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The Author of Life
LIFE has always existed in the universe. This is because God has always been. He has an eternal past, as he has also an eternal future, so that time measured by our clocks is as nothing to him. In inspired prayer the prophet Moses says: "LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Psalm 90:1,2) He had no beginning, and he will have no end. He challenges anyone to prove that there was any God before him. To those to whom he has revealed himself he says: "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am Jehovah; and besides me there is no saviour." (Isaiah 43:10,11, ASV) It is idle to ask, Who made God? It is undignifying to his Godship. He is the one original Creator, and not a creature. His endless past agrees with his being the only true God. "But Jehovah is the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting King." —Jeremiah 10:10, ASV.
To many minds it seems difficult to realize that Jehovah God is without a beginning, that he had an infinite existence before ever we came to life. But is that impossible? What about space and time? Where does space begin? When did time begin? The science of mathematics knows such a thing as infinity; and it should be no more difficult to accept that God always was than that time and space go on forever, into the past and into the future. It gives us some idea of God's eternal past to remember that in 1919, when the hundred-inch telescope on Mount Wilson, California, was the most powerful in the world, space was penetrated by human sight to a distance of five hundred million light years. That represents the distance light would travel in five hundred million of our solar years. Before all those five hundred million years Jehovah God was. But, measured by creation, that is not the limit of his past existence. Now with the 200-inch telescope atop Mount Palomar, California, the distance penetrated into space has been doubled, and the discernible universe has eight times the volume of the one disclosed by the Mount Wilson telescope. As the scientists who believe in relativity now tell us, the universe is expanding, even blowing up. According to the accepted theory the universe which we know began expanding 1,800 million years ago from the single, then created mass of densely packed matter. Even if we take that theory for what it is worth, then before all that time the everlasting true God was. Whither is this universe expanding, if it is expanding? Into further reaches of space. But into all that space the creative power of Jehovah God extends.
Lift up your eyes on high, the Creator invites, and consider all these heavenly works, with or without the aid of the telescope. All these are visible evidences that he is, even though unseen to us, and that from the eternal past he is God. These give mankind no excuse for doubting his existence and his Godship. "Because what may be known about God is manifest among them, for God made it manifest to them. For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world's creation onward, because they are understood by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable." (Romans 1:19,20, NW) In the face of such overwhelming visible evidence it is only the self-conceited fool that says to himself: "There is no God." All these wonders tell of a Creator, and his name is Jehovah. The very name bespeaks his creatorship, for it means "He causes to be". Those who manufacture images of some created thing or imaginary thing and who kneel before them and worship them or worship what they are supposed to represent are called to their senses by these words of the true living God through his prophet.
"Can you not understand, cannot you see? Were you not told this from the first, have you not grasped this, since the world began?—that He sits over the round earth, so high that its inhabitants look like grasshoppers; he spreads the skies out like a curtain, and stretches them like a tent. 'To whom will you compare me, then, and equal me?' asks the Majestic One. Lift high your eyes, look up; who made these stars? he who marshals them in oi'der, summoning each one by name. For fear of him, so mighty and so strong, not one fails to appear. Come now! Do you not understand, have you not heard, that the Eternal is an everlasting God, the maker of the world from end to end? He never faints, never is weary, his insight is unsearchable; into the weary he puts power, and adds new strength to the weak." —Isaiah 40:21, 22, 25, 26,28,29, Moff.
Jehovah God is the living Creator, from all past eternity, he is the one original source of life. No life sprang spontaneously from dead matter. "With thee is the fountain of life." (Psalm 36:9) Since God has an everlasting past and since numberless works which he has created throughout the vast depths of space have continued operating since the time of their creation, we can appreciate how the Creator could start human life on earth and could sustain it forever in perfection, constantly putting power into it and renewing its strength for all time to come.
The proper place for man to live is the earth, of which he is a part. "The first man is out of the earth and made of dust." (1 Corinthians 15:47, NW) The earth from which the first man was made was created to exist forever. Showing the difference between the present human generations and the earth which moves around the sun, the inspired Preacher says: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." (Ecclesiastes 1:4,5) According to earth's eternal destiny Jehovah created it to be inhabited by humankind forever. He says so. "I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens; and all their host have I commanded. For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, the God that formed the earth and made it, that established it and created it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah; and there is none else." (Isaiah 45:12,18, ASV) From the day of the first man's creation to this day the earth has never been without a human inhabitant, and it never will be.
