Editorial May 17, 1924 Issue

God's Holy Mountain

Ella W. Hoag

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Thus came the Word of God to Isaiah. Because mankind's greatest fear and also the way of salvation from it are here presented, the world has longed for the time to come when this beautiful prophecy would be fulfilled. And yet how far away such fulfillment has often seemed to be! Still, there God's promise has stood, and men have certainly hoped it would be kept. For in every one's innermost heart, however doubt may claim to argue, there is always an assurance that sometime, in some way, what God has once declared cannot fail finally to appear.

Although most Christians have been convinced that this universal knowledge of God will eventually be established and all injury and destruction will thereby be done away, they have not been so easily assured that here and now are the place and time when this desirable condition should begin to be realized. Because they have believed in an existence in matter apart from God, and have been educated to believe that this existence must sometime be destroyed by death, they have been in constant fear, either conscious or latent, that they might be hurt or destroyed; indeed, they have supposed such conditions to be finally inevitable.

Jesus, however, taught that men were to find God through life, not through death. He said plainly he came not to destroy men's lives but to save them, and also that he always fulfilled the law of God, proving it by healing the sick and raising the dead. Nevertheless, men have gone right on thinking they must die before they could hope to come into the bliss of freedom from fear of injury and death. And yet, even as far back as Isaiah's day, God said the time would come when nothing should hurt or destroy in all His holy mountain. And why? Because all were to know Him "from the least of them unto the greatest."

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