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Time of Trouble
339
coming, there is no possibility of counterfeiting. It will be witnessed
by the whole world.
Only diligent students of the Scriptures who have received the
love of the truth will be shielded from the powerful delusion that
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takes the world captive. By the Bible testimony these will detect
the deceiver in his disguise. Are the people of God now so firmly
established upon His Word that they would not yield to the evidence
of their senses? Would they, in such a crisis, cling to the Bible, and
the Bible only?
As the decree issued by the various rulers of Christendom against
commandment keepers shall withdraw the protection of government
and abandon them to those who desire their destruction, the people
of God will flee from the cities and villages and associate together
in companies, dwelling in the most desolate and solitary places.
Many will find refuge in the strongholds of the mountains, like the
Christians of the Piedmont valleys. (See chapter four.) But many
of all nations and of all classes, high and low, rich and poor, black
and white, will be cast into the most unjust and cruel bondage. The
beloved of God pass weary days shut in by prison bars, sentenced to
be slain, apparently left to die in dark, loathsome dungeons.
Will the Lord forget His people in this trying hour? Did He forget
faithful Noah, Lot, Joseph, Elijah, Jeremiah, or Daniel? Though
enemies may thrust them into prison, yet dungeon walls cannot
cut off communication between their souls and Christ. Angels will
come to them in lonely cells. The prison will be as a palace, and
the gloomy walls will be lighted up as when Paul and Silas sang at
midnight in the Philippian dungeon.
God’s judgments will be visited upon those who are seeking to
destroy His people. To God, punishment is a “strange act.”
Isaiah
28:21
; see also
Ezekiel 33:11
. The Lord is “merciful and gracious,
longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, ... forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin.” Yet He will “by no means clear
the guilty.”
Exodus 34:6, 7
;
Nahum 1:3
. The nation with which He
bears long, and which has filled up the measure of its iniquity, will
finally drink the cup of wrath unmixed with mercy.
When Christ ceases His intercession in the sanctuary, the un-
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mingled wrath threatened against those who worship the beast will
be poured out. The plagues on Egypt were similar to those more