A Big Book With A Big Theme

“But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in that law doth he meditate day and night.”—Psalm 1:2

“Follow your enthusiasms,” was the advice an old artist gave to a young one. The young artist loved to paint his dreams and the old man knew it. The old man knew that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” He liked painting with warm red blood pumping in it. So many are learning rules these days, but good as rules are, there comes a time in life’s productions when rules are buried in a sweep of fire that accomplishes the lasting things. Just as the little boy who used to sit counting out the time in his music lesson today sweeps the keys seemingly lawless in his passion of producing the things that have swept over his own soul. The rules are good. The law is good, but a burst of love, a vision, while it does damage to no law, sweeps on out with life’s sea a million measures beyond law. Many study the laws of God. They study the Bible, but praise God for those souls who in an abiding glow of the Spirit’s fire are swept out into the realization of the very truth about which others only study. Only such souls can say my “delight is in the law of the Lord.” There is a place of real delight in reading the Bible.

Flying

Flying above the tops of houses, looking down upon the valleys and the farm houses is a delight to the aviator. Flying over the past, looking into the present with real understanding, gazing out upon the future is the delight of the soul who loves the Bible and has found his way into its treasures. The Bible is so much larger than those who have never traveled in it think it is. The Bible is to most folks what the world is to the man of the backwoods. “I’ve hearin tell,” he says; and remains his life long in the corner of the county in which he was born. Talk to the average Christian even about the glories, the wonders and the visions of the Bible, and his “rube” answer is “I’ve hearin tell!” How far the average Christian life comes from being able to say my “delight is in the law of the Lord.”

Yes, it is a very large revelation and you can afford to ask the Spirit to lead you into its valleys and upon its mountains and through its forests, until your soul is filled with visions and wonders and all the glories that truth can bring to the soul that wants to know the truth. Surely there is no free, hilarious soul like the soul whom the truth makes free.

The Church

This book is the only book which contains the truth about the Church in its past, present and future.

It tells and it only of how the Church started. It alone shows that it is not a man organization, but a unity of human beings who have been born again and united to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He says to those who are members of what the Bible calls the Church: “I am the vine, ye are the branches; he that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.” We see then that the real church is the one made up of the folks who abide in Him as a branch abides in a vine.

Hear it explained again so wonderfully as you wander further into the Bible, and come to Ephesians 1:19–23, “And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”

The Present Church

Yes, this book alone tells the origin of the Church, the past of the Church, the present of the Church and the future of the Church. The present of the Church now or at any time since its start can be found in picture form in the Revelation. Can you see the resemblance between the Church and formality and man made churches of our day and the picture as follows from Revelation 3:15–18. “I know thy works that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art luke warm and neither cold nor hot. I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing; and knoweth not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see.” This is a picture of an organization which professes to be branches abiding in Him, but really are abiding in their own organization and boasting themselves in it because it is rich and doing great business from man’s standpoint. It is a picture of present Church conditions.

The Church Future

Then the future of the Church: the body of Christ is told only in this book. This Church is to be caught up to meet Him in the air and that is the next future event to which the members of His body are looking. They are waiting for Him, who is their life. “For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–18).

“And they sang a new song, saying, thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people and nation; and hast made us unto our God, kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9–10).

If you want more details of the past, present and future of the Church, this book can give them to you. It is all in this book, yet the Church is not the theme of this book.

Creation

The truth about the past, present and future of creation is in this book.

How men would have floundered and guessed and never come to any focus of ideas about creation if God had not revealed it in this book. All man’s present theories are efforts of contradicting the revelation in this book and yet not one fact in science today in any way contradicts or shakes this book’s revelation. Some light thinkers laugh at the Garden of Eden story and laugh because Moses, so far removed from the scene, wrote it. In the first place God moved upon men like Moses and they wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. But Moses, even if he had not been inspired, could have written a good account of the Garden of Eden as easily as any writer today could write out with perfect truth all that I told his mother concerning what my father told me about the acts and doings of my father’s father. That wouldn’t be passing through too many hands to get the truth.

A Short Circuit

Adam could have talked about the Garden of Eden and creation to Noah’s father, Lamech, for 171 years before he (Adam) died. Lamech didn’t die himself until five years before the flood, and Noah could run the creation and Eden story over in his mind for 600 years before the flood came. After the flood Noah could have talked to Abraham about what Adam told his father, and he could have discussed it plenty for Abraham was 55 years old when Noah died. Abraham could have told Jacob all that Noah told him and Jacob could have told Moses’ mother. But God had a shorter way and a better way than that and that was to tell direct the man Moses, who came into Mt. Sinai with Him. Yes to tell Moses, who walked with God and led the people. This book only holds the truth of the past of creation. After the statement of fact, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” this book proceeds to tell you that this old Earth hung up in God’s sky with darkness all over, curse all over it. Water all over it, curse all over it. All that had been on it was rolled together like a mud ball and covered with water and darkness. It “was without form and void,” more signs of curse.

