Doctrine of the Angelic Conflict, part 15 – The essence of God – Omnipresence. Psa 139:1-12; Amo 9:2; Luk 10:24.

Title: Doctrine of the Angelic Conflict, part 15 - The essence of God - Omnipresence. PSA 139:1-12; AMO 9:2; LUK 10:24.

 

[martyr = witness] "who has become an instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom." [T.S. Eliot]

 

We could not think anymore. In our darkest hours of torture, the Son of Man came to us, making the prison walls shine like diamonds and filling the cells with light. Somewhere, far away, were the torturers below us in the sphere of the body. But the spirit rejoiced in the Lord. We would not have given up this joy for that of kingly palaces. [Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ]

 

5. The essence of God part 1: Attributes that constitute God and are not commuted to beings.

 

B. Omnipresence = God is present everywhere [not commuted to beings].

 

In the Church-age, accuracy of doctrine [intellect], faith in doctrine [sensibility], and application of doctrine [will] are the main targets of satan’s attack.

 

This is why success in the AC for the CA believer occurs when God’s Sovereign will lines up with his will.

 

One may say that his will lines up with God’s will because he has knowledge of accurate doctrine or that he believes in accurate doctrine. Knowledge alone in God’s will is far from God’s will while faith in His will is closer. Faith occurs in moments and while a believer may have faith in Bible class during perception, he may not have faith in life during the challenge of application.

 

Knowledge, faith and application all combine to adjust to God’s will just as intellect, sensibility, and will combine to adjust to God’s personality.

 

When this has occurred, not only does the believer become an expert witness for the prosecution in the AC, but he enjoys enormously a communion, fellowship, intimate personal relationship with the God who is Spirit as he is worshipping Him in Spirit and in truth.

 

The difficulty for the finite mind arises when both revelation and abstract reason assert the ubiquity, or omnipresence, of God. God has found a way to take the finite mind, reason, and empiricism out of the equation through the application of faith in the word of God as God Sovereignly decided to reveal Himself, and revealing in anthropopathism and anthropomorphism to the born again creature who has been created in His image.

 

There are actually two words in view in this interwoven aspect of God’s essence and they are both omnipresence and immensity and they convey slightly different ideas.  

 

Omnipresence naturally relates God to the universe where other beings are and as present with them, while immensity surpasses all creation and extends on without end, as if there were an end, but there is not.

 

Your God possesses this intrinsic characteristic that is exponentially beyond human reason and intellect.  

 

There are at least three arguments for the divine immensity and omnipresence which abstract reason advances.

 

1. The perfection of God demands that He be everywhere present. If some place were void of Him, He would have less than perfect knowledge and control.

 

If some place were void of Him, the human mind could conceive of a greater being who filled all places and thus God would be imperfect to the degree in which He did not answer the idea of immensity.

 

If this is true then, no matter how much bigger or extensive, He is not immensely infinite and as such He would be similar to His creatures in bounded restrictions.

 

It would be easy to imagine a being still more perfect, for certainly he would be more perfect who was present at the same time in heaven and on earth as well as outside the physical universe to an infinite degree.

 

Satan would love for you to believe that God has any boundary at all, even the smallest, for once the word bounded enters your mind concerning God then the next thought is limited and the next thought is that He may be at some time unable to do something that the creature would deem to be the act of an infinite and all present as well as all powerful God.

 

Is it no wonder that after his fall and after his continued rejection of God’s offer of reconciliation that satan would attack the very person of God. If he can discredit God then his own finiteness is in play or in the ring to compete.

 

2. The very nature of God requires that He be everywhere present. One example: “If there is a place that the love of God doesn’t reach then there is a reason, in that place, to be independent from God.”

 

The exercise of His attributes is not restricted to locality, as if there was some place on earth or in heaven that His love, justice, righteousness, truth, omniscience, and omnipotence didn’t reach and in that place there was no calling to God or no identity of God, but only silence, darkness or solely the essence of a creature with a full absence of God, but He is ubiquitous, hence, as He is, that is where His attributes are, He is Himself ubiquitous and therefore everything that He is, is there.

 

Ps 139:7 Where can I go from Thy Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Thy presence?

 

Ps 139:8 If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there;

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.

 

Ps 139:9 If I take the wings of the dawn,

If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

 

Ps 139:10 Even there Thy hand will lead me,

And Thy right hand will lay hold of me.

 

Ps 139:11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,

And the light around me will be night,"

 

Ps 139:12 Even the darkness is not dark to Thee,

And the night is as bright as the day.

