God is often a mystery to mankind. People can’t answer who and what He is. They don’t understand Him or His purpose. Do you realize that God’s divine hiddenness is deliberately? God created us, and He created us for a great purpose, in this life and beyond this life. He knows how we humans can find true happiness in this world. We all want a wonderful life, which only God can provide. Yet He hides Himself from the vast majority of us.
Does that seem logical to you? Here are a couple of Bible verses to consider. Psalm 104:29 says of God, “When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.” This verse has some disturbing implications. Do you understand it? Isaiah 45:15 reads, “Truly you are a God who has been hiding himself, the God and Savior of Israel.” How can God help us by hiding Himself? This same verse says He is “the Savior” but how can He save us this way? These are crucial questions.
God has a plan for saving Israel—and the whole world! “But Israel will be saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation; you will never be put to shame or disgraced, to ages everlasting.” (verse 17). And hiding Himself is part of that plan. The Bible is also clear that God will not hide Himself from this world for much longer. He prophesies that He will send Jesus Christ to Earth soon to reestablish the government of God on Earth. “And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:5)
We must understand why God is hiding Himself right now. Before God created mankind, He created angels. He sent a leading angel, Lucifer, and one third of the angels to Earth to establish God’s government. But Lucifer rebelled and eventually deceived all the angels under him. Once that tragedy occurred, God knew that the angels could not be trusted to beautify the whole universe and build it the way God wanted them to. That had been God’s plan for them. The only way to ensure that such a destructive rebellion never happened again was to undertake an even bolder plan. God created human beings for the ultimate purpose of creating more God beings like Himself!
God created human beings not only with the human brain but also the human spirit (Job 32:8; Zechariah 12:1; 1 Corinthians 2:11). This human spirit is what separates man from animals: It imparts the power of intellect. It empowers us to think and make choices. It also enables our minds to connect with God’s mind when we receive His Holy Spirit. To humans, God gave the potential to receive the power of His Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:7-16), which allows Jesus Christ to enter our minds (Philippians 2:5). God gave the first humans a fundamental choice. They could submit to His authority and accept His definition of good and evil. Or they could decide that they were their own highest authority and define good and evil for themselves. This choice was represented in His offering to them the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9, 16-17).
God wanted Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of life, but He did not force them to do so. He allowed them the option of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even further, He allowed Lucifer, then renamed Satan, to tempt them. Why? Because only when human beings voluntarily reject Satan and submit to God can He build righteous character in them, enabling them to be born into His Family. That is the fundamental reason why God created human beings and how He plans to reproduce Himself! The first human beings followed Satan instead. Like him, they chose to reject God’s authority and to believe that they knew best.
Satan deceived Eve. The first woman really believed that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was better than the tree of life (Genesis 3:1-6). But Adam was not deceived (1 Timothy 2:13-14). He willfully chose to follow Satan and rebel against God’s explicit instructions. He opened the door to Satan, allowing him to work on his mind and lead him. Satan became Adam’s god. Adam had set the course for himself, for his children and for all of mankind.
“And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So, the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:22-24).
God was disappointed, obviously, yet He allowed this choice, and He continued with His plan, but not the way most people—even most Christians—believe. God Himself cut off mankind as a whole from the Garden of Eden, from those two trees and from that fundamental choice. He has allowed human history to continue for thousands of years. Yet He has hidden Himself.
God expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and barring them from re-entrance was the start of a 6,000-year sentence on mankind. During this time, God would only select a tiny few, including the ancient prophets and then the one true Church (Matthew 16:18). God hid Himself!
Ever since Adam and Eve, Satan has taken this world captive. Satan possesses real power. He is the “ruler of the kingdom of the air” (Ephesians 2:2), the master broadcaster of wrong moods, attitudes and impulses. He deceives the whole world (Revelation 12:9). He is, in fact, “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4) and has manipulated mankind into obeying him.
This is clear in your Bible. But how many people really believe this or have ever even heard of it? The glorious archangel Lucifer, as God originally created him, was the pinnacle of God’s creative power in a single being. Few today remotely realize the great power, now turned to cunning deception, possessed by Satan. Apparently, Adam completely underestimated him.
