1 See S.D.A. Bible Commentary, Volume 1:493 for historical notes on the sequence of the Egyptian kings. It Is there indicated that Thutmose III, 1482-1450 B.C., was the ruler from whom Moses fled. "After Thutmose III, his son Amenhotep II came to the throne (1450-1426 B.C.). He began a reign of calculated frightfulness over his foreign possessions, and fits remarkably well into the role of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. For some reason, unmentioned in non-Biblical records, it was not the crown prince but another son of Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV (1425-1412 B.C.). who followed him on the throne. The disappearance of the crown prince may have been due to the slaying of all first-born sons in the tenth plague of Egypt."

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Thus God did place on Egypt’s throne an exceedingly wicked king by puffing Moses in the court. He could have had a much softer king by not puffing him there.

The principle of God giving two calls to a people but never a third as set out in Matthew 22:14 is clearly revealed in the history of that great nation.

In Joseph’s day, the word of God was obeyed. God’s servant, Joseph, was accorded a position of power and influence second only to the king, a position which he certainly used to establish the worship of the true God. To what extent he was successful we are not told. By the ministry of Joseph the nation was bidden to the spiritual marriage and to some extent they responded. Then followed the usual apostasy. This placed them in need of a call from God which He sent to them as soon as He had the messenger through whom it could be done. In Moses He found His opportunity. By life and word, during the years of his presence in the Egyptian court, Moses conveyed to those in authority, the love and justice of God. But the call was rejected.

There could remain only the second call which was again given through Moses when he returned with the rod that became a serpent. The call began when the rod was cast down, and continued to be sounded as plague after plague fell. But that second call was not heeded. From that day to this, the nation, as such, has never had another call sent to them, nor will they ever again.

Not until the second call had come and been refused, did God separate His people.

The period of servitude spanned several centuries. Why did God wait so long to free His people?

He had no other choice.

Firstly, He could not do it by force for ‘compelling power is found only under Satan’s government."

‘Whereunto,’ asked Christ, ‘shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it?’ Mark 4:30. He could not employ the kingdoms of the world as a similitude. In society He found nothing with which to compare it. Earthly kingdoms rule by the ascendency of physical power; but from Christ’s kingdom every carnal weapon, every instrument of coercion, is banished." Acts of the Apostles, 12.

Secondly, He will not voluntarily withdraw His presence to unleash the deranged forces of nature to break the hold of the oppressor.

All God could do was to take every opportunity to save the Egyptians. He did this when Moses was born. Hopefully, they would repent, but if not, then they would come more speedily to that point where they would force the withdrawal of their canopy of protection.

They themselves would break their own power to hold the people of Israel, thus leaving God with perfect freedom to take His people out. Note how God waited till Pharaoh said, "Rise up, and get you forth from among

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my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said." Exodus 12:31.

The long servitude of the Israelites and God’s refusal to move them out until Pharaoh released them is clear proof that God does not use force and therefore, that the commonly understood views of what God did in Egypt are erroneous.

If God brought Israel out by force, then why did He not do it hundreds of years before? Anyone who is all-powerful can do what, when, and where, he wishes.

But, God is bound by the principles of righteousness to act only within the limitations of law. Therefore, He had to wait until the inevitable out-working of Egypt’s wickedness brought its own harvest of self-destruction and the consequent release of Israel.

This does not mean that God did nothing at all. He was ever there, working to save. Even though He did not get the desired response from the majority, there were those who did find salvation even among the Egyptians, while the rest came more speedily to their ruin.

It is recommended that the student now re-reads the Scriptures quoted at the beginning of this chapter. If the principles outlined in these pages have been grasped, they will be read in a new light altogether. A picture of God will be seen which is consistent with the life and teachings of Christ, thus establishing a perfect harmony between the Old and New Testament revelations of God.

259

In no one place in Scripture does God unfold every aspect of His character. The evidences are given in various places, it being left to the stu­dent of the Word to bring them all together.

So, in one place we are told that there is no unrighteousness—lawbreaking—with God. "What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid." Romans 9:14.

In another, "His law is a transcript of His own character . . ." Christ’s Object Lessons, 315.

Yet again, "God does not stand toward the sinner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression; but He leaves the rejecters of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have sown." The Great Controversy, 36.

In still other places, God is careful to give examples to show how He intends us to understand such expressions as "God destroyed them," "God hardened," "God sent."

The life and all the teachings of Christ perfectly endorse, combine, and amplify these principles.

In the Egyptian episode, the rods and serpents supply us with God’s statement of how He would conduct His affairs. But a clear scientific ex­planation is not provided of how the water turned to blood, how each plague followed, and how the first-born of the land died. It would be of con­siderable help if it were, but such information is not essential to faith.

In the report on the flood, however, it is different. God has given us sufficient evidence in various parts of the Bible to establish the scientific way in which the flood did come. The study of this great cataclysm will be taken up from this angle.

When it is seen what caused the flood and how it came, powerful confirmation will be given to the truth that God does not execute the sinner nor destroy the earth. Far from actually sending the flood, God held it back as long as He could. It finally came because He could no longer prevent it without forcing His presence where it was no longer desired There is no difference between God’s behaviour during the flood and the decimation of Egypt.

Conditions before the flood were radically different from what they have been since. The key to that difference lies in the state of the sun and moon, the former having been seven times as hot as it now is and the latter having been equal to our present sun. This meant that eight times today’s heat and light was being beamed upon the earth before the flood.

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The Scriptural evidence is found in Isaiah 30:26.

"Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."

This is both a prophecy of the future and a description of the past. God is telling what He will do when He will bind up "the breach of His people," and will heal "the stroke of their wound.’ This is restoration, the bringing back of that which was already there. If this involves increasing the sun to seven times its present intensity and the moon to equal the present sun, then this is how it was before "the breach of His people," and the infliction of "the stroke of their wound."

It will be when the Creator makes a new heavens and earth, that this restoration will be achieved. At that time, the sun and moon combined will be transmitting eight times the heat and light now being produced.

Modern man knows the moon as a dead satellite with no light or heat of its own. It is nothing more than a reflector of the sun’s rays. If, in the coming re-creation of the physical heavens and earth when the sun will be increased seven times, the moon was to continue as a reflector, then it would give only seven times today’s brightness. This would not make it equal with the present sun which gives off four four hundred and sixty-five thousand times the light reflected by the full moon.

Verification of this difference in intensity is found in this statement. The sun is about 465,000 times as bright as the moon, with an observational error of about 20%. A real variation in brightness of 20% results from the moon’s varying distance from the earth and sun." The Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. 15:780. 1966 Edition.

Therefore, for the moon to increase in brightness four hundred and sixty-five thousand times while the sun increases but seven times it will have to become a self-luminous body. It will cease to be a reflector and will upgrade to a little sun. Being only two hundred and fifty thousand miles from the earth, it would not need to be as large as the sun in order to transmit as much heat. The intensity of heat and light diminish, not in direct proportion to its distance from the source, but in proportion to the square of the distance. The sun is stationed ninety-three million miles from the earth, a distance almost four hundred times as great as the moon’s position. This makes a very significant difference in the sizes required to generate the same amount of heat on the earth.

With these two orbs of fire jointly serving the new heavens and new earth, a vastly changed condition of things will prevail from what they do now. This would appear so drastic as to cause many to think that the Scripture predicting this has to be understood only figuratively. The words are to be understood literally however, as the following statement verifies.

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"All will be a happy, united family, clothed with the garments of praise and thanksgiving--the robe of Christ's righteousness. All nature, in its surpassing loveliness, will offer to God a tribute of praise and adoration. The world will be bathed in the light of heaven. The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold greater than it is now. The years will move on in gladness. Over the scene the morning stars will sing together, the sons of God will shout for joy, while God and Christ will unite in proclaiming, "There shall be no more sin, neither shall there be any more death." My Life Today, 348. See also Ministry of Healing, 506, and The Review and Herald, November 6,1903.

“All will be a happy, united family, clothed with the garments of praise and thanksgiving--the robe of Christ's righteousness. All nature, in its surpassing loveliness, will offer to God a tribute of praise and adoration. The world will be bathed in the light of heaven. The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold greater than it is now. The years will move on in gladness. Over the scene the morning stars will sing together, the sons of God will shout for joy, while God and Christ will unite in proclaiming, "There shall be no more sin, neither shall there be any more death." My Life Today, 348. See also Ministry of Healing, 506, and The Review and Herald, November 6,1903.

The reason for querying whether this statement can be literally ac­cepted, is on the expectation that eight times more heat would be unen­durable. On an uncomfortably hot summer’s day the temperature will register 120 ^o F., or 48.88 ^o C. This is about as much heat as can be suf­fered, but let the temperature be increased by a mere fifty percent to become 180 ^o F., or 73.3 ^o C., and it would be impossible to survive. What hope then would anyone have if the temperature rose by eight times to 960 ^o F., or 586.56 ^o C? This is above the melting point of lead, 621.32 ^o F., or 327.4 ^o C., and almost the melting point of aluminium, 1220.4 ^o F., or 660.2 ^o C.

The human body is composed of almost 75% water which boils at 212 ^o F., or 100 ^o C. Long before 960 ^o F,, or 586.56 ^o C., is reached, human beings would have boiled to death in their own juices, and plant life would likewise have been destroyed. The earth would have become a hell rather than a home.

While this overheating is what we would expect, a perfect climate would, in fact, result, being achieved by the development of a state of equilibrium between the heat from those fiery giants and the suspension in the atmosphere of a curtain or mantle of water vapour. This protective covering would absorb all but the heat necessary to produce a perfect climate on the entire surface of the earth below.

If God were to recreate the sun and the moon to their original intensities, and then leave the eight-fold heat to elevate the water into the atmosphere again, some time would elapse before the transition was completed. This would be a period of intense discomfiture for the saints. In the first creation, it was not left to the sun and the moon. God lifted the water from the earth’s surface to the upper levels by His creative fiat. As the second creation will be an exact duplication of the first, this is how it will be done again, the only difference being that, whereas the human family did not exist when it was originally done, this time they will be interested spectators.

The conditions existing on this planet before God began to form it into a habitable home, were reproduced during Noah’s time. When the ark rode the stormy seas, the flooding was so complete that no dry land appeared. The record in Genesis 1 shows that it was the same in the beginning.

262 BEHOLD YOUR GOD

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

“And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis1:1,2.

Not one square inch of rock, sand, or soil penetrated the unbroken ex­panse of water. It was not until the third day that the dry land appeared.

“And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

“And the evening and the morning were the third day.” Genesis 1:9, 13.

These verses establish that the entire earth was submerged prior to the third day. What is of great interest now, are the events of the second day Thereon God took a tremendous quantity of water and elevated it above the surface of the earth where it remained in a state of suspension. Some concept of the volume of water thus raised is given by the story of its return to earth to produce Noah’s flood.

“And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” Genesis7:12.

This was no localized storm. It rained over every square inch of the earth’s surface for forty days and nights in an unbroken downpour the like of which has never been repeated.

We do not know how deep the flood was in the early creation days. We are told that even after the Lord had elevated an enormous amount of water, that which remained had to be gathered in one place in order, even then, for the dry land to appear. This would be achieved by reshaping the earth’s surface. Some parts must be heightened, others lowered. The water would then naturally gravitate to the lower areas thus forming seas.

This meant that a great deal of the land was higher than when the entire surface was flooded. Yet when, in Noah’s day, the waters which had been placed high above the earth on the second day of creation, returned to the earth, it was so vast in quantity that it flooded the world again. From these evidences it is established that an enormous volume of water was lifted into suspension on that second day.

“And God said. Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

“And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

“And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” Genesis 1:6-8

The marginal reading for “firmament” is expanse. In due time God called it Heaven. Calling it thus did not designate this expanse as being His central dwelling place, the heaven of heavens. The word, “heaven,” has several applications. There is the heaven where God dwells, the starry

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 heavens, and, finally, the atmospheric area around this earth where birds fly and clouds float. It is this last to which reference is made here.

Thus, in God’s creative organization, He left some water upon the earth, but the remainder, He stationed high above and completely around the world. In between there was an atmospheric heaven. How high that mantle was we do not know. No doubt a scientist could calculate it.

God made reference to it in His conversation with Job when He said, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

“When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it....” Job 38:4. 9.

Thus a deep, protective, insulating mantle of water vapour cocooned the earth, just as cloud partially and periodically does today. The height and thickness of this was precisely calculated by the Creator to produce the perfect climate upon earth.

Having positioned the water vapour, the Lord then commissioned the sun and moon to hold it there, as well as to give light to the earth,

“And God said. Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

“And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

“And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.

“And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

“And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

“And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” Genesis 1:14-19.

The sun and moon were not established in their appointed orbits to give only light to the earth. The Scripture clearly testifies that they were to “. . .give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.”

The purpose of giving light to the earth is easily understood, but more study needs to be given to the meaning of the phrase, “to rule over the day and over the night.” “To rule,” is to govern, to exercise a controlling in­fluence of some nature or the other. In the light of Scripture evidences revealing the physical conditions existing at the time of creation, something of the nature of this rulership becomes apparent.

The sun and moon shared a responsibility beyond that of lighting the earth. An enormous amount of water had been elevated above the globe where it rode in suspension to form a complete mantle. To hold it there required a considerable supply of heat without which the pull of gravity would draw it down again. The sun and moon were placed in command of this

 THE FLOOD 265

situation. They were to rule over the moisture mantle, wrapped like swaddling clothes around the planet, preventing it from returning to the surface again and causing complete flooding. In order to have sufficient heat energy to accomplish this important task, the moon had to be as hot as the sun now is and the sun seven times moreso.

The arrangement was a masterpiece of balanced technology. The amount of heat produced from the two suns was calculated to keep just the correct volume of water vapour at the optimum altitude. The percentage of heat energy absorbed in this process left sufficient over to filter through, providing the needed heat to warm the earth and the dwellers thereon.

But, effective as the water mantle was in absorbing the greater part of the sun’s energy, and thus protecting the world below from its searing blast, God’s purpose for it did not end there. It served to conserve, distribute and equalize the warmth reaching the surface.

The sun’s rays do not heat the air as they pass through it. They heat the earth and the sea. The air coming in contact with these surfaces absorbs the energy and is warmed in turn. Thus the atmosphere directly in contact with land and sea is the warmest, while the further removed it is by altitude, the colder it becomes for the simple reason that it has no contact with sources which will transmit heat to it.

What heat does reach levels above the earth arrives there by the pro­cess of convection. Hot air rises while cold air sinks. As the air nearest the earth is warmed it begins to rise through the colder areas above. In so do­ing, it gives up its heat to the surrounding air, until, by the time it reaches a certain altitude (depending on its original temperature), it will be totally deprived of the energy with which it began.

If there is no cloud cover, there is no restriction on the levels to which the convecting air will ascend, so that the heat gathered by the earth from the sun will be lost out in space. The earth warms fairly quickly and also loses its stored heat quite rapidly. So as the sun sets, the earth and the air above it, quickly cools, especially if the night is clear. This is why clear, still, winter nights are cold and crisp while cloudy ones tend to be warmer.

Conversely, cloudy days are cooler, while the clear days are hotter especially if the weather is at full summer intensity. How often the sweating outdoor worker welcomes with relief the overclouding of the sun on a blistering day.

Whereas in these times, the cloud cover is never completely around this globe, it was in the original design. This resulted in there never being a loss of the accumulated warmth near the earth’s surface. There was a limit to the rise of the convection currents which obliged them to flow upwards and then outwards, generating breezes and gentle winds which evenly distributed the warmth from pole to pole. Thus there was a relatively uniform climate all over the planet, devoid of sweltering tropical regions and frozen polar zones. No more perfect conditions could be imagined.

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In effect, the earth was located within a giant green house, with the temperature inside being maintained at the best possible comfort level for man, animals, and plants. With no adjacent areas of great temperature differences there was nothing to generate storms, low and high pressure systems or any form of violent weather. Instead, there was a climatic pattern of perfect stability and reliability. Anyone could be a suc­cessful weather prophet in those days, with conditions so regular, con­sistent, and delightful.

There are no detailed eyewitness accounts of the antediluvian world, for understandably, any eyewitness testimonies other than those saved in the ark were destroyed with the witnesses themselves. Neither does the Bible provide detailed descrip­tions. Nevertheless, the Lord has not left us without evidences concerning that era as Alfred M. Rehwinkel has observed in his book, The Flood.

“Nor is it mere speculation to, speak of the first world as a ‘veritable paradise.’ For though there are but meager written records concerning this first world, there is another kind of record which God has preserved for us in His wisdom. This record is reliable and true and is written in large and legible letters in the very foundation rocks of our present world. The record I refer to are the fossil remains that have been found in great abundance in every part of the globe. These fossils may be called the mummified remains of an extinct world. Fossils do not lie. Just as the pyramids of and the monuments of Greece and Rome are an evidence of the greatness of the civilization that produced them, so these fossils speak an eloquent language of the glories of a world which has passed away. These fossils have been preserved by God for a purpose. They are, as it were, the inscription on a tombstone erected to that magnificent world and at the same time a warn­ing to the world which was to follow. The fossils have stimulated the imagination of men ever since the early Greeks. The early church fathers were familiar with them. Tertullian mentions them and gives a fairly correct interpretation of them. Luther also knew of them and understood their

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meaning. Others since then have had very fantastic ideas about them, but to us their language is clear. A more detailed discussion of these fossils will follow in a later chapter. Here I merely wish to refer to them as evidence and conclusive proof that the physical condition of the world of Noah, the climate, animals, and plant life, was vastly different from that of our world today.

“With respect to climate, the fossils show that there was a uniformly mild climate in high and in low altitudes of both the northern and the southern hemisphere. That is, there was a perfectly uniform, non-zonal, mild, and springllke climate in every part of the globe. This does not mean that the climate was of necessity the same in all parts of the earth. There were differences, but not the present extremes. Sir Henry H. Howorth, a noted geologist and competent interpreter of these fossils, says: ‘The flora and fauna are virtually the only thermometer with which we can test the climate of any past period. Other evidence is always sophisticated by the fact that we may be attributing to climate what is due to other causes. But the biological evidence is unmistakable; cold-blooded reptiles cannot live in icy water; semitropical plants, or plants whose habit is the temperate zone, cannot ripen their seeds and sow themselves under arctic conditions.’

“Or another outstanding authority, Prof. Alfred R. Wallace says: ‘There. is but one climate known to the ancient fossiI world as revealed by the plants and animal entombed in the rocks, and the climate was a mantle of springlike loveliness which seems to have prevailed continuously over the whole globe. Just how the world could have thus been warmed all over may be a matter of conjecture; that it was so warmed effectively and continuously is a matter of fact. . . .’

“Or Prof. George McCready Price writes: ‘It would be quite useless to go through the whole fossiliferous series in order, for there is not a single system which does not have coral limestone or other evidence of a mild climate way up north, most systems having such rock in the lands which skirt the very pole itself. The limestone and coal beds of the carboniferous period are the nearest known rocks to the North Pole. They crop out all around the polar basis; and from the dip of these beds, they must underlie the polar sea itself. But it is needless to go through the systems one after another. for they ‘uniformly testify’ that a warm climate has in former times prevailed over the whole globe.’ The New Geology, 652.

“It is difficult for us today even to imagine a world as just described, a world in which there was neither arctic nor antarctic and no steaming jungles of the Equator. We know that our present climatic zones and seasons are the results of the changing relations of the earth to the sun, the source of the heat that warms our globe. It is, therefore, quite natural to ask at this point: How could these laws of nature have functioned in that world so as to produce conditions so different from those prevailing today, and what caused the change?

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“That our earth at one time in its history enjoyed a uniformly mild climate in all of its parts is a fact which can be demonstrated, as we have seen, and that a change came suddenly, in fact, very suddenly, and probably at a time of a universal flood, seems to be established beyond a doubt from the frozen mammoths found fully preserved in the flesh in the frozen tundras of northern Siberia, of which we shall hear more later.” The Flood, by Alfred M. Rehwinkel, 6-9.

The witness of the fossils is of great value in the search for information about the antediluvian world. They verify incontrovertibly that there was a uniform climate over the entire planet prior to the cataclysm which pro­duced those fossils. In the frozen north are fossil remains originating from plant and animal forms which now are found only in the temperate regions further south. As these plants and animals are unable to grow in any other than temperate zones, it can only be concluded that those which are now frozen wastes were then beautiful, verdant, temperate climes.

Perhaps the most amazing finds of all are those of the mighty mastodons, which were the elephants of that antediluvian period. These have been discovered deep frozen in the icy wastes of Siberia in perfect condition. The evidence shows that they were overwhelmed by a most sud­den catastrophe, for in the mouths of some, unchewed, were yellow butter-cups likewise perfectly preserved. Such vegetation does not grow in frigid regions, and its presence in the mouths of these great beasts testifies to two things. Firstly, the climate in that part of the world which is now frozen waste, was such as to support the vegetation and provide the animals with a climate in which they could live, and secondly, it proves that they were overwhelmed suddenly and disastrously.

The whole of the Arctic seems to be a vast treasure store of fossil remains. Obviously they are better preserved there than elsewhere because of the extreme cold and because these regions are least disturbed by passing civilizations. “Starting with the islands in the Arctic Ocean along the coast north of Siberia, Howorth says that every one of them contains in its strata abundant animal remains. There is a group of islands off the coast, in the Arctic Ocean, called New Siberia. Concerning one of these, the Island of Lachov, a small island about fifty miles square, Howorth said its soil is almost composed of fossil bones.’ The same is true of another of these islands called Kotelni, which is over a hundred miles long and fifty miles wide. Howorth quotes a visitor to this island named Hedenstrom, who said that so plentifully were elephants buried beneath its surface that, as he walked along on the island for half a mile, he counted ten elephant tusks sticking out of the ground. This general condition existed throughout the whole island. Besides the fossils of elephant, skulls and bones of rhinoceros, horse, bison, ox, and sheep were observed scattered over and imbedded in the earth of the island. Concerning still another island in this group, Howorth quotes Hedenstrom to this effect: ‘In one island is a lake with a high bank, which splits open in the summer when the sun melts the

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ice and discloses heaps of tusks, mammoth bones, bones of rhinoceroses and buffaloes. In other parts of the island bones and tusks are to be seen projecting from the ground.’ “ ibid., 243.

These are the animals which we associate with warm and even hot climates. We know that they would not have lived in the areas where their remains are now to be found if the climate was as it is now—frigid. Therefore at the time when they lived there, which was before the Noachian flood, the climate was mild and warm.