Darkness and light are alike to Thee.

 

3. Reason further contends that, since God used no mechanism or agents in creation then He is in all the creation, outside it, before it and after it.

 

There is danger that the mind, when attempting to make real the ubiquity of God, will think of Him as diffused abroad in the sense that only a minute part of Him is present in a given place, as human life is but partially present in any particular part of the body which it occupies.

 

God, however, is wholly present in every place as though He were nowhere else - Father, Son, and Spirit - in every human temple, and in every part of His dominion.

 

[hold your place ...]

 

Acts 17:24 "The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;

 

Acts 17:25 neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things;

 

Acts 17:26 and He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation,

 

Acts 17:27 that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

 

It is in no way reasonable for the finite mind to suppose that it can fully understand the divine mode of omnipresence. It is best to, in faith, be comforted by it.

 

Ps 139:1 O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me.

 

Ps 139:2 Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up;

Thou dost understand my thought from afar.

 

Ps 139:3 Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down,

And art intimately acquainted with all my ways.

 

Ps 139:4 Even before there is a word on my tongue,

Behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all.

 

Ps 139:5 Thou hast enclosed me behind and before,

And laid Thy hand upon me.

 

Ps 139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

 

Amos 9:1 I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and He said,

"Smite the capitals so that the thresholds will shake,

And break them on the heads of them all!

Then I will slay the rest of them with the sword;

They will not have a fugitive who will flee,

Or a refugee who will escape.

 

Amos 9:2 "Though they dig into Sheol,

From there shall My hand take them;

And though they ascend to heaven,

From there will I bring them down.

 

Satan desires to rule space that God created and Sovereignly fills. Where can satan go to establish an independent kingdom when God is everywhere fully present?

 

God doesn’t choose to fill everything and everywhere, He must do so since this is part of His interwoven and harmonious nature. This means His love is everywhere, as is His Justice, Righteousness, Truth, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Sovereignty, Eternal life, and Immutability.

 

Omnipresence relates to the fact that Jesus Christ controls history. Therefore, in time God’s purpose and plans are fulfilled.

 

A reasonable believer applies the OP of God as a power to resist the impulse to do wrong, GEN 16:13 [Hagar]

"Thou art a God who sees"

 

Prov 15:3

The eyes of the Lord are in every place,

Watching the evil and the good.

 

On this aspect of this theme Dr. John Dick writes with his unique eloquence:

 

Lastly, to the righteous this doctrine is a source of abundant consolation. In every place they meet a friend, a protector, and a father. Does the voice of thunder, or the raging of the ocean, or the fury of the tempest, announce his presence? They have nothing to fear, for love to them presides over the commotions of the elements.

 

Do they perceive Him in the more tranquil scenes of nature, in the silent progress of vegetation, in the smiles of the heavens, and in the regular beneficence which supplies their returning wants, and diffuses so much happiness among all classes of animated beings?

 

Oh! how delightful the thought that He, in whom they repose confidence, is so near that they may always assure themselves of ready and effectual aid! This thought is fitted to en- liven every scene, and to sweeten every condition.

 

It will make the springs of joy burst out in the parched and thirsty wilderness, and clothe the naked and cheerless waste with verdure. It will give a relish to a dry morsel, and a cup of cold water. It will lighten the pressure of poverty, and soothe the pangs of affliction.

 

 

 

It will dissipate the horrors of a dungeon, and console the exile from his country and his friends. How transporting the thought, that we cannot go where God is not! A good man may be bereaved of his reputation, his liberty, his earthly all; but the deadly hatred of his enemies can never so far succeed as to draw from him the mournful complaint, “Ye have taken away my God, and what have I more?”

 

With whatever afflictions his faith and patience may be tried, and whatever change of circumstances a wise providence may appoint him to undergo, although there should be no human heart to sympathise with him, and no kind hand to perform the offices of friendship, he can express his faith and joy in the words of an ancient saint, “Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou holdest me by my right hand. Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel, and afterward receive me to thy glory” (PSA 73:23, 24).—Dick’s Theology, p. 102

 

Luke 10:21 At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, "I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes. Yes, Father, for thus it was well-pleasing in Thy sight.

 

Luke 10:22 "All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." 

 

Luke 10:23 And turning to the disciples, He said privately, "Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see,

 

Luke 10:24 for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them. "

 

Do you see Him all around you, in everything that you do, in everything that is done around you?

 

EPH 1:22-23

And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.

 

EPH 4:5-6

 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

 

COL 3:11

a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.