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Forecast of the World’s Destiny
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which yields its unfailing harvest. The Spirit of God, persistently
resisted, is at last withdrawn. Then there is left no power to control
the evil passions of the soul, no protection from the malice and
enmity of Satan.
The destruction of Jerusalem is a solemn warning to all who
are resisting the pleadings of divine mercy. The Saviour’s prophecy
concerning judgments upon Jerusalem is to have another fulfillment.
In the fate of the chosen city we behold the doom of a world that
has rejected God’s mercy and trampled upon His law. Dark are the
records of human misery that earth has witnessed. Terrible have
been the results of rejecting the authority of Heaven. But a scene
yet darker is presented in the revelations of the future. When the
restraining Spirit of God shall be wholly withdrawn, no longer to
hold in check the outburst of human passion and satanic wrath, the
world will behold, as never before, the results of Satan’s rule.
In that day, as in Jerusalem’s destruction, God’s people will be
delivered. See
Isaiah 4:3
;
Matthew 24:30, 31
. Christ will come
the second time to gather His faithful ones to Himself. “Then shall
all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man
[26]
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And
he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they
shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of
heaven to the other.”
Matthew 24:30, 31
.
Let men beware lest they neglect the words of Christ. As He
warned His disciples of Jerusalem’s destruction that they might
make their escape, so He has warned the world of the day of final
destruction. All who will may flee from the wrath to come. “There
shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and
upon the earth distress of nations.”
Luke 21:25
. See also
Matthew
24:29
;
Mark 13:24-26
;
Revelation 6:12-17
. “Watch ye therefore,”
are Christ’s words of admonition.
Mark 13:35
. They that heed the
warning shall not be left in darkness.
The world is no more ready to credit the message for this time
than were the Jews to receive the Saviour’s warning concerning
Jerusalem. Come when it may, the day of God will come unawares
to the ungodly. When life is going on in its unvarying round; when
men are absorbed in pleasure, in business, in money-making; when
religious leaders are magnifying the world’s progress, and people