As clearly as the fossil remains from the flood indicate that there was an overall climate of temperate levels before the flood, they are not the only evidences to support this fact. Nor do we wish to turn this into a geological study to prove in great detail that this is so, interesting and enlightening as such a study would be.

However, mention can be made of certain other evidences such as the location of volcanoes. It was not until the flood came and buried the vast amounts of combustible material necessary to produce volcanic activity that they began.

“Before the flood there were immense forests. The trees were many times larger than any trees which we now see. They were of great durabili­ty. They would know nothing of decay for hundreds of years. At the time of the flood these forests were torn up or broken down and buried in the earth. In some places large quantities of these immense trees were thrown together and covered with stones and earth by the commotions of the flood. They have since petrified and become coal, which accounts for the large coal beds which are now found. This coal has produced oil. God causes large quantities of coal and oil to ignite and burn. Rocks are intense­ly heated, limestone is burned, and iron ore melted. Water and fire under the surface of the earth meet. The action of water upon the limestone adds fury to the intense heat, and causes earthquakes, volcanoes and fiery issues.” Spiritual Gifts 3:79.

If the cause of earthquakes is the ignition of vast amounts of combusti­ble material in the form of giant trees buried at the time of the flood, then we must expect to find volcanoes today where such vast amounts of vegetation grew before the flood. If, in the days before the flood, the climate was as it is today, so that the greatest forests are found in the temperate and tropical areas, then it would be largely in these that we would find the active and extinct volcanoes of the present world.

On the other hand, if the world had a fairly equal climate over its whole surface so that these trees grew in profusion on the north and south poles as well as in between, with equal or nearly equal vigour, then we would ex­pect to find volcanoes all over the earth.

This is correct. The entire surface of the earth has had its active volcanoes at one time or the other. The location of each, be it still active, dormant, or extinct, marks the place where huge forests were buried.

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Here is a statement showing the universality of the incidence of volcanoes on this earth. “Probably there is no part of the earth’s surface that has not, at some time in the past, been the site of volcanic activity. Indeed, some regions such as the British Isles that we would hardly think of today as volcanic have formerly experienced violent and long-continued volcanic activity. . . . Even ice-bound Antarctica has its active volcano, Mt. Erebus, on the edge of McMurdo sound.” Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1963 Edition, Volume 23:243A.

The very fact that there is a volcano in Antarctica still active after all these rriilleniums, is proof that a vast quantity of timber was buried there, in order to provide fuel for such an intense, long-lasting fire. This enormous supply of fuel certainly could not have been produced if the climate had always been the frigid one it now is. Here is the clearest proof that at one time the area was under the balmy influence of pleasant temperatures con­ducive to vigorous growth.

 Coal and Oil

 As the statement above indicates, the burial of trees at the time of the flood produced coal which in turn produced oil. Just as the distribution of volcanoes shows where vast forests once grew, so does the location of modern coal and oil fields. These are not confined only to those areas where the climate today is such as would produce mighty forests, but are also to be found in the frigid regions of the earth.

In the past few years. tremendous stores of crude oil have been discovered in the frozen wastes of northern Alaska, from where, despite the forbidding nature of the terrain and the present climate, men are de­termined to bring the oil out to the world. Likewise, there is a vast coal field in Antarctica, where ‘Coal has been found near Mawson and in many places in the Beacon group from Coats Land, the Horlick mountains, Queen Maud range, Beardmore glacier region and northward into Victoria Land.” The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1963 Edition, Volume 2:4.

All these things tell their own story of what was there in the past, leaving no doubt that the overall climate of the earth was such as to produce vast forests which were not restricted to the temperate and tropical zones as we now know them. There are, of course, many more evidences from the world of fossils, coal, oil, volcanoes, and so forth which might be studied in this connection, but we believe that enough has been given here to establish the fact that there was an equalized climate over the entire face of the globe before the flood.

Already, evidence has been advanced to show that the moon was then a heat generator equivalent in power to our present sun. God carefully designed it to fulfil a specific and important role, which in the Scriptures is declared as being to rule the night while the sun ruled the day.

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There certainly have been far-reaching changes since Adam’s time, for not only has the moon been extinguished but it no longer occupies the night sky alone. At times it rides the daylight hours with the sun. Its original ap­pointment was the night while the sun commanded the day. Each was faithful to its appointed sphere so that they never appeared at the same time.

The scientific necessity of this is readily discerned. During the day, the enormous heat energy from the sun kept the canopy of water vapour in place, but as the earth turned away, there would be a cooling of this mantle to the point where flooding rains would mar each night. A lesser light was required to give just enough heat to prevent the excessive cooling of the water vapour, and yet allow sufficient to effect some condensation to ir­rigate the vegetation. The moon, riding the night sky on station opposite the sun, provided exactly what was needed. Each night there was just suffi­cient cooling to produce a ground fog which bathed all the plant life with a gentle dew meeting the moisture requirements for the day.

“. . . for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

“But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.’ Genesis 2:5,6.

No more perfect system could have been devised. There were no pounding, wind-swept rains deluging one area at the expense of another, leaching the soil of its life-giving nutrients and eroding the land into the sea.

There were no severe contrasts of climate ranging from the blistering heat of today’s tropics to the super-cold of the polar regions. Everywhere there was a pleasant balmy climate and atmosphere which was delightful, invigorating, and congenial. Neither were there vast oceans as we have them today. All that water was suspended far above. The earth was almost entirely elevated land with only pleasant rivers and lakes well distributed by the perfect design of a marvellous Creator.

Thus the earth had the capacity for supporting billions upon billions of people without overcrowding and without any want. Some concept of what its potential population would have been can be gained by considering what this earth now supports when so much of it is drowned by oceans, and taken up by deserts, mountain ranges, and frozen regions impossible to in­habit, while the remainder has a very low fertility compared to the earth as it emerged direct from the Creator’s hand.

Any comparison between things as they then were and are now, immediately shows that very great changes have taken  place. The sun has been reduced to one seventh of its brightness and the moon has gone out.

The great water canopv is no longer suspended as a protective veil and in­sulating blanket above and around the earth. The moon and the sun no longer sustain the same relationship to each other.

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The climate has changed. Deserts dominate vast areas; huge, restless oceans occupy the greater part of the globe; great upthrusting mountain chains divide nations, control the weather, and create useless wastelands on their lee side; and the northern and southern caps are frozen. The earth is now watered by leaching rain in place of the gentle mist in Adam’s garden.

When and how did all these changes take place? Were they gradual, occupying centuries or milleniums of time, or were they climactic, happen­ing in a few days or weeks?

God has not left this as a mafter of guesswork. The Scriptures plainly tell when and how it took place.

Certainly the changes did not take place to any significant degree prior to the flood. When Noah announced the coming of a deluge by a global rain storm to last for forty days and nights, the antediluvians scoffed at the idea. It had never rained during the one thousand, six hundred and fifty-six years before the flood came,

“In the days of Noah a double curse was resting upon the earth, in con­sequence of Adam’s transgression and of the murder committed by Cain. Vet this had not greatly changed the face of nature. There were evident tokens of decay, but the earth was still rich and beautiful in the gifts of God’s providence. The hills were crowned with majestic trees supporting the fruit-laden branches of the vine. The vast, garden-like plains were clothed with verdure, and sweet with the fragrance of a thousand flowers. The fruits of the earth were in great variety, and almost without limit. The trees far sur­passed in size, beauty, and perfect proportion, any now to be found; their wood was of fine grain and hard substance, closely resembling stone, and hardly less enduring. Gold, silver, and precious stones existed in abun­dance.” Prytriarchs arid Prophets. 90.

Furthermore, the great, scientific minds of that day could prove mathematically that no rain was possible because of the continued genera­tion of heat by the sun during the day and the moon by night. They also boldly declared, as scientists do today, that the sun would continue its radiation of heat energy for millions of years yet. Like the Pharaoh as yet unborn, they had lost sight of the essential knowledge that nature is not self-acting but requires the continued presence, control, and sustenance of God.

“The world before the flood reasoned that for centuries the laws of nature had been fixed. The recurring seasons had come in their order. Heretofore rain had never fallen; the earth had been watered by a mist or dew. The rivers had never yet passed their boundaries, but had borne their waters safely to the sea. Fixed decrees had kept the waters from overflowing their banks. But these reasoners did not recognize the hand of Him who had stayed the waters, saying. ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.’ Job 38;11.

 THE FLOOD 273

 “As time passed on, with no apparent change in nature, men whose hearts had at times trembled with fear, began to be reassured. They reasoned, as many reason now, that nature is above the God of nature, and that her laws are so firmly established that God Himself could not change them. Reasoning that if the message of Noah were correct, nature would be turned out of her course, they made that message, in the minds of the world, a delusion--a grand deception. They manifested their contempt for the warning of God by doing just as they had done before the warning was given. They continued their festivities and their gluttonous feasts; they ate and drank, planted and builded, laying their plans in reference to advantages they hoped to gain in the future; and they went to greater lengths in wickedness, and in defiant disregard of God's requirements, to testify that they had no fear of the Infinite One. They asserted that if there were any truth in what Noah had said, the men of renown--the wise, the prudent, the great men--would understand the matter.” ibid., 96, 97.

For the first time ever, rain fell, beginning its torrential and incessant downpour seven days after the closing of the door, Thus the change came suddenly. Up to a certain day, it had never rained. With the advent of that day, it rained, not gently and then increasingly, but in an absolute deluge.

The water literally dropped out of the sky. At the same time, mighty underground supplies burst forth out of all control.

But this change could not occur unless firstly, changes had taken place in the sun and moon. There is only one way in which rain can come. Suspended water vapour must cool down to condensation point. Today this takes place when rain clouds drifting in from warmer areas either en­counter a cold air front or are forced to rise to cross a mountain chain, In each case the saturated air is cooled. The water vapour turns to heavier-than-air water droplets and rain is the result.

But there were no great mountain barriers in Noah’s day nor was it possible for travelling saturated air to encounter a cold front, for there were no polar regions to generate them.

There was only one way for the water vapour in suspension above the earth to be chilled and that was for the moon and sun to begin to wane in heat production. This they did. The moon went out altogether and the sun faded to one seventh of its former brightness.

Suddenly, the vast volume of water vapour up there found itself de­prived of seven-eighths of the heat it had been receiving. Rapidly the heat energy was exhausted in the work of keeping the vapour suspended. Chilling followed. Then came condensation. Practically all the water that had been taken from earth to sky by God’s direct power on the second day of creation, was returned through natural causes during those forty days and nights.

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 So great is the power of God that He could speak into position a volume of water which took forty days and nights to return by its own power. The result was that for the second time the earth became corn­p]etely flooded with water. Not a trace of dry land showed anywhere.

The first appearance of rain in Noah’s day is positive proof that it was then that the extinguishing of the moon and the diminishing of the sun took place. Confirmation of this is provided by both Isaiah and Peter. The evidence from Isaiah has already been quoted. Here it is again.

“Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.” Isaiah 30:26.

This text supplies the proof that the sun was reduced in brightness and the moon went out at the time of the flood, for, the promise that the sun and the moon will be restored, will be fulfilled “ . . . in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.”

A healing is the restoring to an original condition. If, in this healing work, the sun and moon are to be brought back to what they were, then it had to be at the making of the breach and the wounding that the sun and moon suffered their reductions. So it is only necessary to determine when the breach was made and the stroke administered, to know when the sun and moon were depleted of their powers.

There is only one point in time when a great stroke was delivered against mankind which produced a terrible breach on human population and that was at the flood. It was not when man sinned, for the punishment did not fall on him at that time due to the instant interposition of Christ. There is a distinction to be seen between committing the sin, and the punishment which comes long after, when the calls to repentance have been persistently rejected.

So great was the stroke and the resulting breach in the human family that total extermination almost resulted. God has promised to restore that which was lost but not those who were lost.

There have been many minor strokes made against sections of people, but none of these compare with the great flood and the damage it caused. The time is coming though, when that will be restored. The sun will come back to seven times its brightness and the moon will become as bright as the sun, thus re-establishing the earth to its pre-flood state.

From the evidences investigated so far, it is confirmed that the dimming of the sun and the extinguishing of the moon were the direct scientific and natural causes of the flood. What caused the sun and moon to lose their powers is a question yet to be determined, but the answer will come as we proceed. Firstly, some consideration must be given to New Testament evidences that great changes did take place at the flood.

In the Old Testament it is Isaiah who provides the information that there was a great change at the time of the flood. In the New Testament it is Peter. In fact the latter writer is even more specific in that he names the flood as the great point of change.

“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walk­ing after their own lusts,

“And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

“Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

“But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” 2 Peter 3:3-7.

In these words, Peter divides history into two periods—antediluvian and post-diluvian. In doing so he uses the expression, “the world that then was,” to indicate the world as it was before the flood and which was destroyed by the flood. When referring to the world after that catastrophe, he speaks of “the heavens and the earth, which are now.

He does not speak only of the earth which is now, as being different from what it was before. He also includes the heavens in the change. The heavens referred to do not mean the starry heavens, nor the heaven of heavens where God dwells, for they have never been touched by sin and thus have never been changed. In actual fact, Peter does not define the particular heavens to which he is referring, but there is no need for any ig­norance of this on our part. The information contained in the other Scrip­tures makes it clear that the heavens which changed at the time of the flood were those governed by the sun and the moon of this solar system.

Before the flood, the sun was seven times brighter and the moon was as bright as the sun. The sun ruled the day and the moon the night. There was a wonderful mantle of protective vapour around the earth and the climate from pole to pole was of pleasant, even temperatures. It never rained but a gentle mist rose each morning to water the earth- Storms, tidal waves, earthquakes, blizzards, hurricanes, and hail storms were completely unknown. That was the heavens and the earth which then were. 

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But how different are the heavens and the earth which now are. The sun is dimmed to one seventh. The moon has gone out. The mantle of pro­tection is not there. Wide diversity of climate covers the earth. Fierce storms, terrible earthquakes, destructive blizzards, pulverizing hailstorms, and a thousand other scourges blast the earth.

These are the great changes of which the wise men of today are ig­norant, and wilfully so. It is not that they do not believe in the flood, for many of them do, but the deluge is seen as if it were no more than the same disasters which occur today on a lesser scale. They see the heavens and the earth before the flood as being essentially the same as the heavens and the earth after the flood. There simply came the time when an abnormally wet season flooded the entire earth. When the flood ended, as all floods do, the earth gradually returned to the same situation as before. This is the thinking of those who do recognize the flood, but fail to acknowledge the real changes which took place there.

We see from a more thorough and careful study of the Scriptures that the changes were much more far-reaching than that. It is needful that their full extent be understood, together with the causes namely, the dimming of the sun and the extinguishing of the moon.

When Noah emerged from the ark, God made a special promise and prophecy to him that there never would be a flood upon the earth again. That promise is repeated again in Isaiah. “Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting.. light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.” Isaiah 60:20.

In what sense are these words to be understood?

Usually we refer to the sun or the moon “going down” when they ap­pear to sink below the western horizon, but this is an erroneous expression, for neither the sun nor the moon go down in relation to the earth. They only appear to. The disappearance of these heavenly bodies behind the western mountains or plains, is caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis so that as the earth turns we are the ones who “go down”—not the sun and moon.

Because of its scientific inaccuracy this understanding of the expression, go down,” as used in the Scripture under consideration, must be highly suspect. That it is not the correct interpretation is made evident by certain facts revealed in the Word of God.

The first creation was perfect and the second will be a reproduction of it. There can be no differences between the second and the first because perfection cannot be improved, any modification being an admission that the first was imperfect and thus required improvement.

In the first creation, there was day and night occasioned by what we term the “going down” of the sun. If the promise of Isaiah 60:20 provided that the sun would never set in the western sky, then there would be no day and night as in the original, perfect creation. In fact, only one side of the 

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earth would ever see the sun while the other would see only the moon, so it is easily seen that this is not the meaning of Isaiah 60:20.

Some may point to the reference in Revelation 22:5, “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever,” and claim this teaches that there will not even be a sun in the new earth, for it will not be needed.

However, we are confident that most will recognize that this Scripture is not describing conditions in the new earth generally but as they will be in the new Jerusalem. Even then it does not say there will be no sun, but only that there will be no need of it for there will be the greater light streaming from the presence of God. So far as the rest of the earth is concerned it will have, as promised in Isaiah 30:26, a blazing sun and a brilliant moon. The earth will still rotate on its axis and each evening the sun will appear to “go down” behind the western horizon as it does today.

Furthermore, why should the Lord make a special promise that the sun would never go down again behind the western horizon each evening, then such an event was no trouble or problem? It is a perfectly normal and desirable occurrence, introducing the blessings of the night. Therefore, if this is all the Lord was offering in that Scripture, it could hardly be regarded as a precious promise.

The promise is made in respect to new earth dwellers who will again be enjoying perfect climatic conditions under the protective and insulating canopy supported by the sun and the moon as they will then be. They will know what happened when the sun went down in intensity and the moon withdrew itself in the days of Noah, To them, the promise that this will not happen again is a very valuable and precious one for by this means they are assured that never again will their beautiful home be flooded to destruction.

The guarantee offered in this Scripture is not merely that it will never happen, but that it will happen “no more.” “Thy sun shall no more go down. If it is to happen no more then must have happened already. The only occasion it could have been, was when the dimming of the sun and the extinguishing of the moon brought the deluge. Therefore, this verse along with Isaiah 30:26 and 2 Peter 3:3-7, is directly referring to the great changes which occurred in both the earth and the heavens when sun went down and the moon withdrew itself.  Consequently, the world “that then was,” was very different from the “heavens and the earth which are now.”

It is the utter failure by modern scientists to understand the full extent of these changes which has led them into erroneous conclusions in all matters of dating extending beyond existing historical records. While the earth is, in fact, not quite six thousand years of age, they date it in the hundreds of millions of years. 

It is the utter failure by modern scientists to understand the full extent of these changes which has led them into erroneous conclusions in all matters of dating extending beyond existing historical records. While the earth is, in fact, not quite six thousand years of age, they date it in the hundreds of millions of years. 

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Great excitement was experienced during the nineteen-forties when the radiocarbon method of dating was developed. Careful testing of the pro­cedure with materials of known age proved its accuracy. Thereupon, the dating of materials of known age proved its accuracy.  Thereupon, the dating of materials of otherwise undetermined age was undertaken and, to the delight of the scientists, the readout agreed with established postulations of the age of the earth and life upon it. Whereas the Biblical record allows for only about six thousand years, they confirmed figures running into millions.

At the time, faithful Bible students were perplexed to some extent by this, for the evolutionists felt that they had a sure upper-hand in the everlasting debate on the age of the earth. There seemed a real possibility that the Bible, after all, could be proved to be in error. Those of us, however, who understood, even back there, the full extent of the changes which did take place at the flood, recognized immediately the defect in their calibrations. The relaying of this information to the perplexed among God’s children quickly set their minds at rest.

“Radiocarbon age dating, developed in the late 1940’s at The Universi­ty of Chicago, is an example of the application of one of the newest sciences (atomic energy) to one of the oldest (archaeology). The technique involves measuring the relative activities of radioactive carbon (C¹⁴) in (l) present-dayj living organic matter and (2) the sample under investigation, and multiplying the logarithm of this ratio by the rate at which the activity of (C¹⁴) decays with time. Careful measurements have shown that the activity of any given preparation of carbon- 14 is reduced by exactly one-half during each interval of 5,568 ±30 years. This value is called the half life of C¹⁴.

“Radiocarbon is produced in nature by an indirect process involving the interaction of cosmic rays from outer space with the nitrogen in the earth’s atmosphere. The competing processes of formation and of decay of C¹⁴ have been going on for so long that the equilibrium has been established, and the world inventory of C¹⁴ is estimated at about 70 metric tons. Radiocarbon therefore has been introduced into the biosphere, and all liv­ing matter contains a small quantity of radiocarbon which averages 15.3 ± 0.1 disintegrations per minute per gram of contained carbon. This activity remains constant throughout the life of the organic matter because of the above-mentioned equilibrium processes.

“However, at death the introduction of radiocarbon into the specimen ceases, while the normal decay of the contained radiocarbon continues ac­cording to the half life mentioned above. Therefore an archaeological specimen (for example, a mummy or a tree) which yields 7.65 disintegra­tions per minute per gram of carbon instead of 15.3 is judged to be 5,568 ± 30 years old. If the material shows only one-fourth of the radiocar­bon content of living matter, the age of the specimen is 11,136 ± 60 years. etc. The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1963 Edition, Volume 18:904, 905. 

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In less scientific terms the above may be re-stated as follows: There is a continual bombardment of this earth by cosmic rays from outer space. These, interacting with the nitrogen in the atmosphere cause all living organisms to absorb radiocarbon 14. This continues until the death of the living thing, be it plant, animal, or human. Thereafter the radiocarbon 14 breaks down at an accurately known rate. To determine how long since death took place, the residual radiocarbon in the specimen is measured. If half the original activity remains then it is known that the age of the subject is very close to 5,568 years.

As mentioned above, when the procedure was tested using samples with ages already established through other means, it always checked out accurately. It was natural to assume then, that it would be equally reliable in testing materials for which there was no definite way of determining age. Coal was an excellent example of this kind of matter.

When samples were tested, there was found to be a complete absence any radiocarbon 14. It was natural to conclude that it had been there in the usual strength in the original living trees, but these had been dead for so long that complete disintegration of the radioactive material had taken place. Knowing that this could happen only over an exceedingly long period of time, they dated the coal as being many hundreds of thousands of years old.

In doing so they did the very thing God, through Peter, foretold they would do. They denied that there had ever been a great change in the heavens and the earth and worked on the assumption that “ . . . all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” 2 Peter 3:4.

Had they understood that the earth was mantled by that protective water vapour, they would have known that before the flood, cosmic rays could never have penetrated into our atmosphere as they do today.  Plants and animals did not absorb any radiocarbon 14 before the flood because the band of moisture filtered the rays out before they ever reached the nitrogen in the earth’s atmosphere. Therefore scientists found no radiocarbon clock in the coal—not because it had all disintegrated, but because it was never there originally. Thus the radiocarbon clock, far from denying the truth of the Bible, actually serves to confirm it.

