THE BIBLE WORLD: STILL THE WARM, LIVING WORLD

“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 TIMOTHY 2:15)

When reading the Scriptures, the sensitive person is sure to feel the marked difference between the world as the Bible reveals it and the world as conceived by religious people today. And the contrast is not in our favor!

 

The world as the men and women of the Bible saw it was a personal world, warm, intimate, populated. Their world contained first of all the God who had created it, who still dwelt in it as in a sanctuary and who might be discovered walking among the trees of the garden if the human heart were but pure enough to feel and human eyes clear enough to see. There were also present many beings sent of God to be ministers to them who were the heirs of salvation. They also recognized the presence of sinister forces which it was their duty to oppose and which they might conquer by an appeal to God in prayer. Jacob saw a ladder set up on the earth with God standing above it and the angels ascending and descending upon it. Abraham and Balaam and Manoah and how many others met the angels of God and conversed with them. Moses saw God in the bush; Isaiah saw Him high and lifted up and heard the antiphonal chant filling the temple.

 

Christians today think of the world in wholly different terms—a world cold and impersonal and completely without inhabitants except for man. The blind eyes of modern Christians cannot see the invisible but that does not destroy the reality of the spiritual creation. If we will believe we may even now enjoy the presence of God and the ministry of His heavenly messengers.

 W. Tozer