What Abraham Could Not Hear

(as preserved by Dennis Kinlaw)

Henry Clay Morrison used to describe this scene in a powerful way. He would say:

I thought I heard a conversation on Mount Moriah. It wasn’t between Abraham and Isaac, it was between the first Person of the Trinity and the second Person of the Trinity. The second Person of the Blessed Trinity said to the first of the Blessed Trinity. “Father, this is not the last time we’re coming to this mountaintop, is it?”

And the Father said to the eternal Son, “No, Son, this is not the last time we’re coming to this mountaintop. It will be about two thousand years and we’ll be back here.”

“Father, when we come back the next time, it won’t be one of them on this altar, will it?”

The eternal Father replied, “No, Son, when we come back the next time, it won’t be one of them on this altar; it will be one of us.”

“It will be me, won’t it?”

And the Father said, “Son, yes, it will be you.”

The eternal Son looked into the face of the eternal Father and he said, “Father, when we come back the next time, and it’s me on that altar, and the knife’s raised or the spear is raised, and they’re ready to push it in, are you going to say, ‘Don’t touch the lad’?”

“No Son. We never ask them to do in symbol what we are not willing to do in reality.”

D.L. Moody ~ From “The Prodigal Son” in The Gospel Awakening

There was a young man went off to California, and he left a kind, praying father. He went to the Pacific coast; and the first letter to his father brought the tidings that he was in bad company. The next letter told he had gone on from bad to worse; and every time he heard from that dear boy he heard how he was going on in sin. At last one of the neighbors was going out to California, and the father said to him: “When you get there hunt up my boy, and tell him one thing—that his father loves him still. Tell him my love is unchanged. Tell him I never loved him more than I do at the present time; and if he will come home, I will forgive him all.” The man, when he got to California, had hard work to find the boy; but one night, past midnight, he found him in one of the lowest dens in California. He got him out, and he said to him: “I have news from home for you. I have come from New England, and just before I left I met your father; and he told me, if I found you, to tell you that he loved you as much as ever, and he wants you to come home.” The young prodigal said: “Did my father tell you to tell me he loved me still? I do not understand that.” “But,” says the man, “it is true.” That broke the man’s heart, and he started back to his father. I bring the message to you that God loves you still. I say to every sinner in Philadelphia, I do not care how vile you are in the sight of your fellowmen, I want to tell you upon the authority of God’s word, that the Lord Jesus loves you, and loves you still.

Father God

 I read about a small boy who was consistently late coming home from school. His parents warned him one day that he must be home on time that afternoon, but nevertheless he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing.

At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There was a slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father’s full plate and then at his father, but his father remained silent. The boy was crushed.

The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son. When that boy grew to be a man, he said, “All my life I’ve known what God is like by what my father did that night.”

J. Allan Peterson

https://bible.org/illustration/father-god