Had the heavens and the earth been the same before the flood as they are now, with no better protection from cosmic ray penetration, then the trees would have absorbed it as they do today. When buried by the flood, the breakdown would have proceeded and the measuring instruments to­day would have shown the coal to be a little less than five thousand years old. We know how old the coal is without the help of a radiocarbon clock. We have the Word of God and from its utterly reliable source we know that the flood occurred about four thousand, four hundred years ago.

If the scientists were to allow for the great changes made in the heavens and the earth at the flood they would also make allowances for their dating 

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techniques and would not propose such astronomical figures for the age of the earth. It is interesting to note that since the introduction of this system, it has been discovered that the method is by no means as reliable as first thought.

Some may question the effectiveness of the moisture mantle in screening out the cosmic radiation, but the fact is that even the limited presence of moisture and atmosphere around our earth today, is a protection from this problem. When supersonic jets traverse the oceans at altitudes which practically take them out of this earth’s atmosphere, it is necessary to keen a continual watch on solar flares. Should these break out while they are in flight, they must immediately return to a lower altitude top lace atmosphere between themselves and open space so as to obtain protection from this radiation.

This clearly shows how completely the protective mantle before the flood would screen out all these radiations from outer space. Therefore, any fossils of things living before the flood will always give a zero readout so far as radioactive carbon content is concerned. This is proof, not that they are so old that there has been a complete decay of this material, but that it was never there in the first place in order to break down. Its absence con­firms the vastly different conditions existing in the heavens and the earth prior to the deluge.

Thus the Word of God offers us a great deal of information about con­ditions as they were before the flood, the scientific forces which maintained those conditions, and the changes in those forces which produced the flood. This information is of tremendous value in searching out the specific role the Lord played in that fearful stroke of their wound which made such an enormous breach upon the people. It does not seem that the same wealth of scientific information has been offered to us in the Bible, to ex­plain how the plagues of Egypt fell. At least, such has not been found in the Scriptures though it might well be there, only waiting to be revealed to God’s children.

On the other hand, the revelation of the scientific causes of the flood, is a strong confirmation of the truth that God does not execute the sinner, but that the catastronhies which destroy mankind are the outworking of natural forces no longer under God’s control and supervision. While the Lord has not supplied the same detailed information about the scientific basis of the Egyptian plagues, faith is strengthened by the evidences of the flood to know that they had a scientific basis too.

Once these have been established then it is possible to understand just what God did in these situations.

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The Biblical evidences gathered so far, confirm the scientific nature of the flood. The perfect arrangement of balanced heat supply and protective mantle producing a mild and equalized climate over the earth, was critically dependent on the uniform production of heat from the sun and the moon. When that failed, the flood was inevitable.

The question now remaining is why the sun came to be dimmed and the moon extinguished. This problem solved, there will remain no dif­ficulties in connection with God’s character as it was manifested in that catastrophe. If the dimming and the extinguishing of those two bodies was God’s deliberate act performed at a moment dictated by Him, then God certainly was an executioner of the sentence against transgression. He did not leave the rejecters of His mercy to themselves to reap that which they had sown. He was a destroyer. Undeniably, He departed from His stated principles and resorted to measures foreign to Him and His kingdom prior to the entrance of sin.

This is, of course, the view generally adopted, together with its implica­tions which unfortunately, are rarely considered. If men did but contemplate the full import of what they believe, they would heartily reject many errors.

Strengthening the tendency to adopt this position, is the awareness that God has full power to extinguish the moon and dim the sun, easily and instantly. There is no possibility, need, or intention of denying this. God is possessed of infinite power. Just as by commanding and it was done. God placed those blazing orbs in the day and nighttime sky, so He could as readily put them out again. There is no contention over God’s ability to be the executioner. He possessed all the power necessary and much more besides. It required Him only to speak and it would be done, to command and it would be destroyed.

The controversy is over whether He, who was in possession of such power, would use it in this way. Those who have grasped the principles laid down in this book, will understand that while God has the power to do it, He did not, because He is bound by immutable principles of righteousness not to use His might in that way. All such will praise the excellence of character which, equipped with infinite might while pressed under the severest provocation, does not retaliate. That is righteousness at its beautiful best.

The story of the flood is very significant and important to me, for it was this recital, which, twenty-six years ago in 1952, first exercised my mind on the problems of understanding God’s character. Prior to this I had simply 

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accepted the traditional concepts of God’s character without question, but from that time forward they became subject to serious challenge. It happened as follows:

The Sabbath School lessons of that year took the students back to the beginning of the great controversy in heaven. I studied with fascinated interest, the rise of sin in Lucifer, his opposition to God, His government and law, and the divine response to this terrible spirit of rebellion.

From the outset of my study it became increasingly and sharply clear that the struggle was not a contest instituted to prove who was physically stronger, for there could be no doubt of God’s infinite superiority in this field. Neither Lucifer nor any other creature challenged this. Furthermore, had that been the issue then God could have resolved it with one over­whelming demonstration of His almighty power. It would not have been necessary to wait for almost two thousand years and then bring the flood to prove that He was physically stronger than Satan and his hosts.

I came to understand that the contest was over the respective merits of two opposing and irreconcilable systems of government, the one long established by God versus that newly espoused by Satan. God declared that His system was perfect, needed no modifications or improvements, and guaranteed for those who faithfully respected it, the permanence of eternal life, prosperity, and advancement. Satan counter-claimed that the divine order was not all it pretended to be, a point having been reached where it had ended its effective reign. Far from being a system designed for the universal good of all, he charged, it was a master plot formulated for the special exaltation of the Father and the Son. Because of this, he insinuated, an oppressive era was about to be introduced which would increase in severity as eternity dragged on. While he admitted that up till that time con­ditions could not have been better, he declared that the future would cer­tainly reveal the defects in the divine system. He agitated that it was im­perative that every member of the angelic hosts stand up for themselves before they were so circumscribed by bondage that they would be powerless to assert their rights.

Satan’s attack was upon the principles of God’s character and thus His government. The question was whether the established ways of God’s government could emerge impeccably from subjection to the most search­ing test Satan could give it, or whether defects would become evident.

God was confident that it could emerge immaculate and therefore, had no hesitation in submitting it to the ultimate test. Let the devil attack and counter-attack! Let him use all the weapons of force and deception! God knew that His system would come through vindicated and perfect.

So God entered into the great controversy for which this earth and its people became the testing ground, the arena, the theatre. I recognized back there the critical importance of understanding what was under test, what was at stake, and the limitations placed upon God by His own acceptance 

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of this challenge. God did not permit the testing of His system of government to preserve His personal honour and word, for God is not self-centred. He did it for the salvation of the creatures in His universe

I perceived that a clear distinction must be seen between the principles of God’s government itself, and the personal power resident in God by which He could enforce the observance of His ways if He chose to use those methods. When this distinction is seen, it then follows that if God’s principles are under test then they must stand or fall on their own merits. If the Lord should find it necessary to introduce another factor, such as the use of omnipotent power, to settle the controversy, then this would depart from His original committal to leave the principles of righteousness to stand or fall on their own merits. It would also be an admission that they were defective and could not stand by virtue of their own intrinsic qualities. It would give Satan the whole argument, for this action would prove the adversary correct in his charges.

So I emerged from studying the beginnings of the great controversy clearly understanding its legal aspects, what it was all designed to prove, and assured that God had positioned Himself where He could not interpose His omnipotent personal power to ensure that the victory was His. He had not assumed this position for the first time just to meet the issue. Eternally, He had occupied that place, but under the pressure of the test, He re­affirmed this truth with a much more clearly defined statement of His eternal principles and purposes.

My only sources in this study were the inspired writings and I emerged from them thrilled with these discoveries of truth. I had come to see and know God as I had never seen Him before, and I was exceedingly happy with the revelation.

But a few weeks later, the Sabbath School lessons moved on to the flood. Naturally, up till that time, I had held the universally accepted view that the wickedness of man had become so great, the Lord was obliged to step in with His judgmental power and wipe them out as a stern warning of what all others would likewise receive if they pursued a similar course of defiance against God.

Now, however, I found this traditionally-held view in sharp conflict with the principles of God’s position in the great controversy. I was unable to reconcile the newly discovered truths revealing the legal basis of the great controversy with the view I had always unquestioningly held of God’s behaviour at the flood.

On one side I could see clearly that the Father and Son had allowed the conflict to play itself out upon the stage of this earth. They had declared that the victory for the cause of righteousness must and would come by the application of its own power and rightness—not because of the interposition of omnipotent power on God’s part being used to destroy the non­-conforming. 

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But, on the other hand it was clear that as time passed and men began to really multiply upon the face of the earth, things were going from bad to worse for God’s cause. Continually, in increasing numbers, the inhabitants of the earth were joining Satan, while God’s accounting finally showed only eight to His credit. Yet even among them, the loyalty was far from absolute, as demonstrated by Ham’s behaviour after the flood.

There are no records in Holy Writ showing just how many inhabitants the earth then supported, Yet to appreciate the minuteness of the minority in contrast to the majority, one has to consider the likely population of the earth at that time. In his book, The Flood, Alfred Rehwinkel estimates that the population might have been anywhere between two thousand million and twelve thousand million. Of course, it is impossible to gain an exact figure. As one reads this author’s arguments, one realizes that he is being very careful in his assessments. He is a responsible researcher, not a sensa­tion raiser. Therefore, the population could have been well in excess of his estimates.

Today, the population of this earth is given at three billion, eight hun­dred and eighty-eight million and seven hundred and eighty-seven thou­sand, which is approaching four thousand million, or four billion. This is the figure quoted in the Encyclopedia Brittanica 1976 Year Book, page 566. This is twice the minimum figure suggested by Rehwinkel and one third of the maximum figure. These comparisons should give us some idea of the disparity between the forces gone over to Satan’s camp and the very few who remained loyal to God.

Every appearance then, suggested that Satan was about to emerge as the outright winner in the great controversy, that his ways were so superior to the ways of God that everyone on the earth was for them but for the eight. In time these few would either die or join anyway.

As I looked upon the whole problem back there, my thoughts ran along these lines. It was desperately important to God that the situation not be allowed to continue to the point where there was no one left on His side for, essential to the ultimate success of His plan, was the birth of the Redeemer through the righteous line. Should the righteous line be cut off, then God’s plan must fail.

It must fail, not simply because the intention of God to save the human family would be frustrated, but because God would be deprived of the means of removing the cause of the rebellion. That cause as has been demonstrably proved earlier in this book was the misrepresentation of the character of God, firstly in the mind of Lucifer and later to the other creatures.

The only satisfactory and successful way to solve a problem is to remove the cause of it. Once the problem of sin, which is rebellion against the principles of God’s government, entered the universe, all the resources of heaven were devoted to its solution. It is a mistake to limit the solution to 

CONCEPTS REVISED 285 

the cleansing of sin from those who will be saved, while the rest are simply left to their annihilation. The problem will not be solved until the cause has been removed from the mind of every creature who has ever come into existence including all those who will, in the end, be eternally lost.

Inasmuch as the cause of all the trouble is the misrepresentation of God’s character, whilever that misconception remains in the minds of angels and men, the rebellion must continue. Therefore, to end it, that misconception must be corrected. This cannot be done merely by declara­tions on God’s part or by the use of force. There is only one way to ac­complish it. The character of God must be manifested by One Who was equal with God. Only Christ could do the work.

But it was impossible for Him to do it successfully in the perfect environ­ment of heaven, It could be done there to a certain extent but not wholly. There is a very valid reason for this. In heaven, Satan had not developed the fulness of his attack against the character of God. It remained for him to do that on this earth. This imposed on Christ the necessity of coming right to the place where Satan was perpetrating the fulness of his lies against God and there, side by side with the character of Satan, provide the contrasting revelation of God’s character. Only as men and angels were able to see both of them side by side, could the revelation of God and Satan be so fully given that the cause of the struggle could be erased from angelic and human minds.

For Jesus Christ to come into this position, He must be born into the human family. He could and would not force any woman to be His mother. The one through whom He would enter the earthly arena must be absolutely willing to perform this office. We can be assured that no one who was on Satan’s side would undertake such a commission. Satan knew this. Therefore, he realized that one way to secure the victory in the contest was to either win every human being over to his side, or to win all he could and then use them to exterminate the rest.

Satan was terribly afraid that if Christ did appear on the earth, He would be successful in exposing the lies he had levelled against God, with the result that he would be rejected with loathing by all the creatures whose support he so desperately sought. He knew that everything depended on his successfully preventing such a demonstration from being given. Therefore he worked with fanatical and unsleeping zeal to win as many of the human family as possible to his side and to destroy the remainder. Suc­cess in so doing would deprive God of the means whereby Christ could enter the earthly arena of battle.

Victory for Satan would have been assured at any point of time before the first advent of Christ, where he could have destroyed the righteous line. It was vital to his cause that he achieve this, while for God it was equally vital that the righteous line be preserved. Had God lost every follower to the devil, He would have been unable to bring His Son into the world, provide 

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thereby the necessary character demonstration, unmask the deceptions of the devil and thus, by removing the cause of the rebellion, bring it to its end. lnstead His kingdom would remain cursed with an ever widening and deepening scourge of rebellion.

Never did Satan come so close to absolute success in his determinations than just prior to the flood. God saw His forces of loyal followers dwindle down to a mere and doubtful eight while the devil numbered millions as his. It was all too obvious that but a short time would elapse before death and apostasy would win the balance totally in Satan’s favor.

With the future of the entire kingdom of God throughout the infinite reaches of His domains at stake, such a development placed enormous pressure upon God to step in and take direct and decisive action to save the situation from total and eternal disaster. If the traditional view of what God did at the flood is correct, then God succumbed to that pressure.

Back there in 1952, 1 saw a terrible conflict between the popular con­cept that God in personal judgment sent the flood upon the earth, and the truth that God has submitted His principles to stand on their own merits against the mightiest attacks the devil could make upon them. It was im­possible for me to question the veracity of the truth that God and Christ had agreed to this utterly fair and proper contest between their principles and those the devil wished to introduce,

1 realized that if God and Christ had entered into such a plan, and then, sixteen centuries later, when things had moved to the brink of disaster for Them, They had organized the flood, They must have gone into conference and reasoned as follows: “In the beginning We agreed and an­nounced that We would permit the principles of righteousness to be sub­jected to the severest tests the devil could place upon them. We went on record as testifying that those principles are so perfect and complete that they are immortal and cannot be destroyed. We averred that there was no need to introduce super-power weapons to force a conclusion favourable to Us. But things are turning so badly against Us that if We do not step in now with Our infinite power and curb the onrush of Satan and his people, all will be loss to Us and gain to him. Therefore the situation now developed demands that We arise and do something. What shall it be?”

Popular theology asserts that the Lord then stepped in with the flood to thoroughly curb the advancement of Satan’s cause. He wiped out Satan’s forces to the last individual and so savaged the earth that it was never the same again.

If this is what God did, then He made a complete farce of the original statement of willingness to submit the case to fair contest and of His expres­sion of confidence that the principles of righteousness could survive such a test. It would appear that He started out in the hope that they would; viewed with growing dismay the turning of the tide against Him; held out till the last possible moment, and then found Himself obliged to resort to the use of His limitless powers to contain the rebellion within certain limits. 

CONCEPTS REVISED 287 

I thought of a number of people who, year after year, entered the com­petition for the best front garden in town. One man of unusual skill took the prize time after time until he came to think it was his by right. Yet, each year, he put forth the utmost effort to ensure that none outclassed him. The time came when, to his consternation, a new face entered the contest and it became apparent as the months went by, that this newcomer was an excep­tional gardener whose efforts showed every prospect of taking off the first prize.

The usual prize winner became convinced that unless something was done, he certainly would not be the number one man this year and perhaps never would be again. Desperately, he worked harder on his own plot but he was never able to outstrip the new man. He saw at last that he could not win the contest by fair means so he determined to win it otherwise. In the dead of night, he let loose some animals to rampage through the property of the other, with the result that the beautiful garden was destroyed. When the judges came the next day, he received the prize as usual. No one knew, of course, that he was responsible for the devastation of the real prize­winning garden and he was most careful not to reveal this for he knew with what indignation such an action would be viewed.

Furthermore, the revelation to all concerned of what he had done would have turned the judges against him. Not one of them would have awarded him the prize. They would have agreed that the man whose garden had been ravaged was the real prize winner.

Once it is clearly understood that the Lord had agreed to submit the principles of righteousness to any kind of test and declared that they would stand on their own merits without the interposition of arbitrary power, it will likewise be seen that should God at the last moment resort to the use of destructive power to wipe out the efforts of His competitor, then no one will believe in Him. He will be literally giving the case away to Satan

God would give His enemy every just right to charge Him with un­fairness, duplicity and deception. Satan would ask how he could ever fairly demonstrate his claims, when the Lord lets him go until he is on the very brink of success and then, because He is the possessor of omnipotent power, uses that to wipe out all Satan has achieved. Satan could rightfully complain that he never would have any real chance of proving anything. God would have no defence against this argument and it would actually serve to increase the spirit of rebellion in the universe. No fair-minded per­son would stand on God’s side once these issues were clearly understood.

When I came to understand these things, I was thrown into quite a state of perplexity. Fortunately, my faith in the justice and honour of God’s character and the veracity of the Scriptures was such that I was well prepared to hold on till the problem was solved. I believed that the Lord would answer my earnest and honest searching. Frankly I recognized that I was confronted with two contradictory pictures and with equal strength of

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conviction I knew that there was no such thing as a contradiction in the Scriptures but only in our understanding of them.

For a number of days, little else but this problem weighed upon my mind. Every opportunity I had was devoted to studying the Bible and to prayer. I knew that there must be a solution which would fully reconcile what God did at the flood and the eternal principles to which He was committed.

I knew that the standard evaluation of God’s behaviour there could not be reconciled with the new truths I had learned about His character and law. Therefore, I became more and more doubtful of the popular view. I could not accept the idea that God, Who knows all things from the begin­ning, would commit Himself to a position which would later get completely out of hand, forcing Him to introduce methods He had originally declared would never be used. If God did this, He would have to be rated as an im­practical idealist and we need a God superior to that.

When God committed all the resources of heaven to ending the great controversy, He knew already the coming numerical imbalance at the flood. It did not catch Him by surprise and He had made full provision to meet the emergency. Therefore, when He promised the ultimate triumph of truth and predicted Christ’s coming to the earth as an essential part of the plan, He was well aree how narrowly the sheme would come short of failure in Noah’s day. Knowing all this in advance, did not perturb Him in the slightest. He made no provisions for it outside of His eternal principles of truth. He still committed Himself to fair and open contest.

Yet, while the traditional view of God’s conduct at the flood had become suspect, I found at first, no alternative to take its place. Then sud­denly, after several days of intense mental preoccupation, the solution came to my mind. All the things I had learned fell neatly and harmoniously into place and the problem was resolved. From that day to this, no argu­ment raised by anyone has caused me to doubt what I saw that day.

I saw that God had not sent the flood to obliterate Satan’s forces. On the contrary, He had done His very best to keep the flood from coming for as long as He possibly could. When it finally came, it was not because He had sent it, but because He could no longer prevent it.

The key to the problem lay in the application of two principles, The first is that God will never force His presence where it is not desired, and the second is that every power in nature is directly and continually dependent on God’s creative power to  keep it on station fulfilling its appointed task. Therefore in the era leading up to the deluge, the sun and the moon, which were critical factors in the coming of the flood, were dependent on the presence of God’s power to keep them burning at exactly the correct heat level and stationed at the proper distance from the earth. Let the Lord’s hand be removed from the control and direction of those two orbs of fire, and the flood had to follow. 

CONCEPTS REVISED 289 

Under Satan’s determined and relentless influence, men increasingly desired total separation from God. They wanted nothing of His ways or principles. God, knowing the dreadful consequences of such a course, sent message after message pleading with them to correct their drift, but they steadily insisted on His departure. Because He will never force His presence where it is not desired, He had no choice but to depart. In doing so, He gave them what they wanted, the control of the heavens and the earth. The moon, being nearer to the earth, was the first to feel the effect of God’s departure. It went out entirely. The sun, much further away from men and much larger than the moon took longer to diminish completely. Before it could do so, the wicked had perished and suddenly the situation was reversed. Whereas the majority had been against God, now the changed situation placed the majority on His side. They were only eight in number but still the majority.

These, of course, desired the Lord to fill His office and do His work of sustaining the powers of heaven and earth. Thus the returning Spirit of God was able to arrest any further decay in the sun and maintain it at the diminished level. It has remained that way ever since.

With the moon out and the sun at diminished output. there was neither the heat energy to return the water to its proper place nor the energy to maintain it there. Nor was it possible for the surviving remnant to live on a shoreless ocean. The water must be relocated to expose sufficient land to produce food for man and beast. This was accomplished by the violent up-thrusts of land masses forming the great mountain chains and peaks found in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, Rockies, and so on. Additionally, enor­mous quantities of water were held in cold storage at the poles.

Artists’ representations of conditions experienced by the disembarking voyagers, give the impression that the water gently subsided and Noah and his family emerged to a scarred but peaceful earth. This has to be far from true. We have no concept of the titanic convulsions which all but tore this earth apart. There were no great mountain chains between the creation and the cataclysm. The earth was beautifully formed with pleasant, undulating land, low hills, verdant valleys, and slowly moving rivers. Think then, of the energy necessary to open up the almost bottomless ocean depths, and thrust those huge mountain chains into the air as high as twenty-nine thousand feet.

During the flood, unbelievable quantities of organic material were buried in the earth which quickly generated heat, This burst through to the surface in explosions and fiery issues. Volcanoes circled the globe. Most of them are extinct today, but then they belched forth smoke and fire incessantly.

Grim indeed was the view confronting the patriarch, his wife, and children, as they stepped out of their boat. The sky was filled with the pall of 

290 BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

black smoke, the earth heaved and shook as earthquake tremors succeed­ed each other, It must have required some centuries before it settled down again.

But none of these terrible destructions were the work of God. Neither man nor Satan can justly charge God with the damages done. It was not His direct act by which the moon was extinguished and the sun dimmed. He laboured unceasingly to save man from stepping so far out of the ways of righteousness as to compel His retirement from control. If His efforts had been successful, there never would have been a flood. It came, not because God sent it, but because He could not stop it. Those who believe that there are two sides to the character of God—the loving side and “His strange act”—see the flood coming as a result of God’s changing from the former to the latter. The real truth is that the flood proved inevitable, not because God changed His tactics, but because He remained undeviatingly the same. With Him, the use of force has ever been excluded. Therefore, to have prevented the flood once His final appeals had been rejected would have required Him to change to forcing His presence where it was em­phatically not desired. This He could not do thus leaving nothing to pre­vent the onset of disaster.

