A Mountain Top Experience Series

Mountains have made men marvel at the majesty of God's creation all through history. Man needs

the mountains, for the heights are in his head and heart. Mountains awaken in man the instinct for

heaven. He knows when he looks at the mountains that he was made for a high and lofty purpose.

"But chief of all Thy wondrous works, Supreme in all Thy plan, Thou has put an upward reach

within the heart of man!" Once the mountains get into a man's system he can never be content on the

plain. Egypt had no mountains, and so they built their own in the pyramids.

When Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon he married a woman from the hills and took her

to Babylon. She was unhappy and so he built for her the famous hanging gardens of Babylon, which

was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Bliss Carman, a modern poetess, knew how she felt,

for she also longed for her mountains and she wrote,

I am homesick for my mountains,

My heroic mother hills,

And the longing that is in me

Knows solace ever stills.

Men wonder at the mystery of both mosquitoes and mountains, but they are glad that God made

mountains. When you gaze at those massive snow covered peaks you are forced to think big. The

mind as well as the eye is lifted by their loftiness. Mountains force the thought of God upon you, for

there is nowhere else the mind can go and be relevant. Man becomes insignificant and humanism

melts into oblivion before these rocking monarchs of the earth. In their majestic silence they shout at

you that God and only God is great.

I need not shout my faith. Thrice eloquent

Are quiet trees and the green listening sod;

Hushed are the stars, whose power is never spent;

The hills are mute, yet how they speak of God.

Frank Gaebelein in A Varied Harvest wrote, "From the mention in Gen. 8:4 of Ararat, the great

17 thousand foot peak in Armenia, capped by its glittering ice dome, to Rev. 21:10 where John in

his vision is transported to a high mountain, whence he sees the New Jerusalem in all her splendor,

the Word of God is full of mountains. Names like Ararat, Moriah, Sinai, Horeb, Zion, Carmel,

Herman, Gerizin, and Olivet have rich associations; indeed the basic structure of sacred history

might be related to the mountains of Scripture."

In one of his books of sermons Wallace Hamilton told of how the famous architect Frank Lloyd

Wright made the statement that all public buildings should be only 12 feet high so people would not

feel inferior or insignificant. He had a point, but Dorothy Thompson wrote and article that quickly

dulled it. She pointed out that when GI's visited the great Cathedrals of Europe and knelt under the

lofty arches of Notre Dame and starred up at the great art of Michangelo on the dome of St. Peter's,

they were not made to feel small, but were awakened to higher aspirations. They were made to

think big in the presence of bigness. You do not feel any longing for greatness by gazing in the

gutter. It is only in the presence of greatness that one is motivated to greatness. That is why

mountains are a must for men's minds. Wallace wrote, "Emerson did not advocate a 12 foot ceiling

when he said hitch your wagon to a star...The height to which a man grows is commensurate with

his vision. Set his ceiling at 12 feet and he will eventually be living underground."

Man needs the mountains to remind him of how small he is so that he can be motivated to get

climbing toward the heights of what God intends him to be. It is the awareness of our need that gets

us climbing. Mountains motivate us. Bishop Foster said, "If you have no sense of need, you will

assuredly make no progress." This is what we see in the church of Laodicea in Rev. 3. Jesus said

that they were neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, and he tells them why they were on this dead

level plain making no progress. He said in verse 17, "For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I

need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked." They lost the

vision of their need. They felt adequate and satisfied. They had a 12 foot ceiling and didn't feel

inferior or insignificant. The result was that they lost their motivation to climb.

This can happen to any of us and that is why it is good to go to the mountains. It is healthy to

look at something so big that it forces you out of your self-centeredness. When we drove out of the