“A Book of Remembrance”

In scripture testimony we encounter phraseology which bears witness to the fact that divine ideas are often couched in the language of adoption; that is, in order to make certain great principles of Truth come within the limits of human understanding, God adjusts Himself to the plane of human reasoning and com­prehension. The last five chapters of JOB contain evidence of this fact — wherein we have Job’s reasoning’s conclusively answered by the divine Being adopting Himself to the plane of Job’s viewpoint.

Throughout the scriptures we have many evidences of this same principle, one notable example being the several references to the divine regard for men and women who have been faithful and upright in their walk and conversation. In the third chapter of Malachi, verses 16 and 17, we have a beautiful expression of God’s estimate of those whom He loves and the place they hold in His affection. We read here that “they that feared the Lord spake often one to an­other: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was writ­ten before Him for them that feared the Lord and thought upon His name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels .

This phrase, “A book of remembrance” is one we wish to consider. Moses makes reference to this book in the 32nd chap­ter of Exodus, verse 32, where he prayed so fervently to God for sinning Israel, and asks that his name be blotted out of God’s book if the national sin of Israel might not be forgiven. We have at least twelve references to this book of God throughout the scriptures, which are as follows:

Exodus 32:32; Phi. 4:3; Rev. 20: 12-­15; Psalms 56:8; Rev. 3:5; Rev. 21:27; Psalms 139:16; Rev, 13:8; Rev. 22:19; Daniel 12:1; Rev. 17:8; Malachi 3:16.

There are also many scriptures which embody the ideas represented by this phraseology. However, in understanding these terms, we do not think the Deity keeps a large ledger-like volume in which He jots down our names and the various items of our lives’ histories, but they emphasize the fact that there is some repository in which the record of what­ever character we have formed is pre­served in such form as makes it possible to reproduce it and establish our identity, should occasion call for such reproduction.

What is the nature of this medium of preservation ? Here we come into contact, as it were, with fundamental powers of the universe. In scripture we are told that “by his spirit he hath garnished the heav­ens . . . ” (Job 26:13). This all-pervad­ing power or spirit emanates from the focal center of the universe. From this center (which we believe is the dwelling place of the Almighty Father of heaven and earth), all motion of the heavenly orbs is controlled, and all life, light and power that exist in heaven and earth are sustained. We are also assured by the dis­covered facts of science that all power of the universe emanates from one center. and that center, scientists acknowledge, is unknowable. We also give expression to this fact in our hymn: “We know not in what hallowed part of the wide heavens Thy throne may be, but this we know, that where Thou art, strength, wisdom, goodness dwell with Thee.” This the scriptures also declare, as, for example, Psalms 77:18-19; Psalm 93; Psalm 97; Job 11:7-9. From these precincts of the Deity there emanates this energy, which is not within the capabilities of man to comprehend, but which the scriptures re­veal to us as the attributes of an intelli­gent, personal, all-wise God, that all creation does sustain (Psalms 139:1-12).

At this point we digress a little to con­sider a few facts from current knowledge in the realm of the discovery of later days. In the last days of Gentile times there have been marvelous developments in science, learning and discovery. This is spoken of in the prophecy of Daniel, chapter 12, verse 4 as “knowledge shall be increased.” During the past 100 years many new and wonderful things of God’s creation have been discovered and brought under control of human ingenuity. One of the greatest discoveries is that of electrical phenomena: the telegraph, telephone, radio, radar and television. Not only are these forces basically electrical, but the fact is also revealed that the atoms of the material universe are made up of particles of electrical units.

The visions that are portrayed upon the television screen are conveyed through the aerial medium of that all-pervading spirit of which the Psalmist speaks in the Psalm 139:1-12. In other words, the sending station, by its apparatus, creates very rapid vibrations in the surrounding electrical atmosphere. These vibrations, when released from the transmitting in­strument, are superimposed upon the waves set up in the electrical particles of the atmosphere, and radiate outward in waves corresponding in length and fre­quency to the transmitting apparatus. The receiving instrument, at a distance from the transmitting station, is caused to vi­brate in unison with the transmitting in­strument, receives the images, and repro­duces them upon the surface of the sheet or screen.

Where were those images in the inter­val between the sending and the receiving action? They must have been somewhere or they could not have been reproduced in the manner noted. In this phenomenon we have the fact illustrated that human powers such as thought, speech and hearing are attributes of personality, and are dependent upon the all-pervading, free spirit of God for their manifestation. Speech is transmitted upon the sound waves set up by our voices. Thought can also be transmitted through wave motion set up in the surrounding medium of free spirit in which we are encompassed. Our hymn expresses these facts with the words: “Our thoughts, before they are our own, are all to God distinctly known. He knows the word we mean to speak ‘ere from our opening lips they break.” In other words, there is not a thought in our minds or a mental vibration that emanates from our brain organism that is not recorded upon that all-pervading medium of free spirit. Therefore our individuality, which is the sum of our thoughts, words and actions, and which constitute our character, is being recorded upon this subtle medium which emanates from the great focal center of the universe where God dwells in light and glory everlastingly.