Satan and men had applied the greatest possible pressure upon God to force Him into changing His ways and introducing the weapons of force in­to His arsenal. But they failed. God had foreseen it from the beginning and simply went composedly on His way as the crisis developed, knowing that His principles would stand the test. They did.

Therefore, there is absolutely no difference between God’s conduct at the flood and His conduct during the falling of the plagues on Egypt. In both cases the rod of power slipped out of His grasp and became a serpent of destruction.

292 BEHOLD YOUR GOD

For there to be another flood of water, the conditions necessary to pro­duce it must exist. Before Noah’s time, they did, but today they no longer do, as the did then. The only way total flooding could reoccur would be for the polar caps to melt, the mountain chains levelled into the ocean depths and, in general, the land masses reduced to about the same elevation. All the water which covered the earth in the first days of creation and which returned to submerge it again, is still here. Therefore, it would cover the earth if it was evenly distributed over the surface again.

Should the Lord withdraw His sustaining presence from the earth, con­vulsions of this magnitude are not impossible. It happened before, to pro­duce the ocean depths and the mountain heights, for neither of these ex­isted between the creation and the flood.

But we are well informed in God’s Word that this is not the direction things will take when His presence is finally and fully withdrawn from the earth. Rather, a flood of fire, not water, will engulf the planet.

These floods, firstly of water and lastly of fire, are not disconnected. The former is the parent of the latter. This relationship should be clearly understood, and it will be the purpose of the evidences and arguments im­mediately following, to certify this.

It is not usual to think of water producing fire, for water is the most com­monly used means of extinguishing a conflagration. However, it is easily proved that the waters of the flood were the direct cause of destructive fires which have burst forth from the earth ever since, and are the means whereby enormous amounts of fuel will be provided to fire that last great holocaust. More than this, it is desired to show that the flood, though itself long since over, Lives on in the form of offspring. Some roam the earth as storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, and tempests, others are confined to a single location such as volcanoes, and still others break forth in ex­pected and unexpected spots as earthquakes and tidal waves. All are devoted to missions of destruction.

The flood marks the time division between original tranquillity and the aberrations of nature. Of every one of these deviations from God’s original scheme of things, the flood is also the parent. These disturbances may be divided into two categories: those found in the earth, and the others in the atmosphere.

The first of these include volcanic eruptions, thermal activities, earth­quakes and tidal waves. In the latter are storms, tempests, hurricanes, bliz­zards, tornadoes, typhoons, floods, and droughts.

Problems arising within the earth were spawned when the flood waters buried vast forests whose timbers were of majestic and durable quality. Under the multiplied pressures of earth and rock beneath which they were entombed, they turned to coal which then produced oil. In some cases the generated heat ignites these materials which penetrate to the surface, form­ing volcanoes, thermal activities, and fiery fissures. There are situations 

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where the opening earth admits tonnages of water which, contacting the molten rock, transforms into steam. Great pressures are built up causing underground explosions, the radiating shock waves of which trigger earth­quakes. These are also caused by subsidence of the earth as the supporting material below is consumed. When an earthquake happens at sea, a tidal wave is launched.

Thus, the flood is truly the parent of all these troubles within the earth itself.

Weather as it is today, is the product of conditions brought about by the deluge. The redistribution of land and water masses, the location of moun­tains and flat lands, and the inequalities of climate, all formed by the flood, are the determining factors in producing atmospheric problems from their mildest to their wildest forms. There is not the space nor need in this volume to make a detailed study of weather, interesting and valuable as such would be. Those who do undertake such an investigation will be suitably impressed with the relationship between the weather and the con­ditions established by the flood.

One example will suffice. In November 1977, a severe snow storm ravaged South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin before crossing the border into Canada. A moisture-laden mass of warm air had flowed north­ward from the Gulf of Mexico until it met a southbound cold front originating in the Arctic zone. At the meeting point over the northern states, the warm, moist air was chilled and immediately precipitated in heavy snowfalls. Roads were closed, lives were lost, and extensive damage was done. It was days before life returned to normal.

This was possible only because of the geographical and climatic factors existing. Had there been another displacement of these elements, the northern states would never have had that storm. If, for instance the Rocky Mountains had lain east and west across southern Texas, the advancing warm air would have been forced upward to chillier elevations causing it to condense into rain which would have fallen on the coastal plains and run back to the sea again. There would never have been the confrontation be­tween warm and cold fronts which produced the storms and losses in the north. Likewise, if the mountain chains had been lying east and west in Canada the cold front would never have come through to the south. It would have detoured off to the east or west.

Consideration of other possibilities would produce interesting results. Suppose that the Gulf of Mexico was dry land, that the mountain chains all lay east-west so that a plain stretched between them from the Pacific to the Atlantic, or that the United States was another shape. The weather pattern in each case would be very different.

What tremendous changes the flood set up, producing results which reach down to the end of time. The destruction initiated at the flood but halted before it had finally consumed all things, will then break forth to
 

291

Noah and his family emerged from the ark to tread a shattered earth. The destruction was beyond description. They needed no convincing that the flood had come, but they did need a very real assurance that it would not happen again. This the Lord was able to give them.

“And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,

“And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

“And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

“And I will establish My covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood: neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

“And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make be­tween Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

“I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.

“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:

“And I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh: and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

“And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

“And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between Me and all flesh that is upon the earth. Genesis 9:8-17.

These words assure us that there will never again be a repetition of the deluge which twice before has covered the earth, firstly in the opening days of creation, and secondly, during Noah’s time.

The Noachic flood was none of God’s doing, it having come in spite of His efforts. Therefore, His statement that there would never again be a flood of water, was not an undertaking to restrain Himself, but a prediction of what the future held. Specifically, the prophecy is limited to a flood of water. It does not ensure against the deluge of fire by which the earth will finally consumed. 

294  BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

completion. Those fires by which the earth will be reduced to ashes, will also be the child of the flood, for the remaining deposits of coal and oil in the earth will fuel that last conflagration.¹

In the meantime, drought and flood, tempest and earthquake, tidal wave and hurricane, volcano and fire, are that cataclysm’s troubled off­spring which will plague earth dwellers till the end.

Not every area is afflicted with all these scourges. In fact, some parts are apparently free from them. This explains why some centres of sin pass unscathed year after year, while others seemingly less iniquitous, are struck down with shocking suddenness. Those cities located right where one of these children of the flood resides, need to be far more careful than those in positions more favoured. For years the giant of destruction will remain un­seen or manifest itself only in mild forms, because the restraining power of God holds it in check while He seeks to woo men from their danger and while there remains in the city a faithful remnant for whose sake He will continue His restraint. But, during this time, the unwitting inhabitants continue to resist His appeals until finally He has no choice but to leave them to their desires.

The unfettered monster then bursts with unannounced fury upon the unprotected heads and homes of the abandoned sinners, whose destruc­tion may be as total in the area where they are, as it was over the whole earth when the flood came.

Sodom and Gomorrah were a case in point.

The Scriptures report the devastation of those cities and their peoples in the same way that all the other destructions which fell upon abandoned sin­ners are described.

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;

And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the in­habitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” Genesis 19:24, 25.

To millions of Bible readers, these words have pictured God as per­sonally pouring great sheets of flame from His own hands upon the hapless victims below. But, those who have come to learn and accept the principles of God’s character as explored in this study and who have learned to use the Bible as its own dictionary, know that such an interpretation is wholly incorrect.

Rather, the truly Biblical interpretation of these words is that the Lord had no option but to withdraw and leave the wicked to the fate they had chosen. This He had done only when every means and appeal had been totally exhausted and there was nothing more He could do. Then, whatever potential of destruction was lurking in the area, was unleashed. The result was terminal.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

¹ See Spiritual Gifts 3: 76, 89

SODOM AND GOMORRAH 295 

There is always great value in assessing the implications of a certain belief, so study will now be given to see in what image God is cast by the belief that He personally poured that fire down upon the dwellers on the plains. Only a certain kind of God would do this.

Death by fire is one of the cruellest and most-to-be-feared ways to die. On February 1, 1974, a fire started by an electrical short-circuit in an air-conditioner, engulfed the upper fourteen storeys of a newly con­structed twenty-five storey bank building, trapping hundreds of workers as the flames fed on combustible interior-finish materials. Due to inadequate escape facilities, at least two hundred and twenty-seven persons lost their lives. Those in the higher floors above the fire level found themselves cut off. As the fire advanced upwards, many chose to die by leaping from the upper levels rather than face the hungry flames.

In the jungles and forests it is the thing most feared by the animal kingdom. Beasts and reptiles lose all fear of each other as they flee pell-mell from the roaring flames. There is good reason, for death by fire is a horrible death.

Think of yourself as facing the death penalty, the only consolation being that the choice of how you will die is given to you. The choices are firing squad, gassing, the electric chair, beheading, hanging, or being burned alive. None of these is a pleasant prospect, but when you sit and think of our body being roasted while you are still alive, you know that that is the very last choice you would make. It is not difficult to realize that this is the kind of death which a judge or king would impose upon a person whose death he wished to make as painful as possible.

Picture the scene back there when the consuming flames fell upon the cities of the plain. The Scriptures tell us that “when the morning arose,” Lot and his family were hurried out of the city and, as soon as they were clear, the destruction fell in flaming torrents. Therefore it was an early morning conflagration.

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The sun is beginning to mount in the heavens. The family is astir. Breakfast is on the table and the mother is busily bathing and dressing her young children of whom one is still but a nursling. Suddenly the ordinary noises coming from the street are exchanged for frantic cries of alarm and then of terrible agony. The golden glow of the morning is changed to fiery orange and red. The father and mother glance with fearful apprehension through the window and see an appalling spectacle outside. Fire is running like a river down the street engulfing victims in its path who fall writhing and twisting in searing agony. Their boy rushes into the house screaming while his clothes and hair burn like a torch. He flings his body into his mother’s recoiling arms scorching her and baby alike.

Within the house, there is protection for only a short time. The flames are consuming the timbers, licking in through doors and windows and reaching out for the trapped ones inside. They retreat to an inner room, but though it gives them a little longer to live, it makes the end more agonizing. Steadily, the temperature in the room rises while the flames batter at the walls without, until the room becomes an oven in which they are slowly but terribly baked alive. The temperature of their clothes rises above ignition point and bursts into flames. As they tear them off, their flesh comes away in great sheets and the stench of cooking human tissue chokes the air.

When the flames at last break through the walls they are already dead, lying naked of clothes and skin in twisted, bloated, horrible postures. The expressions frozen by death on their faces, express the extreme suffering of terror and pain through which they departed.

It is not a pleasant scene upon which to dwell. It would have been a far worse one to behold. Yet it must be visualized as realistically as possible so that it can be comprehended that no God of mercy, justice, and love, would ever behave in such a way to personally and deliberately inflict a death of this nature upon anyone.

The ability to do certain things reveals the disposition within the doer. It is not possible for any being in the universe, including God, to do everything. The truth of this statement is confined to the spiritual and ethical side of the person. Admittedly, God has the physical power by which He can do anything. But while He has the might, there are some things His character will never permit Him to do. Just as surely as Satan’s character will not allow him to love, so God’s character prevents Him from hating any other individual, no matter how much that person may have wronged Him.

Therefore, if God poured the fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, it could only be because it was in Him to do it. It had to be a part of His character. Therefore, God has within Him a spirit of cruelty by which He is motivated to select the cruellest possible death for those who have refused to obey Him. Without that, He could never have treated the Sodomites as He is accused of having done. 

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But that is not God’s character. He is not cruel, sadistic, and revengeful. He would never select the worst conceivable punishment, and then ad­minister it to those who did not appreciate His ways and acted contrary to His ideas.

Terrible are the implications of believing that God determined that the cities of the plain should be consumed by fire and then proceeded to do it. It is to equate Him with the papacy, whose constant practice was to burn to death those who refused to submit to her assumed authority. Something of the seriousness of this is manifested when it is recognized that the papacy is Satan’s masterpiece of misrepresentation of God’s character. If we wish to understand what God is not, then behold the principles and practices of the papacy. The way God is supposed to have behaved at Sodom and Gomor­rah is exactly as the papacy would have behaved if she had been in God’s position. Therefore, how God is thought to have behaved is certainly not the way He conducted His affairs there.

The papacy went forth to convert the people to her religious beliefs and service. When her first efforts were unsuccessful, she began to exert pressure upon them until, when it was clear that the subjects of her ministrations had no mind to ever obey her, she cruelly destroyed them with fire. In doing this, she represented herself not only as administering the will of God but of doing it as she and Satan would have it believed God does it.

The very fact that this is the way of the papacy is certain denial of its be­ing God’s way for, if anyone wishes to know what God is not, let him behold what the papacy is and what she does. Contrawise, if anyone wishes to know what God is, let him look at the life of Jesus Christ. Never will the two witnesses agree.

It is with horror and loathing that we read of the papal practice of burn­ing victims to death. Yet we have looked with satisfaction upon God’s destroying by fire (as we imagined He did) those who would not obey Him. But careful thought will lead all to understand that if they do continue to believe that God personally decreed that the Sodomites should die by fire and then as personally administered the destruction, then our God is a cruel, revengeful, and therefore self-centred God. Of such a God the papacy is a fit symbol.

Evidence that would further help us to deny such teachings is found in the varying habits of men according to the influence Christianity has had over them. Those heathen races who have little or no Christian influence are the ones who will execute their victims with the greatest cruelty. They will devise means of bringing them to the very doors of death and then resuscitating them, so that they die over and over again as it were.

But those nations where the mighty influence of Protestantism has had its effect, dispatch their criminals and traitors in the most painless way possi­ble. The hangman was required to study how to set the noose so that death 

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would be instant from a broken neck rather than from strangulation, while the headsman was required to strike only one sure blow fairly on the ex­posed neck of the condemned.

The ultimate witness to the character of God is found in those who have drawn so near to Him as to possess His character. Such a people cannot be brought to take up any weapon of destruction against anyone, not even their very worst enemies. They would much rather die themselves than take the life of another. That is the example of the life of Christ. He would rather die Himself than require that the life of another be taken. This is the ultimate outliving of the injunction to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. A God who counselled this kind of behaviour as the reflection of His own, could never pour fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. He did there just what He did on every other occasion. He did not “stand toward the sin­ner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression; but He” left “the rejecters of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have sown.” The Great Controversy, 36.

If the Lord of heaven did not act the part of an executioner and per­sonally pour fire on those cities, how were they destroyed? Are we left with no scientific information to reveal the nature of that disaster?

There is a considerable amount of information available if careful search is made for it, though hampering the search is the relative uncertainty as to where these cities actually stood,

There are those scholars who have looked for the cities on the northern side of the Dead Sea, but “Other scholars seek these cities underneath the waters of the southern end of the Dead Sea. Arguments for this view are more numerous and weighty: (1) The ‘vale of Siddim’ in which these cities were located is identified with the ‘salt sea’ in Genesis 14:3. The northern two-thirds of the present Dead Sea reaches a depth of one thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight feet, and must have existed as early as Abraham’s time, but the depth of the southern part nowhere exceeds six­teen feet. Submerged trees show that part of this area was dry in relatively modern times, and accurate measurements have shown that the level of the sea has been steadily rising during the last century.

“(2) Asphalt is found at the southern end of the Dead Sea, while the Vale of Siddim is said to have been ‘full of slimepits,’ RSV ‘bitumen pits’ (Genesis 14:10). Bitumen, or asphalt, still erupts from the bottom of the southern part of the Dead Sea and floats to the shore.

“(3) Statements made by classical authors, Diodorus Siculus (ii. 48. 7-9), Strabo (Georgr. xvi. 2. 42-44), Tacitus (Hist. v. 6. 7), and Josephus (War iv. 8. 4), describe an area south of the Dead Sea (presumably now covered by its rising water) as scorched by a fiery catastrophe that destroyed several cities whose burned remains were still visible in their day. Foul gases are said to emerge from fissures of the ground. Compare Deuteronomy 29:23. 

SODOM AND GOMORRAH 299 

“(4) Geologists have found oil and natural gases in the ground at the southern end of the Dead Sea, which is at the same time an area frequently disturbed by earthquakes, hence furnished all the condi­tions for the catastrophe described in the Bible, if God used natural means in the destruction of the cities (see above). Furthermore, Jebel Usdum, the ‘Mount of Sodom,’ at the southwestern shore of the Dead Sea, consists of 50 per cent rock salt. Some have con­jectured that in an upheaval during the destruction of Sodom some of this salt may have been dislodged and may have buried Lot’s wife, piling over her to form a ‘pillar of salt’ (Genesis 19:26). (The place where the Israelis have a potash extraction plant, on the southwestern shore, has been named Sodom, but it has no connection with the ancient Sodom.)

“(5) A number of streams enter the southern part of the Dead Sea from the east, in a region that is still very fertile, and it is reasonable to believe that the whole valley now forming the southern-most part of the Dead Sea was once that exceptionally fertile plain, one fitting the Bible description which compares the land with the Garden of Eden and the Nile valley (ch 13:10).

“(6) Kyle and Albright, in their exploration of the region lying southeast of the Dead Sea, found no ancient ruins of cities, but discovered an elaborate place of worship on a hillside with remains dating from before 1800 B.C. This site, Bab edh-Dhra’, evidently was a place where the annual festivals of a large population were held. The cities in which this population once lived must have been in the area now covered by the waters of the Dead Sea.

“(7) Zoar. one of the 5 cities of the plain (Genesis 14:2), was at the southern end of the Dead Sea in the time of Christ.” Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary 8:1028, 1029.

This statement gives excellent reasons for concluding that the site of those ancient cities was at the southern end of the Dead Sea. But it also tells some further interesting facts about the area.

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“Bitumen, or asphalt, still erupts from the bottom of the southern part of the Dead Sea and floats to the shore. . . . Geologists have found oil and natural gases in the ground at the southern end of the Dead Sea, which is at the same time an area frequently disturbed by earthquakes.”

The Encyclopedia Brittanica 1975 Edition, Macropedia, Volume 14:165 states: “The Dead Sea was known in ancient times as Lake Asphaltites (from which is derived the term asphaltum) because of the semisolid petroleum washed up on its shores from underwater seepages.”

“Even today the southern region of the Dead Sea is rich in asphalt. In­flammable gases still escape from rock crevices in the area. Asphalt rising to the surface of the southern part of the Dead Sea gave to it the name Lake Asphaltitis in classical times. Massive lumps of asphalt floating on the sur­face are often of sufficient size to support several persons. Asphalt, sulphur, and other combustible materials have been reclaimed and exported from this region for years.” Seventh-day Adventist Commentary 1:335.

Asphalt, oil, natural and highly inflammable gases and earthquakes are not common to every part of the world, but they are a combination often found together. Where they are found indicates a spot where enormous amounts of vegetable material in the form of plants and frees together with animal and human carcases were buried at the flood. Where such materials are found there is the formation of coal, oil, gas, and petroleum which may or may not combust. If it does, then volcanic or thermal activity will result, usually accompanied by earthquakes and tremors.

“Before the flood there were immense forests. The trees were many times larger than any trees which we now see. They were of great durabili­ty. They would know nothing of decay for hundreds of years. At the time of the flood these forests were torn up or broken down and buried in the earth. In some places large quantities of these immense trees were thrown together and covered with stones and earth by the commotions of the flood. They have since petrified and become coal which accounts for the large coal beds which are now found. This coal has produced oil. God causes large quantities of coal and oil to ignite and burn. Rocks are intense­ly heated, limestone is burned, and iron ore melted. Water and fire under the surface of the earth meet. The action of water upon the limestone adds fury to the intense heat, and causes earthquakes, volcanoes and fiery issues. The action of fire and water upon the ledges of rocks and ore, causes loud explosions which sound like muffled thunder. These wonderful exhibitions will be more numerous and terrible just before the coming of Christ and the end of the world, as signs of its speedy destruction.

“Coal and oil are generally to be found where there are no burning mountains or fiery issues. When fire and water under the surface of the earth meet, the fiery issues cannot give sufficient vent to the heated elements beneath. The earth is convulsed—the ground trembles, heaves, and rises into swells or waves, and there are heavy sounds like thunder 

SODOM AND GOMORRAH 301 

underground. The air is heated and suffocating. The earth quickly opens, and I saw villages, cities and burning mountains carried down together into the earth.” Spiritual Gifts 3:79, 80.

This makes it plain that wherever there is a spot on the earth where such enormous amounts of vegetation have been buried to petrify into coal and oil, there is the potential for volcanic eruptions and devastating earth­quakes. The evidences still existing today show that Sodom and Gomorrah and their associated villages and towns were located over just such a spot.

They were in danger constantly, for they were living over a powder keg, a disaster which was only waiting to happen. But the Lord desired their salvation. He was as loathe to see them perish as He is to see anyone destroyed. So, He filled His usual role of protector of those wicked cities, while His Spirit pleaded with them to repent and escape the wrath to come. But they would not and the time came when finally the protecting Presence had to be withdrawn leaving no power to control the seething elements beneath the ground. Long held back, when released they exploded in one spectacular and all-consuming fireball of destruction that filled the heavens above where they stood and the earth where they rested.

It was not something which God sent in the sense that He decreed what should happen to them and then personally used His power to see that it happened. Rather it came, not because the Lord brought it, but because He could not hold it back any longer. There was no one the Sodomites could blame for their destruction but themselves.

The burning of the cities of the plain is not an event singular to them. There is a modern counterpart to this in the destruction of St. Pierre, on May 8, 1902.

“It was on May 8, 1902, that the town of St. Pierre, on the lush West Indies island of Martinique, abruptly died. At exactly 7:50 AM. on that disastrous morning, 4,583-foot Mont Pelee—a long-dormant vol­cano—blew its top in one of the world’s most cataclysmic explosions.

“The French-held island of Martinique shuddered like a stricken giant at the violent eruption. From the yawning mouth of the volcano, a huge black cloud of superheated air and gas emerged that rolled down the sloping side of the mountain like a monstrous tumbleweed. In its path, at the foot of the mountain, lay the harbor town of St. Pierre. Within seconds the cloud swept over the city. Street by street, buildings leaped into instant flame and people were turned into human torches. The hideous black ball—its core later estimated to have been at least 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit—quickly reduced St. Pierre to smoldering ashes. Only two people survived the fiery devastation, and the rest of the populace—more than 30,000—died.

