When the Apostle Paul stood on Mars Hill, and told the heathen people of Athens of the true God that made the heavens and the earth, He said, “For we are also His offspring.” That is, we are all God’s little children.

Our Father wants all His children to know and love Him, and so for His human family He made a wonderful book, in which they might see Him clearly, and hear Him speaking to them all the time.

When men put their thoughts into words, and make books, they have to use ink paper, because they can only think and speak and write about things, but God thinks and speaks and writes the things themselves. His Word is “living and active,”—it lives and works.

So when, in the beginning, God put His thoughts into words, the Word took just the form that was in His mind when He spoke it,—sun, moon, stars, plants, birds, fishes, animals, man,—and this is how God’s Book was made. We call it “the book of nature,” but nature is God’s showing us Himself in “the things that are made.” He says that “the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Divinity.”

In each thing that He has made the living Word is speaking to us some thought of God, showing us something of God Himself that will teach us to know Him better and love Him more.

Adam and Eve were the first of God’s children to read in this book of God. They understood just what God was saying to them in each of His wondrous works. “They held converse with leaf and flower and tree, gathering from each the secret of its life. With every living creature, from the mighty Leviathan that playeth among the waters, to the insect mote that floats in the sunbeam, Adam was familiar. He had given to each its name, and he was acquainted with the nature and habits of all.” [Patriarchs and Prophets, pg. 50]

“On every leaf of the forest or stone of the mountains, in every shining star, in earth and air and sky, God’s name was written. They were ever discovering some attraction that filled their hearts with a deeper love, and called for fresh expressions of gratitude.” [Ibid.]

God’s older children, the angels, also delighted to read this beautiful Book of God. They watched with the deepest interest during the six days that it was being made, and when it was finished, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” [Job 38:7] Even they could see God more clearly, and understand Him better, through “the things that are made” in this earth.

But when man, to whom God had given the power to choose good or evil, chose to disobey the living Word of God, and so not to let the thought of God be carried out in him, a great change came over everything. The curse of sin came upon man, and “sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” [James 1:15]

It was God’s own life that He had given to man; God Himself lived in him, and so it was upon him that the curse of sin came. Yet God did not at once take away His life for man, but went on bearing the curse that man had brought upon himself, so that he might be saved.

Man now had other, deeper, more wonderful lessons to learn of God. As a sinner he needed to know God as a Saviour from sin, and so that His Book might teach him this God allowed the curse that man had brought upon himself, to come upon all “the things that are made.”

Thus man could not only see God in all things, His “eternal power and Divinity,” but could see Him bearing the curse of sin, and learn to read the Gospel, which is “the power of God unto salvation” from sin.

And now the Book of God began to tell a more wonderful, more beautiful story than in the beginning, “The Story of the Cross.” Another time we will perhaps talk more about this, and how we may each read it for ourselves in all “the things that are made.”

The Present Truth – March 3, 1898
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf  The Things that Are Made