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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
from sharing the glory that bursts upon his astonished vision. All
want a share, but know that it is not for them.
In earnest, agonizing prayer they call for God to pass them not
by. The kings, the mighty men, the lofty, the proud, the mean
man, alike bow together under a pressure of woe, desolation, misery
inexpressible; heart-anguished prayers are wrung from their lips.
Mercy! mercy! Save us from the wrath of an offended God! A
voice answers them with terrible distinctness, sternness, and majesty:
“Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out My hand,
and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all My counsel, and
would none of My reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will
mock when your fear cometh.”
Then kings and nobles, the mighty man, and the poor man, and
the mean man, alike, cry there most bitterly. They who in the days of
their prosperity despised Christ and the humble ones who followed
in His footsteps, men who would not humble their dignity to bow
to Christ, who hated His despised cross, are now prostrate in the
mire of the earth. Their greatness has all at once left them, and they
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do not hesitate to bow to the earth at the feet of the saints. They
then realize with terrible bitterness that they are eating the fruit
of their own way, and are filled with their own devices. In their
supposed wisdom they turned away from the high, eternal reward,
rejected the heavenly inducement, for earthly gain. The glitter and
tinsel of earth fascinated them, and in their supposed wisdom they
became fools. They exulted in their worldly prosperity as though
their worldly advantages were so great that they could through them
be recommended to God, and thus secure heaven.
Money was power among the foolish of earth, and money was
their god; but their very prosperity has destroyed them. They be-
came fools in the eyes of God and His heavenly angels, while men of
worldly ambition thought them wise. Now their supposed wisdom
is all foolishness, and their prosperity their destruction. Again ring
forth shrieks of fearful, heart-rending anguish: “Rocks and moun-
tains, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the
throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of His
wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?” To the caves of the
earth they flee as a covert, but these fail to be such then.