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and art dead.” And to those who refuse to arouse from their careless
security, the solemn warning is addressed: “If therefore thou shalt not
watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what
hour I will come upon thee.”
Revelation 3:1, 3
.
It was needful that men should be awakened to their danger; that
they should be roused to prepare for the solemn events connected with
the close of probation. The prophet of God declares: “The day of the
Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” Who shall stand
when He appeareth who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil,” and
cannot “look on iniquity”?
Joel 2:11
;
Habakkuk 1:13
. To them that
cry, “My God, we know Thee,” yet have transgressed His covenant,
and hastened after another god, hiding iniquity in their hearts, and
loving the paths of unrighteousness—to these the day of the Lord
is “darkness, and not light, even very dark, and no brightness in it.”
Hosea 8:2, 1
;
Psalm 16:4
;
Amos 5:20
. “It shall come to pass at that
time,” saith the Lord, “that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and
punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart,
The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil.”
Zephaniah 1:12
.
“I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity;
and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low
the haughtiness of the terrible.”
Isaiah 13:11
. “Neither their silver nor
their gold shall be able to deliver them;” “their goods shall become a
booty, and their houses a desolation.”
Zephaniah 1:18, 13
.
The prophet Jeremiah, looking forward to this fearful time, ex-
claimed: “I am pained at my very heart.... I cannot hold my peace,
because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the
alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried.”
Jeremiah 4:19,
20
.
“That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of
wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of
clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm.”
Zephaniah
1:15, 16
. “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, ... to lay the land
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desolate: and He shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.”
Isaiah
13:9
.
In view of that great day the word of God, in the most solemn
and impressive language, calls upon His people to arouse from their
spiritual lethargy and to seek His face with repentance and humilia-
tion: “Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy