The Why of
Natural Law is the Living Voice of God Immanent in His Creation. And This Word of
God Which Brought All Worlds Into Being Cannot Be Understood to Mean The Bible,
For It Is Not A Written Or Printed Word At All, But The Expression Of The Will
Of God Spoken Into The Structure Of All Things.
This Word of God Is the Breath of
God Filling the World with Living Potentiality. The Voice of God Is the Most
Powerful Force in Nature; Indeed, It Is the Only Force in Nature, For All
Energy Is Here Only Because the Power-Filled Word Is Being Spoken.
The Bible Is
the Written Word of God, And Because It Is Written, It Is Confined and Limited by
The Necessities of Ink and Paper. The Voice of God, However, Is Alive and Free as
The Sovereign God Is Free.
"The Words That I Have Spoken unto You, They Are
Spirit and They Are Life." The Life Is in The Speaking Words. God's Word in The
Bible Can Have Power Only Because It Corresponds to God's Word in The Universe.
It Is the Present Voice Which Makes the Written Word All-Powerful. Otherwise,
It Would Lie Locked in Slumber Within the Covers of a Book.
We Take A Low and Primitive
View of Things When We Conceive of God at The Creation Coming Into Physical
Contact With Things, Shaping And Fitting And Building Like A Carpenter. The
Bible Teaches Otherwise: By the Word of The Lord Were the Heavens Made, And All
the Host of Them by The Breath of His Mouth. . . For He Spoke, And It Was Done; He Commanded,
And It Came into Being. And Through Faith We Understand That the Ages Were
Framed by The Word of God.
Again, We Must Remember That God Is Referring Here
Not to His Written Word, But to His Speaking Voice. His World-Filling Voice Is
Meant, That Voice Which Predates the Bible by Uncounted Centuries, That Voice
Which Has Not Been Silent Since the Dawn of Creation but Is Sounding Still
Throughout the Far Reaches of The Universe. The Word of God Is Quick and Powerful.
In the Beginning He Spoke to Nothing, And It Became Something. Chaos Heard It and
Became Order; Darkness Heard It and Became Light. And God Said. And It Was So
These Twin Phrases, As Cause and Effect, Occur Throughout the Genesis Story of The
Creation.
The Said Accounts for The So the So Is the Said Put into The
Continuous Present. That God Is Here and That He Is Speaking—These Truths Are
The Backing For All Other Bible Truths; Without Them There Could Be No
Revelation At All. God Did Not Write A Book And Send It By Messenger To Be Read
At A Distance By Unaided Minds. He Spoke A Book And Lives In His Spoken Words,
Constantly Speaking His Words And Causing The Power Of Them To Persist Across
The Years.
God Breathed On Clay And It Became A Man; He Breathes On Men And
They Become Clay. “Return Ye Children Of Men,” Was The Word Spoken At The Fall,
By Which God Decreed The Death Of Every Man And No Added Word Has He Needed To
Speak.
The Sad Procession Of Mankind Across The Face Of The Earth From Birth To
The Grave Is Proof That His Original Word Was Enough. We Have Not Given
Sufficient Attention To That Deep Utterance In The Gospel Of John: That Word
Was The True Light, Which Lightens Every Man That Comes Into This World. Shift
The Punctuation Around As We Will, And The Truth Is Still There: The Word Of
God Affects The Hearts Of All Men As Light In The Soul. In The Hearts Of All
Men The Light Shines, The Word Sounds, And There Is No Escaping Them. Something
Like This Would Of Necessity Be So If God Is Alive And In His World. And John
Says That It Is So Even Those Individuals Who Have Never Heard Of The Bible
Have Still Been Preached To With Sufficient Clarity To Remove Every Excuse From
Their Hearts Forever, Which Show The Work Of The Law Written In Their Hearts,
Their Conscience Also Bearing Witness, Accusing And Also Excusing Their
Reasonings One With Another.
For The Invisible Things Of Him, His Eternal Power
And Divinity, Are Clearly Understood By The Creation Of The World And By The
Things That Are Made So That There Is No Excuse. This Universal Voice Of God
Was By The Ancient Hebrews Often Called Wisdom And Was Said To Be Everywhere
Sounding And Searching Throughout The Earth, Seeking Some Response From The
Sons Of Men.
