God From Everlasting to Everlasting
Reading from Psalms 90:2: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the
earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”
First, we learn then that God was God from before the world was created, and He
was the same identical God after it was created. What a marvelous sense of
security and stability that thought gives to the mind, the positive assurance
that we don’t have to revise our thinking about God from the time to time; that
is, try to comprehend Him in one set of circumstances one time and in another
set of circumstances another time, and wonder what and how He will be at some
future time. Before the earth and the world were made and after the world and
the earth were made, and from everlasting to everlasting, He is the same God,
and certainly that is as far as any human mind can stretch. We need not worry
or fear about the permanency or irrevocability of His position as God.
. . .
A God Who Does Not Change
In James 1:17: “Every
good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father
of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” And in
Sec. 3 of the Doctrine and covenants, verse 2, “For God doth not walk in
crooked paths, neither doth he turn to the right hand nor to the left, neither
doth he vary from that which he hath said, therefore his paths are straight,
and his course is one eternal round.” And in Sec. 35 verse 1 this phrase is
added, “the same today as yesterday, and forever.” Thirdly, then, we learn that
He changes not, neither is there variableness with Him, but that He is the same
from everlasting to everlasting, being the same today as yesterday, and
forever. His course is one eternal round without variation. As we think about
this quality of absolute constancy and consistency and try to let the full scope
of it settle in our minds, we thrill with satisfaction, I’m sure; for here we
find an answer to a deep need continually moving within us, the need to find a
being in whom we can place our full faith and know beyond a shadow of a doubt
that that being will not vary in the slightest degree throughout all eternity.
Such a being cannot be found in this world. Many times those in the world whom
we love the most and in whom we place the most confidence vary from time to
time in their thoughts and feelings on many things; and we must come to the
painful realization at last that we cannot put our trust in the arm of flesh
with full and final confidence; for one of the inevitable characteristics of
flesh is variableness in some degree. And the thought of variableness produces
insecurity and fearfulness within the mind. But here is a being who is the same
yesterday, today and forever, and our trust in Him can be infinite.
A God of Truth
Numbers 23:19 tells
us: “God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he
should repent.” And so, fourthly, He is a God of truth and cannot lie. Here the
difference is very clearly drawn between God and man; the inference is
unmistakable in this passage, and we ourselves can testify from our own bitter
experience, that man can lie. What more disturbs our peace of mind or bores more
stealthily into our hopes and aspirations in the world, than the fear of being
deceived, that a man can look us squarely in the eye, to all outward evidences
and appearances in full faith, and tell us things that we discover later to be
entirely false, or partially false which is the deadliest lie, or so colored by
personal influence that a misconception is produced, and know that these things
were uttered designedly to deceive, and thus bend us to the selfish will of the
speaker? To me, there is only one thing more horrifying than the thought of
being deceived by someone else, and that is the memory of the times when I have
found myself a victim of this deadly mental poison and have thought to achieve
my own selfish ends by employing that same insidious device that I, myself,
have been duped by. Thank heaven we have found here a being who not only would
not lie but will never lie, for He is a God of truth, and cannot lie.
Furthermore, he does not make mistakes of which He must repent. Would you seek
such a being in whom to rest your faith? For myself, I must know that such a
being exists, and that He will protect me from enough of the deceptions in the
world, that I may live out my life with courage and faith, and not be destroyed
by the gnawing fear of man’s ability to deceive. (Lynn A. McKinlay, Life Eternal
[Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1950, 1954], 17, 18-19)