Lucifer was a bringer of light. Now he is the bringer of indescribably wicked darkness. Human beings think they can recognize good and evil and tell the difference between the two. They cannot! They rely on themselves and think they know the difference between God and Satan. They do not! If you are not actively submitting to God’s authority, you will look at things that are coming from Satan and think they are coming from an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
People today underestimate Satan all the time! He has tremendous power. He has led all humanity in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which leads to death. Throughout history, God has called out a tiny minority to choose the tree of life, to preserve the truth, and to prepare for the next stage of His master plan. But even many of those, including 95 percent of true Christians have eventually decided to choose good and evil for themselves.
If Adam had resisted Satan, he would have replaced Satan on Earth’s throne. But he failed. Adam and Eve decided to determine for themselves what is good and what is evil, which only results in self-righteousness. They rejected God’s definition of good and evil. That is the meaning of the tree they chose. God calls human righteousness filthy rags! (Isaiah 64:6). It is worthless!
Those called out of this world today have God’s government restored in the Church. Christ will return to restore God’s government over the entire Earth. God’s people today must build God’s character to be able to help Christ establish the Kingdom of God, rule in the World of Tomorrow, and finish creating the whole universe. All this is part of God’s master plan! But we must change. Adam and Eve refused to change, so God drove them out. If those of us called out of the world now decide, after a lifetime of chances, not to change and obey God, then God will blot us out of the book of life (Revelation 20:15).
For the rest of mankind, their opportunity to choose life is yet in the future, but the process will be the same. They will not be cut off from God for much longer. Hebrews 9:27 shows that the hope of mankind is not for them to be saved before they die, but in the resurrection. They are not being judged by God yet! But because they have rejected Him, He hides Himself.
Right now, God is reproducing Himself only among true Christians. He has called this tiny minority out of the world prior to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to do His work and deliver His warning message to the world. But His plan is not just for this tiny minority. It is a plan for all human beings who have ever lived. God is re-creating Himself in man! That is the ultimate feat! It ought to stagger our minds!
The two symbolic trees in the Garden of Eden are highly significant to us today. These trees explain the very foundation of this world, which has always been a mystery to mankind. People can laugh and scoff at the two trees as a childish way to explain the Bible, but this is so profound that almost no one understands it. It is the very depth of God!
What happened to Adam and Eve is now happening to the whole world. God has allowed mankind to work things out their own way. He has observed humans continually choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is really the tree of death. It symbolizes eternal death for us—if we don’t learn some lessons. This is something to beware of in this pulsating, evil, twisted world.
We are nearing the end of 6,000 years of human history. It is as if the movie were almost over. We can’t understand what is going on unless we go back to the beginning and understand the premise and what has happened since. We must go back to the two trees and beyond to grasp why the world is the way it is. Study the origins. Start the movie from the beginning.
From our very first parents, human beings have been learning the hard way that going our own way brings suffering and death. The firstborn son of the first humans murdered his own brother! (Genesis 4:8). Cain killed Abel at the very beginning. We have suffered strife, violence, and murder, and we have failed to understand our purpose, or potential, from the beginning.
The first family on Earth was taught directly by God. He didn’t hide His face from them! He taught them how to live a joyful, happy, abundant, prosperous life. They could have grown in godly character to the point that they would be born into God’s Family! But they rejected Him, and their descendants killed each other, including the prophets God sent through the ages to warn them and teach them. Human beings are in love with Satan’s attitude. They keep trusting in themselves, no matter how horrible the results are from this fundamentally wrong choice. They are self-reliant and self-willed. They worship Satan without realizing it!
Sin makes God turn His face from mankind. “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:1-2). The world doesn’t want God. They don’t seek Him. They might think they do, but they really don’t know or understand Him at all.
God has not given up on man. His hiding Himself is part of His master plan. So was the sending of a God Being to become a man. Jesus Christ came to Earth not only to pay the death penalty for our sins if we will repent, believe God and obey His law, but also to do what Adam failed to do and what Lucifer failed to do before him. Jesus Christ submitted perfectly to the will of His Father and relied totally on Him! He finished His Father’s work.
