God, the Father, Revealing Himself
By T. E. Bowen
THE nature of truth is to make manifest. There is a definiteness and surety in truth that is an anchor to the soul. Upon truth the heart can securely rest. Error seeks to enshroud itself in mysticism and uncertainty. Some people prefer to think of God as some spiritual nonentity wholly incomprehensible or undefinable. While it is true, finite minds can never comprehend the infinity of the power of the Creator, still it has pleased the Father to reveal Himself sufficiently to satisfy the heart of His children, and that which He has deemed wise to reveal is for us and our children to know; and to study these truths is not prying into secrets we should not know. The infinite Creator has enshrouded Himself with glory unfathomable. No man can look upon this glory and live. The works of God seen in creation reveal His power, but disclose no clue as to His personality. Only in one way has He chosen to set before us this truth, and this is made manifest in the revealing of His Son. In Heb. 1:1-3 it is clearly stated that the Son, sent forth by the Father to represent Him in our fallen world, was manifested in the "express image of His [the Father's] person." The American Revised Version reads, "The very image of His substance." Rotherham's translation renders it, "An exact representation of His very being." This leaves no one in uncertainty. When those who saw Jesus were privileged to look into His face and converse with Him as friend does with friend, they saw one who in glory was an exact likeness of the invisible and unrevealed Father in heaven. Any other view can do nothing less than render the above words meaningless. Philip desired to see the Father, little thinking that, should his request be granted, it would mean his instant death. Jesus replied: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father: and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?" For the very purpose of revealing the Father, both in character and personality, Jesus had been earnestly giving His life, and for Philip to ask this question near the close of His work revealed that so far as he was concerned he had grasped but little of the real mission of the Son of God. And this was true of all the disciples. The enemy was constantly working with them to dull their comprehension, and thus thwart the purpose of Christ in presenting clearly to their minds the relation they sustained to heaven and the Father's purposes concerning them. For this reason Jesus could not tell them then many things He desired that they should know. They had walked with, talked to, and touched the only-begotten Son of the invisible God, yet they had but dimly comprehended who He was, and the import of His being revealed. "When on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the disciples, they understood the truths that Christ had spoken in parables. The teachings that had been mysteries to them were made clear. The understanding that came to them with the outpouring of the Spirit made them ashamed of their fanciful theories. Their suppositions and interpretations were foolishness, when compared with the knowledge of heavenly things which they now received."7 "As a personal being, God has revealed Himself in His Son. 'Jesus, the outshining of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person,' was on earth found in fashion as a man. As a personal Saviour [both a Saviour to each of us personally, as well as Himself having a person], He came to the world. As a personal Saviour, He intercedes in the heavenly courts. Before the throne of God in our behalf ministers 'One like unto the Son of Man.' Christ, the Light of the world, veiled the dazzling splendor of His divinity and came to live as a man among men, that they might, without being consumed, become acquainted with their Creator. No man has seen God at any time, except as He is revealed through Christ." It may help some to see this vital truth, — for if Satan can becloud the mind as to the personality of God, he has gained a tremendous victory in his game of life which he is playing for every soul, — to sensibly ponder that just as soon as the Son of God finished His ministration on earth among men, He no longer concealed His divinity by laying aside His divine glory. The same glory He had before He came as a babe in Bethlehem's manger, the Father bestows upon Him again. The glory enshrouding His person is, expressing it in our own words, more natural than the manner in which He lived during His stay among men. To come close to us, He must lay the glory all aside. So He prayed that last night He was with His disciples, "And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was;" and again, "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world." John 17: 5, 24. Please note that while He was on earth they had not seen the glory, but had beheld His person, excepting at the transfiguration scene. He would still be in heaven the same Jesus (Acts 1:11) they had seen and learned to love, but there they were to behold His glory which they here could not behold and live. That you may see the truthfulness of all this, we have but to refer to Paul's personal experience with Jesus very soon after the resurrection. Paul, in describing this scene to King Agrippa, said: "Whereupon as I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them that journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goad. And I said, Who art Thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." Here Jesus revealed His glory to one of our race, Saul, the young persecuting Pharisee. This glory caused them all to fall prostrate to the earth. This glory was brighter than the sun at midday — so much brighter that Saul was made blind, and was restored to sight only by Christ's miracle-working power manifested through the church. And this was Jesus, the same personal Saviour who had been manifested among men in loving ministry so long that He had become one common among men. He passed for the carpenter's son of Nazareth, whose earthly brothers were known, and who, because of His persistent saying that He was the Son of God, was condemned to death as a blasphemer. "But," says one, "while I can see all this regarding the Son, yet what bearing has this upon the personality of the invisible Jehovah?" It certainly has all the answer that it has pleased the Father to make known. And here we rest. In sending us His Son, the Father revealed Himself. This is precisely what Jesus Himself said to Philip in answer to the direct request "Show us the Father" — "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." There was no salvation in simply seeing Jesus. It was the divine fulness of knowing God, of entering into His divine purposes, and of yielding our lives and wills to Him, that Jesus came to make known to us. Yet in it all He sets forth something tangible and real, so that His followers are not left in uncertainty as to His Father in heaven. He revealed Him as full of compassion and love, and equally interested in the human race as He had manifested Himself to be by His own life of unselfish service. It may be urged that Jesus said, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Very true; but this does not do away with the personality of God. Jesus permitted Himself to be worshiped. In fact, it was proper that He should be worshiped; for the Father had proclaimed when the Son was born, "Let all the angels of God worship Him." The Son, then, being Himself God equal with the Father (altho subject to Him and to be worshiped) was, and is, as much a spirit as the Father Himself. "The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit" 1 Cor. 15: 45 And let it not be forgotten that this same Jesus, who here after His resurrection was showing to His astonished disciples that it was He Himself who had appeared to them, is the same Jesus who appeared to Paul at noontide clothed in dazzling brightness above that of the sun. In these simple truths the Father has been pleased to reveal Himself through His Son to men. Let us not permit the enemy to throw us into uncertainty over plainly revealed truth which God has been pleased to make known regarding Himself, neither to yield to Satan's temptation to seek to pry into secrets which God in His wisdom has not unfolded. "Man can not by searching find out God. Let none seek with presumptuous hand to lift the veil that conceals His glory. 'Unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out.' It is proof of His mercy that there is the hiding of His power; for to lift the veil that conceals the divine presence is death. No mortal mind can penetrate the secrecy in which the mighty One dwells and works. Only that which He sees fit to reveal, can we comprehend of Him. Reason must acknowledge an authority superior to itself. Heart and intellect must bow to the great I AM." HE who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. — Foster. "REMORSE is the echo of a slaughtered joy."