Book-11-Now And Hereafter

Now And Hereafter

Text.—“Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know here­after.... Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but Thou shalt follow me afterwards.”—John 13:7; John 13:36. THE apostles did not understand the teachings of the Master. Their thoughts took the coloring of things material. They were not able to grasp the spiritual significance of his words. They were blinded by gross materialism. Jesus had to use the simplest illustrations to make known his mind to them. He used the most lucid arguments and held before them object-lessons.

Here and hereafter; Now and Then. They are like two great mountain peaks, and they may be named Yesterday and To-morrow. The valley of Now lies between them, and we are in this valley. Yesterday is the background, and we can never traverse its roads again. We see the mountain-top of To­morrow before us, and we move our feet in the direction of it. This valley of Now separates us from the seen and the un­seen, the knowable and the unknowable, the temporal and the spiritual.

We know but little. The valley that separates the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, is only a step. Our dealings must have to do with the Now. We eat, but do not understand the laws of digestion and assimilation. We use the compass, but we cannot tell why the needle points toward the North Pole. We ride upon the waves of the sea, but we cannot explore all that is beneath. We cannot tell what fire is and why it burns. We know that water will quench thirst, but we cannot tell why it is and what it is. There are but few things we know. The religious field is full of mysteries. We like to speculate —man is an interrogation point—he wants to delve into the deep things of God. This is all right; he was made to think, and to acquire knowledge—he has an ambition to find out things. The great apostle says: “While we look not at the things which are seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” We see the apple fall, but we cannot seen gravitation. We see the car move, but we cannot see the electric current that makes it move. We see the engine and watch the ponderous wheels of machinery turn, but we cannot see the steam that causes them to turn. No one has ever seen steam; we have seen the vapor. We see the pieces of matter, but we cannot see cohesion which holds them together. We find the coal, the iron, the gold and the silver, but we cannot get hold of and analyze chemical affinity. We can handle the grain of wheat, but we can see the life within the grain only as it is manifested through the material. Who can see faith, hope, love and pa­tience?

Man tries to fathom all of these great questions. He tries to find out the origin of God, but who, by searching, can find him out? Many volumes have been writ­ten on the origin of sin, and we are just as much in the dark on this question as we were the day Adam fell. How many sermons do you think have been written on the origin of the devil? Ministers and theologians have preached and written on the philosophy of the atonement. Angels desired to look into these questions. What is man? How can he live forever? What is life? What is death? Where is heav­en? What is heaven?

Revealed things belong to man, and the things not yet revealed belong to God. God will reveal them unto us just as fast as it is possible for us to comprehend them. He has century plants, and again he has plants that will not unfold until he comes again, when we shall have the new heaven and the new earth and when we shall get back in the second Adam what we lost in the first.

Today we cannot understand why the good woman must suffer while the bad woman is blessed. We cannot un­derstand why the good man must meet with misfortune while the bad man abounds in wealth. Why is death per­mitted to come into the home and fasten its grip upon the form of my child? When I look into its face and see it in the throes of death and undergoing ter­rible suffering, I find myself asking, “Why does God permit it?” I cannot answer now. It is not given to me to know now, but I shall know hereafter. Someday I shall understand that all of these light afflictions have wrought out for me an eternal weight of glory. On one occasion a mighty flood was witnessed in a certain community, and a man awoke to find that his farm had been destroyed. He saw the dark side and complained. He felt that he was ruined financially. Soon after this flood he dis­covered a vein of gold which had been exposed by the madly rushing waters, and it proved to be a fortune. This mis­fortune was a blessing in disguise. plant the seed without knowing just what it is, but after the flower blooms I can know. We are living in the Now and must have to do only with the present. The old man looks back to the mountain peak of Yesterday, and he lives in the past; the young man stands in the valley and anticipates the blessings to be en­joyed in the To-morrow. The mother and the father stand by the casket that holds the ashes of their little child, and sob with broken hearts, but with the vi­sion of faith they behold it in the arms of Jesus, as it sings a song no man can sing, and they live in the hope that someday, when Jesus comes back to earth, they will see the child and be glorified together with it.

"I know in grief like yours how more than vain All comfort to the stricken heart appears; And as the bursting cloud must spend its rain, So grief its tears.

I knew that when your little darling’s form Had freed the angel spirit fettered there, You could not pierce beyond the breaking storm, In your despair.

You could not see the tender hand that caught Your little lamb, to shield him from all harm;

You missed him from your own; but never thought Of Jesus’ arm.

You only knew those precious eyes were dim;

You only felt those tiny lips were cold;

You only clung to what remained of him Beneath the mold.

But, oh, young mother, look! the gate unbars! And through the darkness, smiling from the skies, Are beaming on you, brighter than those stars, Your darling’s eyes.

’Tis said that, when the pastures down among The Alpine hills have ceased to feed the flocks, And they must mount to where the grass is young—

Far up the rocks— The shepherd takes a little lamb at play, And -lifts him gently to his careful breast, And, with its tender bleating, leads the way For all the rest; That quick the mother follows in the path, Then others go, like men whose faith gives hopes, And soon the shepherd gathers all he hath—

Far up the slopes. And on those everlasting hills he feeds The trusting fold in green that never palls.

Look up! Oh, see! Your little darling leads— The Shepherd calls.”

Paul is now persecuted, but after­wards be shall be glorified. Someday the light shall break, and we shall know as we are known. Now we must look through the mirror darkly, but then we shall see face to face. Now we must know in part, but then we shall know even as we are known. On one occasion a man stood in the presence of a great crowd and gave an exhibition of his skill as an artist. He painted before them a picture. The wheat fields and meadows appeared, and then the cattle and the sheep: another stroke of the brush, and the old home­stead, then the old well and the bucket, and then the father, the mother and the children appeared, and when the picture was completed he folded his arms and waited for applause. They looked upon this picture and gave evidence of their appreciation by their cheers. Then he took the brush and dipped it into a pot of paint, and with one stroke he blotted out the wheat fields and the meadows; with another he blotted out the cattle and the sheep, and with another the faces of father, mother and children, with the old homestead, were gone. He then folded his hands and waited for ap­plause, but no one gave it. The picture was destroyed! He changed the canvas, and the people began to applaud, for their eyes were feasting upon one of the most magnificent paintings eyes had ever seen. What they had believed to be de­structive strokes were constructive when viewed from the right angle.

God is painting a picture for us, and sometimes when trouble, misfortune, sor­row and death come to us, we feel that our picture is ruined, but let us wait to see it from his angle when he unfurls it in the eternities, and we shall then know that all things have worked together for our good and that what we one time thought to have been destructive was constructive, and then we shall under­stand and rejoice. Jesus had to go away from his disciples—he had to leave this world of material things—in order to make it possible for his disciples to have the Holy Spirit and be fitted to enjoy the things to be known and enjoyed in the hereafter. A child was dying. Its mother stood near it. The little thing reached out its hand to its mother and said: “Mother, please go with me.” The mother said: “My child, I shall follow, but each of us must make the journey alone. I cannot go with you, but I know One who will go with you—it is Jesus.” Each of us must go alone, and our loved ones must follow after. Jesus will go with us all the way.