When Christ returns, He will at last reveal the Father to mankind as a whole. He came to Earth the first time to declare the Father (John 1:18). Why? Because no one knows the Father! There are two Gods at this time, called God and the Word in John 1:1. They use the power of the Holy Spirit to build character in human beings. The Word, or Spokesman, became Christ. God is now the Father; Christ is the Son. God is a Family! And they want to bring us into their Family through the resurrection.
All mankind is about to know the one true God. “Then they will know that I am the Lord their God, for though I sent them into exile among the nations, I will gather them to their own land, not leaving any behind. I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit on the people of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord.” (Ezekiel 39:28-29).
God has hidden Himself to allow mankind to experience the results of our choices. He has hidden Himself to teach us a powerful lesson. He has hidden Himself because He has a plan for all human beings, living and dead. Soon He will reveal Himself! Jesus Christ is about to return to Earth to rule the Earth and to do what Adam and Lucifer failed to do. He will compel everyone to submit to the Father, as He Himself does. Everyone will have the opportunity to humble themselves before God and receive His Holy Spirit. They will have the chance to develop the very mind of God. God will accomplish His master plan. God will reproduce Himself and bring billions of human beings into His Family!
Divine hiddenness, or the argument from divine hiddenness, is a philosophical approach that attempts to explain why some people do not recognize the existence of God, if God indeed exists. It is also sometimes called the argument from reasonable non-belief because, according to the argument, it is reasonable not to believe in a God you cannot see, even if you want Him to be there. It also suggests that a perfectly loving God would make sure that all His creatures were unable to doubt His existence.
The most widely known modern argument for the hiddenness of God was developed by Canadian philosopher J. L. Schellenberg (b. 1959). Schellenberg argues that God, being perfect and personal, would logically be perfectly loving. Being a loving God, He would therefore seek out (or at least be open to) an emotional connection with all His creatures. So far, this is true and can be supported biblically (John 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:4). But Schellenberg goes on to argue that, given God’s character, any person desiring a relationship with God could have it and would therefore be convinced of God’s existence (because you can’t have a relationship with a God you think does not exist).
Schellenberg also observes that, if a God fitting this description were to exist, there would be no “nonresistant nonbelievers.” In other words, there would be no person who both a) would like a relationship with God and b) does not believe in His existence. But, Schellenberg points out, these “nonresistant nonbelievers” do exist. There are people who want to know God and yet find that He is hidden from them. Since, according to the argument, God is loving (and being loving, does not hide Himself from those who desire to know Him), God must not exist.
We should point out that, when the God-man relationship started out, God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:8). God was not hidden at all. After man disobeyed God and fell into sin, the man and his wife hid from God. Therefore, it is man who initiated the separation between God and man. We did the hiding, not God.
Furthermore, God has made His existence known through creation (Psalm 19). But man suppresses the knowledge of God in various ways (Romans 1). Now, the “nonresistant nonbeliever” may simply be a person who has grown up in a culture where the philosophies and arguments of resistant unbelievers (those who actively suppress the knowledge of God) are prevalent and taught in school, in media, etc. The man who, in his heart, is not resistant to a relationship with God, yet cannot fathom His existence, has likely been blinded by the lies of those who hate God and want to suppress the knowledge of Him (2 Corinthians 4:4). The nonresistant nonbeliever is most likely influenced by philosophies that wickedly hide God’s face from those who might seek to know Him. This is tragic, but it certainly does not prove that God lacks love for His creatures.
In fact, it is God who has reached out to humanity to reconcile the rift between Himself and us caused by sin (2 Corinthians 5:20; Romans 5:10). He promised that, when we seek Him, we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7–8).
Ironically, in formulating an argument about “divine hiddenness”, one must rely on biblical revelation of Him. To develop an argument that a perfect Creator does not reveal Himself, we must use God’s own words. The perfect and loving God whom Schellenberg is arguing against is based on a biblical concept of God, that is, the God who is defined in the Bible—Scripture, of course, being itself prime evidence of God’s loving intention to reveal Himself to mankind.
China - in His image 