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The Desire of Ages
I go ye know, and the way ye know.” For your sake I came into the
world. I am working in your behalf. When I go away, I shall still work
earnestly for you. I came into the world to reveal Myself to you, that
you might believe. I go to the Father to co-operate with Him in your
behalf. The object of Christ’s departure was the opposite of what the
disciples feared. It did not mean a final separation. He was going to
prepare a place for them, that He might come again, and receive them
unto Himself. While He was building mansions for them, they were to
build characters after the divine similitude.
Still the disciples were perplexed. Thomas, always troubled by
doubts, said, “Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can
we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and
the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me. If ye had known
Me, ye should have known My Father also: and from henceforth ye
know Him, and have seen Him.”
There are not many ways to heaven. Each one may not choose
his own way. Christ says, “I am the way: ... no man cometh unto the
Father, but by Me.” Since the first gospel sermon was preached, when
in Eden it was declared that the seed of the woman should bruise the
serpent’s head, Christ had been uplifted as the way, the truth, and the
life. He was the way when Adam lived, when Abel presented to God
the blood of the slain lamb, representing the blood of the Redeemer.
Christ was the way by which patriarchs and prophets were saved. He
is the way by which alone we can have access to God.
“If ye had known Me,” Christ said, “ye should have known My
Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.”
But not yet did the disciples understand. “Lord, show us the Father,”
exclaimed Philip, “and it sufficeth us.”
Amazed at his dullness of comprehension, Christ asked with pained
surprise, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not
known Me, Philip?” Is it possible that you do not see the Father in the
works He does through Me? Do you not believe that I came to testify
of the Father? “How sayest thou then, Show us the Father?” “He that
hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” Christ had not ceased to be God
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when He became man. Though He had humbled Himself to humanity,
the Godhead was still His own. Christ alone could represent the Father
to humanity, and this representation the disciples had been privileged
to behold for over three years.