Similarly, Jehovah God’s blessing of Job is recorded in the Book of Job. What did God bestow upon Job? “So Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses” (Job 42:12). From man’s perspective, what were these things given to Job? Were they man’s assets? With these assets, would Job have been very wealthy during that age? And how did he acquire such assets? What caused his wealth? It goes without saying that it was thanks to the blessing of God that Job came to possess them. How Job viewed these assets, and how he regarded the blessings of God, is not something we’ll go into here. When it comes to the blessings of God, all people yearn, day and night, to be blessed by God, yet man has no control over how many assets he can gain during his lifetime, or whether he can receive blessings from God—and this is an indisputable fact! God has authority, and has power to bestow any assets upon man, to allow man to obtain any benediction, yet there is a principle to God’s blessings. What kind of people does God bless? The people that He likes, of course! Abraham and Job were both blessed by God, yet the blessings which they received were not the same. God blessed Abraham with descendants as numerous as the sand and the stars. When God blessed Abraham, He caused one man’s descendants, one nation, to become powerful and prosperous. In this, the authority of God ruled mankind, who breathed the breath of God among all things and living beings. Under the sovereignty of God’s authority, this mankind proliferated and existed at the speed, and within the scope, decided by God. Specifically, this nation’s viability, rate of expansion, and life expectancy were all part of God’s arrangements, and the principle of all of this was wholly based on the promise that God made to Abraham. Which is to say that, regardless of the circumstances, God’s promises would proceed without hindrance and be realized under the providence of God’s authority. In the promise that God made to Abraham, regardless of the world’s upheavals, regardless of the age, regardless of the catastrophes endured by mankind, the descendants of Abraham would not face the risk of annihilation, and their nation would not die out. God’s blessing of Job, however, made him extremely wealthy. What God gave him was an array of living, breathing creatures, the particulars of which—their number, their speed of propagation, survival rates, the amount of fat on them, and so on—were also controlled by God. Though these living beings did not possess the ability to speak, they too were part of the Creator’s arrangements, and the principle of God’s arrangements was according to the blessing that God promised to Job. In the blessings that God gave to Abraham and Job, though what was promised was different, the authority with which the Creator ruled all things and living beings was the same. Every detail of God’s authority and power is expressed in His different promises and blessings to Abraham and Job, and once again shows mankind that the authority of God is far beyond man’s imagination. These details tell mankind once more that if he wishes to know God’s authority, then this can only be achieved through God’s words and through experiencing God’s work. God’s authority of sovereignty over all things allows man to see a fact: God’s authority is not only embodied in the words “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and, Let there be firmament, and there was firmament, and, Let there be land, and there was land,” but, moreover, in how He made the light continue, prevented the firmament from disappearing, and kept the land forever separate from the water, as well as in the details of how He ruled over and managed the creatures: light, firmament, and land. What else do you see in God’s blessing of mankind? Clearly, after God blessed Abraham and Job, God’s footsteps did not cease, for He had only just begun to exert His authority, and He intended to make every one of His words a reality, and to make every one of the details of which He spoke come true, and so, in the years to come, He continued doing everything that He intended. Because God has authority, perhaps it seems to man that God only speaks, and does not need to lift a finger for all matters and things to be accomplished. To imagine thus is somewhat ridiculous! If you only take the one-sided view of God’s establishment of the covenant with man using words, and of God’s accomplishment of everything using words, and you are incapable of seeing the various signs and facts that the authority of God holds dominion over the existence of all things, then your understanding of God’s authority is too hollow and ridiculous! If man imagines God to be thus, then, it must be said, man’s knowledge of God has been driven to the last ditch, and has reached a dead end, for the God that man imagines is but a machine that issues orders, and not the God who is possessed of authority. What have you seen through the examples of Abraham and Job? Have you seen the real side of God’s authority and power? After God blessed Abraham and Job, God did not stay where He was, nor did He put His messengers to work while waiting to see what the outcome would be. On the contrary, as soon as God uttered His words, under the guidance of God’s authority, all things began to comply with the work that God intended to do, and there were prepared the people, things, and objects that God required. Which is to say that, as soon as the words were uttered from the mouth of God,…
