The Great Doctrines of the Bible. William Evans J.
Thick clouds are a covering to him that he seeth not," etc. All agreed that God displayed His presence in the heaven, but Job had inferred from this that God could not know and did not take notice of such actions of men as were hidden behind the intervening clouds. Not that Job was atheistic; no, but probably denied to God the attribute of omnipresence and omniscience. Acts 17:24–28—"For in him we live, and move, and have our being." Without His upholding hand we must perish; God is our nearest environment. From these and many other scriptures we are clearly taught that God is everywhere present and acting; there is no place where God is not.
This does not mean that God is everywhere present in the same sense. For we are told that He is in heaven, His dwelling-place (1 Kings 8:30); that Christ is at His right hand in heaven (Eph. 1:20); that God's throne is in heaven (Rev. 21:2; Isa. 66:1).
We may summarize the doctrine of the Trinity thus: God the Father is specially manifested in heaven; God the Son has been specially manifested on the earth; God the Spirit is manifested everywhere.
Just as the soul is present in every part of the body so God is present in every part of the world.
(2) Some practical inferences from this doctrine.
First, of Comfort: The nearness of God to the believer. "Speak to Him then for He listens. And spirit with spirit can meet; Closer is He than breathing, And nearer than hands or feet."
"God is never so far off, As even to be near; He is within. Our spirit is the home He holds most dear. To think of Him as by our side is almost as untrue, As to remove His shrine beyond those skies of starry blue."—Faber. The omnipresence is not only a detective truth—it is protective also. After dwelling on this great and awful attribute in Psalm 139, the psalmist, in vv. 17, 18, exclaims: "How precious are thy thoughts to me. … . When I awake I am still with thee." By this is meant that God stands by our side to help, and as One who loves and understands us (Matt. 28:20).
Second, of Warning: "As in the Roman empire the whole world was one great prison to a malefactor, and in his flight to the most distant lands the emperor could track him, so under the government of God no sinner can escape the eye of the judge." Thus the omnipresence of God is detective as well as protective. "Thou God seest me," should serve as warning to keep us from sin.
d) The Eternity and Immutability of God.
The word eternal is used in two senses in the Bible: figuratively, as denoting existence which may have a beginning, but will have no end, e.g., angels, the human soul; literally, denoting an existence which has neither beginning nor ending, like that of God. Time has past, present, future; eternity has not. Eternity is infinite duration without any beginning, end, or limit—an ever abiding present. We can conceive of it only as duration indefinitely extended from the present moment in two directions—as to the past and as to the future. "One of the deaf and dumb pupils in the institution of Paris, being desired to express his idea of the eternity of the Deity, replied: 'It is duration, without beginning or end; existence, without bounds or dimension; present, without past or future. His eternity is youth, without infancy or old age; life, without birth or death; today, without yesterday or tomorrow.'"
By the Immutability of God is meant that God's nature is absolute|y unchangeable. It is not possible that He should possess one attribute at one time that He does not possess at another. Nor can there be any change in the Deity for better or for worse. God remains forever the same. He is without beginning and without end; the self-existent "I am"; He remains forever the same, and unchangeable.
(1) Scriptural statement of the fact: The Eternity of God
Hab. 1:12—"Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One?" Chaldea had threatened to annihilate Israel. The prophet cannot believe it possible, for has not God eternal purposes for Israel? Is He not holy? How, then, can evil triumph? Psa. 90:2—"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." Short and transitory is the life of man; with God it is otherwise. The perishable nature of man is here compared with the imperishable nature of God. Psa. 102:24–27—"I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations. Of old thou hast laid the foundations of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end." With the perishable nature of the whole material creation the psalmist contrasts the imperishable nature of God. Exod. 3:14—"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM." The past, present and future lies in these words for the name of Jehovah. Rev. 1:8—"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
(2) Scriptural statement of the Immutability of God:
Mal 3:6—"1 am the Lord, I change not." Man's hope lies in that fact, as the context here shows Man had changed in his life and purpose toward God, and if God, like man, had changed, man would have been destroyed. James 1:17—"The Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." There is no change—in the sense of the degree or intensity of light such as is manifested in the heavenly bodies. Such lights are constantly varying and changing; not so with God. There is no inherent, indwelling, possible change in God. 1 Sam. 15:29.—"And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent." From these scriptures we assert that God, in His nature and character, is absolutely without change.
Does God Repent?
What, then, shall we say with regard to such scriptures as Jonah 3:10 and Gen. 6:6—"And God repented of the evil, that he said he would do unto them." "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." In reply we may say that God does not change, but threatens that men may change. "The repentent attitude in God does not involve any real change in the character and purposes of God. He ever hates the sin and ever pities and loves the sinner; that is so both before and after the sinner's repentance. Divine repentance is therefore the same principle acting differently in altered circumstances. If the prospect of punishment answers the same purpose as that intended by the punishment itself, then there is no inconsistency in its remission, for punishment is not an end, it is only a means to goodness, to the reign of the law of righteousness." When God appears to be displeased with anything, or orders it differently from what we expected, we say, after the manner of men, that He repents. God's attitude towards the Ninevites had not changed, but they had changed; and because they had changed from sin unto righteousness, God's attitude towards them and His intended dealings with them as sinners must of necessity change, while, of course, God's character had in no wise changed with respect to these people, although His dealings with them had. So that we may say that God's character never changes, but His dealings with men change as they change from ungodliness to godliness and from disobedience unto obedience. "God's immutability is not that of the stone, that has no internal experience, but rather that of the column of mercury that rises and falls with every change in the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. When a man bicycling against the wind turns about and goes with the wind instead of going against it, the wind seems to change, although it is blowing just as it was before."—Strong.
2. THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES.
a) The Holiness of God.
If there is any difference in importance in the attributes of God, that of His Holiness seems to occupy the first place. It is, to say the least, the one attribute which God would have His people remember Him by more than any other. In the visions of Himself which God granted men in the Scriptures the thing that stood out most prominent was the divine holiness. This is clearly seen by referring to the visions of Moses, Job, and Isaiah. Some thirty times does the Prophet Isaiah speak of Jehovah as "the Holy One," thus indicating what feature of those beatific visions had most impressed him.
The holiness of God is the message of the entire Old Testament. To the prophets God was the absolutely Holy One; the One with eyes too pure to behold evil; the One swift to punish iniquity. In taking a photograph, the part of the body