Page 17 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

is now the unseen inspirer of all earthly rulers and the power behind the thrones and
kingdoms of this present world-system.
It is significant of the enduring grace of our Creator that He commanded Ezekiel to

“take up a lamentation” upon the prototype, the king of Tyrus. He desires not that any
should perish but that all should come to repentance. Our benign God does not exult
over the downfall, resulting from the sin of His enemy; rather does He lament. God is
Himself the framer of the great moral and spiritual law that makes death and

separation from His presence the inevitable result of sin. He grieves over every sinner,
especially over those who will not invoke the only covenant as a basis on which He
can suspend His own law.

This shining creature addressed as “the anointed cherub that covereth” is declared
by God Himself to be “full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.” Dwelling in the original
Eden, the garden of God, he was bedecked and adorned with the most beautiful and
costly of gems. He seems to have been anointed to the august position of “coverer” of

the throne, the chief of the king‟s Praetorian Guard. There were doubtless myriads of
angelic beings directly subject to his commands. As he walked up and down among
the stones of fire, perhaps with sweeping, outstretched wings, there was reflected from
his garment of jewels the dazzling brilliance that issued forth from the throne of Deity.

No created being ever possessed such majesty, such radiance, such dignity.

The Revealer, however, emphasizes that this beauty and glory he enjoyed were not
of his own making nor attaining. “I have set thee so, “is the word. He was Lucifer, the

light-bearer, the light-bearer. This light-bearing was a divinely ordered function, not of
his own impulse, power, or merit.

It is necessary from time to time to remind ourselves that divine principles and

truths are eternal and abiding. The creature is the author of nothing. Any beauty, any
glory he possesses is a gift, an endowment from Another, held in trust from that Other.
Least of all is it intended that he should vaunt himself in the possessing of it.

There is an immutable condition attached to inhabiting the Eden of God or of
standing in The Presence. In verse fifteen it is set forth. “Thou wast perfect in thy
ways.” Perfection, according to the divine estimate of things, is the unalterable

standard. Here is no human slide-scale of evaluation. Here is the final, the ultimate,
the absolute in perfection and righteousness, divinely tempered to endure the
“devouring fire” and the “everlasting burnings” (Isa. 33:14). It was the relentless
searching of this fire of divine holiness that discovered the incipient “iniquity” in the
shining cherub.

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