PART I.    THE MORAL BASIS OF THE CREATION

CHAPTER ONE
THE MYSTERY OF GOD

       "Known unto God are all His works from the beginning", but only made known to His creatures as He chooses to reveal them (Eph. 3 v.3): as Isaiah said "Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour". The word 'mystery' in the Scriptures has no thought in it of anything mysterious, uncanny, vague. On the contrary it was used to describe the inner religious teachings which the various pagan sects divulged to those of their members who desired to go on to perfection. The modern parallel would be the inner teaching of, for example, the Freemasons, or the spiritists. There is an inner as well as an outer circle of Christianity; all Christians are born again, but not all grow up into full stature. Some spend their lives drinking the milk of babyhood, others feast on the solid food of manhood.

       From the opening pages of Scripture the Lord began to reveal Himself and as chapter was added to chapter, and later on book to book, so the revelation steadily grew for those who valued it. There was, however, a world of difference between the writer of Psalm 119 and the King of Judah who, like a modernist, cut the words of Jeremiah to pieces and burnt them. There were also passages of Scripture in the Old Testament which were sealed up and not intended to be understood till many years had passed (1 Peter 1:12; Daniel 12 v.9). Then for a long period from Malachi to

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Christ God kept silent concerning Himself, and Judaism willingly drifted into darker and darker ignorance and perplexity. She had her Scriptures, but her teachers had taken away the key to them (Luke 11 v.52), and the words of Isaiah 29 vv. 10-12 came to pass. The Book, which was meant to enlighten, instead misled and baffled. Yet even in those days there were those, like Simeon and Anna, who had a glimmer of light. How remarkable it is, though, that John Baptist for all his knowledge of the Scriptures and his divine mission, yet when he actually saw and heard the Son of God—doubted! (Matthew 11:2,3).

       There was, however, breaking in upon the world a revelation of God so astounding as to be at first unintelligible even to those who like Nicodemus knew the Scriptures best. The Son of God Himself was to enter this earth and reveal to men the Father God with whom He had lived from eternity. So intimate was this revelation of the heart and mind of God, that even to believe it changed a man's whole outlook and nature, and made earth, his former habitat, a mere place of pilgrimage, and lifted him up from earth to Heaven as one superior even to angels, and worthy to be called the Brother of God's Son, Jesus Christ. (John 20:17).

       Moses and the Prophets were faithful in all God's House as servants, and John Baptist came at the end of a long line of those to whom Jehovah spoke; but from Moses to John many prophets and kings "desired to see those things which ye see and have not seen them, and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them". For there is a limit to the intimacy between master and servant, and they had but a partial knowledge of their Lord (Genesis 22:5).

       But to His Brethren Christ has made known all that He Himself knew, and sent the Holy Spirit to make known all that He should hear hereafter. (Revelation 1:1): (John 16:12-13).

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For he that is least in the Royal Family is greater than the greatest of servants (Matthew 11:11; Hebrews 3:5-6). There will of course be many further revelations of the will of God, as the Ages of the Ages are unveiled; but never again will the Almighty speak so revealingly, so amazingly, as He did from the Cross of Calvary. There, and only there, those who believe are led further and further away from Man's idea of God, till it is as if a revolution had taken place in their hearts, and replaced the darkness of fallen nature with the Light of Life.

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