Mankind needs life, everlasting perfect human life. For about six thousand years mankind has been dying, and many generations of humans have come and gone. When we remember the endless happy existence that God promises for mankind, it provokes a sympathetic smile to read the announcement from Washington, D.C., of the National Office of Vital Statistics, that "the average life span in this country [U.S.A.] lengthened from 66.8 years in 1947 to 67.2 years in 1948. . . . The average length of life in 1900 was 49.2 years. Thus average life expectancy has lengthened eighteen years in approximately half a century. The decline in the death rate since 1940 has been greatest for children from 1 to 4 years of age." (New York Times, Feb. 16, 1950) That represents what modern medical and social science is supposed to have accomplished for the United States, one of the most progressive countries of the world. Unaided by modern science, the ark-builder Noah, who saw life on both sides of the global flood, lived to be 950 years old. Methuselah his grandfather died in the flood year at the age of 969 years.—Genesis 9:28; 5:27.
Modern science cannot be depended upon to build man up to live forever. Look at the condition finally of any person whom it may have aided to live to a ripe old age beyond the general average! Modern science does not make for everlasting life. What with its development of bacteriological warfare and its invention of atomic bombs and the hydrogen or "hell" bomb and other weapons of mass destruction, modern science makes rather for death. It contradicts its own benevolent claims by prostituting itself to the aims of this world. Modern science is not the all-essential thing of which to gain knowledge in order to enjoy everlasting life. The warning to a faithful servant of God in the first century applies equally to us today: "O Timothy, guard what is laid up in trust with you, turning away from the empty speeches that violate what is holy and from the contradictions of the falsely called 'knowledge'. For making a show of such knowledge some have deviated from the faith."—1 Timothy 6:20,21, NW.
All the investigations by modern science into the heavens, the earth and the atom prove that the entire universe was created by a great scientist of depthless wisdom. That great scientist of the universe is Jehovah God the Creator. The truth expressed by his wise Son Jesus Christ remains unchanged today: What means everlasting life to us dying humans is our knowing first of all the heavenly Father, "the only true God." As the Father he is the Life-giver. This great Architect of the universe is eternal in scientific knowledge. He has the know-how and the power to create, yes, re-create life by a resurrection and to protect and renew and preserve it forever. His offer of everlasting life to mankind is the only one on which to hope. That offer is through the one whom he sent from heaven into this earth, Jesus Christ. This one we must cultivate a knowledge of also.
To many minds it seems difficult to realize that Jehovah God is without a beginning, that he had an infinite existence before ever we came to life. But is that impossible? What about space and time? Where does space begin? When did time begin? The science of mathematics knows such a thing as infinity; and it should be no more difficult to accept that God always was than that time and space go on forever, into the past and into the future. It gives us some idea of God's eternal past to remember that in 1919, when the hundred-inch telescope on Mount Wilson, California, was the most powerful in the world, space was penetrated by human sight to a distance of five hundred million light years. That represents the distance light would travel in five hundred million of our solar years. Before all those five hundred million years Jehovah God was. But, measured by creation, that is not the limit of his past existence. Now with the 200-inch telescope atop Mount Palomar, California, the distance penetrated into space has been doubled, and the discernible universe has eight times the volume of the one disclosed by the Mount Wilson telescope. As the scientists who believe in relativity now tell us, the universe is expanding, even blowing up. According to the accepted theory the universe which we know began expanding 1,800 million years ago from the single, then created mass of densely packed matter. Even if we take that theory for what it is worth, then before all that time the everlasting true God was. Whither is this universe expanding, if it is expanding? Into further reaches of space. But into all that space the creative power of Jehovah God extends.
Lift up your eyes on high, the Creator invites, and consider all these heavenly works, with or without the aid of the telescope. All these are visible evidences that he is, even though unseen to us, and that from the eternal past he is God. These give mankind no excuse for doubting his existence and his Godship. "Because what may be known about God is manifest among them, for God made it manifest to them. For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world's creation onward, because they are understood by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable." (Romans 1:19,20, NW) In the face of such overwhelming visible evidence it is only the self-conceited fool that says to himself: "There is no God." All these wonders tell of a Creator, and his name is Jehovah. The very name bespeaks his creatorship, for it means "He causes to be". Those who manufacture images of some created thing or imaginary thing and who kneel before them and worship them or worship what they are supposed to represent are called to their senses by these words of the true living God through his prophet.
