.
When Arioch brought Daniel in before the king, he said, “I have found a man . . . that will make known;” but Daniel said, “The secret . . . can neither wise men, enchanters, magicians, or sooth-sayers, show unto the king; but there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and He hath made known.”
The word rendered “secret” is in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, musterion, rendered mystery in the New Testament, or rather transferred and anglicized. It is God revealed in man and through man. It is “the mystery of godliness,” which the Lord longs to reveal to all, that every one like Nebuchadnezzar may know the thoughts of His own heart, and may understand what shall be in the latter days.