"Thy Word Is Truth"

by J. Miller | Category: Thy Word Is Truth | Sept 1956

Thus God began His six days' work by bringing light into that scene of darkness, for He ever works in the light and in the day, but the devil works in the night and in the darkness, as the parable says, "while men slept "(Matthew 13.25). Day by day God wrought until finally He reached the climax of His work in the creation of man (Adam) male and female. Man was the last and greatest of all His works, a creature created in the image and likeness of God as nothing else had been. He formed him, as to his body, out of the dust of the ground. Formed means to mould as a potter moulds a vessel of clay. Into man's nostrils God breathed the breath of life and man became a living soul; a being was created who had never existed before; man was an entirely new species of creature. Man is of spirit, soul and body subsisting (1 Thessalonians 5. 28). One has aptly said, that the human spirit is in the man (1 Corinthians 2.11), and the body is on the man. The body is man's earthly tabernacle, flimsy, fragile, and easily dissolved (2 Corinthians 5.1). The soul is the man. The soul has two sides, an upward and a downward. The upward reaches up to God by man's spirit when man is quickened and enlightened by God's Spirit. In unregenerated man, man is dead to God and all things spiritual because of his sins and trespasses (Ephesians 2.1, 5). The downward reaches down to the earth and to natural things through the five senses of the body, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching. The soul of man, which is the man himself, has two needs of subsistence, as the Lord emphasized when He was tempted of the devil by quoting the words of Moses, "Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4.4; Deuteronomy 8.8). Many, alas, think only of the needs of the soul as to bodily needs, what they shall eat and drink, and they forget the higher need of the soul in the spoken word of God in the Holy Scriptures. These two forms of human need are seen in the Garden of Eden. Of every tree of the garden man could freely eat, except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to supply man's spiritual need the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day (Genesis 2.16, 17; 3.8). Alas, as it was with man when he sinned, he and his wife turned their backs on God and fled from His presence, having no desire to hear His word, sin having changed the whole attitude of his soul to God; so it is still, man hastens to flee from God's presence and is deaf to His entreaties of love and grace. This condition continues until in the mystery of the working of God's Spirit within, the human soul opens the door to the entrance of the word of God and the Son of God. Blessed indeed is the change, the reconciliation, that is wrought by the death of God's Son: "For if, while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life" (Romans 5.10), that is, His life in resurrection.

There is one supreme consideration, which rises as a mountain towering over all others, and that is, Where does the Man Christ Jesus come in in this theory of evolution? Most, if not all, questions which affect things moral and spiritual are settled finally in the Person of Christ. We have seen that the Lord in Matthew 19 quoted from Genesis chapters 1 and 2 when settling the matter of divorce, and that He regarded what is said there as the word of God and therefore decisive on the subject of marriage.

He also said to the Jews regarding Moses, that great man by whom God gave the law, contained in the first five books of the Bible, "There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?" (John 5.45, 46). We would ask the Evolutionists and the so-called Modernists, How are you going to get round the words of Christ as here given? How are you going to die believers in Christ if you disbelieve the writings of Moses? Christ puts it to you as well as to the Jews, "If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?" How? How? If Moses and Christ are not believed, What then ? Hear again the decisive words of Christ, "Except ye believe that I am He, ye shall die in your sins," and if this should happen to anyone, then those other words will also be true, "I go away, and ye shall seek Me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come" (John 8.21-24).

We ask again, Where does the Man Christ Jesus come m in evolution? Is He just to be regarded as a cultivated ape like the rest of us? If we follow evolutionist theories it must be so. He was perhaps, according to the ideas of certain, a little more spiritual, a little more moral, a little more cultivated, a little more powerful. We say to the. evolutionist, take care as to where your thoughts will lead you. Take care lest you commit that sin against the Holy Spirit which has neither forgiveness in this world nor in that which is to come (Matthew 12.31, 32), lest you attribute the work of the Holy Spirit, by whose power Jesus Christ was born (Luke 1.84, 85), and by whom He was anointed and went about doing good (Acts 10 88; Luke 4. 18, 19), to some other cause.

Let us ask the question, Was the Man Christ Jesus just One who was evolved from the beast (Do I hear the true believer in Christ

saying, Blasphemy?) or were the words which Moses and others wrote of Him true? Can we believe the Spirit-given words of Paul the apostle who says that he was "separated unto the gospel of God, which He promised afore by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who is declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord"? (Romans 1.1-4).

A person of ordinary intelligence can see how completely the facts of the Old Testament are woven into the fabric of the New. There are quotations, references, Old Testament ideas and language everywhere, all bearing witness to the fact that the Lord and the writers of the New Testament believed absolutely in the divine Authorship and character of the Old Testament. It is impossible to believe the Bible in the New Testament without believing the Old Testament, and those that fear and believe God cannot possibly accept the theories of evolution. There is no middle path between believing the whole Bible to be God's word and not believing it. It cannot be accepted in part. Men are not allowed by God to add to or take from the Word of God. See Deuteronomy 4.2; 12.82; Revelation 22.18, 19.

J. Miller | Sept 1956
Thy Word Is Truth