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Selected Messages Book 1
The most difficult and humiliating lesson that man has to learn is
his own inefficiency in depending upon human wisdom, and the sure
failure of his own efforts to read nature correctly. Sin has obscured
his vision, and of himself he cannot interpret nature without placing it
above God. He cannot discern in it God, or Jesus Christ, whom He has
sent. He is in the same position as were the Athenians, who erected
their altars for the worship of nature. Standing in the midst of Mars’
Hill, Paul presented before the people of Athens the majesty of the
living God in contrast with their idolatrous worship.
“Ye men of Athens,” he said, “I perceive that in all things ye are
too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I
found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God
that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of
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heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is
worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing
he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one
blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and
hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their
habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel
after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for
in him we live, and move, and have our beings; as certain also of your
own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as
we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead
is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device”
(
Acts 17:22-29
).
Nature Is Not God
Those who have a true knowledge of God will not become so
infatuated with the laws of matter or the operations of nature as to
overlook, or refuse to acknowledge, the continual working of God in
nature. Nature is not God, nor was it ever God. The voice of nature
testifies of God, but nature is not God. As His created work, it simply
bears a testimony to God’s power. Deity is the author of nature. The
natural world has, in itself, no power but that which God supplies.
There is a personal God, the Father; there is a personal Christ, the
Son. And “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake