God is Calling

Man is so constituted that he continues to dream of a shining world, although he must constantly confess, “We know not whither we are going, and how can we know the way?”

Why is it that the shining world of which men have dreamed, and that every man secretly believes is somewhere before him, is nevertheless lost to men? It can only be because we are out of the way. The world we inhabit is a lost world. It is a sick, fallen planet upon which we ride.

In a translation of the eighth chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul says:

“This world of nature was condemned to be without meaning . . . in the hope that not only mankind, but this world of nature, also, might be set free from bondage to decay. . .”

The sacred revelation declares plainly that the inhabitants of the world are also lost, by a mighty, calamitous visitation of woe which is still upon them.

But, it also tells this glorious fact—that this lost race has not been given up!

Thankfully there is a voice that calls, a voice that entreats. If we were not lost, there would be no voice behind us saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.”

If we were not far from home, there would be no Father’s voice calling us back home. All of these voices blend into one, whether it be the voice of God’s love, or the voice of Jesus’ blood, or the voice of conscience, or the voice of the dead or of the living, or of the lost or of the saved.

It is the distraught heart of God seeking His lost race.

So, the holy writer says the lost planet is full of vanity and has lost its meaning—so that even the world around it is crying, like a woman in travail; waiting as it were to be born again into the liberty of the sons of God, and saved from decay and corruption.

I say that we have not been given up. That is plain from the Book of Genesis. Recall that the sound of God’s gentle voice was heard saying, “Adam, where art thou?”—and that voice has never died out!

The echo of that voice sounding down through the years has never ceased to reverberate, to echo and re-echo from peak to peak, from generation to generation, from race to race, continent to continent, and off to the islands and back to continents again.

The voice of God is entreating us. With everything inside of my beating heart, chastened and criticized by everything inside of my mind, I believe in the voice of God sounding in this world, calling men!