“Elapsed time from the moment of eruption to extinction of the city was less than two minutes!” Nature at War,² 131, 132, by Hal Butler.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

²Copyright 1916. Published by Henry Regnery Company. 180 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60601

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The disaster did not come without warning. Mont Pelee dominated the island’s mountain chain, and, though long dormant, showed signs of con­siderable activity in the few days prior to the fatal outburst. However, the populace did not think in terms of an explosion but only of an eruption and considered the town to be at a safe distance of four miles.

Then on the night of May 2, six days before the end, and half an hour before midnight an awesome explosion shook the entire island, awakened the inhabitants and drove them in panic into the streets. “Even in the dark they could see dense black smoke issuing from the crown of Mont Pelee, smoke that was cut through by jagged streaks of lightning. Suddenly a second formidable explosion rocked the entire island, followed by several more. Then the loud detonations stopped and a shower of hot cinders fell on St. Pierre. When daylight came the people of the city looked at their town in amazement. It was no longer the bright colorful city it had been. It was now covered with a ghostly gray ash.” ibid., 136.

All during that day and night the volcano exploded at six-hour intervals but on the following day everything had quietened down. The wind changed direction and the ash was blown to the north where it fell on the cities there.

“But tragedy was building up in the crater known as Etang Sec. Boiling water had now reached its rim, and suddenly the side of the crater collapsed and an avalanche of hot water and mud cascaded down the side of the mountain joined the Riviere Blanche, and formed a fast-traveling torrent that swept everything before it. As it sped down the mountain the great slide gathered earth until it became a moving mountain of hot mud that rolled over anything and anyone in its path. It raced all the way to the mouth of the Riviere Blanche, where the Guerin sugarworks lay open and unprotected. Workers saw it coming and tried to flee, but the wall of mud rolled over them, killing M. Guerin, the owner, as well as the overseer and twenty-five employees. Nothing remained of the sugarworks except the smokestacks, still standing but bent to one side.

“At precisely the same time, in the roadstead of St. Pierre, the sea withdrew, stranding several anchored ships, then rushed back ferociously to flood the streets of the city. This was the first violence to hit the coastal area, and the people acted in curious ways. More refugees from the mountain-sides poured into St. Pierre, while others already in the city decided to leave—some by horseback to Fort-de-France and others by ships that were ready to depart for safer ports. The inflow and outflow left the population of St. Pierre about the same—some 30,000 frightened citizens.” ibid., 137, 138.

May 6 was a relatively quiet day. At four in the morning of the next day the volcano began to roar loudly but by the early morning of the fateful day, the eighth, the volcano was as quiet as it had been before all the fuss began. 

SODOM AND GOMORRAH 303

“The fatal day of May 8 was bright and sunny, with hardly a cloud in the sky. It was Ascension Day and the people awoke to the ringing of church bells. Most of the staunchly Catholic populace had risen early to at­tend eight o’clock mass.

“The night had passed with the usual internal growling from Mont Pelee, and the mercurial volcano was now emitting a grayish smoke that rose in a plume from its crater. Still, it was as quiet as it had been for some time, and the people hoped that Ascension Day would be an appropriate time for the Lord to deliver them from the wrath of Mont Pelee.

“Stores and shops were closed for the holiday. Only the churches were open, and by 7:30 in the morning they were filled with anxious worshipers thanking the Lord that Mont Pelee’s spasmodic eruptions had been no worse and praying that the mountain would now resume its placid ways.” ibid., 139.

“At 7:50 AM. the final, ferocious eruption of Mont Pelee took place. At 7:52 AM. the city of St. Pierre and its 30,000 inhabitants ceased to exist.

“It was a deafening explosion, one of the most devastating volcanic eruptions of all time. The top of Mont Pelee was literally torn apart, and from the innards of the earth a great black ball of heated air and gases shot into the sky. Within seconds the huge ball had blotted out the sky for fifty miles across. For an instant it clung to the top of the mountain, then rolled down the sloping sides directly toward St. Pierre. It swept over the city and out to sea, burning buildings, ships and people in its path.

‘There were a few eyewitnesses outside the area covered by the black ball who survived, a handful on land and a dozen or more on ships at sea. From these came the most graphic descriptions—in fact, the only descrip­tions—of the sudden catastrophe.

“An unidentified passenger on the Roraima described the destruction of St. Pierre this way:

‘I saw St. Pierre destroyed [he related]. It was blotted out by one great flash of fire. Thirty-thousand people were killed at once. Of eighteen vessels lying in the roads, only one, the British ship Roddam, escaped and she, I hear, lost more than half on board. It was a dying crew that took her out.

‘Our boat arrived at St. Pierre early Thursday morning. For hours before we entered the roadstead we could see flames and smoke rising from Mont Pelee. No one on board had any idea of danger. Captain 6.1. Muggah was on the bridge and all hands got on deck to see the show. The spectacle was magnificent. As we approached St. Pierre we could distinguish the rolling and leaping of the red flames that belched from the mountain in huge volumes and gushed high in the sky. Enormous clouds of black smoke hung over the volcano.

‘When we anchored at St. Pierre I noticed the cable steamship Grappler, the Roddam, three or four other steamers and a number of 

304 BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

Italian and Norwegian barks. The flames were then spurting straight up in the air, now and then waving to one side or the other for a moment, and again leaping suddenly higher up. There was a constant muffled roar. It was like the biggest oil refinery in the world burning up on the mountain top.

‘There was a tremendous explosion soon after we got in. There was no warning. The side of the volcano was ripped out and there hurled straight toward us a solid wall of flame. It sounded like thousands of cannon.

Before the volcano burst the landings of St. Pierre were crowded with peo­ple. After the explosion not one living being was seen on land.’

“M. Albert, owner and manager of an estate near St. Pierre, witnessed the eruption from a position on land, and gave a vivid account of his experience:

‘Mont Pelee had given warning of the destruction that was to come [he said] but we who had looked upon the volcano as harmless did not believe that it would do more than spout fire and steam, as it had done on other oc­casions. It was a little before eight o’clock on the morning of May 8 that the end came. I was in one of the fields of my estate when the ground trembled under my feet, as if a terrible struggle was going on within the moun­tain . . . . As I stood still, Mont Pelee seemed to shudder and a moaning sound issued from its crater. It was quite dark, the sun being obscured by ashes and fine volcanic dust. The air was dead about me, so dead that the floating dust seemingly was not disturbed.

‘Then there was a rending, crashing, grinding noise, which I can only describe as sounding as though every bit of machinery in the world had suddenly broken down. It was deafening, and the flash of light that accom­panied it was blinding, more so than any lightning I have ever seen. It was like a terrible hurricane, and where a fraction of a second before there had been a perfect calm I felt myself drawn into a vortex and I had to brace myself firmly. It was like a great express train rushing by, and I was drawn by its force.

‘The mysterious force leveled a row of strong frees, tearing them up by the roots and leaving a bare space of ground fifteen yards wide and more than one hundred yards long. Transfixed, I stood not knowing in what direction to flee. [looked toward Mont Pelee and above Its apex formed a great black cloud which reached high into the air. It literally fell upon the city of St. Pierre. It moved with a rapidity that made it impossible for anything to escape it. From the cloud came explosions that sounded as though all the navies of the world were in titanic combat. Lightning played in and out in broad forks, the result being that intense darkness was followed by light that seemed to be magnified in power. That St. Pierre was doomed I knew, but I was prevented from seeing the destruction by a spur of the hill that shut off my view of the city. 

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‘When I recovered possession of my senses I ran to my house and col­lected the members of my family, all of whom were panic-stricken. I hurried them to the seashore where we boarded a small steamship to Fort-de­France. As we drew out to sea in the steamship, Mont Pelee was in the throes of a terrible convulsion. New craters seemed to be opening all about the summit and lava was flowing in broad streams in every direction. My estate was ruined while we were still in sight of it.’

“One incident suffices to demonstrate the swiftness of St. Pierre’s com­plete destruction. The night shift telegrapher at St. Pierre had just transmit­ted to the operator in Fort-de-France the latest reports on the volcano. The transmission contained nothing new and mentioned no unusual developments during the night. When he was finished he clicked the key to signal the Fort-de-France operator to reply. The telegrapher in the capital city pressed down his key. The line was dead, No answer came from St. Pierre because the city had died in that split-second.

“Leon Compere-Leandre, the shoemaker who was sitting on the doorstep of his home trying to decide whether or not to leave St. Pierre, had his reverie shattered by Mont Pelee’s final eruption. The explosion was so violent that it shook the entire island, and Leon felt a shuddering spasm under his feet. He staggered upright and caught a glimpse of the darkening sky and the menacing black ball rolling down the side of the mountain toward the doomed city. Trembling with fear, he turned to enter the house, but a hot wind buffeted him and he felt his body burning as if tongues of flame already were licking at his flesh. With difficulty he made his way into the house and staggered to the table. Three men and a ten-year-old girl were in the tiny house, all of them screaming with pain as the heated air raged over them.

“Leon moved to a table and hung over it, wondering if the end was near for him. Then he saw the girl collapse and die in twisting agony, and the three men fled blindly from the room. For what seemed hours—actually about a minute—he held tightly to the table. Then, noticing that the strange hot wind had abated, Leon pushed himself erect and walked into the bedroom where the little girl’s father lay. He found the man dead in his bed, already burned to a crisp by the heat. Stumbling into the courtyard he discovered the three men on the ground, their inert bodies charred. The thought crossed his mind, How can I be alive when the others are all dead? Screaming, he ran back into the house, threw himself on a bed, and awaited death.

“But for some strange reason no one since has been able to explain, death did not come. Instead Leon became aware that the roof of the house was burning and once more he stumbled outside. He saw now that his legs and arms were severely burned and bleeding, but he managed to run six kilometers to the next town—Fonds-Saint-Denis. Once he looked back. All of St. Pierre was in flames. A strangled cry escaped him and he staggered 

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as it aimed its deadly blow at St. Pierre. Two hours later, when he had left his family in a safe place, M. Clew went back to the city of St. Pierre. He found nothing but blackened corpses among the smoldering wreckage of the town. ‘All were dead,’ he reported later. ‘I knew I could do no good there, so 1 hastened back at the first opportunity and sent my family to Guadeioupe.’

“In the roadstead of St. Pierre, all but one of the seventeen ships at an­chor sank or perished in the flames after the black cloud passed over them. Only the British ship Roddam, covered with seething volcanic debris, afire in a dozen places, and with 28 crewmen and most passengers dead, managed to escape. She got away because she happened to have steam up at the time and was ready to sail. Her captain, badly burned, personally took the wheel and guided the ship to the nearby island of St. Lucia. A port official, horrified at the battered condition of the ship and the blackened bodies strewn about the deck, said, My God, what happened to you?’

‘We just came from hell,’ the captain said.

“The full extent of St. Pierre’s fate was not known until a relief ship set out from Fort-de-France two days later, when Mont Pelee had once again quieted down and the burned city had cooled enough to permit explora­tion. Aboard was Vicar-General Parel, along with soldiers, policemen and priests. When the ship rounded an out-jutting of land and moved into the roadsteads of the stricken city, those aboard the ship saw the widespread destruction for the first time. Sixteen ships burned in the harbor, some of them overturned with only blackened hulls above the ash-covered waters. The French cruiser Suchet was already on duty, picking up badly injured seamen.

“The once-proud city of St. Pierre had disappeared; in its place was smoldering wreckage stretched for two miles along the coast. The Vicar-General turned his glass on the burning city, looking in vain for survivors. He laid the glass down, shaking his head.

‘Not a living soul,’ he said.

“Eventually, the Vicar-General and the police, soldiers and priests went ashore. In a letter written to Monseigneur de Cermont, Bishop of Martini­que, who was in Paris, the Vicar-General described what he saw:

‘We disembark [he wrote] provided with disinfectants, on the Place Bertin, once so full of life and movement. We pick our way through the wreck. The Place is now nothing but a heap of confused ruins. Here and there are decaying bodies, horribly disfigured, and showing by the contrac­tion of the limbs how awful must have been the death agony. Among the seared branches of a fallen tamarind tree, which proved inadequate to pro­tect him, we find the body of a poor creature lying on his back, with his head raised, and his arms stretched to heaven in a gesture of supplication. The legs are drawn and twisted, the flesh has been torn away from the entrails. 

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‘It was only with difficulty that we could reach the cathedral, it being im­possible to recognize streets. In the interior of the houses, the walls of which are standing in places, there are still flaming and smoking braziers. Hot stones, iron, lime, cinders, materials of all sorts, scorched the soles of our feet. It was imprudent even to touch the charred walls, which crumbled at the slightest shock.

‘One of the square cathedral towers, with its four bells, is still upright; but it is riddled throughout, and we dare not approach it. The left tower has been thrown down, together with its great bell. The statue of the Virgin, belonging to the facade, seemed to me to be intact as it lay among the ruins of the cathedral. The walls, with the exception of a part of the apse, have disappeared. We made our way in through the Rue de College and saw several bodies in the ruins. Here, as elsewhere, most of the victims are buried under the piled-up masonry.

“Those aboard the Vice-General’s relief ship and others who followed had the unpleasant task of burning or burying 30,000 bodies that quickly putrified in the heat of the sun. They found many of the victims in casual repose, indicating that the black cloud had snuffed out their lives suddenly and painlessly. Others, however, were distorted in agony. Most of the vic­tims caught outside their homes were naked, with their hair burned away and what had been clothing either torn or seared from their bodies; others, indoors, were still covered with their charred clothes. Every stone house in the city had collapsed, and most lay completely in fragments. The entire city was covered by a ghostly white ash that in some places was several feet deep.

“Even though the giant ball of volcanic horror had swept the city in less than two minutes, it had enough time to play capricious tricks along the way. In many cases solid objects were pulverized, while fragile articles were left untouched, Silver stored inside a safe had melted and adhered to the sides of the safe itself. Glass tumblers were fused together by the intense heat, while nearby crockery was not even cracked. In one place a carafe of wine was untouched, but the stems of wine glasses nearby were bent. Although the wall of the military hospital was completely leveled, one sec­tion containing the clock still stood. The hands of the timepiece had stopped at 7:52, marking the exact moment that St. Pierre had died.

“In all, the volcano’s devastation covered an area of about eight square miles. The focal point, of course, was St. Pierre, where there was complete destruction and loss of life. Along either side of the tumbling ball of death was a section where loss of life and damage was reduced. Still farther out­side this zone was one where no loss of life occurred, no buildings were damaged, and only vegetation was burned off. On the slopes of the moun­tain, the rivers that had once flowed with pure water were now either dried up or choked with slowly flowing mud; one mud slide was later estimated to be 80 feet deep. 

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“On May 20, cantankerous Mont Pelee erupted again. This time a violent explosion rent the air over the mountain at 5:15 in the afternoon. The Vicar-General, in Fort-de-France, stood on his balcony and watched the same amazing scene reenacted—a black ball of heated air and gases again tumbled down the slopes toward St. Pierre. After the eruption, the Vicar-General ordered the Suchet to investigate the situation. The report that came back was simply that the remains of St. Pierre had been ravaged again but, since there was little left of the town, the second black ball had failed to increase the damage.

“On a recent visit to Martinique we saw a few remaining walls standing in what had been St. Pierre. That was all, for the city that was once called the ‘Paris of the West’ was never rebuilt. Mont Pelee had not only destroyed a city of 30,000 people; it had ended a way of life.” ibid., 142-152.

We have no eyewitness accounts of the destruction of the ancient cities as we have here of the modern decimation of St. Pierre, only the terse Bible statement of what God did there.

Yet the similarities between the two situations are very obvious. Both were located in an area of intense volcanic and earthquake activity and both were suddenly overcome by the descent of fire upon them of such ferocity and intensity that the cities were obliterated, never to be rebuilt, and the population was exterminated but for very few survivors. In the case of Sodom, there were only three, Lot and his two daughters. In St. Pierre, only two in the city and the family who fled just in time, escaped death.

Like Sodom, St. Pierre was a place of abandoned wickedness. Here is the description of it as given in our source by Hal Butler:

“In 1902 St. Pierre, on the western coast of the island and only four miles from Mont Pelee, was Martinique’s major city. Twelve miles to the south was Fort-de-France, the capital of the island, but this was a small village that bore no resemblance to glittering St. Pierre. France was proud of St. Pierre; indeed, the French often referred to the city as the ‘little Paris’ or ‘the Paris of the West’ because of its sparkling social life.

“Both the city and its people were picturesque. The city stretched for two miles along the coast and, from an approaching ship, it looked like a welcome oasis. The houses, fashioned of stone and stucco, were alive with color. Most of them were painted yellow or bright orange and all had red-tiled roofs. Two main roads ran parallel to the coast, interlaced by cross streets that began at the sea and climbed upward toward the mountain slopes behind the city. With the green mountains as a backdrop, the city had the appeal of a glistening jewel embedded in a costly setting.

“In addition to being the social capital of the island, St. Pierre was also the commercial center. One of its major industries was the rum distillery, and its principal business street, Rue Victor Hugo, was lined with banks, stores and other commercial establishments. The ‘Paris of the West’ was also equipped to cater both to the welfare of the soul and the gratification of 

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the flesh, for it boasted a stately Catholic cathedral and several parish churches, along with a theater where actors from France entertained, cafes, nightclubs and assorted emporiums designed specifically for uninhibited revelry.

“The French colonists, whose ancestors had settled on Martinique generations before, represented the elite of the island. They owned and supervised plantations producing tobacco, coffee, cacao and sugarcane. Most of them had built ostentatious villas in the mountains and spent much of their tI me either relaxing at these summer homes or sipping cognac in St. Pierre’s hotels and inns. This wealthy group of Pierrotins—as residents of St. Pierre were called—numbered about 7,000.

“Most of the city’s 23,000 other inhabitants were blacks. The men—usually bare-chested and dressed in canvas trousers and hats made of bamboo grass—were typically handsome; the women couched their natural beauty in colorful robes and turbans and strode the streets with frays and baskets of salable goods balanced on their heads. The waterfront was a scene of continuous activity as stevedores loaded and unloaded ships call­ing at what was one of the most profitable ports in the Caribbean.

“This was St. Pierre in 1902—a city that had every reason to believe in its future but a city that had no future at all.” ibid., 132-133.

Life in St. Pierre and Sodom followed a similar pattern. Sodom and Gomorrah were places where study was given to the development of every means whereby the desires of the flesh could be gratified and, from the description given here, so was St. Pierre. Thus the very things which caused the departure of the restraining and protecting Spirit of God in the ancient situation were also present in this fair city. In both cases, the balmy climate and abundant wealth tended to stimulate this pursuit for the licen­tious, until a fever pitch was reached.

It is not to be supposed that Sodom was irreligious, for in those days worship of the sun god was the devoted spiritual exercise of those peoples. Wherever this religious influence has been present, it has encouraged licen­tiousness and immorality of all kinds. The Roman Catholic religion which dominated the spiritual life of St. Pierre, is the modern counterpart of the ancient sun-worship³ and has demonstrated that it, likewise, is the spawn­ing ground for every type of sin and wickedness. The same religious in­fluences therefore, which brought Sodom and Gomorrah to the pitch of wickedness equated with total and unrestrained rejection of God, also brought the inhabitants of St. Pierre to that point.

St. Pierre, then, provides us with a splendid illustration of the death of Sodom and Gomorrah, God did the same thing in both the ancient and the modern situation for the same reason. He left the rejecters of His mercy to themselves to reap that which they had sown and He did that because that

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

³See The Two Bobylons. by Alexander Hislop, published by SW. Partridge and Co., 4,5. & 6. Soho Square, London, W.i. 

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was what the people in each case demanded of Him. Because the cities concerned were sitting over a time-bomb just waiting to go off in the form of a volcanic eruption, that was the fate which overtook them. In other words, they died, not because God decreed that this was the way it should be, but because that was the potential destruction threat under which they lived.

A wide variety of destructions befall the wicked. There are those who, as in the cases of Sodom, Gomorrah, and St. Pierre. are wiped out by volcanic eruptions, while others are taken by flood, earthquake, hurricane, hailstorm, accidents by air, sea, and land, giant conflagrations in forests and buildings, famine, or by the savage outbursts of human wrath. The only consistent pattern through it all is that the disaster is according to the poten­tial of destruction common to the area. This denies the charge that God personally takes hold of the powers of nature and manipulates them according to His design to punish sinners. God has the power to create any kind of destruction at will. He is not bound to the particular peril present in a given area. Being a God of utter justice and consistency would require Him to punish the same offences with the same punishments. But this is not so. The same offences are dealt with by widely varying punishments always according to the destructive potential of the place where the offenders reside.

There is as great a disparity in the severity of the judgments as in their type. Some of the sinful suffer lingering deaths tortured with intense suffer­ing, while others die quickly and mercifully. This is unequal enough, but observation shows that those who live lives of great and unrestrained wickedness usually suffer much less than the relatively innocent. Consider the situation in wartime. Behind the titanic struggles are the warmongers, men burning with the lust for power who have no regard for the cost others must pay in order that they achieve their desires.. They are the truly guilty ones who deserve the greatest punishment of all.

Out on the farmlands, in the villages, up in the mountains and all over the land are the simple, honest folk whose lives are largely devoid of serious vices even though they cannot be called the children of God. When the baffles ravage the land, they are the sufferers. Their sons are killed, their houses levelled, their businesses ruined, their livestock destroyed, and their bodies are starved, mutilated, lamed, and finally killed.

Of the two classes, the warmongers are the ones upon whom the desolations should justly fall, but they grow fat and rich from the merchan­dise of blood. Justice is truly turned around. If this is the decree and work of God, then He is a strange God indeed. But we know that He is not that kind of God. He is absolutely just and strictly impartial. He never excuses one nor favours another, while dealing harshly with someone else less deserving. If God were the one administering the punishments then the penalty would be exacted according to the offence. The very fact that it is not, is clear proof that these situations are not the result of God’s handiwork. 

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The same unequal discrimination is found in the fate of the earth’s large cities. To walk the streets of London in England, Frankfurt in Germany, Copenhagen in Denmark, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York in the United States, is to behold sin under direct and wilful cultivation, with study being given to the art of satisfying the most demanding desires of the flesh. Many, coming in from country areas to encounter these things for the first time, have been so appalled at the spectacle that they have felt that God should and would arise to wipe these cesspools from the face of the earth. But decade follows decade during which the corruption prospers. Seeming­ly it enjoys the patronage and protection of God Himself.

