[Printable version]
[Also published in Nuggets for the Needy]
Omega Message – August 1984
Mavis M. duCille
When we think of GOD we think of Strength, Power, Love, Kingship, Kindness, Peace, Longsuffering and Patience, Justice, Judgment, Mercy and all that He reveals Himself to be. Try as we may to fathom all this, it is beyond our comprehension to fathom His scope. He is without bounds or limit. He pervades everything, producing cause and effect from beginning to end.
Adam:
He knew some of the magnificence of God as he walked and talked with him in the cool of the evening. He knew God in a special way and for how long this relationship continued, we do not know. One thing we are sure of is that Enoch, the seventh from Adam was translated by Faith, and that this knowledge did not come from his own experience but must have come from his fathers.
Enoch:
“Enoch walked with God, and Enoch was not, because God took him.” Gen. 5:24. Just think of a man who walked so close to God that he was translated into the heavenlies without death. This must have been his desire, and I expect one of these days many of us will come to that point of time and place where we will be translated without seeing death:
I Corinthians 15:51-52 “Behold I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed.”
Noah:
Noah knew God as one who cared for and delivers his people even under the most trying and humanly impossible circumstances.
Here was the only survivor of a whole nation of righteous people. During a period of almost two thousand years, the righteous people, beginning with Seth who was a replacement for Abel who was slain by Cain, were gradually being destroyed by the violent and by defection. “Sons of God going in to the sinful nation and having children who became great men of renown.” Now only one family of eight persons was left and daily their lives were threatened. God told him to build an ark. For one hundred and twenty years Noah believed God while he warned the people and built his ark. Sometimes we feel badly when we discover that a few people are against us, but this man had all the people in the rest of the world who were against him. He was mocked, derided and counted as nothing – total rejection. It would appear that rain had not fallen on the earth before, and people did not even think it was a possibility that this could happen. Noah Preached that rain would fall. One man against the world. He Won.
Shem:
Shem lived in the time of Nimrod when man first set up his kingdom against the kingdom of heaven, when a man dared to declare himself as God. This was the period in which Babylon was built and when Ishtar the ‘queen of heaven’ reigned. (the Ishtar gate still stands in Bagdad, Iraq). Shem overcame all this and lived down to the time of Abraham.
Abraham:
When Abraham met Melchizedek (Christ) referred to God as the Most High God, – Possessor of Heaven and Earth, and gave to Melchizedek a tenth of all he had. He refused to take any gift from the King of Sodom because his gift was not going to glorify God.
God honored Abraham’s faith and confidence, who at Seventy Five years of age left all for God and “went out knowing not wither he went”. Through much hardship and trials, God brought him to the land of promise, and because he believed God he bought a field to bury his wife in Jerusalem. Today the Dome of the Rock shrouds the stone where he offered Isaac to God, but for the intervention of an angel, he would have sacrificed him. In spite of all this at the end Abraham did not look for an earthly Jerusalem, but a heavenly:
Hebrews 11:10, 15, 16;
11:10 “For he looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
11:15 “And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had the opportunity to have returned.
11:16 “But now they desire a better country, that is an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.”
Moses:
This is the man who had the testimony of God that of all the men on the earth he was the humblest. Among men he must have been one of the greatest God made yet, his heart was set on doing the will of God with all his strength. He had seen the mighty works of God in the wilderness of Sinai and he had seen the finger of God write the Ten Commandments on stone. He seemed to have understood God so well, that when God said to him “tomorrow you shall die,” he did not see it as defeat but Victory. No pleading no begging, the divine will was his will. He snatched victory out of the hand of Satan by making offering for his sins before dying, thus appearing sinless before God. Satan could not have his body, angels took him away.
This Man Knew The Awesome Power Of God, But He Also Knew His Love And Kindness. He never misconstrued a word of God, and the only time that he ever failed was when his emotions got the better of him.
Moses was a trained warrior of Egypt, a fit man to be groomed as the successor to the throne. He was trained in all the arts of Egypt by Jannes and Jambres, the sorcerers of that time, YET, when God called him, he rejected it all – “Counted it as dung, to gain Christ”.
David:
The man after God’s own heart. A lion in battle, a leader of the leaders, King of Israel, Yet obedient to God. He knew God as Saviour of his life on many occasions. Sometimes God would come into the battle line and work miracles for His people.
Psalms 27:1, 5,
27:1 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
27:5 “For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion: In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock.”
He lived constantly with death, thus he knew the power of God to save. He knew what it meant to be hidden under the shadow of the Almighty. David was King and knew God As Lord And Saviour:
How Do We See God?
Is God any less today than He was in the time of the Great Patriarchs? Or does He care less for us today than He did for those people in the past? The answer to both questions is obviously No; God is the same yesterday, today and forever – Yes, God is the same, the problem is with us.
Because of the fallen state of the church, we tend to look to the high mountains of God and say they seem to be so unattainable, but the Faith of Enoch and the Faith of Abraham is still part of our inheritance in Jesus Christ.
When we come to see God through the eyes of Jesus Christ, then we will begin to have a glimpse of not only the God of Adam and the God of the Patriarchs, but the God of All Ages.
Each of the men mentioned was a mighty pillar in the foundations which God has built in the earth over the ages, but they each saw only a part of God. God is yet to be revealed in us and to us. This is why the last book in the Bible is “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.” The deeper we go into the Holy Ghost, and the deeper the Holy Ghost is allowed to penetrate into our beings, the greater will be the revelation of God.
Revelation 10:7 “When the Seventh Angel begins to sound then the mystery of God shall be finished…”
The promise therefore is that one day we shall see him face to face. Thank God, the Day Approaches.
Sonlight Devotional 