This is the book of remembrance in which the character or spirit of Abraham is preserved and recorded, and which will be brought forth and reimposed upon the recreated bodily organism that shall come forth from the dust of death when that great Son and Seed promised him by the covenanted mercies of God exercises that “all power” given unto Him (Matt. 28: 18), in calling forth Abraham and all of Abraham’s true children that are with Him in the death state, and clothing them with the robe of immortality and life eternal. This makes the words of Psalm 139, verses 15 and 16 intelligible to us, and the beauty of their meaning very im­pressive. “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”

There is another phase of this subject worthy of our consideration. From the many scriptures which refer to the spiritual man, such as “the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb. 12:23); “the spirit that may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5); “the fruit of the spirit” (Gal. 5:22); “as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14), we can understand that fellowship of the spirit is fellowship with God as recorded in God’s book of life. The spirit of God’s justified ones is therefore the instrument of good fruit, born in the faithful life. With these facts in mind, we can readily understand Stephen’s dying prayer (Acts 7:59, and Jesus dying words upon the cross (Luke 23:46).

To bring to a focus what we have endeavored to glean from this study, we believe the book of God’s remembrance, or the book of life, has reference to that marvelous, inscrutable, and all diffused power emanating from His divine presence in which all creation and all living organisms in the waters and in the air and earth live and move and have their being. Enveloped thus, we understand what Paul referred to in Acts 17:28. Also in some measure we can comprehend how, being thus enveloped, our faculties of thought, work and action have their motivating agency. We are therefore inscribing upon this all-diffused “sheet of spirit substance” the record of activities and service in the Way of Life. It is this recorded data of personal, historical, de­veloped and developing character or dis­position that is recorded in God’s book that will be restored at resurrection.

The dust-formed organism would be of no use without the identity of mental and moral qualities that make up personality, but the dust-formed organism is the substratum or foundation upon which can be reflected by restoration that which has been inscribed upon this all-pervading and all embracing free spirit of God. The uniting of all of these elements together will constitute the resur­rection body which, by divine creative energy, will constitute that immortal, incorruptible body organism which will be swallowed up of life, or spirit substance and power; or as we have it scripturally expressed, “made . . . after the power of an endless life” (Heb. 7:16). Knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10), characters like that of Mo­ses, Abraham and David, for instance, will be reproduced and made permanent inheritors of eternal life; while characters like that of Saul, Judas or Alexander, the copper-smith (2 Tim. 4:14), will, after judgment, be obliterated from the rec­ord and never will be restored. It is, therefore, the spirit, the mind, the aspiration that gravitates toward God and the things of God; the spirit, disposition, or aspiration that ascends above the vain, poor, low and petty things of this evil world. The spirit that gravitates upward, when the believer dies, is committed into the safe keeping of God until that wonderful day when the Spirit Man Christ Jesus returns and opens the books, and the book of life is brought forth and the dead are judged out of those things that are recorded therein (Rev. 20:12).

Let us conclude our study with a quo­tation from Dr. Thomas’ “Anastasis”, page 23, where he treats of the extraordinary evolution of living beings from apparently nothing but a little disorganized dust, and the process of identifying them as men and women who once formed a part of society, some of them thousands of years before. This restoration with Deity is neither impossible nor difficult. The dead are historical characters who lived and moved and had their being. (Acts 17:28). Hence all their thoughts and actions constituting their characters are recorded in Him as in a book of remembrance (Mal. 3:16). Therein is written their history; and with the exception of their disorganized dust in Sheol, their characters inscribed upon the divine page are all that remains of them in the universe. This scroll or record is the broad expanse of spirit which scien­tists try to understand by giving it con­venient terms such as ether and elec­tricity, which, filling the universe, enfolds the world.

All thoughts and actions are vibrations existing in this spirit of the Creator by corporeal agents. These subtle vibratory impressions are never obliterated unless God wills never to revive them. Many such impressions He has willed to blot out, as in the case of those who are consigned to “a perpetual sleep” (Jer. 51: 57), or the case of sins that are forgiven 57), or the case of sins that are forgiven (Micah 7:19). But there are impressions, at present latent, which are to be intensi­fied and made manifest. “For whatsoever doth make manifest is light” (Eph. 5:13). And in view of all this, how wonderfully expressive of this glorious truth are the words of our hymn: “Those characters shall firm remain, our ever­lasting trust, when gems and monuments and crowns have mouldered into dust.”