The Pre-Existence “Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Christ rested upon the bosom of the Father in Eternity before He rested on the bosom of a mother in Time. Before He took the form of a created being and became flesh, He had eternal pre-existence as an un created divine person. This Jesus, from everlasting to everlasting, the Ancient of Days, became a baby as old as His Heavenly Father and ages older than His earthly mother—a baby virgin-bom. And every nerve of this virgin-bom baby was divine handwriting, every bone divine sculpture, every muscle a pulley divinely swung, every breath a divine whisper, every heartbeat a divine pulsation. Born of a virgin who had never touched a man, He was the Light—God seen, the Word—God heard, the Life—God felt. This One who laid aside “that glorious form . . . that far-beaming blaze of majesty" which was His at “Heav’n’s high council table . . . and chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay” was He who created all things—was He “by whom God created the worlds.” “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him” (Col. 1:16). “Ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it?” (Deut. 4:32).
Robert G. Lee, D.D., LL.D., Lift D.
"Bethlehem . . . a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:4,11).
The Place B ETHLEHEM! Not Jerusalem — a city of thousands of national memories—glorious and guilty, evil girt with a diadem inside her walls. Not Athens— the intellectual center of the world. Not illustrious Rome —festering on the spoil of war. But Bethlehem—called by some “a weed patch ignored by world travelers”—a small village in which nothing had occurred to aggran dize it. Bethlehem, drawing a new star to lighten its obscurity, drawing sages from the East, drawing the angel of the Lord, drawing of the Heavenly hosts a multitude— remembered in all generations. “Thou, Bethlehem Eph- ratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.” Though in going to Bethlehem, Mary thought only of going with Joseph, and Joseph had in mind nothing but the Governor's order, and the Gov ernor thought of nothing but the mandate of the Emperor, and the Emperor was holding in vain head and wicked heart vanity and pride, yet all of these in ignorance but in the harmony of much complexity, fulfilled the determi nate counsel and foreknowledge of God.
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DECEMBER, 1946
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