Cursed

The animals that were on it previous to this awful cursing we find buried in the earth in fossil form and vegetation in the same form, but the kind of beings that had forms and walked upon it, we do not find in fossil form. There was great insubordination somewhere, and sin in the beings who were at its head or the curse would have never come. We are told in this book of God that “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6). They may have had form and walked the created world until this insubordination, but cursed it was and then God said, “Let there be light.” What ages cover that cursed period scientists can figure to suit themselves to the world’s age up to the curse from its creation. This book states the facts, the truth. Let men speculate about all the details as they choose. Creation past is written in this book.

Creation’s Present and Future

Creation’s present condition, cursed again and waiting for the curse to be taken off, is stated only in this book. Here in this book is the only explanation of a world where perfection and imperfection progress and destruction contradict each other. It alone speaks light to all this darkness. “For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God for the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subject the same in hope because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:19–21). The present cursed condition of the world is because of sin and when men the sinners are redeemed, the Earth also will be redeemed and the contradictions and curses shall be no more. This coming of man’s redemption holds the vision of the future of creation as stated in this book. Here is creation’s future, “and I saw a new heaven, and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1).

Yes, the past, present and future of creation are recorded in this book, yet creation is not the theme of this book.

The Jew

The Jew—his origin, his past—is in this book. How wonderful to see God calling out Abraham after world movements on men had failed and through Abraham planning a people for Himself who would be a light to the nations because God was with them. This people were brought forth to receive the covenants of God and the promises of God and the program of God and pass it on to all nations.

God gave them the message of the living God; they rejected the light which God had for the world in His Son. They were scattered. They will yet preach Him to the ends of the earth. The past, present and future of the Jews is given in perfect picture in the book of Jonah. Let Jonah represent the Jewish race. God calls him and gives him His message. He turns God down and goes to sea and was swallowed by the great fish. Now the miracle is not that the fish could swallow Jonah, but that Jonah could stay alive in the belly of the fish. This is the present miracle of the Christ rejecting Jewish race, not that they are scattered only but that horribly persecuted and swallowed up as they are by other nations they have never lost their identity. Like cork in water, they float above all that governments have done to them. Hated, beaten, cast aside, they still remain hearty and determined and vital leaders in enemy nations. This part of Jonah’s life, the miracle of remaining alive with the digestive organs working around him, is the Bible picture of the present state of the Jews.

Cast Up

The fish threw Jonah up. The world will yet give up the Jew into his own land, and as Joseph revealed himself to his brethren, so Christ is to reveal Himself to the Jews. “And the Lord shall inherit Judah his portion in the holy land and shall choose Jerusalem again. Be silent, O all flesh before the Lord! For He is raised up out of His Holy Habitation” (Zechariah 12:10).

Jonah repented and delivered the message. Here is the record of the Jews’ future repentance. Jonah went and preached and people repented. The whole city came to God. When the Jews preach the Gospel the whole world will come to Jesus, who will be at that time sitting as King of kings and Lord of lords at Jerusalem.

The future of the Jews is in this book. They shall be the future preachers, restored, and greatly blessed. “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts. In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirts of him that is a Jew, saying, we will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you” (Zechariah 8:23).

The past, present, and future of the Jewish race is in this book, yet the Jew is not the theme of the book.

Humanity

Humanity, past, present, and future is in this book.

Evolution comes sailing along as those who love to push it think, but it reaches its height and it cannot jump from the last step of the theory (for it is only a proposed theory) of evolution to the lowest kind of man, the jump is impossible. It is not a missing link; it is an unbridged chasm. Man has no explanation of the origin of man. This book has the only explanation. It records his past. Man’s theories of the origin of man are only human guns designed for attempts at blowing away God’s revelation of his origin.

Man’s present condition can be only explained by God’s revelation and God’s book says that sin has found its wages in death and that all the separation from the body in death, the separation from the perfect environment in Eden and the separation from God in blindness and insubordination. This book reveals sin in men’s hearts and says all these vile things that hate and envy and revenge and jealousy, and murder, and cheating, and lying can do come out of the human heart. This book tells the truth about humanity’s present condition “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

Only Hope

This book holds the only hope for this wicked heart. This book tells of the blood of Jesus, the lamb of God, who takes it away. This book that gives the cause of death gives man’s future through Jesus Christ in a cure of death. This book states man’s future in glory and power and life through the death and resurrection of Jesus or an everlasting hell for sinners.

This book states the past, present and future of the human race. Yet the human race is not the theme of this book. The theme of this book is Jesus Christ, the revelation of God.

Creation, past, present and future is in His hands. “All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

Christ All In All

Creation will never be redeemed until He comes to Earth to reign and this book promises His soon return with power and glory.

Since the Church is His body, all she is is in Him, all she will be is in Him. All she is is because He shed His blood to redeem her. 

All the past, present and future of the Jew is because of Him. The Jews will never be restored until He comes. He is King of the Jews and King of kings. He is the theme of this book. Humanity’s only hope is Jesus. Men will either take Him as Saviour or they will some day have to stand before Him. He will be judge. All judgment is given unto Him. The past, present and future of the devil is in this book. But the theme of this book is to utterly destroy him and his followers.

Every enemy is to be put under His feet.

He, the mighty conqueror of sin, Satan, self, and death, the glorious Saviour and coming King is the theme of this book.

This is my story;
This is my song;
Praising my Saviour
All the day long.

Glory to Jesus. Wonderful Saviour.