Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

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ii :27-32 GENESIS
that shall be disclosed (Rom. 8:23, 1 Thess. J:23). We
are assured, however, by the word of our God that the
number of the glorified shall not small, but shall come
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out of every nation, and of all ibes and peoples and
tongues” (Rev, 7:9-10) ; and this is’the Word that stands
sure and stedfast (1 Pet. 1:2~, 2 Pet. 1:19, 2 Tim. 2:9,
Luke 21:33, etc.). These, we , “the general
assembly and church of the first who are enrolled
in heaven” (Heb. 12:23), shall e the glorious
citizenry of the City of God, New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2).
Me must never lose sight of the awesome truth that
eternity is timelessness: it has been rightly said that time
is the narrow vale between the mountain-peaks of two
eternities. It follows, therefore, although our poor minds
are unable to grasp it, that God does not, in the strict
sense of the term, foreknow: rather, He simply knows.
The whole temporal process is but His single Thought.
In God essence IS existence: the essence of our God is
to be: He dwells always in the present tense; with Him it
is always NOW (2 Cor. 6:2, Luke 14:17; Isa. 49:8, JJ:6;
2 Pet. 3:8) ; hence, the great and incommunicable Name
of our God is I AM, HE WHO IS (Exo. 3 : 13 -14). He is
the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega (Rev.
1:8, 17; 21:6, 22:13; cf. Isa. 41:4), the Beginning and
the End, only in the sense tht He is without beginning
or end. This is not only the testimony of Scripture; it
is that of reason as well. There must be back of all being,
the very Creator and Preserver of it all, a Power that is
without beginning or end; else our only alternative is the
belief that sometime, somewhere, nothing created this vast
something which we call the world, the cosmos, with its
multifarious living creatures. Such a notion, however, is
inconceivable: even the ancients were wise enough to know
that ex nihilo, nihil fit. (Incidentally, the most ardent
evolutionist, whether he admits it or not, cannot escape
the fact that his theory is, after all, a theory of creation.)
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