Sunday, October 15, 2017
In the person of Christ we behold the eternal God engaged in an enterprise of boundless mercy toward the fallen race....
If the poor and unlearned are not capable of understanding the Bible, then the mission of Christ to our world was useless, for He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” The command to search the Scriptures Christ addressed not only to the Pharisees and scribes but to the great multitude of the common people who crowded about them.
If the Bible is not to be understood by every class of people, whether they be rich or poor, what would be the need of the Savior's charge to search the Scriptures? What profit would there be in searching that which could never be understood?...
The duty of every intelligent person is to search the Scriptures. Each one should know for certainty the conditions upon which salvation is provided....
The Pharisees and the religious teachers so misrepresented the character of God that it was necessary for Christ to come to the world to represent the Father. Through the subtlety of Satan, men and women were led to charge upon God satanic attributes; but the Savior swept back the thick darkness which Satan had rolled before the throne of God in order that he might intercept the bright rays of mercy and love which came from God to us....
Christ took upon Him humanity in order that the light and radiance of divine love should not extinguish the human race. When Moses pleaded, “I beseech thee, shew me thy glory,” he was placed in the cleft of the rock, and the Lord passed by before him. When Philip asked Christ to show them the Father, He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”...
In plain language the Savior taught the world that the tenderness, the compassion, the love that He manifested toward humanity, were the very attributes of His Father in heaven. Whatever doctrine of grace He presented, whatever promise of joy, whatever deed of love, whatever divine attraction He exhibited, had its source in the Father of all. In the person of Christ we behold the eternal God engaged in an enterprise of boundless mercy toward the fallen race.—Signs of the Times, August 20, 1894. FH 32
“God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.” He gave Him not only to live among men, to bear their sins, and die their sacrifice. He gave Him to the fallen race. Christ was to identify Himself with the interests and needs of humanity. He who was one with God has linked Himself with the children of men by ties that are never to be broken. Jesus is “not ashamed to call them brethren” (Hebrews 2:11); He is our Sacrifice, our Advocate, our Brother, bearing our human form before the Father's throne, and through eternal ages one with the race He has redeemed—the Son of man. And all this that man might be uplifted from the ruin and degradation of sin that he might reflect the love of God and share the joy of holiness. SC 14
I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. John 17:6 (King James Version)