God Gave It in Person by Andrew Nelson

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 26, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 20.

God Gave It in Person

By Andrew Nelson

It was at Sinai that the great God, amid thunder and flame, proclaimed to His people, the assembled host of Israel, the constitution of His universal government. The glory of God like devouring fire rested upon its summit, and the mountain quaked at the presence of Jehovah. This law was the enunciation of the principles of love, and was a revelation to earth of the law of heaven.

God has frequently spoken to men; He has but once written a message to His creatures. The Decalogue stands alone as God's manuscript; and it becomes us to study with deep reverence these words so remarkably given, these spiritual precepts that sought our earth directly from the upper world.

But man has broken this wonderful law of love and righteousness, and come short of the glory of God, and forfeited his life — for death is the wages of transgression. God's great heart of love went out in pity and sympathy for fallen man, but He could not change or modify His holy law, which reveals His own character, and is an expression of His divine will, and is as unchangeable as Himself. Hence God's beloved Son offered Himself to redeem man, and to bring him back into harmony with the law of heaven. He came as a man into the world, and expounded the law, and taught the people, by precept and example, the justice and righteousness of its requirements. He gave His precious life as a ransom for man, that man might be pardoned, and through divine grace be able to keep the law of God.

Calvary stands as the greatest argument of the immutability of the law of God, and shows that God's law could not be abolished or changed in the least, and that the penalty for its transgression is death.

Pentecost stands as a monument of the power of the gospel of Christ to save from sin, which is the transgression of the law of God, and also of the glorious work and operation of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of sinners, and of what may be accomplished by the church under the direction and power of the Spirit of God. Before that day of Pentecost closed, about three thousand souls were added to the church, and a few days later about five thousand more were added to their number, and the glad tidings of salvation were carried, in a short space of time, to the world.

ANDREW NELSON.