p. 126 | The Lord's Name by M. W. H.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 15, 1864

The Lord's Name.

By M. W. H.

Do ANY still incline to inquire, "Is it correct that in the fourth commandment only, the distinctive name of God is given as the God who is alone known by his works?" It is true, nor is it claimed to be otherwise, that other passages of the Bible teach who this Lord, who is our God, is, and what he has wrought. But

simply taking the ten commandments apart from all else, since this is the only document which God himself with his own finger wrote, and because to finite beings he entrusted the transcribing of all besides, where save in the fourth do we find aught to limit with certain identity "the Lord your God?" Herein we see the propriety and the necessity of God's specifying his attributes even beyond mistake. And subsequently when the name came to be identified with his peculiar people as "The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel," the prophet awards to him his rightful, because self-assumed attributes: "Ah Lord God! behold thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power," even "the great, the mighty God, the Lord of Hosts is his name." Jer. xxxiii, 17, 18. Then came the response to Jeremiah in the word of the Lord "Behold I am the Lord, the God of all flesh," (verse 27,) whether they so recognize me or not, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy." Thus, scripture passages might be multiplied indefinitely which ascribe to the Lord our God his peculiar attributes; but with sacrilegious audacity will the various adherents of "lords many and gods many," claim the same for their self-styled deities.

But when it is affirmed as in Isa. xlii, 5; xlv, 18, "Then saith the Lord, that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it—I am the Lord and there is none else," it strikes at once at all the claimed attributes of lords many and gods many. Still it stands forth as clear as the light of noonday that in the fourth commandment aside from other scripture is obtained the authority for ascribing this power and these attributes distinctive to the Lord our God, who "in six days made heaven and earth and all that in them is." M. W. H. Malone, N. Y.