Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Jan 1961

We are told that "God created man in His own image" (Genesis 1. 27). This cannot be a material image, for God is not matter but Spirit (John 4 24) though man's physical form and gait are indications of man's greatness over all other earthly creatures. In the beginning he was given dominion over all creatures en earth. Elihu said in speaking to Job,

But none saith, Where is God my Maker,

Who giveth songs in the night;

Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth,

And maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?"

(Job 35.10,11).

Man's mental powers, even in his sinful and fallen state, place him in a class by himself amongst all God's earthly creatures. The weird ravings of evolution, which class man as having a common origin with the apes, are illogical and untrue and contrary to the revelation of Holy Scripture. Man's powers of thought and reflection are unique, and in this there is confirmation of the fact stated at the beginning of what we are saying, that man was made in the image of God

Often it says in Scripture that God remembered "God remembered Noah', (Genesis 8.1). "God remembered Abraham" (Genesis 19. 29) "God remembered His covenant" (Exodus 2.24). There are many instances of God remembering man in various ways. The same is true of man's memory. Some things men remembered, and some they were accused by God of not remembering. The fathers of Israel were to instruct the generation to come, "that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God". Later it says, that "they sinned still and believed not in His wondrous works". Then it says,

"When He slew them, then they inquired after Him:

And they returned and sought God early.

And they remembered that God was their Rock,

And the Most High God their Redeemer."

Yet again it says,

"They remembered not His hand,

Nor the day when He redeemed them from the adversary" (Psalm 78).

Thus it has been with man; his memory is fickle and short lived Forgetfulness of God and His works and mercies are characteristic of him He is willingly forgetful. And if God were as forgetful of man's needs as man is of God, what a pitiful plight man would be in! But God, having set His love upon man, cannot forget him for one cannot forget one whom one loves. Love will not allow forgetfulness. The heart returns, like the pointer of the compass to the magnetic north to the object of its love. The root of man's forgetfulness of God is in the fact that man does not love God naturally. Indeed he hates God and only by the manifestation of the love of God for man shown in Christ will man's heart and affections be corrected, even as Paul writes," While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son" (Romans 5.10). How truly and fully this was exemplified in Paul himself! Once he was a hater of the name of Jesus of Nazareth and His disciples, and also a hater of God, though he thought that in his Jewish zeal and patriotism he was actually rendering service to God. But the great and blessed change came for Paul, and after his conversion few men, if any, loved God more than did Paul.

Moses said to Israel on the plains of Moab, as they were about to cross the Jordan and enter the land of promise, though he himself was not then to enter it as their leader,

"Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness" (Deuteronomy 8.2).

And Peter too, as he drew near to the end of his earthly pilgrimage, wrote to the sojourners of the Dispersion, calling upon them to remember what lie and others had taught them. Please see 2 Peter 1. 12-21; 3.1, 2.

Memory is one of God's gifts to men, indeed one of His great gifts, for without it man could not answer to God for what he had done. Memory will involve some men in great blessedness, and with others it will be a great misery. In the case of the redeemed it will supply them with a source of endless joy, as they reflect on the richness of that grace of God to them in the wonders of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, which they had known on earth. But in the case of the lost of the human race it will be a cause of continual wretchedness as they think of their folly in rejecting the testimony of God to them, whether in the visible things of God's creation or in that greater witness in the gospel of God's grace.

Whilst the human brain, with all the secret operations of the nervous system which centre in that organ, is necessary to thought and reflection in the present state of human existence, it is clear from the words of Abraham to the rich man in hell, that there is memory in man in a disembodied state. See Luke 16.19-81. The bodies of both Abraham and the rich man were buried. Of the former it says, "And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah" (Genesis 25.9), and of the latter we read, "And the rich man also died, and was buried. And in Hades (Hell) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom" (Luke 16.22, 23). Following the request of the rich man for Lazarus to be sent with a drop of water on the tip of his finger to cool his parched tongue, which was refused as being impossible, Abraham said, "Son, (Greek, Child, R.V.M. )remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things: but now here he is comforted, and thou art in anguish" (verse 25). How much saints in a disembodied state know of events connected with those who are in a disembodied state it is quite impossible for us to know, but Abraham knew of the kind of lives the rich man and Lazarus had lived while they lived on earth. He also knew that Moses and the prophets had lived after his time on earth, and that they had written books which were available both for the rich man to have read, and for his five brothers to read.

Abraham stirred up the memory of the rich man by saying that he had had his good things while he lived. "Child, remember," he said. And the rich man remembered that he had five brothers alive on earth, whom he did not wish to come to hell where he was. The facts of man's life on earth are apparently written in man's being, and not simply in man's brain. The functions of the brain and body cease at death, but memory goes on without these, a blessed and solemn fact.

Men evidently wrote books to assist their memory in relation to persons and facts, for as we know from experience the memory of things often becomes dimmed as events, scenes and faces pour into our mind from without. One thing is liable to crowd out another. Thus we read, "This is the book of the generations of Adam (Genesis 5.1). The book here referred to is no doubt the book of Genesis, but it may well be that while Moses wrote inspired Scripture, he wrote from records extant in his time, he being divinely guided to write only what the Holy Spirit willed should be written by him. Luke wrote his Gospel from the matters which had been delivered to the saints by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, and as a historian of those things he traced the course of all things accurately from the first.

It has been suggested that the word" generations "might he rendered "history," for inwrought in the record of Adam's descendants, there are records of different events which took place in the lives of these men, as, for instance, what is said about Enoch walking with God, and the account of the days before the Flood, and the Flood, and what took place afterwards.

The first mention of a book in the Scriptures, after that of Genesis 5.1, is in Exodus 17.14: "And the Loan said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." The manner in which this is stated implies that books and writing were not unknown at the time of the Exodus. Egypt was a land of writing, on Papyrus and Parchment, on Walls and Monuments. Stephen tells us that Moses was "instructe4 in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; and he was mighty in his words and works" (Acts 7.22). Such was the man who was told to write of Amalek's attack upon Israel, and chosen to write the Book of the law, the first five books of the Bible.

J. Miller | Jan 1961
Jottings