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Look Up!, August 31
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to
Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her
iniquity is pardoned.
Isaiah 40:1, 2
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In the darkest days of her long conflict with evil, the church of God has been
given revelations of the eternal purpose of Jehovah. His people have been permitted
to look beyond the trials of the present to the triumphs of the future, when, the
warfare having been accomplished, the redeemed will enter into possession of the
promised land. These visions of future glory, scenes pictured by the hand of God,
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should be dear to His church today, when the controversy of the ages is rapidly
closing and the promised blessings are soon to be realized in all their fullness.
To us who are standing on the very verge of their fulfillment, of what deep
moment, what living interest, are these delineations of the things to come—events
for which, since our first parents turned their steps from Eden, God’s children
have watched and waited, longed and prayed!
Fellow pilgrim, we are still amid the shadows and turmoil of earthly activities;
but soon our Saviour is to appear to bring deliverance and rest. Let us by faith
behold the blessed hereafter as pictured by the hand of God. He who died for the
sins of the world is opening wide the gates of Paradise to all who believe on Him.
Soon the battle will have been fought, the victory won. Soon we shall see Him
in whom our hopes of eternal life are centered. And in His presence the trials
and sufferings of this life will seem as nothingness. The former things “shall not
be remembered, nor come into mind.”“Cast not away therefore your confidence,
which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after
ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while,
and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.”“Israel shall be saved ... with
an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without
end.”
Look up, look up, and let your faith continually increase. Let this faith guide
you along the narrow path that leads through the gates of the city into the great
beyond, the wide, unbounded future of glory that is for the redeemed.
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