The Eighth Chapter Of The Book Of Proverbs Begins: "Doth Not Wisdom
Cry, And Give Her Voice To Intelligence?" The Writer Then Pictures Wisdom As A
Beautiful Woman Standing In The Top Of The High Places, By The Way At The Crossroads
Of The Paths. She Sounds Her Voice From Every Quarter So That No One May Miss
Hearing It. "Unto You, O Men, I Call; And My Voice Is To The Sons Of Men." Then
She Pleads For The Simple And The Foolish To Give Ear To Her Words. It Is A
Spiritual Response For Which This Wisdom Of God Is Pleading, A Response Which
She Has Always Sought And Is But Rarely Able To Secure.
The Tragedy Is That Our
Eternal Welfare Depends Upon Our Hearing, And We Have Trained Our Ears Not To
Hear. This Universal Voice Has Ever Sounded, And It Has Often Troubled Men Even
When They Did Not Understand The Source Of Their Fears. Could It Be That This
Voice Distilling Like A Living Mist Upon The Hearts Of Men Has Been The
Undiscovered Cause Of The Troubled Conscience And The Longing For Immortality
Confessed By Millions Since The Dawn Of Recorded History?
We Need Not Fear To
Face Up To This. The Speaking Voice Is A Fact. How Men Have Reacted To It Is
For Any Observer To Note. When God Spoke Out Of Heaven To Our Lord,
Self-Centred Men Who Heard It Explained It By Natural Causes: They Said, It
Thundered. This Habit Of Explaining The Voice By Appeals To Natural Law Is At
The Very Root Of Modern Science.
In The Living, Breathing Cosmos, There Is A
Mysterious Something, Too Wonderful, Too Awful For Any Mind To Understand. The
Believing Man Does Not Claim To Understand. He Falls To His Knees And Whispers,
“God.” The Man Of Earth Kneels Also, But Not To Worship. He Kneels To Examine,
To Search, To Find The Cause And The How Of Things. Just Now We Happen To Be
Living In A Secular Age. Our Thought Habits Are Those Of The Scientist, Not
Those Of The Worshipper. We Are More Likely To Explain Than To Adore. “It
Thundered,” We Exclaim, And Go Our Earthly Way. But Still The Voice Sounds And
Searches. The Order And Life Of The World Depend Upon That Voice, But Men Are
Mostly Too Busy Or Too Stubborn To Give Attention.
Every One Of Us Has Had
Experiences Which We Have Not Been Able To Explain: A Sudden Sense Of
Loneliness, Or A Feeling Of Wonder Or Awe In The Face Of The Universal
Vastness. Or We Have Had A Fleeting Visitation Of Light Like An Illumination
From Some Other Sun, Giving Us In A Quick Flash An Assurance That We Are From
Another World, That Our Origins Are Divine. What We Saw There, Or Felt, Or Heard,
May Have Been Contrary To All That We Had Been Taught In The Schools And At
Wide Variance With All Our Former Beliefs And Opinions. We Were Forced To
Suspend Our Acquired Doubts While, For A Moment, The Clouds Were Rolled Back,
And We Saw And Heard For Ourselves.
Explain Such Things As We Will, I Think We
Have Not Been Fair To The Facts Until We Allow At Least The Possibility That
Such Experiences May Arise From The Presence Of God In The World And His
Persistent Effort To Communicate With Mankind. Let Us Not Dismiss Such A
Hypothesis Too Flippantly.
It Is My Own Belief (And Here I Shall Not Feel Bad
If No One Follows Me) That Every Good And Beautiful Thing Which Man Has
Produced In The World Has Been The Result Of His Faulty And Sin-Blocked
Response To The Creative Voice Sounding Over The Earth. The Moral Philosophers
Who Dreamed Their High Dreams Of Virtue, The Religious Thinkers Who Speculated
About God And Immortality, The Poets And Artists Who Created Out Of Common
Stuff Pure And Lasting Beauty—How Can We Explain Them? It Is Not Enough To
Say Simply, “It Was Genius.”
What Then Is Genius? Could It Be That A Genius Is
A Man Haunted By The Speaking Voice, Labouring, And Striving Like One Possessed
To Achieve Ends Which He Only Vaguely Understands? That The Great Man May Have
Missed God In His Labours, That He May Have Even Spoken Or Written Against God,
Does Not Destroy The Idea I Am Advancing. God’s Redemptive Revelation In The
Holy Scriptures Is Necessary To Saving Faith And Peace With God. Faith In A
Risen Saviour Is Necessary If The Vague Stirrings Toward Immortality Are To
Bring Us To Restful And Satisfying Communion With God. To Me, This Is A
Plausible Explanation of All That Is Best Out Of Christ. But You Can Be A Good
Christian And Not Accept My Thesis.
