EJW
E. J. Waggoner
You ask me, “How can we see God?” There is just one answer,-“Open your eyes.” The easiest thing in the world to see is light. If a person can see anything, he can see the light. If he cannot see the light, he cannot see anything at all, and there are many who cannot. The apostle speaks of some who are blind,-that is, those who have not faith, knowledge, virtue, temperance, godliness, brother kindness, and patience. “He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.” Ah! this power to see comes with purging from sin, and this is exactly what the Saviour said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” It is necessary that the individual himself shall be pur, shall be, in a word, light, in order that he may see the light. For so it is stated in the Scripture, “With thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light.” When we remember that the life is the light of men, then we have it, that with Him is the fountain of light, a flood of light, because he is clothed in light and he delights in the light. And that is the message for you and me to take to the world, “God is light,” and then to say, “Open your eyes, and behold your God.” MEDM August 1903, page 196.1
In the fourth chapter of Ephesians, we read: “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” If it were not for the blindness of their heart they would not have the ignorance, because their ignorance comes through the blindness of their heart. Then if they were not blind, they would not have that ignorance. If they did not have that ignorance, they would not be alienated from the life of God. Then they would be able to see; they would not be walking in darkness. MEDM August 1903, page 196.2
The ignorance that is in them is lack of the knowledge of the life of the Lord, for that life is the light that lights every man who comes into the world. This does not say, neither does it mean that there are some persons who are alienated from the life because they have none of it about them, and that that life is not in them,—no, they are alienated from the light because they cannot see it; because of the ignorance that is in them, they do not know that it is there, and our message to the world is, “Behold, your God,”—get your eyes open, and look around you, and see the presence of the Lord,—that God is light. MEDM August 1903, page 197.1
Here is the introduction to that message, “Comfort ye my people, and cry unto her that her iniquity is pardoned.” That is what we are commissioned to do,-go to the man who is a sinner, and who knows he is a sinner, and acknowledges that he is a sinner, and as soon as he acknowledges this, we are to communicate that message, “Your sin is pardoned.” MEDM August 1903, page 197.2
Now do not let any one make the mistake of thinking because this text says, “Comfort ye my people,” that simply those belonging to the church are meant; that is, I am one of God’s people, and every one who is as good as I am is one of God’s people, and all those who believe just as I do are God’s people. Jesus says, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick,” and we are sent even as Christ was sent, not “to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” We are sent to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and these lost sheep are the other sheep not of this fold, of which Christ said, “I have many, and I must seek them.” And on one occasion when he said, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he immediately gave a demonstration of who was meant by then, when he granted the prayer of the poor heathen woman. When his disciples would have sent her away he simply said, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and immediately granted her request and healed her daughter, showing that a heathen woman was one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and therefore claimed by the Lord as one of his people. MEDM August 1903, page 197.3
The Lord says his people do not know him: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” So God claims as his people those who do not know him, those who are in darkness and blindness, alienated from the life of God through the blindness that is in them, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of other men; these are the people to whom we are to go with this message. MEDM August 1903, page 197.4
The world is full of people who will say, “How can I get deliverance from this besetment?” Not only in the church, but almost everywhere, men are diseased,-besotted,-yet God does not despise them; and we are forbidden to despise anybody. But they are down, and they know they are down, and this is what produces that awful feeling of despair that leads them in utter abandonment to do worse. This abandonment to vice and debauchery is not always from pure viciousness and love of wickedness, but it is the abandonment of despair; they do not know how to do anything else; they can not lift themselves up, and a discouraged man is in no condition to make progress; the tendency of discouragement is to go down. These men know that they are sinners; they feel that they are sinners; in their moments of soberness they have a thoughtfulness, a feeling of unspeakable despair and despondency at their woe-begone condition, and they cannot be blamed for not knowing the way out when they are so many professing Christians who do not know the way. They will ask, “Do you suppose it is possible to be delivered from this condition?” or, “Do you believe it is possible to live above these besetments?” A man cannot live under the feeling of condemnation and despair; it is impossible, and therefore, in order to find a little peace and quiet, a man resorts to drink, takes opiates, or enters into some other vice, because he cannot stand the pain of body and distress of mind, and this is the way many men enter into the dissipation and pleasures of the world. They would like to do better, but they cannot. MEDM August 1903, page 197.5
You and I are commissioned to comfort God’s people, and if we do not know how to do it, our business is first to find out, because it is the commandment that we should go and see these people who, God says, are “my people.” He includes them as his just as truly as the father of the prodigal son claimed him as his son even when he was spending his substance among harlots. When he came back to his father, and his father said, “This is my son,” he even forestalled his son, who tried to say, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.” But the father said, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand... and let us eat and be merry.” MEDM August 1903, page 198.1
Just so truly as that father claimed the prodigal in his dissipated life as his son, so the Lord looks at all these poor souls. They are wicked, they are unlovely in their actions, and there is much that is unlovely in their appearance; yet in spite of that, God loves them. We never know anything about love until we have found out the fact that true love loves the unlovely. It take no virtue to love a lovable person, but nothing but the love of God loves those who are unlovely. MEDM August 1903, page 198.2