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God’s People Delivered
309
The King of kings descends upon the cloud, wrapped in flaming
fire. The earth trembles before him, the heavens are rolled together
as a scroll, and every mountain and every island is moved out of
its place. Says the psalmist: “Our God shall come, and shall not
keep silence; a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very
tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from
above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather my
saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me
by sacrifice. And the heavens shall declare his righteousness; for
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God is judge himself.” [
Psalm 50:3-6
.]
“And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men,
and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman,
and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of
the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, 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?” [
Revelation 6:15-17
.]
The derisive jests have ceased. Lying lips are hushed into silence.
The clash of arms, the tumult of battle, “with confused noise, and
garments rolled in blood,” [
Isaiah 9:5
.] is stilled. Naught now is
heard but the voice of prayer and the sound of weeping and lamenta-
tion. The cry bursts forth from lips so lately scoffing, “The great day
of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” The wicked
pray to be covered by the rocks of the mountains, rather than meet
the face of Him whom they have despised and rejected.
Those who mocked Christ in his humiliation are in that throng.
With thrilling power come to their minds the Sufferer’s words, when,
adjured by the high priest, he solemnly declared, “Hereafter shall ye
see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming
in the clouds of heaven.” [
Matthew 26:64
.] Now they behold Christ
in his glory, and they are yet to see him sitting on the right hand of
power.
That voice which penetrates the ear of the dead, they know. How
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often have its plaintive, tender tones called them to repentance. How
often has it been heard in the touching entreaties of a friend, a
brother, a Redeemer. To the rejecters of his grace, no other could be
so full of condemnation, so burdened with denunciation, as that voice
which has so long pleaded, “Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?”