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GOD’S PURPOSE IN CREATING NAN
Psalms 8:4: “What is man that thou art mindful
of him?’’
HE work of creation has ever been an
interesting study. Around it have ga
thered the greatest and strongest minds
that the world has ever known. Volume
upon top of volume has been written by
men of ability and great scholarly train
ing, endeavoring if possible to ferret
out the mystery that underlies the great
work of creation, and we are forced to
T
admit as we take a retrospect and look into the
achievements of these scholars and hook-writers
.that the world has advanced after all no further
than the first few chapters of the book of Genesis
with respect to the mysteries of creation. Here
in these first few chapters of the book of Genesis
we have practically set forth all the wisdom that the
scholars have achieved with reference to this great
and important question. ‘From this section of in
spired truth we find simply this, that in 'the begin
ning God created the heavens and the earth. God,
in His inspiration of this Book, did not see fit to
tell us the length of time required for the world’s
creation. It is simply stated that “In the begin
ning God created the heavens and the earth. ” It is
said that He consummated His creative work by
making man, so that man stands out as the finished
product of the great work of creation, and from
the time when God turned him loose, having given
to him the last touch needed to perfect him, until
the present day, the cry of the Psalmist that we
find in the text and the context has been ringing
in his heart: “When I consider Thy magnitude, as
expressed in Thy created work, what is man that
Thou art mindful of him?” Why is it that God,
after creating so many things, so many beautiful
things, so many attractive things, so many magnifi
cent things, why is it that God was satisfied only
when He created man? And why is it He is still
spending all His resources in an effort to reclaim
and perfect His erring creation? It is the old
question that has oftentimes throbbed in our hearts.
Why was I made?
THE DIVINE PURPOSE.
I feel quite sure that this question has not been
sufficiently serious with most of us. Why did God
create me? Evidently He had a purpose. Man is
not simply the culmination of evolutionary existence.
Man is the creature of God; fashioned by His own
hands for a divine and fixed purpose; the whole
race of man was created for a divine and fixed
purpose. There is but one answer that can" be given
to that question and that is in the one word “fellow
ship.” God created man for the purpose of having
something with which He could have personal, inti
mate, heart fellowship. God could not have fellow
ship with anything else that He made. He created
man that with and by the association of man He
could have personal fellowship. We have often
heard that God is love; He must have something
on which to lavish His love. God has a heart to
love las well as a head to think and plan, and
no being can be satisfied or hold fellowship
with that which is inanimate. No being could
be satisfied or have fellowship with the stars
of the heavens, with the sun and the moon.
He might admire them, even to the extent of wor
shiping them. I am sorry for the man who cannot
go out and look up into the starry heavens and
find himself charmed by their beauty. When I
was crossing the Atlantic less than a year ago one
beautiful evening when there was just enough clouds
in the sky for the sun to paint upon them his most
beautiful colors, I watched him as he left us in dark
ness. It was the most beautiful sunset I ever saw.
As the sun was withdrawing his last rays from us,
I observed a curious looking man standing near me.
I had observed him before, but this time he was
more conspicuous than ever. I had been told that
he was a sun-worshiper; and as the sun left us he
lifted his hat and stood with uplifted head and
The Golden Age for April 29, 1909.
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Broughton, D. D.
Stenocraphically reported for The Golden Age. —Copyright applied for
closed eyes for a moment, then put his hat on his
head and walked off. That is the universal custom,
I was told, of the sun-worshipers. Whenever, at
any place, on land or sea, they see the sun go down,
they invariably do that. And I felt akin to him.
It was so majestic, so indescribably beautiful and
awe-inspiring. But while the sun may be worshiped,
no man can have fellowship with him. And no man
can have fellowship with nature. A man may go out
and have communion with the things of nature, and
I am sorry for the man who can not at this season
of the year step out in the country alone in the
woods amid the blossoming flowers and smell their
sweet perfume and not have communion with those
silent voices, but he can not have fellowship with
them. And this is true with respect to the animal
creation; there was no chance there for fellowship;
no being can have fellowship with the lower order
of animal creation; I know of some who are able
to have fellowship with a certain kind of them,
dogs, cats and the like, but they are but mere
excrescences on the world of human beings. They
are freaks in the economy of God’s creation; more
akin to the lower animal creation than to man.
To have fellowship there must be, first of all,
intelligence; and that intelligence must have free
will exercise. If our fellowship one to the other
is a relationship of force there is no fellowship in
it. If you axe my friend because you have to be my
friend, then there is no fellowship in our friendship,
but if you are my friend through the free exercise
of your will, because you choose to be my friend,
then there is fellowship between us based upon the
exercise of your choice. So with respect to God
and man. God could not have fellowship, He could
not spend His loving heart on anything He had
created because up until this time there was nothing
created that could respond to His love by the exer
cise of free-will intelligence.
SIMILARITY OF CHARACTER.
