When God "answered Job out of the whirlwind," He began at the beginning, saying: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if you have understanding." (Job 38:4)
The same question could be asked of every man who lives, or who has ever lived, and not one of them could say a word. Everything else in the whole creation was made before man was. Man was the last of all. When he came into being, he found everything complete; and every man that has ever been born has found everything waiting for him when he arrived.
Why this arrangement? Evidently so that no man could have any chance to lay claim to share with God the honor of creation. It is a fact that no man can create. This needs no argument. Men work, and effect changes in form and appearance of many things; but no man ever yet added the slightest particle of matter to the substance of the earth or to anything that exists; and no man ever can do it.
Yet such is the conceit and self-assertion of the human mind that if God had performed any new act of creation after man came into being, man would surely claim that he himself had done it.
Even as it is, men are very prone to exalt themselves above God. The only thing that will keep them--us--from doing this in some form or degree, is to remember "who is the beginning." (Colossians 1:18)
We are wont to pride ourselves not a little upon the fact that man was made last--"the crown of creation." (Psalm 8:5; Hebrews 2:9) It may serve to abate that pride if we think that God made man last because there was no use for him before; there was nothing that he could do, he would have been hopelessly in the way of the progress of creation, and what is more, he would not have been able to maintain himself. God had to provide all things first, so that man, the most helpless of created things, might be able to live.
If all men had but kept in mind this simple truth, and had remembered that in Christ, who is the Beginning, "were all things created," (Colossians 1:16,RV) and "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together," (Colossians 1:17,RV) there would never have been a pope, great or small. "Do you seek great things for yourself? seek them not." (Jeremiah 45:5)
Let us rather be content to remain children, keeping close to the Beginning. "In all your ways acknowledge Him [as the beginning] and He shall direct your paths." (Proverbs 3:6)
What He begins, He will carry to successful completion.--Present Truth, June 30, 1894.