While this is going on, the judgments which one would expect to see fall on these cities, strike with merciless ferocity on other places where one would judge the state of iniquity to be mild by comparison.

The examples which might be cited are numerous. Here are two which are typical. In Guatemala, February 4, 1976, an earthquake which measured 7.5 on the Richter scale, caused extensive damage and huge loss of life. It was estimated that the dead numbered twenty-three thousand and the injured, seventy-five thousand.

On December 25, 1974, a cyclone ripped through the quiet tropical city of Darwin in North West Australia, in what has been described as the worst natural disaster ever to strike in Australia. Ninety percent of the city was levelled and fifty people lost their lives

If an investigator was sent to find the most iniquitous city on earth, neither Darwin nor Guatemala would be first on the list. His thoughts would naturally turn to the cities listed above. Yet those places live on unscathed year after year while these quieter places are razed to the dust.

Why this disparity?

The answer is quite simple.

Firstly it must be obvious that it is not the work of God for it is far too partial and capricious to be His handiwork. If He was the destroyer then He would certainly visit the large cities filled with vice and sin before He touched the smaller ones where evil is not nurtured to anywhere near the same degree. He would administer the punishments with carefully calculated exactitude so that the guilty would receive their just desserts. Things would be very different from what they are

The nature and location of these catastrophes are clear proof that they are not the work of God. They occur because of the presence, in scattered areas of the earth, of pockets of potential destruction seeded at the time of the flood. Those who live in such areas need the protecting care of God more than do others who live where there is a lesser threat. But, by their impenitent living they grieve away the shield of omnipotence thereby ex­posing themselves to the terrible storms or earthquakes, fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, or whatever else is poised to obliterate them. Therefore they suffer the awful consequences of the withdrawal of God’s presence, as others in more favourable places do not. 

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This does not infer that there are entirely safe places on earth for this is not true. As the withdrawal of God’s presence becomes more extensive, the uncaged powers of nature are reaching out to waste areas previously untouched. As we draw nearer to the end, this will become universal.

There is no problem in understanding what God did at Sodom, Gomorrah, and St. Pierre if care is taken to consider all the implications and, if the principles which govern God’s behaviour are carefully kept in mind.

315

The flood was the first occasion when nature out of God’s control broke with cataclysmic fury on men’s and demons’ shelterless heads. Powerless to control such stupendous forces, mankind suffered a breach of such magnitude as to all but obliterate him. That fearful stroke inflicted a wound so terrible that it was almost entirely fatal to the human generation. Even “Satan himself, who was compelled to remain in the midst of the warring elements, feared for his own existence.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 99.

But, while the flood was the first, it was certainly not the last. After the destruction of the tower of Babel by lightning bolt, the next incident of great note was the incineration of Sodom and Gomorrah.

After this the list lengthens. There were the plagues upon Egypt, the returning waters of the Red Sea, various pestilences which smote the Israelites, the invasion of the fiery serpents, the swallowing of Korah, Uathan, and Abiram in the earthquake, the overthrow of the walls of Jericho, the great hailstorm in Joshua’s day, the expiration of Sennacherib’s army, the death of the children at the claws and jaws of the bears, the fire which consumed the men who came to take Elijah captive, and many more.

In our day, one disaster follows another in steady succession until each fresh one brings no surprise.

To examine each case would be repeating the same arguments already advanced In respect to the flood, the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the plagues of Egypt. Once the principle has been established it can then be ap­plied to all other situations.

Sometimes it is possible to see a scientific explanation of the disaster but not always. Just what took the lives of Sennacherib’s men is not revealed. The withholding of this information simply provides an exercise in faith, testing the grip held upon the principles of righteousness revealed in the Scriptures. Because no revelation is given of how they died, the temptation is to revert to the idea that God personally executed them.

Such a temptation must be positively rejected. Cling to the simple belief that God does not execute the sinner but leaves him to himself to reap that which he has chosen. This is so emphatically revealed in God’s Word, that there is no excuse for losing sight of it.

The consumption of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram presents no problem. The earth opened up and swallowed them. What neither they, nor the rest of Israel knew, was that they were encamped over an earthquake which so far only the sustaining presence of God had held in check. In like manner, human beings today are unable to predict just where and when these disasters will strike. 

316 BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

When those rebels sustained their defiance of God, they compelled Him to withdraw from where they were, leaving only one possible conse­quence. The earthquake so long restrained, was unleashed.

Once the understanding has grasped these principles, and faith deter­mines that they shall never be relinquished, there is no incident when the rod of power passed out of God’s hands and control, that will cause any serious problem to the true child of God. He will see that it was not God, but deranged nature which destroyed the unrepentant. There will be times when it is possible to see how this actually happened, but other situations will be inexplicable. Faith will know that the same God acted in the same way whether it can be seen exactly how nature behaved or not.

But there are other occasions, in some respects different from those cited above, in which God’s actions are most difficult to understand. They have so perplexed earnest Christians for centuries, that some have been led to doubt the character of God and even to forsake His service. What God appears to have done, denies every principle discussed so far in this study.

These incidents are those in which God commanded the Israelites to take their weapons and slay utterly, men, women, children, infants, and all livestock. The execution of the defiant ones at the golden calf, the genocide of the Amalekites, and the extermination of the Canaanites were all ac­complished in obedience to God’s directions. While God Himself did not carry out the slaughterings, they were administered at His command. Con­sidering that, in the natural order of things he who orders the execution is the real executioner, it appears that God did fill the role of a destroyer in these instances at least.

More than any other, the biblical recital of these events provides those who cling to the view that God does inflict judgments on those who offend Him, with the justification for their stand. In any confrontation between them and those who see the true character of God, it will be observed that these are the statements to which they cling with great determination. To them they provide incontrovertible proof.

It cannot be denied that these are difficult to understand, but they are not beyond human comprehension provided it is taught of God and guided by the principles which underlie God’s character. When these incidents are correctly understood, it will be found that God has not subverted His codes to meet an emergency, but has acted with impeccable consistency. Not even in these situations has He been an executioner or destroyer.

It cannot be overstressed that success in uncovering the real truth of God’s part at the golden calf execution, the genocide of the Amalekites, the annihilation of the Canaanites and so forth, depends upon there being complete confidence in God’s consistency. There must be the unassailable conviction that there are no contradictions in the Word of God, that He does not make a declaration about His character and behaviour in one place, and then proceed to do the opposite in another. Unless the student is 

AN EXECUTION 317 

possessed of this, he will not arrive at any satisfactory solution to the problem, but if he does, then solid searching, combined with earnest prayer and the forsaking of sin, will repay rich dividends of spiritual truth. All disharmonies will disappear. That which firstly appeared as an unanswerable indictment against God’s character, will prove to be the strongest evidence in favour of it. What previously we hoped no one would mention, turns out instead, to be the best argument for the case.

To clarify the nature of the problem, three statements outlining God’s commitment never to use force will be quoted. These will be immediately followed by the records of the golden calf incident so it can be plainly seen that one set of statements appears to be directly contradicted by the other.

“Rebellion was not to be overcome by force. Compelling power is found only under Satan’s government. The Lord’s principles are not of this order. His authority rests upon goodness, mercy, and love; and the presen­tation of these principles is the means to be used. God’s government is moral, and truth and love are to be the prevailing power.” The Desire of Ages, 759.

“Earthly kingdoms rule by the ascendency of physical power; but from Christ’s kingdom every carnal weapon, every instrument of coercion, is banished.” The Acts of the Apostles, 12.

“God does not stand toward the sinner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression; but He leaves the rejecters of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have sown.” The Great Controversy,36.

There is no ambiguity in these statements, but they do become a problem when brought into direct contact with a story such as the slaughter of the rebels at the golden calf. When these two are brought together it ap­pears that God states one thing in one place and then proceeds to do the opposite in another. Compare the record which follows, with the statements quoted above.

“And he [Moses] said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

“And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

“For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the Lord, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that He may bestow upon you a blessing this day.” Exodus 32:27-29.

“Those who performed this terrible work of judgment were acting by divine authority, executing the sentence of the King of heaven. Men are to beware how they, in their human blindness, judge and condemn their fellow-men; but when God commands them to execute His sentence upon iniquity, He is to be obeyed. Those who performed this painful act, thus 

316 BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

When those rebels sustained their defiance of God, they compelled Him to withdraw from where they were, leaving only one possible conse­quence. The earthquake so long restrained, was unleashed.

Once the understanding has grasped these principles, and faith deter­mines that they shall never be relinquished, there is no incident when the rod of power passed out of God’s hands and control, that will cause any serious problem to the true child of God. He will see that it was not God, but deranged nature which destroyed the unrepentant. There will be times when it is possible to see how this actually happened, but other situations will be inexplicable. Faith will know that the same God acted in the same way whether it can be seen exactly how nature behaved or not.

But there are other occasions, in some respects different from those cited above, in which God’s actions are most difficult to understand. They have so perplexed earnest Christians for centuries, that some have been led to doubt the character of God and even to forsake His service. What God appears to have done, denies every principle discussed so far in this study.

These incidents are those in which God commanded the Israelites to take their weapons and slay utterly, men, women, children, infants, and all livestock. The execution of the defiant ones at the golden calf, the genocide of the Amalekites, and the extermination of the Canaanites were all ac­complished in obedience to God’s directions. While God Himself did not carry out the slaughterings, they were administered at His command. Con­sidering that, in the natural order of things he who orders the execution is the real executioner, it appears that God did fill the role of a destroyer in these instances at least.

More than any other, the biblical recital of these events provides those who cling to the view that God does inflict judgments on those who offend Him, with the justification for their stand. In any confrontation between them and those who see the true character of God, it will be observed that these are the statements to which they cling with great determination. To them they provide incontrovertible proof.

It cannot be denied that these are difficult to understand, but they are not beyond human comprehension provided it is taught of God and guided by the principles which underlie God’s character. When these incidents are correctly understood, it will be found that God has not subverted His codes to meet an emergency, but has acted with impeccable consistency. Not even in these situations has He been an executioner or destroyer.

It cannot be overstressed that success in uncovering the real truth of God’s part at the golden calf execution, the genocide of the Amalekites, the annihilation of the Canaanites and so forth, depends upon there being complete confidence in God’s consistency. There must be the unassailable conviction that there are no contradictions in the Word of God, that He does not make a declaration about His character and behaviour in one place, and then proceed to do the opposite in another. Unless the student is 

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possessed of this, he will not arrive at any satisfactory solution to the problem, but if he does, then solid searching, combined with earnest prayer and the forsaking of sin, will repay rich dividends of spiritual truth. All disharmonies will disappear. That which firstly appeared as an unanswerable indictment against God’s character, will prove to be the strongest evidence in favour of it. What previously we hoped no one would mention, turns out instead, to be the best argument for the case.

To clarify the nature of the problem, three statements outlining God’s commitment never to use force will be quoted. These will be immediately followed by the records of the golden calf incident so it can be plainly seen that one set of statements appears to be directly contradicted by the other.

“Rebellion was not to be overcome by force. Compelling power is found only under Satan’s government. The Lord’s principles are not of this order. His authority rests upon goodness, mercy, and love; and the presen­tation of these principles is the means to be used. God’s government is moral, and truth and love are to be the prevailing power.” The Desire of Ages, 759.

“Earthly kingdoms rule by the ascendency of physical power; but from Christ’s kingdom every carnal weapon, every instrument of coercion, is banished.” The Acts of the Apostles, 12.

“God does not stand toward the sinner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression; but He leaves the rejecters of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have sown.” The Great Controversy, 36.

There is no ambiguity in these statements, but they do become a problem when brought into direct contact with a story such as the slaughter of the rebels at the golden calf. When these two are brought together it appears that God states one thing in one place and then proceeds to do the opposite in another. Compare the record which follows, with the statements quoted above.

“And he [Moses] said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

“And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

“For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the Lord, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that He may bestow upon you a blessing this day.” Exodus 32:27-29.

“Those who performed this terrible work of judgment were acting by divine authority, executing the sentence of the King of heaven. Men are to beware how they, in their human blindness, judge and condemn their fellow-men; but when God commands them to execute His sentence upon iniquity, He is to be obeyed. Those who performed this painful act, thus 

318 BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

manifested their abhorrence of rebellion and idolatry, and consecrated themselves more fully to the service of the true God. The Lord honored their faithfulness by bestowing special distinction upon the tribe of Levi.

“The Israelites had been guilty of treason, and that against a King who had loaded them with benefits, and whose authority they had voluntarily pledged themselves to obey. That the divine government might be main­tained justice must be visited upon the traitors. Yet even here God’s mercy was displayed. While He maintained His law, He granted freedom of choice and opportunity for repentance to all. Only those were cut off who persisted in rebellion.

“It was necessary that this sin should be punished, as a testimony to sur­rounding nations of God’s displeasure against idolatry. By executing justice upon the guilty, Moses, as God’s instrument, must leave on record a solemn and public protest against their crime. As the Israelites should hereafter condemn the idolatry of the neighboring tribes, their enemies would throw back upon them the charge that the people who claimed Jehovah as their God had made a calf and worshiped it in Horeb. Then though compelled to acknowledge the disgraceful truth. Israel could point to the terrible fate of the transgressors, as evidence that their sin had not been sanctioned or excused.

“Love no less than justice demanded that for this sin judgment should be inflicted. God is the guardian as well as the sovereign of His people. He cuts off those who are determined upon rebellion, that they may not lead others to ruin. In sparing the life of Cain, God had demonstrated to the universe what would be the result of permitting sin to go unpunished. The influence exerted upon his descendants by his life and teaching led to the state of corruption that demanded the destruction of the whole world by a flood. The history of the antediluvians testifies that long life is not a blessing to the sinner; God’s great forbearance did not repress their wickedness. The longer men lived, the more corrupt they became,

“So with the apostasy at Sinai. Unless punishment had been speedily visited upon transgression, the same results would again have been seen. The earth would have become as corrupt as in the days of Noah. Had these transgressors been spared, evils would have followed, greater than resulted from sparing the life of Cain. It was the mercy of God that thousands should suffer, to prevent the necessity of visiting judgments upon millions. In order to save the many, He must punish the few. Furthermore, as the people had cast off their allegiance to God, they had forfeited the divine protection, and, deprived of their defense, the whole nation was exposed to the power of their enemies. Had not the evil been promptly put away, they would soon have fallen a prey to their numerous and powerful foes. It was necessary for the good of Israel, and also as a lesson to all succeeding generations, that crime should be promptly punished. And it was no less a mercy to the sinners themselves that they should be cut short in their evil 

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course. Had their life been spared, the same spirit that led them to rebel against God would have been manifested in hatred and strife among themselves, and they would eventually have destroyed one another. It was in love to the world, in love to Israel, and even to the transgressors, that crime was punished with swift and terrible severity.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 324-326.

The people’s behaviour can only be classified as rebellion. In the case of those who refused to repent of it, it was persistent and incurable. There is no possibility of viewing their course in any other light, and there is no point in attempting to. It must be recognized for what it was—rebellion.

With equal clarity it is to be seen that the insurrection was overcome by force. The Levites took their swords, and slaughtered the rebels. Thus, by force alone the rebellion was overcome.

What makes this critically different from the numerous other occasions when rebellion has been overcome by force is that God ordered this solu­tion to be applied. The sinners were not left to themselves to reap that which they had sown. Rather, a direct sentence was formulated against them and summarily carried into effect,

Thus, at first observation, every step God is reported to have taken, denies what He laid out as His principles in the first three references quoted. God declared that it is not His way to overcome rebellion by force, yet He directed that it be done in just that way. He claims that He leaves the sinners to themselves to reap what they have sown, but He certainly did not do that here.

It is simple to see how quite a case can be built up against God by using this evidence. It is argued by those who believe God does execute, that the only way to deny this is to make the Bible read as we wish it to be read. Before this study is over, it will become evident that those who make this charge are, in fact, the ones who are guilty of doing this.

When rightly understood. Scriptural records will show that at the golden calf, God did nothing in violation of His stated principles. He will emerge from this examination as a Saviour only. His character will glow with a brighter radiance exciting the wonder, admiration and emulation of all who will respond to it.

How is it, though, that the vast majority have failed to rightly perceive the work of God at the base of the mountain? Why has He been viewed as the maker and executioner of the sentence? Why has no real difference been made between the behaviour of God and any earthly monarch?

It is because one vital factor, being completely overlooked, is never taken into consideration. When it is, it makes all the difference to understanding the case. Then the charges levelled against God will be redirected where they rightly belong.

That factor was Israel’s introduction of the sword into their lives. Under­taking this was an extremely serious and tragic step which placed them on a 

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different relationship with their divine Leader. It amounted to the institution of mans procedures in the place of God’s. Because the choice of which was to be the established and recognized way, rested not with God but with Israel. Jehovah could not and therefore did not, compel them to discard it. All He could do was to labour to save them from the worst effects of what they had elected to do.

Their decision to take up weapons of coercion and destruction was not made in complete ignorance of God’s will. Their Heavenly Father had faithfully communicated to them that the sword was to find no place among them whatsoever.

They were named after their revered father Israel, whose history of vic­tory over his foes was well known to them. God designed that this should be a witness to them of His ways. The lesson was especially pertinent for there was a distinct parallel existing between Israel’s situation and theirs. As he was a prisoner of his scheming uncle, Laban, and desired to depart for the promised land, so they were held in Egyptian bondage and longed to leave for Canaan’s land.

When the patriarch set forth on his journey he was pursued by Laban who was determined to bring his son-in-law back with him. It cost Laban seven days to overtake Jacob, seven days in which his temper had time to reach fever heat. When he found Jacob, “He was hot with anger, and bent on forcing them to return, which he doubted not he could do, since his band was much the stronger. The fugitives were indeed in great peril.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 193.

Jacob, knowing full well that he would be pursued, made every provi­sion possible to prevent his being forced to return, But, in all his careful planning for the security of the ones he loved so dearly, he made no move to arm his servants with swords and spears. He put his entire trust in God as his Protector and so effectively did the Lord fill that commission, that not only did Jacob not go back to Laban’s home, but not one of his household was even so much as scratched.

This peril gone, with the pacified Laban returning to his place, Jacob pressed on to meet the greater peril of Esau who reportedly was coming to meet him with six hundred armed men. Esau had only one objective in mind—to ensure that Jacob could never dispossess him of their father’s wealth. The only way to assure this was to slaughter Jacob and his band. That would settle the question for all time.

As this deadly peril threatened Jacob, there were at least two different courses he could have adopted. The common human reaction is to turn to the power of weapons. Accordingly, Jacob could have chosen to divert from his course to spend time in arming and training his servants. He did not do this for he rightly understood that this was not God’s way. Instead, he continued without deviation, his entire confidence resting in the assurance that God would faithfully fulfil His responsibility of protecting him

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and his entourage. On the night before the encounter he turned aside to pray, his deep concern arising from the fear that unconfessed sin would obstruct God’s work and leave him exposed to his enemy. There was no lack of faith in God’s power to deliver him. His only fear was that his own spiritual condition would make that power unavailable. The long hours of agonized wrestling brought the victory.

God did not force Esau to leave his brother unmolested. Instead He sent an angel to reveal to him the true character of Jacob, his sufferings, his spirit, and his intentions. Thus Esau was led to view Jacob in a new tight. He realized that Jacob was not a threat to him and therefore did not need to be eliminated. His rage was replaced by sympathy, and the outcome again was that not a single one from Jacob’s households received so much as a scratch.

Here is a point worthy of emphasis. Whenever the children of Israel left to God the task of protecting them, not one of them lost their lives or suf­fered injury, but when they took the sword, there was nearly always loss of life which in some cases was very heavy.

From Jacob’s experience, the Israel of God from then to now has an everlasting message which should never be forgotten. It is the message reiterated by the psalmist. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

“Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

‘Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the moun­tains shake with the swelling thereof.” Psalms 46:1-3.

“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.” Psalm 34:7.

The great controversy is not between us and Satan, but between Christ and Satan. We do not have the power to overcome the enemy. God alone can do that and has undertaken to do so. Our task is to leave Him to do what He has promised. The victory is ours as a gift, which is demonstrated in the wonderful experience of Jacob. How much more wonderful it was for him to see the Lord’s salvation than to gain a victory by the sword at the cost of the lives of some of his dearly loved servants and sons.

Through this experience, God provided the Israelites with a perpetual testimony of the security available to them if they trustingly committed the keeping of their lives to Him, As a preparation for their departure from Egypt it was sufficient to assure them that they were to make no provision for acquiring and using swords. They were to entrust that task to God as fully as Jacob did, knowing they could expect the same results.

God, knowing that the success of the great venture depended on their strict adherence to these principles, reiterated the lesson repeatedly during the exodus and the period leading up to it. 

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Moses had been thoroughly trained in the art of war and had proved himself on the baffle field to be a brilliant tactician. His ability as a military leader made him a favorite with the armies of Egypt, and he was generally regarded as a remarkable character.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 245.

Moses, therefore, naturally expected that the Lord would deliver them by force of arms and saw in his Egyptian education a divinely provided training for such a campaign. Had God purposed to do it this way, no better man than Moses could have been found anywhere in history. It is significant that God made no use of this ability in Moses at any time in his life for not once did Moses lead the armies of Israel into battle.

“The elders of Israel were taught by angels that the time for their deliverance was near, and that Moses was the man whom God would employ to accomplish this work. Angels instructed Moses also that Jehovah had chosen him to break the bondage of his people. He, supposing that they were to obtain their freedom by force of arms, expected to lead the Hebrew host against the armies of Egypt, and having this in view, he guarded his affections, lest in his attachment to his foster mother or to Pharaoh he would not be free to do the will of God.” ibid.

Thus Moses was dedicated to the divine purpose for himself and Israel and longed for the fulfilment of the plan. When he saw the Israelite being oppressed by the Egyptian, he slew the persecutor supposing that thereby he had initiated the armed struggle which would liberate the slave nation.

But, even though the Israelites were aware of God’s appointment of Moses, there was not a man inspired to rise with him. Instead, he was forced into precipitous flight to Midian. This unexpected development caused Moses a great deal of deep heart-searching, providing God with the needed oppor­tunity to educate into him the realization that it was not by warfare that Israel was to be delivered.

Forty years later, he returned, clad, not in the shining armour of a military leader, but in the simple garb of an eastern shepherd with a staff in his hands. Before all Israel, God was proclaiming the way by which they would be taken out of bondage, and by which they were to be preserved forever from their enemies. It was a reminder to them of the same truth as revealed in God’s dealings with Jacob.