The Voice Of God Is A Friendly Voice. No
One Need Fear To Listen To It Unless He Has Already Made Up His Mind To Resist
It. The Blood of Jesus Has Covered Not Only the Human Race But All Creation As
Well. Having Made Peace Through The Blood Of His Cross, Whether They Are The
Things In The Earth Or The Things In The Heavens. We May Safely Preach A
Friendly Heaven.
The Heavens as Well As The Earth Are Filled With The Good Will
Of Him That Dwelt In The Bush. The Perfect Blood Of Atonement Secures This
Forever. Whoever Will Listen Will Hear The Speaking Heaven. This Is Definitely
Not The Hour When Men Take Kindly To An Exhortation To Listen, For Listening Is
Not Today A Part Of Popular Religion. We Are At The Opposite End Of The Pole
From There. Religion Has Accepted The Monstrous Heresy That Noise, Size,
Activity, And Bluster Make A Man Dear To God. But We May Take Heart. To A
People Caught In The Tempest Of The Last Great Conflict, God Says, Be Still,
And Know That I Am God, And Still He
Says It, As If He Means To Tell Us That Our Strength And Safety Lie Not In
Noise But In Silence.
It Is Important That We Get Still To Wait On God. And It
Is Best That We Get Alone, Preferably With Our Bible Outspread Before Us. Then
If We Will, We May Draw Near To God And Begin To Hear Him Speak To Us In Our
Hearts. I Think That For The Average Person The Progression Will Be Something
Like This: First A Sound As Of A Presence Walking In The Garden. Then A Voice,
More Intelligible, But Still Far From Clear. Then The Happy Moment When The
Spirit Begins To Illuminate The Scriptures, And That Which Had Been Only A
Sound, Or At Best A Voice, Now Becomes An Intelligible Word, Warm And Intimate
And Clear As The Word Of A Dear Friend. Then Will Come Life And Light, And Best
Of All, The Ability To See And Rest In And Embrace Jesus Christ As Saviour And
Lord And All.
The Bible Will Never Be A Living Book to Us Until We Are
Convinced That God Is Articulate In His Universe. To Jump from A Dead,
Impersonal World to A Dogmatic Bible Is Too Much For Most People. They May
Admit That They Should Accept The Bible As The Word Of God, And They May Try To
Think Of It As Such, But They Find It Impossible To Believe That The Words
There On The Page Are Actually For Them.
A Man May Say, “These Words Are Addressed to Me,” And Yet in His Heart Does Not
Feel and Know That They Are. He Is the Victim of a Divided Psychology. He Tries
To Think Of God As Mute Everywhere Else And Vocal Only In A Book.
I Believe
That Much Of Our Religious Unbelief Is Due To A Wrong Conception Of And A Wrong
Feeling For The Scriptures Of Truth. A Silent God Suddenly Began To Speak In A
Book, And When The Book Was Finished, He Lapsed Back Into Silence Again
Forever. Now We Read The Book As The Record Of What God Said When He Was For A
Brief Time In A Speaking Mood. With Notions Like That In Our Heads, How Can We
Believe?
The Facts Are That God Is Not Silent, Has Never Been Silent. It Is The
Nature Of God To Speak. The Second Person Of The Holy Trinity Is Called The
Word. The Bible Is The Inevitable Outcome Of God’s Continuous Speech. It Is The
Infallible Declaration Of His Mind For Us, Put Into Our Familiar Human Words. I
Think A New World Will Arise Out Of The Religious Mists When We Approach Our
Bible With The Idea That It Is Not Only A Book Which Was Once Spoken, But It Is
Also A Book Which Is Now Speaking. The Prophets Habitually Said, Thus Saith The
Lord. They Meant Their Hearers To Understand That God’s Speaking Is In The
Continuous Present.
We May Use The Past Tense Properly To Indicate That At A
Certain Time A Certain Word Of God Was Spoken, But A Word Of God Once Spoken
Continues To Be Spoken, As A Child Once Born Continues To Be Alive, Or A World
Once Created Continues To Exist. And Those Are but Imperfect Illustrations, For
Children Die And Worlds Burn Out, But The Word Of Our God Endureth Forever.
If
You Would Follow on To Know the Lord, Come at Once To The Open Bible, Expecting
It To Speak To You. Do Not Come with The Notion That It Is A Thing Which You
May Push Around at Your Convenience. It Is More Than A Thing; It Is A Voice, A
Word, The Very Word Of The Living God.
Prayer
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