"Can you not understand, cannot you see? Were you not told this from the first, have you not grasped this, since the world began?—that He sits over the round earth, so high that its inhabitants look like grasshoppers; he spreads the skies out like a curtain, and stretches them like a tent. 'To whom will you compare me, then, and equal me?' asks the Majestic One. Lift high your eyes, look up; who made these stars? he who marshals them in oi'der, summoning each one by name. For fear of him, so mighty and so strong, not one fails to appear. Come now! Do you not understand, have you not heard, that the Eternal is an everlasting God, the maker of the world from end to end? He never faints, never is weary, his insight is unsearchable; into the weary he puts power, and adds new strength to the weak." —Isaiah 40:21, 22, 25, 26,28,29, Moff.
Jehovah God is the living Creator, from all past eternity, he is the one original source of life. No life sprang spontaneously from dead matter. "With thee is the fountain of life." (Psalm 36:9) Since God has an everlasting past and since numberless works which he has created throughout the vast depths of space have continued operating since the time of their creation, we can appreciate how the Creator could start human life on earth and could sustain it forever in perfection, constantly putting power into it and renewing its strength for all time to come.
The proper place for man to live is the earth, of which he is a part. "The first man is out of the earth and made of dust." (1 Corinthians 15:47, NW) The earth from which the first man was made was created to exist forever. Showing the difference between the present human generations and the earth which moves around the sun, the inspired Preacher says: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." (Ecclesiastes 1:4,5) According to earth's eternal destiny Jehovah created it to be inhabited by humankind forever. He says so. "I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens; and all their host have I commanded. For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, the God that formed the earth and made it, that established it and created it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah; and there is none else." (Isaiah 45:12,18, ASV) From the day of the first man's creation to this day the earth has never been without a human inhabitant, and it never will be.
Mankind needs life, everlasting perfect human life. For about six thousand years mankind has been dying, and many generations of humans have come and gone. When we remember the endless happy existence that God promises for mankind, it provokes a sympathetic smile to read the announcement from Washington, D.C., of the National Office of Vital Statistics, that "the average life span in this country [U.S.A.] lengthened from 66.8 years in 1947 to 67.2 years in 1948. . . . The average length of life in 1900 was 49.2 years. Thus average life expectancy has lengthened eighteen years in approximately half a century. The decline in the death rate since 1940 has been greatest for children from 1 to 4 years of age." (New York Times, Feb. 16, 1950) That represents what modern medical and social science is supposed to have accomplished for the United States, one of the most progressive countries of the world. Unaided by modern science, the ark-builder Noah, who saw life on both sides of the global flood, lived to be 950 years old. Methuselah his grandfather died in the flood year at the age of 969 years.—Genesis 9:28; 5:27.
Modern science cannot be depended upon to build man up to live forever. Look at the condition finally of any person whom it may have aided to live to a ripe old age beyond the general average! Modern science does not make for everlasting life. What with its development of bacteriological warfare and its invention of atomic bombs and the hydrogen or "hell" bomb and other weapons of mass destruction, modern science makes rather for death. It contradicts its own benevolent claims by prostituting itself to the aims of this world. Modern science is not the all-essential thing of which to gain knowledge in order to enjoy everlasting life. The warning to a faithful servant of God in the first century applies equally to us today: "O Timothy, guard what is laid up in trust with you, turning away from the empty speeches that violate what is holy and from the contradictions of the falsely called 'knowledge'. For making a show of such knowledge some have deviated from the faith."—1 Timothy 6:20,21, NW.
All the investigations by modern science into the heavens, the earth and the atom prove that the entire universe was created by a great scientist of depthless wisdom. That great scientist of the universe is Jehovah God the Creator. The truth expressed by his wise Son Jesus Christ remains unchanged today: What means everlasting life to us dying humans is our knowing first of all the heavenly Father, "the only true God." As the Father he is the Life-giver. This great Architect of the universe is eternal in scientific knowledge. He has the know-how and the power to create, yes, re-create life by a resurrection and to protect and renew and preserve it forever. His offer of everlasting life to mankind is the only one on which to hope. That offer is through the one whom he sent from heaven into this earth, Jesus Christ. This one we must cultivate a knowledge of also.