God did not introduce a temporary provision to be followed by changed procedures once the children of Israel, having gained their freedom, became competent in the art of warfare. God started the exodus upon principles which were to be forever preserved and maintained. At no time did He deviate from His established course of action. During the reign of sorrow as plague followed plague, the Israelites had no part to play other than merely standing by and letting the Lord handle everything.

When, just before their final departure, God impressed the Egyptians to liberally provide the travellers with everything they would ever need on their journey, He did not put it in the hearts of their former masters to give 

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them weapons of war. It was a people for whom God had made every provision, who went out of  “. . . unarmed, and unaccustomed to war. . .” ibid., 282. If the Lord had intended a change from His fighting their battles, to their doing this work for themselves, then He certainly would have made sure that they were equipped for this role. The fact that He did not impress the Egyptians to arm them is clear proof that He never intended they should be. As the exodus began, so it was to continue.

Had the Israelites manifested living faith in God, they would have reasoned as follows: “The Lord knows exactly what we need to bring us to the promised land. From the vast storehouse of Egypt He has given us every necessity, but He has not drawn from its arsenals. Therefore this is the clearest endorsement of the message demonstrated in the experience of our father, Jacob, that we, like him, are to return to the promised land an unarmed people. We are to entrust the matter of our protection entirely to God.”

How much happier their subsequent history, if this had been how they had thought. There would have been no substitution of human, faithless methods in place of the infallible, divine procedures. God would never have commanded them to take their swords and slaughter men, women, and children. In every situation, He would have been their defence and deliverer.

So they came to the Red Sea where once more the Lord displayed before them the way in which the power of their enemies would be broken. There it was shown in the most vivid way, that the rejecters of God’s mercy were simply left to themselves to perish. As the Egyptians’ greatest act of re­jection was to seek to destroy the people who were walking closely with God, the point where the Israelites seemed to be most endangered was, in fact, the moment closest to deliverance.

When Pharaoh led his army into the corridor between those standing walls of water, it was an act of terrible presumption on his part. The only way in which the Israelites could pass safely over was by remaining within the circle of God’s protection. But the Egyptians had deliberately and de­fiantly cast off that protection, and therefore the Spirit of the Lord could not maintain the waters in their position. As the army advanced, the Spirit of God had no choice but to retire before it. As that power was withdrawn, the waters simply rushed back to their original position, overwhelming the enemies of God and His people.

The Lord was very diligent in the education of His people. He knew that the day of decision was fast approaching when they must make the critical choice between continuing in God’s order or turning from it to their own. While He could train them to hold to the right course, He could not make the decision for them. There is no compulsion with God. He will never depart from this principle by so much as a hair’s breadth. Pharaoh had exercised that choice to his destruction. No blame for the outcome can 

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be charged to God, for He had been more than fair in sending warnings to the proud ruler.

This right to choose was given to the human family in the persons of Adam and Eve when they were placed in possession of their inheritance. The angels imparted the information to them. “They told Adam and Eve that God would not compel them to obey—that He had not removed from them power to go contrary to His will; that they were moral agents, free to obey or disobey.” The Story of Redemption, 30.

The entrance of sin did not change this. When man exercised the gift of choice by turning aside from the principles of righteousness, God still did not intrude into this area. Men were not deprived of this freedom by Jehovah, although they lost it to sin and to other men.

God’s commitment of freedom of choice to them would be no more than empty words if there was no opportunity to choose another course. Accordingly, in order to give full support to His declared principles, the Lord must be careful not to deprive the people of the means whereby they could go in another direction if they wished.

So while the Lord had made it absolutely clear that they were not to carry the sword in their journeyings from Egypt, Lie did not make it im­possible for them to do so. They had the same freedom to obey or disobey as did their first parents in Eden. The special opportunity for them to take the sword was afforded when the armour-clad bodies of the Egyptian soldiers were washed up at their feet. “As morning broke, it revealed to the multitudes of Israel all that remained of their mighty foes—the mail-clad bodies cast upon the shore.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 287, 288.

Here was the great test for the men of Israel. Temptingly offered them was a veritable arsenal of weapons—swords, spears, helmets, shields, and breastplates. They could either rush down and take the spoils, thus equipping themselves to fight as other nations fought, or they could turn their backs upon it and leave their protection in the Lord’s hands.

The real issue involved God’s continuation as the sole Protector of His chosen versus their taking His work into their own hands. It was the question of implicit trust in God versus greater confidence in the power of their own fighting abilities. It was a critical point in their history for the sad deci­sion made there, influenced the full span of their future. It was a departure from strict adherence to the only safe course. It determined their final failure and rejection as a people.

There are no direct records confirming that they did rush down and take the armour from the Egyptians. But all the evidence points strongly in that direction. Here are the facts. They approached, crossed, and emerged from the Red Sea without implements of war. Shortly after leaving the Red Sea, they engaged in warfare against the Amalekites in which they did not use sticks and stones. As there were no swordsmiths between the Red Sea and the location of this battle, the only way they could have become equipped was by salvaging the weaponry washed ashore. 

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What makes the decision taken so significant are the circumstances under which it was made. God had just spoken to them in the most thrilling and convincing demonstration of His ability and willingness to cope with their enemies according to the principles of eternal righteousness. With a God like that, what need did they have of weapons? To seek military equip­ment under ordinary circumstances was bad enough, but to lay hands on it in the light shining from God as it did then, was totally inexcusable and highly irresponsible.

In taking up the sword at that point, Israel failed tragically. They in­troduced a new order into the camp, replacing the divine arrangement. Thus they prevented the nation from giving a true representation of God’s character and this eventually led to their final dismissal as the channel of God’s communication to the world.

Some would argue that this change was an inevitable development made necessary and possible as conditions changed. This line of reasoning views the children of Israel in Egypt as being both untrained and without equipment so that there was no recourse but for the Lord to fight for them, just as initially a parent does everything for the infant. But, as they moved out, the time came when the Lord could progressively turn over to them the care of their own needs and interests. Accordingly, He kindly caused the Egyptians to be washed up at their feet so that they were provided with the armour they needed. From then on, they became His appointed in­struments in decimating the heathen.

This argument is not illogical but it is nonetheless false. If it were true, then the subjugation of Canaan as it did, in fact, take place, was in the order of God. That it was not, is proved by direct statements as well as by all the principles which undergird God’s character. “The Lord had never com­manded them to ‘go up and fight.’ It was not His purpose that they should gain the land by warfare, but by strict obedience to His commands.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 392.

It was not God’s purpose that they should gain the land by warfare, for the important reason that that is not His method. The use of force is ex­clusive to Satan’s kingdom. It has no part in God’s order. They were to possess the promised land by strict obedience to His commands, one of which prohibits killing. The human mind finds great difficulty in under­standing how a vigorous, warlike nation can be dispossessed without using force. This was the problem with Israel, even though they had witnessed the mighty manifestations of God’s methods in the plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea.

All this had happened to the dwellers on the Nile because they had refused God’s every effort to save them. The same resistance among the Canaanites had brought them to the position where destruction was all that remained to them. But Israel could not see this, nor could they rest in the Lord’s promise that He would give them the land. Therefore, they deter­mined that they would take it in the only way they understood—by force. 

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It is true that they gained the land in this way but let it not be forgotten that they also lost it in the same manner. Their sad history confirms the truty of Christ’s words to the valiant and belligerent Peter, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Matthew 26:52.

Jesus did not give these words a limited application in time. He was not saying, “From this time forward, all who take the sword will thereby perish.” What He stated is an eternal truth. It is a statement of the fact that the use of force engenders counter-force. While the individual or the nation may be strong enough today to occupy the top position, the time soon comes when another power will be stronger and will seize the opportunity to destroy those who have previously ascended the pathway of blood.

The veracity of Christ’s words as a universal application is adequately proved by six thousand years of human history, That period reveals that whenever a nation was built by the use of the sword, that power perished or will perish by the same means. The same is true of individuals. It may be argued that men of power rose by the sword and maintained that lead through their lifetimes to die unconquered rulers of the world. But let it not be forgotten that they live on in their children to whom they gave the legacy of conquest they had gained, and, in their children, they perished or will yet perish by the sword.

God, understanding perfectly that those who live by the sword will perish by it, knew that for Israel to have it was to ensure their destruction. God did not desire such an outcome. Therefore, from this motivation alone, it is certain that He never gave them the sword. More than this, if He had done so then He would be responsible for their destruction, for he who gives to another that which will assuredly effect his death must carry the blame for that demise.

It follows then that it was never in God’s purpose that Israel or anyone else should ever carry the sword. It has no place in His character and cor­responding methods, and therefore is to find no acceptance in the character and behaviour of His people.

The recognition of this truth is essential in understanding the directives from God which sent the Israelites forth with the sword to utterly destroy the peoples who opposed them. The institution of this form of government was entirely the people’s work, the expression of their having more faith in themselves than in God. It was the establishment of human principles and procedures in place of the divine.

Therefore, in every instance where the Israelites went to war or ex­ecuted the wrongdoers among themselves, their actions were not a revelation of the character of God. There has been a universal readiness to con-dude that they were, on the erroneous assumption that the people were simply doing as the Lord told them. If they had been a truly obedient peo­ple they would not have had the swords at all and therefore would never have gone forth with them to slay their enemies. 

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Yet God did give directions to them. There is no denying this, nor any desire to do so, for the nature of those commands reveals a very wonderful and beautiful Father in Heaven ever reaching out to save and never to destroy. The tragic error is that He has been terribly misunderstood to the point where the actions designed to minimize the evil effects of the slaughtering to which they were committed, have been judged in an altogether different and wrong light.

The purpose here is to establish that it was in spite of God’s best efforts to the contrary that the sword became an establishment in the encampment of Israel. The recognition of this truth is essential to understanding the direc­tives given to Israel, which have been viewed for too long as an indication that He was personally using them as executioners.

If God’s will had been respected, they would never have carried the sword, the Levites would never have executed those who worshipped the golden calf, nor would there have been the many bloody battles whereby they gained possession of the land. God would have been left free to do His work for them according to the eternal principles of righteousness.

The command given by God at various times in connection with these slayings makes it difficult for the average person to see this. It is argued that God was personally and directly involved, that He decided the particular sentence and then ordered its execution.

This certainly appears to be a watertight argument but it still leaves those terrible contradictions. God does not give orders contrary to the prin­ciples of eternal rectitude and righteousness. Therefore, more study is re­quired to remove those seeming inconsistencies. This may be done with the sweet consciousness that there are no contradictions in the Word of God and that God’s character is perfectly consistent in all its behaviour.

It will be seen, as we proceed, that the commands given by God were to a people who had already chosen the way they would go and who, if left completely unguided, would use those weapons in the worst way. God’s commands were designed to minimize the evil effects of what they had chosen to do. In this, He was acting out the role of a Saviour, who, having failed to save them from the sword, would save them from its worst effects.

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When the Israelites took the sword, thus rejecting God’s way in favour of their own, the Lord was faced with several possible courses.

Firstly, He could have simply abandoned them to their own devices. This would have been perfectly just and righteous on His part, though it would have been justice without mercy. The result would have been the speedy disappearance of the household of Israel from the face of the earth. Their enemies were multitudinous, highly skilled, and well equipped in the business of war. Satan desired nothing so much as the extermination of Israel and he would have quickly seized upon the opportunity.

Secondly, God had the physical power to force the Israelites to con­tinue in His way but He could not do this from the moral point of view. He had given them, along with the remainder of humanity, the freedom to choose. Therefore, under no circumstances, would He attempt to insist on His way in preference to theirs. It was for them to choose how it would be, and when they made that choice God could do nothing except respect it, which He did.

Thirdly, God could have simply ignored the sin, pretended that it did not exist. To do this would be to condone it and this God cannot do.

These three are obvious alternatives, but there is another possibility which is normally overlooked. Herein, the Lord recognizes that He has failed to save them from taking the wrong turning, and that, therefore, the work calculated to save them from that is now valueless. Because they have not yet tasted the bitter experience of the consequences of their apostasy, they are not disposed to come back. But they have not gone beyond the possibility of restoration. So God, in His infinite love, will not abandon them and thus cut off their opportunity to rectify their misdemeanours.

If no saving help is provided to draw them back from going into the worst effects of their choice, then they would not survive long enough to ever return to God. Therefore, the Lord works to save them from those evil results both to make their sufferings as mild as possible, and to extend the time in which they may learn and repent. It is because this aspect of God’s working has not been understood that He has been so seriously mis­judged in the Old Testament.

The following illustration will serve to clarify these alternatives and to identify the divine choice among them.

Picture a smallish town located in an area where wild animals, such as bear, deer, mountain sheep, and various big cats abounded. As is to be expected, the majority of men in the town were keen hunters never missing the opportunity to take their guns out and to track down the game. 

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But one man was different. He had the love of God in his heart and to kill the beautiful dwellers in the forests and mountains was contrary to his nature. So he was never seen in company with the men trailing off to seek their adventures in the blood of others. For their part, they were troubled by this odd man out and never lost an occasion to persuade him, if possible, to join them. At one time, they even bought him a splendid hunting rifle for his birthday. With Christian graciousness, he gently declined the gift. This was naturally resented, causing those men to increase the pressure on him, but despife this, year after year, there was no change in him. The only equipment with which he would hunt was a good camera.

This man had a fine son whom he was most anxious to protect from the influence of the hunters around. He worked untiringly to instil into him the same love of the wildlife which he possessed, and was gratified to see that he was having good success in this direction. Thus the father was working to have the boy do things his way as distinct from the hunters’ way.

The father did not take away the boy’s freedom of choice. When he eventually reached later youth, he became answerable for himself and was no longer under the direct control and discipline of his father. He received an invitation to spend some weeks away from home and, eager to see new country, accepted the kindly offer. This was a clever plot by the huntsmen, who sent their sons along to invite the boy, once he was away from the father’s direct influence, to go hunting with them. They urged him to try it just once to see how he liked it. Feeling that no harm would be done by an on-the-spot personal appraisal of the hunting business, he went along.

His first reaction was unfavourable but, something about the challenge, thrill, and excitement, drew him back and soon he was an enthusiastic devotee. He went to the sports store, selected a beautifully engineered weapon, and in due time returned with it to his dismayed father. He had exercised his choice and now the father was confronted with a situation which required a response. How would he now relate himself to this turn of events? Clearly the young man had instituted in his life a course contrary to the ways of his father and of God.

For the father, as for God, the choice lay between several alternatives.

The first option was to disown the son, forbidding his entrance to the home and requiring he go his own separate way. The justification for this would have been the certainty that the principles of father and son could never harmonize.

Another course would have called for the use of force to coerce the lad’s surrender to his father’s wishes and ways. This was not the answer for two reasons. Firstly the youth had achieved the age of independence, so it would have been impossible for the father to achieve the desired result anyway. But, secondly, it was not in this father’s nature any more than it is in the character of God, to use force. To them, the only acceptable service is that which springs from an educated heart of love. 

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A third alternative was to quietly ignore the change. pretend that the rifle had never been brought into the home, and ad as if all were well when, in fact, it was not. Again, this was no way out, for sin cannot be ignored. Neither love nor justice will permit it. Iniquity demands attention. A response to it will always be forthcoming whether it be the saving outreach of love or the vindictive reaction of destructive hate.

Having considered and rejected each of these possibilities, what would have been left for this godly man to do? What would God do in the same situation?

Firstly, the older man recognized that his son had placed himself, other people, domestic livestock, and wild animals, in a position of great danger. Being an inexperienced and untrained rifleman, he did not understand the necessity of looking beyond the target to ensure that there were no buildings, people, or farm animals in the line of fire. He needed to under­stand how to carry the weapon so that in climbing through fences, for in­stance, he did not, as so many have done, shoot himself or his friends. He must be made aware of the awful potential of the ricochet, when a bullet, glancing from rock or tree, will embed itself in a target far to the right or left of the original sighting. He must come close enough to the game to eliminate the possibility of only wounding the animal which would then drag itself away to suffer a lingering death. These and others things he could be taught in order to save himself and others from the worst effects of what he had chosen.

While the father could no longer save the youth from taking the gun, he could, if permitted, provide the instruction needed to save him from these serious consequences. Even the wild animals would benefit from this saving ministry, for, while they could not be saved from death, they could be delivered from a painful and lingering one.

As the response of God and those who walk with Him will always be the outreach of saving love, there is only one course among those sug­gested above that the Lord or this father would follow. God is by nature a saviour. So too was the father pictured in this illustration. When God is frustrated from saving people in one area, He will still exercise His saving power in whatever possibilities remain. Thus, when the boy’s father found that his long pursued objectives of saving the youth from taking up weapons had failed, he still recognized that there was much he could do to save the boy from the worst effects of what he had chosen.

So, sadly, but with tender dignity the father drew his son aside and spoke with him. He expressed disappointment that the younger man had chosen to go the way he had, but assured him that he would respect his decision fully. He gently suggested that there were dangers associated with the use of such a weapon, from which perils he could only be safeguarded by receiving and obeying a number of specific precautions. The father in­timated that he was more than willing to carefully instruct the son in these 

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things so that he would be saved from the worst results of what he had chosen.

The son, relieved that his parent was not launching against him a fiery denunciation of his ways, no longer braced himself to resist such pressure. Instead he expressed his willingness to learn. By so doing he exhibited the strange quirk of human behaviour which gives men an unwillingness to obey God where the higher levels of faith are concerned, but permits them to follow His counsel at lesser levels. Israel, for instance, was not prepared to trust God fully by leaving the sword alone, but they accepted and followed His counsels regarding the restrictions designed to minimize its evils. In like manner, the son who had abandoned his father’s principles regarding the total rejection of firearms, was prepared to respect his counsels in the use of them.

The father introduced the training session by emphasizing that nothing he was about to do or say indicated that he had changed In any way, even though it could be interpreted that way.

God, who has been placed in the same position by the determination of His children to take up weapons of destruction, has likewise solemnly warned that His effort to save them from the worst effects of what they have chosen does not indicate any change in Him, even though His actions could and have been interpreted otherwise.

“I am the Lord, I change not;” “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever;” “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8; James 1:17.

Despite the fact that men know that before sin entered God never destroyed, and despite these solemn declarations from God that no change has ever occurred in Him, men still look on His everlasting efforts to save and interpret them as being the actions of one who has become like man himself. The father in our story did not have to change his ways in order to instruct the son how to be a kind killer, neither did God have to change His ways to save Israel from being cruel users of the sword. Neither of them took life. They were only bent on saving it, or, if that were no longer possi­ble, to save it from as much suffering as possible.

Now suppose that one of the villagers, the man who had most ardently sought to convert the father, had happened to come down the lane as this session was in progress. From a distance too great to hear all that has been said, he beheld the father instructing the son in the use of firearms.

What assumptions will this man make? What conclusions will he draw?

He never was possessed of the spirit of the father and therefore, could never understand it. Accordingly, there was no possibility of his correctly assessing what the father was doing. Instead, he would have interpreted what he saw as sure proof that the father had changed.

The onlooker would have lost no time in returning to his hunting com­panions to announce the father’s conversion. He would have told them that 

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he was now one of them—a gunman. He would have offered as proof to his incredulous listeners, what he had seen of the father actually instructing the boy in gun-handling. The evidence he offered was factually true, for this is exactly what he had seen the father doing, but the conclusions drawn from those evidences were the opposite from the truth.

Even as that father was misjudged, so God has likewise been.

At the golden calf, God gave direct instructions through Moses for the Levites to take their swords and execute the unrepentant rebels. Men have taken these facts and from them have drawn their own conclusions. While the facts are correct, the conclusions drawn from them are wholly wrong. They have declared with great satisfaction that God has become one of them, one like them—a destroyer.

They could not be more mistaken.

Thankfully, God has not changed. He has not become like men; He is not a destroyer. Sin has not changed Him, neither have sinful men. When His character and work are correctly understood, it will be seen that He did nothing differently at the golden calf than He did when Adam and Eve elected to go their own way.

When they made that choice, God was faced with the same options which confronted the father when his son returned with the gun. Firstly, He could have separated from them and left them to go their own way. How thankful we can be that He did not do this. Very quickly they would have perished and we would have been deprived of existence and any oppor­tunity for salvation.

The use of force was another alternative but this is unacceptable to God for the only obedience He will accept is that which comes from a willing heart. If force was the answer, then Lucifer would never have sinned in the first case, for God would have compelled him not to.

God could have chosen to ignore the sin, to simply pretend that it did not exist but this could not be, for its intrusion into the universe affected too much. It had to be dealt with. It refused to be ignored.

In His great love and mercy, God does not leave man to himself to reap the worst consequences of what he has sown. To whatever extent man will accept it, God provides him with counsels and blessing so that his life is less severe and painful.

In doing this, God makes Himself suspect of becoming participant in man s way, of having compromised His principles, and of having changed. What we are now striving to show from the clear evidences of God’s Word, is that the Lord does not change, compromise, or participate in the least degree, with man In his way. The illustration of the father who refused to become a hunter, yet instructed his son in the safe use of the gun, should greatly assist in making this principle clear. God is not a legalist. He is a very wonderful God and it takes deep spiritual insight on the Christian’s part to understand His character, to see how He can assist man in this way and yet not compromise Himself or His principles in the least. 

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Even though He is misunderstood in doing these things, to the point where He is charged with becoming a destroyer, God does not deviate from principle. It is more important for Him to do the right thing than to be understood in the doing of it. In the end He will be understood, and when He is, the loyalty of every one of His true children will be assured forever. At the same time, those who have chosen a life of rebellion will be con­vinced of His righteousness and will confess it, even though it is too late for them to be saved.

From the very beginning, God has worked this way and He will do so to the last. Firstly, He does all in His power to save His creatures from going into sin. Then, when they do, He works equally hard to save them from the worst effects of what they have done. When they finally reject even this sav­ing effort, there is nothing more He can do to save them, and they are left to perish.

The golden calf episode is not the easiest place in the biblical record to see this principle. There are others where it is more clearly revealed. Therefore it is better that they be studied first. Then a preparation will have been made for an enlightened reassessment of God’s part at the golden calf.

The outstanding example is God’s behaviour before and after the Israelites went into Babylonian captivity.

