Page 82 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

combination with the miry clay of flabby democracies, the increase of lawlessness and
wickedness and the removing of the ancient landmarks, the vicious circle of towering
armaments to protect commercial interests but which produce in turn bankruptcy and

economic stringency, upheavals, and catastrophes, and the universal apostasy of the
professing church, altogether constitute an accumulation of evidence that judgment is
in the immediate offing, that cannot be denied.

Such conditions should strike terror to the heart of the unconverted and those who
have never come into vital relationship to God through faith in His Son. If there be
any such whose eyes fall upon these words, let me beseech you in Christ‟s name to be
reconciled to God before it is too late. Confess your sin and need of a Savior and bow

yourself under the shadow of the cross, receiving Christ as your personal Savior.
Christ is the One who “openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man
openeth.” Praise be to His name, the door of grace is yet ajar, and you may yet enter
in.

These realizations should produce in the believer mingled emotions. He should
have a feeling of joy and exhilaration because his own redemption and the glory and

vindication of his Savior draweth nigh (Luke21:28). Yet being a partaker of the Divine
nature his exultation at his own deliverance should be tempered by sorrow and
compassion for the mass of the people in the world upon whom the awful judgments
of God are about to fall. The blessed Christ wept over Jerusalem because she knew not
the things that belonged unto her peace, and it was with sorrow that he pronounced

judgment upon Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin. So far from producing within
the believer a tendency to ease and relaxation, the knowledge of approaching
world-judgment should stimulate him to well-nigh feverish effort to wrest some as
brands from the burning by warning of imminent punishment to be meted out to

unbelievers and pointing to the fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel‟s
veins, which is yet open for sin and uncleanness. The believer should, moreover, be
constantly claiming as his own the victory which Christ has wrought out in his behalf
and which alone can work in him a life of godliness, righteousness, and holiness.

With our lamps trimmed and burning brightly, let us watch, and pray, and work,
straining our ears for the trumpet sound of the archangel, which will herald our

gathering out in rapture and translation unto Him, before the worst of the tribulation
shall come upon this poor old world.

“Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the
hour of trial, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the

74