THE ABIDING WORD | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Association

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

THE ABIDING WORD.

ABRAHAM had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael was the son of a bondwoman, the fruit of human scheming to fulfil God's promise. God had declared that Abraham's seed should be blessed, should be a blessing to all nations, and should become too numerous to reckon. God showed the old patriarch the blue vault of heaven, luminous with shining stars, and declared, "So shall thy seed be."

BUT how? was the question which puzzled Abraham and his wife. Sarah was old and barren, and of course there could be no heir from her. Then came the suggestion that Hagar should bear for her, and Abraham made the Egyptian his concubine. Ishmael was born; and upon Ishmael was set the father's heart as his son and heir, the promised seed.

GOD corrects the error of his servant and tells him that Sarah would bear a son. Barren she might be according to all human ideas, yet the power of God was sufficient to accomplish His word, and Isaac was born. Of course, in the very nature of things the lads could not live together, nor their mothers, and so Hagar and her boy Ishmael were sent away.

DISAPPOINTED, angry, and despairing, with bread and a bottle of water, the Egyptian woman goes forth into the wilderness of Beersheba. There she stays and nurses her grief till the bread is gone and the spent water bottle mocks her thirst. The lad grows weak and faint; she places him under one of the shrubs of the desert, and removes to a distance that she may not see him die, and in her sorrow and misery, she lifts up her voice and weeps.

THEN God came to her relief. The angel calls: "What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thy hand; for I will make him a great nation," because he was Abraham's seed. See Gen. 21:8-21. And in the wilderness he grew up, became an archer, and the leader of wild tribes who gathered to him.

A PRAYING boy he was when he left his father's tent; but he drank in the hatred of his mother's teaching, and thus fulfilled the prophecy which God had given at his birth: "Thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because Jehovah hath heard thy affliction. And he shall be as a wild ass among men; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell over against ["in the presence of," A. V.] all his brethren." Gen. 16:11, 12.

NEARLY 4,000 years ago the words were uttered by the angel. Nearly 3,500 years ago they were recorded by Moses. Centuries have rolled their round. Ages have passed away. Nations have waxed and waned. The beginning of Ishmael was not strong. For many years his people, the Ishmaelites, were weak. They could never be considered a united nation with a central government. The Ishmaelites are the wandering tribes of the Arabian and Syrian deserts. They are against every man, and every man is against them. They live by the booty, the plunder, they gather from passing caravans and travelers, or by levying backsheesh on those whom they dare not openly rob or kill. How literally true the Word of God has spoken as to character!

AND Ishmael has dwelt in the presence of his brethren. Israel, a weak people numerically, has persisted. Scattered, peeled, divided in his own house, sold into slavery, pushed to the ends of the earth, he still lives, and his holy city is still Jerusalem, his land Palestine. And in his presence, the sheiks of the Syrian and Arabian deserts with their wandering hordes, dwell the seed of Ishmael.

Both peoples exist, and stamp upon their progeny their own characteristics.

GOD said they would so persist. Not so with other nations. Where are the Assyrians? Where are the Chaldeans? Where are the Sidonians? Where are the Medes? the Philistines? the Egyptians? the Hittites? the Jebusites?—Gone, all gone. The very existence of some of them has been questioned, and would be still if the very stones and bricks had not borne mute but faithful witness to the truth of God's Word.

THE lesson to us is that God's word endures. What He has said of nations and cities and peoples has been demonstrated true times without number. What He has said as to our condition as sinners, our need of a Saviour, of the coming of that Saviour, are all true. We may despise His word; we may treat it lightly; but just as truly as that word was fulfilled in Ishmael, so truly will it be fulfilled in any other particular. Our only hope is to be in harmony with the eternal, living Word.