INTRODUCTION
"Blessed are the inquirers who inquire not concerning the Eternal
but for the Eternal"
The creation, the redemption, and the consummation of the world-like
three outstanding sublime hieroglyphs, these three problems stand forth in
the spiritual history of mankind. Never yet has any people passed them
heedlessly by. Rather have the greatest minds of all ages striven to
interpret them.
The answers have been varied, contradictory, often completely
incomprehensible. System after system has been devised, one cosmogony
after another has been followed. On the ruins of the one another builds
his thought-structure, and still today man wrestles about them with all
the energy of his mind.
Yet all the time the answer is there! God Himself has given it plainly.
His eternal thoughts are in no wise mere "ideas" floating far
above the course of all earthly affairs, but are creative deeds, which at
one and the same time directly incorporate themselves within all history,
interweave themselves closely and deeply with it, and manifest themselves
effectively "in, with, and beneath" it all. "The history of
the ages is the history of mankind, and the history of mankind is the
history--of God".
But the answer which God gives is-Himself; His own being in the person
of His Son. As the eternal "Word" the Son is the centre and sun
of all Divine revelation in the entire universe.
All things proceed from God: here the primeval basis of the past unveils
itself, the nature of world-creation (Col.1: 16; John 1:3)
All things are completed by God: this explains the question of the
present, the process of world-redemption (Rom. 11:36).
All thinas move back to God: here the goal of all the future reveals
itself, the essential character of all world-consummation (I Cor. I 5:
28).
Thus is God the Lord, revealed in Christ, the Rock of all the ages, the
personal, living, primal basis of all existence.
But the etemal Word revealed itself through the spoken Word, and the
spoken Word became the written Word, and the written Word became the
Bible. Hence the Bible is the key to world events, the Book of mankind,
thc Book of history.
Therefore all depends upon understanding it. Without it we are but
creatures who grope and fumble in a dungeon completely without light. But
upon whom the Bible rises the sun rises, and with it heaven and all its
radiance. His path is illuminated, his life becomes light, time is
transfigured, the divine conquers, and more and more he understands that
great word,
"NOW IS ETERNITY ".
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