Never did a nation pursue a more provocative course toward God than did Israel in those years of apostasy, rebellion, and idolatry between the reigns of David and Hezekiah. After an excellent beginning in Joshua’s time, there had been the heart-breaking frustrations of Israel’s oscillations from good to bad during the period of the judges, but, in David’s day, the kingdom had reached its pinnacle of glory. The people were basking in the manifold blessings of the Lord, and everything was set for the most glorious reign of righteousness yet to be witnessed in the world. Instead, the people took the gifts of the Lord, transferred their trust from God to them, and entered into the worst period of their history up to that point. It had cost heaven a great deal to bring Israel to this hour of promise and opportunity, only to see it all thrown away so despitefully, selfishly, and irresponsibly.

Men, treated after this fashion, will reciprocate with destructive punishments. Such men, devoid of any true understanding of God’s character, expect Him to react in the same manner. From the human point of view, God would never have been more justified if He had done so when Israel pursued so heaven-daring and insulting a course as they did during that great apostasy.

But the Scriptures do not reveal any such disposition developing on God’s part as the fateful years dragged on. Instead they reveal Him in an entirely different attitude. He is shown as a compassionate Saviour, un­mindful of the terrible defiance and ingratitude, seeing instead the dreadful, self-imposed plight of His people, working to deliver them from the power 

THE EVER-LOVING, SAVING FATHER 335 

of the Babylonians and the sufferings which would follow their overthrow. Hear Him speaking through the prophet Jeremiah.

“Hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.

“Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.

“Trust ye not in lying words, saying. The temple of the Lord, The tem­ple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these.

“For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour;

“If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:

“Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.” Jeremiah 7:2-7.

As these words were spoken, a mighty nation darkened any bright hopes of the world’s future. Babylon was rising spectacularly in power, and nation after nation was succumbing. Israel, weakened by years of idol wor­ship and sin, could not hope to resist the northern tide. If God had possessed even the slightest traces of the spirit men think He has, His attitude would have been very different at this time. He would have declared to Israel, “For centuries I have blessed, protected, and prospered you, and all I get in return is insult, disobedience, disrespect, and rejection. The might of Babylon is coming against you in the very near future. They will savage you and you will deserve all you get and more. I wash My hands of you and leave you to your fate.”

But we do not find such an attitude on God’s part. If we did then God’s love must be less than infinite. There would be a iimit to it. It would go so far and then stop, to be replaced by a spirit of revengeful reciprocation. Such is the changing nature of man’s love, but it is never the way of God’s infinite love. Nothing can change that.

Striking evidence of its unchangeable qualities is given in the history of Israel between the reigns of David and Zedekial-u Seldom, if ever, have a people who have received so much from God, done more to provoke Him. They turned their backs on the sanctuary and worshipped the gods of the heathen. BaaI became their lord. They offered their beautiful children as living sacrifices to Molech. They slaughtered each other, devoted their bodies to every species of licentiousness and debauchery, and robbed the poor, the widowed, and the fatherless. They did everything conceivable to offend and drive the Lord away. Theirs is indeed a sad, terrible, and pro­vocative record.

But what a contrast is God’s behaviour. In the face of it all He could truthfully say, “For I am the Lord, I change not: therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Malachi 3:6. His relationship to them was the same at the end of this trying experience as it had been at the beginning. It is true 

336 BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

that at the end they were not recipient of His blessings to the same extent as when their relationship with Him had been so good, but that was not because the Lord had retaliated by withdrawing those blessings. It was only because they had shut themselves away from them.

‘In the matchless gift of His Son, God has encircled the whole world with an atmosphere of grace as real as the air which circulates around the globe. All who choose to breathe this life-giving atmosphere will live and grow up to the stature of men and women in Christ Jesus.

“As the flower turns to the sun, that the bright beams may aid in perfec­ting its beauty and symmetry, so should we turn to the Sun of Righteousness, that heaven’s light may shine upon us, that our character may be developed into the likeness of Christ.” Steps to Christ, 68.

In these paragraphs, two illustrations of God’s provision for man’s physical needs are referred to—the air and the sun. Irrespective of man’s behaviour, these blessings are as abundant on any one day as another. They flow with unrestricted power to all. If men choose to shut themselves away from these life-giving agencies, then they will suffer, but the blame can never be laid on God. So, Israel had no justification for any charge they might level at God for cuffing off the blessings to themselves. They, alone, were responsible for puffing themselves where they could not receive those benefits.

It was for this reason that the impending invasion of the Babylonians was possible. The Israelites had placed themselves outside the circle of God’s protection thereby preventing Him from saving them. They were do­ing just what Pharaoh had done before them. As that proud ruler had teetered on the brink of self-destruction, God had sent Moses to plead with him to repent so that the calamities might be averted and he be saved from receiving the just punishment for his sins.

When Israel stood under the shadow of Nebuchadnezzar’s power, they likewise were standing on the black edge of the abyss. God had not changed. For this reason He did for the Israelites what He had done for the Egyptians. He sent a prophet, Jeremiah, to plead with them and to assure them that if they would only repent, they could remain in their own land forever. They would entirely escape the terrible calamities which they fully deserved, and which were so imminent.

God did not call on them to endure appropriate punishments or a period of penance before they were reinstated in their land and in His favour. This is very difficult to accept, for man’s philosophy demands that if a man sins, he pays for it. Therefore, no matter how sincerely a man may repent, or be changed in nature, human justice requires that he endure an appropriate punishment for his sin. Only when he has done this can he be deemed to have ‘paid his debt to society.”

There is a double motivation behind this human disposition. One is the spirit of rendering evil for evil, the other is the impulse for self-protection

THE EVER LOVING, SAVING FATHER 337 

and security. Accordingly, courts of justice seek to measure an evil to the man equal to the evil he has committed, thus demonstrating that the human way is .to render evil for evil. This satisfies the requirement for revenge. At the same time the penalty is administered in such a way that the public is aware of it, the example being made of the wrongdoer serving as a warning deterrent to other would be offenders. By this means the hope is entertained that security will be guaranteed.

But this is not God’s order. He does not mete out evil for evil. He returns good instead. Though this is the truth, it is exceedingly difficult for earthlings to grasp. So deeply engrained is the concept of meeting evil with evil, that it cannot be understood how God can operate on opposite principles.

Yet the case under study here verifies that this is His way. To prove otherwise will necessitate finding Scriptures which record God’s demands that they endure a series of punishments before they can regain His favour. But such references are not to be found. The only chastisements they would suffer were those they had brought upon themselves, but from which God had worked to save them.

If any doubt this beautiful attribute of Cod, let him study the story of the prodigal son which is expressly designed to teach this truth. In this parable, both the sons exhibited the same belief that appropriate punishments must be endured before there could be a restoration. The erring son asked for it and the other demanded it. The father, who directly represents God’s behaviour, would not hear of it. All he required was true repentance.

When the prodigal returned to his father, he asked only a place as the least of the servants. This, he felt, would be a humiliation so great as to be a punishment befitting his case. He was sure he was asking for his just desserts.

The elder brother was incensed when he heard of the complete restora­tion of the sinner to the place from which he had gone. He thought of the prodigal’s wasteful expenditure of health, money, time, and the father’s reputation. He did not mind the repentance and the return, but he did ob­ject to the reinstatement. If the younger brother had been compelled to live in the servants’ quarters and then scrub the floors for a year or two before being slowly elevated to the place of a son, he would have been satisfied, but for him to come back, to receive a royal welcome and to be accorded the same place as he had left, without being sentenced to an appropriate punishment, was too much for his human morality to accept.

The father accepted that boy back into the household as if he had never sinned. Exactly so, God receives the sinner back and accepts him as though he had never sinned. “If you give yourself to Him, and accept Him as your Saviour, then, sinful as your life may have been, for His sake you are accounted righteous. Christ’s character stands in place of your character, and you are accepted before God just as if you had not sinned.” Steps to Christ, 62. 

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“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 8:1.

When the full beauty of that Scripture opens to the mind, it will be seen that it, too, is saying that when the sinner repents, the Lord really does treat him as though he had never sinned at all.

This is the truth expressed through Jeremiah to Israel when the Lord said that if they would repent, they would stay in their own land forever. In other words, He would treat them as though they had never sinned. No clearer view could be given of the unchanging nature of God. His blessings never cease to flow toward man, His attitude is always the same. When men turn away from Him, they place themselves out of touch with those blessings, but the moment they return, then they find themselves back in the same position they were in when they left.

In the great, original rebellion this truth is revealed with clarity and force. Lucifer had served God with unfailing devotion for what must have been a long period of time. Throughout, he received the fulness of God’s blessings and the joy of fellowship. Eventually, he lost his confidence in God and consequently entered into rebellion against Him. If he had gone no further it would have been bad enough, but he added greater offence by enlisting as many as possible in the same spirit of disaffection. A threat was thus directed against the entire kingdom. When this happens in an earthly dominion, the monarch speedily deals with the offender, making such an example of him as to effectively deter others from a like course.

But the ways of men are not God’s ways. Therefore, no greater mistake can be made than to expect God to employ the same measures to deal with a given situation. Consequently, God did not relate Himself to Lucifer by making an example of him, by administering disciplinary actions, or by changing in His relationship toward him in any way. Instead, all the loving agencies of heaven were put in motion to plead with him not to persist in a course which could only propel him into deadly ruin. “But the warning, given in infinite love and mercy, only aroused a spirit of resistance.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 36.

God did not even demote the covering cherub. He did not take this type of action no matter how far the bright one departed from Him. The initial vacating of his position and later of heaven itself, was Lucifer’s own action. It was never the work of God. The confirmation of this can be obtained by reading through the chapter from which the above statement is taken.

In a loving effort to save both Lucifer and the angels who were coming under his influence, ‘The King of the universe summoned the heavenly hosts before Him, that in their presence He might set forth the tue position of His Son, and show the relation He sustained to all created beings.” ibid. That was a marvellous sermon on the divine order and organization in which was revealed the love of God toward every one of His creatures. 

THE EVER-LOVING, SAVING FATHER 339 

They were brought to see that the position occupied by Christ was one of great personal sacrifice, made for their good from a heart warmed by in­finite love and wisdom.

Lucifer came close to sharing the adulation of the other angels but the strange, fierce conflict raged within him until self and pride obtained the mastery. It was then that he left his place in the throne room of God. God did not dismiss him and require his departure. Lucifer took himself away as it is written, “Leaving his place in the immediate presence of the Father, Lucifer went forth to diffuse the spirit of discontent among the angels.” ibid., 37.

Now the rebellion had really started, the corruption was solidly setting in and the endangering of God’s kingdom was well under way. This was no secret to God. He knew the very thoughts in Lucifer’s mind, how he was now totally committed to his course and that he would go on and on to per­dition. The time had surely come for positive preventative action such as the extermination, or, at least, expulsion of the rebel. After all, it is sound policy to throw out the rotten apple to prevent corruption of the remainder. But God did not do this. It would have been a denial of the principle that He had given complete freedom to serve or not to serve Him. Therefore, He would not take any action requiring force. He would use only the outreach of saving love to draw His much-loved creature back from destruction.

“A compassionate Creator, in yearning pity for Lucifer and his followers, was seeking to draw them back from the abyss of ruin into which they were about to plunge.” ibid., 39. The result of this was that he came close to the point of yielding and coming back to God. Quite a time had elapsed and he had done a tremendous amount of damage in God’s kingdom. From the human point of view he deserved a great deal of punishment, but, “Though he had left his position as covering cherub, yet if he had been willing to return to God, acknowledging the Creator’s wisdom, and satisfied to fill the place appointed him in God’s great plan, he would have been reinstated in his office.” ibid.

In other words, he would have been accepted before God as though he had never sinned. He would have gone back to his place in God’s presence and would have continued there as if he had never left it. Lucifer was not required to suffer any punishments, endure penance, or pass through a period of probation before being readmitted to his place. He was not even called upon to accept a lowly position from which he could work his way back to the top.

Therefore, when Christ revealed His Father in the parable of the return­ing prodigal, He was not simply telling what the Father would do to the repentant. He was confirming what He had always done. What Jesus told of the father’s attitude toward the prodigal son is exactly how God related Himself to Lucifer. The only difference is that the prodigal son was repen­tant; Lucifer was not. 

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The Bible requires two or three witnesses to confirm any truth as it is written, . . . in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” Matthew 18:16. Here are the three needed witnesses to con­firm this truth about God’s character. The case of Lucifer, the experience of the Israelites as they faced Babylonian oppression, and the parable of the prodigal son all confirm that God does not administer punishments to sin­ners but seeks to save them from the chastisements which they are about to inflict upon themselves. If they will only repent and return to the circle of His blessings, then they will be accepted back as if they had never sinned.

But those who do not really believe that God’s love is infinite and that He never changes by so much as a hair’s breadth, will argue that there was a limit to His patience and when that was exhausted with Lucifer, He turned to active warfare to run him out of heaven. Their proof text is Revelation 12:7-9.

“And there was war in heaven: Michael and His angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

“And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”

To millions, these words have pictured an intense physical struggle be­tween the forces loyal to heaven and the rebels. It has been seen as a con­flict involving the use of physical power versus physical power. Great artists have portrayed Christ at the head of hordes of shining angels standing with an unsheathed sword before which Lucifer is plunging downwards into the darkness of empty space.

But this is a superficial and inaccurate view of the nature of that struggle. It is a view consequent with the practice of seeing God’s behaviour as being identical to mans. There was war in heaven, it is true, but not war as men fight. Satan was cast out, but it was God’s way of doing it, not mans.

“God could have destroyed Satan and his sympathizers as easily as one can cast a pebble to the earth; but He did not do this. Rebellion was not to be overcome by force. Compelling power is found only under Satan’s government. The Lord’s principles are not of this order. His authority rests upon goodness, mercy, and love; and the presentation of these principles is the means to be used. God’s government is moral, and truth and love are to be the prevailing power.” The Desire of Ages, 759.

In that struggle then, God did not use force. This weapon is never found in His kingdom but only in that of Satan’s. Therefore, it was by another way that Satan was cast out of heaven, never to return. God fought with none other than the weapons consistent with His kingdom. It is difficult for sinful man to understand the nature of those weapons for they are so foreign to his experience and nature. 

THE EVER-LOVING, SAVING FATHER 341 

The struggle in heaven was a very real one nonetheless. It was war—a total effort on Satan’s part to change the entire structure of heaven’s order and organization. In order to succeed, he needed to convert the angels’ allegiance away from God to himself. At that time the only sword Satan could use was that of deception, against which God used only the weapon of truth. The battle raged on over a considerable time span until the point was reached where the devil had penetrated as far as he could. Each angel had made his choice with sufficient numbers standing for the truth to enable God to maintain His position as Protector of the heavenly hosts. With God’s continued presence assured, there was no hope of the proposed new order being established. The old and proven order would remain. But Satan’s deformation had brought him into such disharmony with those principles that he found it impossible to remain where they continued to operate. To him, heaven had become a place that was foreign, unaccep­table, and unendurable, and he could not leave it quickly enough.

It was the truth of God which drove him out, not the use of any kind of physical force. The same reason for Satan’s leaving heaven is the reason why the wicked would never be happy if they were to return there. They would not be able to tolerate the place and would want to leave it as soon as possible. They would be driven out by their sheer unfitness to remain.

“Could those whose lives have been spent in rebellion against God be suddenly transported to heaven, and witness the high, the holy state of perfection that ever exists there—every soul filled with love, every countenance beaming with joy, enrapturing music in melodious strains rising in honor of God and the Lamb, and ceaseless streams of light flowing upon the redeemed from the face of Him who sitteth upon the throne,—could those whose hears are filled with hatred of God, of truth and holiness, mingle with the heavenly throng and join their songs of praise? Could they endure the glory of God and the Lamb? No, no; years of probation were granted them, that they might form characters for heaven; but they have never trained the mind to love purity; they have never learned the language of heaven, and now it is too late. A life of rebellion against God has unfitted them for heaven. Its purity, holiness, and peace would be torture to them; the glory of God would be a consuming fire. They would long to flee from that holy place. They would welcome destruction, that they might be hidden from the face of Him who died to redeem them. The destiny of the wicked is fixed by their own choice. Their exclusion from heaven is voluntary with themselves, and just and merciful on the part of God.” The Great Controversy, 542, 543.

Confirmation of this is already available. The worldly and ungodly to­day find that the society of true Christians engaged in devoted worship of God is Intolerable to them and they desire only to leave such society. They are happier elsewhere. In like manner, Satan’s rejection of the ways and principles of God in exchange for other pursuits so worked changes in him 

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that he could no longer suffer its holy atmosphere. Being there was such torture to his deranged nature that he had to go and go he did. As Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by his continual resistance of God’s efforts to save him, so Lucifer’s whole being was warned by his fighting off God’s lov­ing efforts to draw him and his followers back from the abyss into which their steps were surely taking them. This is how Satan was driven from heaven, not by God directly driving him out, but by His efforts to save him.

There is much more which could be written on Satan’s expulsion from Paradise. Many more proofs could be supplied from Scripture to enlarge the point made here, but for now we will pass on and leave further discus­sion of this until we come to the falling of the seven last plagues and the Baffle of Armageddon. That final struggle is simply the culmination of the war which began in heaven and has continued ever since. God and Satan will still be using the same weapons in the last confrontation as they did at the first and the outcome will be the same. Therefore, a clear understanding of what is to happen then will illuminate what took place in the past.

From God’s recorded behaviour toward Lucifer and apostate Israel and as further intimated in the parable of the prodigal son, it is obvious that God’s behaviour toward man is vastly different from man’s behaviour toward his fellowmen.

With man there must always be the exacting of a penalty; the enduring of a punishment no matter how penitent and changed the criminal may become. Men are not satisfied until the malefactor has “paid his debt to society.”

But if Lucifer had repented of his evil course he would have been reinstated in his office as if he had never sinned.

Likewise, if Israel had repented and turned away from idol worship and all the licentiousness and evil which goes with it, they would have been delivered from the Assyrians and the Babylonians as if they had never sinned. The certainty of this is contained in the Word of God when He told them through Jeremiah, already quoted in this chapter, that this is the way it would be.

That these were not mere words with God is proven by the fact that when He was given the opportunity to carry them out He surely did so. The mighty Sennacherib marched victoriously against the whole idol-worshipping world. The ten tribes of Israel fell before him and he intended to add Judah as a further prize to his conquests. But there was a king on the throne who believed God. Hezekiah came to power after a succession of very wicked and idolatrous rulers. The land had been filled with images and the sanctuary was in a sorry state.

Over the whole land loomed the dark shadow of Assyrian global con­quest demanding that instant action be taken to meet the threat, Many a man would have concentrated on the formation of military preparedness by gathering, equipping, and training the largest army possible in the shortest 

THE EVER-LOVING, SAVING FATHER 343 

time. The restoration of the sanctuary and the obliteration of the images could wait till a later date.

But not this king. Firstly he set to work to cleanse and restore the sanc­tuary and its services. With his whole heart he turned to the Lord and put his trust there. He claimed the promise that they would be protected and saved in their own land and they were. God dismissed the Assyrian threat with such totality that it never assailed Judah again. Study the story with care and see how the Lord did not demand that they pay their debt to Him. He did not require a long period of proving before He would act on their behalf. As soon as they repented, He stepped back into His rightful place as their Protector and Saviour and delivered them as if they had never sinned.

Had Zedekiah been a king of Hezekiah’s character, then Nebuchadnez­zar would never have had any hope of overcoming the Israelites. But, despite the fact that the King of Heaven sent His prophet Jeremiah to him with the assurance that if he would repent, then the Lord would work for him as if he had never sinned at all, and despite the fact that the history of Judah’s deliverance from Sennacherib proved this, the king elected to re­ject God’s counsels and go his own way, thus frustrating any hope of God doing what His loving heart longed to do, namely, to save them from the cruel oppressor.

What the Lord would have done for Lucifer and Zedekiah, He did do for good king Hezekiah and for countless others who have believed the Lord. These experiences are the proof that the portrayal of God rendered in the parable of the prodigal son is the truth. Satan is desperate in his fear that men will become acquainted with such a God, for he knows they will then have confidence to come to Him for deliverance from his machina­tions. Therefore, he presents God as a being no different from sinful men—severe, exacting, and determined that the full measure of punish­ment for sin be borne before mercy can be extended. Then the devil leads the soul into sin so terrible that the victim knows he can never serve out the sentence and is thus discouraged from ever seeking God.

Let God’s wonderful willingness to forgive and restore Israel in the face of their sad and desperate apostasy, be to every man and woman an inspir­ing encouragement to come back to the God of mercy and light.

God says to the sinner, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy trans­gressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.” Isaiah 44:22.

“I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:34.

“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts:

and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” Isaiah 55:7.

“In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none: and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found.” Jeremiah 50:20. 

344 BEHOLD YOUR GOD 

“What assurance here, of God’s willingness to receive the repenting sin­ner! Have you, reader, chosen your own way? Have you wandered far from God? Have you sought to feast upon the fruits of transgression, only to find them turn to ashes upon your lips? Now that voice which has long been speaking to your heart but to which you would not listen comes to you distinct and clear, ‘Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest; because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.’ Micah 2:10. Return to your Father’s house. He invites you, saying, ‘Return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee.’ Isaiah 44:22.

“Do not listen to the enemy’s suggestion to stay away from Christ until you have made yourself better; until you are good enough to come to God. If you wait until then, you will never come. When Satan points to your filthy garments, repeat the promise of Jesus, ‘Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.’ John 6:37. Tell the enemy that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. Make the prayer of David your own, ‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Psalm 51:7.

“Arise and go to your Father. He will meet you a great way off. If you take even one step toward Him in repentance, He will hasten to enfold you in His arms of infinite love. His ear is open to the cry of the contrite soul. The very first reaching out of the heart after God is known to Him. Never a prayer is offered, however faltering, never a tear is shed, however secret, never a sincere desire after God is cherished, however feeble, but the Spirit of God goes forth to meet it. Even before the prayer is uttered or the yearn­ing of the heart made known, grace from Christ goes forth to meet the grace that is working upon the human soul.” Christ’s Object Lessons, 205, 206.

Those who rejoice in deliverance from the old Satan-inspired concepts of God will know Him as He is presented in the parable of the prodigal son. They will have the faith and courage to bring their sins for pardon and cleansing and to thus stand before Him as if they had never sinned. These are they in whom true love for God will be found, and from whom a stream of dedicated service will flow. Such will inhabit the universe throughout eternity to experience the fulness of eternal joys and pleasures. There is small wonder then that heaven will be a place of perfect bliss and security.

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