“Shall Not God Avenge His Own?”
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while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.”
Hebrews
10:35-37
. “Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of
the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and
latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of
the Lord draweth nigh.”
James 5:7, 8
.
The long-suffering of God is wonderful. Long does justice wait
while mercy pleads with the sinner. But “righteousness and judgment
are the establishment of His throne.”
Psalm 97:2
, margin. “The Lord
is slow to anger;” but He is “great in power, and will not at all acquit
the wicked: the Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
and the clouds are the dust of His feet.”
Nahum 1:3
.
The world has become bold in transgression of God’s law. Because
of His long forbearance, men have trampled upon His authority. They
have strengthened one another in oppression and cruelty toward His
heritage, saying, “How doth God know? and is there knowledge
in the Most High?”
Psalm 73:11
. But there is a line beyond which
they cannot pass. The time is near when they will have reached the
prescribed limit. Even now they have almost exceeded the bounds of
the long-suffering of God, the limits of His grace, the limits of His
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mercy. The Lord will interpose to vindicate His own honor, to deliver
His people, and to repress the swellings of unrighteousness.
In Noah’s day, men had disregarded the law of God until almost
all remembrance of the Creator had passed away from the earth. Their
iniquity reached so great a height that the Lord brought a flood of
waters upon the earth, and swept away its wicked inhabitants.
From age to age the Lord has made known the manner of His
working. When a crisis has come, He has revealed Himself, and has
interposed to hinder the working out of Satan’s plans. With nations,
with families, and with individuals, He has often permitted matters to
come to a crisis, that His interference might become marked. Then He
has made manifest that there is a God in Israel who will maintain His
law and vindicate His people.
In this time of prevailing iniquity we may know that the last great
crisis is at hand. When the defiance of God’s law is almost universal,
when His people are oppressed and afflicted by their fellow men, the
Lord will interpose.
The time is near when He will say, “Come, My people, enter thou
into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were