And God also, in order that He may have fellow
ship, must have something with a. similarity of
Character. Intelligence alone, and intelligence of
free-will choice, is not sufficient to give fellowship.
It may give companionship, but companionship is
not fellowship. And so God, the embodiment of all
that is holy and perfect made man in the likeness
of Himself; holy, without spot or blemish or any
such thing; and in the free exercise of will a holy
God and a holy man had sweet fellowship. God,
with the first created man roamed the Garden of
Eden, arm in arm, step by step, having perfect
fellowship because the demands for fellowship were
perfectly satisfied. And so, my brethren, if you
ask me to state in a single sentence why did God
create the world of mankind I should say it was
that He might have fellowship.
But sad is it that in the midst of these blessed
surroundings, in the midst of this magnificent en
vironment, that God environed the first pair with,
sin entered. Never mind how sin entered. Never
mind how the devil took shape, the fact remains
that sin, subtle sin, entered into the hearts of the
first pair, robbing them of their holiness, and con
sequently of their fellowship with God. Sin entered
and broke the link that bound the heart of man to
the heart of God. And from the moment man and
God proceeded to walk upon different paths. In no
sense did they parallel each other; man moved down
ward, away from God, and on through these thou
sands of years of history of the race, all of the
trouble and suffering may be explained by this, that
man has been out of fellowship with God. The great
purpose of the infirJte in the creation of the race
has been broken, and man has ever moved out of
harmony and therefore out of touch and out of
fellowship and out of purpose with the mind of
the Infinite, and there isn’t a single solitary woe,
or misery, or pain, or anguish, or sorrow of any
character that is not the outcome of this great fact
that man is out of fellowship with God, and that
since man is out of fellowship with God all the
world is out of fellowship with the purpose of the
Infinite. When I see the sorrow, the suffering, and
the misery in the world; when I look into our own
midst and see it and hear it and feel it, in myself,
I know that all this suffering, of whatever character
it may be, whether temporal, physical, or spiritual,
is the outcome of that act in the Garden of Eden
when the link that bound man and His maker to
gether was broken. That is the cause of your
suffering. That is the cause of poverty and sin.
That is the cause of sickness, suffering, crime.
The world is out of harmony with the mind of the
Infinite, and as I come to a realization of this fact,
there comes rushing in upon me the manner that
He has provided by which this great tragedy can
be overcome. After all, that is the problem of the
age. Go into any department of life and you will
find men are at work upon that problem, though
they do not realize it, they may not believe it, they
may not be conscious of it, but it is nevertheless
true. Man has a knowledge in his heart that he
was meant to be like his Maker, consequently he is
always devising ways and means of attaining to
that. Go into the department of education and
find that men are at work upon that problem, though
uplift; how to lift the world out of its present
condition of ignorance and all the things that are
incident to ignorance; they are working on the
problem of how to lift the world back into fellow
ship with God, believing that to be the way.
MAN’S UNSUCCESSFUL EFFORT.
In the department of state you will find the same
thing. Visit our halls of legislature, municipal, state
and national, and you will find men there knitting
their brows over the problem of the world’s uplift;
bow to so legislate as to lift humanity up ana make
things and conditions better, that men may be
happier and more successful and that civilization
may be advanced. That is their problem; that is
their way of stating it. It may be stated another
way, and that is that men are at work upon the
problem of bringing man back to his original state
of perfection. If we enter the home and find a
faithful mother at work with her children, teaching
them the ethics of life, as she ought to do, the one
problem, though the mother may not know it, the
one problem that she is at work upon is, “How
can I train my children as that they will have
fellowship with the Infinite through perfection?”
In this fellowship, world-wide, God will be satisfied,
and a satisfied God means successful people.
How are we going to do this? There is but one
way it can be done. We may try all the educational
methods that we may see fit, and I have nothing to
say against it; we may try all the political discus
sion possible, and I have nothing to say against that;;
good laws are essential, and I am profoundly in
terested in the intellectual enforcement of law that,
is good. And surely I would not say a word that
would discourage the work of any fond and faithfull
(piother in teaching the ethics of life to her children,
but go here and there, and work on that department
and this as much as you like, still there is but one
*way that the race of man can be brought back into
the original fellowship with God. There is but one
way by which you as an individual can be brought
into fellowship with God; there is but one way by
which you can satisfy God, and that way by which
you yourself can satisfy the claims of God is the
way which the world will have to go. The fact is,,
we have been talking too much about the salvation
of society; we will never save society until we save
the individual; society is made up of individuals,
the individual unit, and every unit has got to have
salvation before society can have salvation. How
then can I? That is my problem and yours. How
can I, broken off from God, get back again? How
can I get back, and when back, help to work out
this great problem for the world’s uplift? My
brethren, it can only be done through the basis
of holiness; it can only be done through the basis of
similarity of character, and no character can become-
