Contributor, v9 1887-1888 by Ezra Taft Benson

Author:Ezra Taft Benson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion

False and True Notions of a God.

ON the evening of the ninth instant, a densely crowded meeting was held in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, to welcome home Mr. Spurgeon, the popular preacher, who had been absent for some months at Mentone. The reverend gentleman addressed the meeting, and in concluding his remark is reported by the Liverpool Post to have said:

"The God he worshiped was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There was no break to him between the Old and New Testament. The god of old was a god of gold. The god of the present age was made of sugar of lead, poisonous to all who came near him."

Granting that Mr. Spurgeon is sincere in his utterances, we may say that he has separated himself from what are regarded as orthodox Christians by a very wide gulf, for there is a marked difference between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the God of the orthodox Christian world. The God of Abraham appeared unto that worthy patriarch in the plains of Mamre, and conversed with him, and also partook of the food prepared by the hands of Sarah, his wife, and made known to Abraham His designs concerning the cities of the plain which He was about to visit. This God of Abraham's was in the form of man, and moved about from place to place; for we read that when the report of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah came unto the Lord He said:

"I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not I will know." (Gen. xviii, 21).

And again:

"And the Lord went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham," (verse 23).

This God of Abraham, too, was the One who appeared to Moses and to the seventy elders of the house of Israel, who went with Moses into the Mount, and they saw the God of Israel, and did eat and drink in His presence. And though we are told that the Lord laid not His hand upon the nobles of the children of Israel, yet, "There was under His feet as it were a paved work as of a sapphire stone."' (Exodus xxiv, 1-12). It would be an easy matter to prove from the Scriptures that God loved righteousness and hated iniquity-that He was pleased with the upright and angry with those who transgress His laws; so that we may conclude that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel-in short, the true and living God, Creator of heaven and earth, is a God with a body, with parts, and likewise with passions.

But these are notions altogether at variance with the ideas of orthodox Christians respecting God. What the orthodox conception of God is, may be learned from that part of the creed of Athanasius which says:

"There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts or passions;

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