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Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers
would not. It was not alone that they had been guilty, and deserving
of wrath, but that they armed themselves with the attributes of Satan,
and determinedly continued to be opposed to God. Every day, in
their refusal to repent, they took up their rebellion afresh. They were
preparing to reap that which they had sown. The wrath of God is not
declared against men merely because of the sins which they have
committed, but for choosing to continue in a state of resistance, and,
although they have light and knowledge, repeating their sins of the
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past. If they would submit, they would be pardoned; but they are de-
termined not to yield. They defy God by their obstinacy. These souls
have given themselves to Satan, and he controls them according to
his will.
How was it with the rebellious inhabitants of the antediluvian
world? After rejecting the message of Noah, they plunged into sin
with greater abandon than ever before, and doubled the enormity of
their corrupting practices. Those who refuse to reform by accepting
Christ find nothing reformative in sin; their minds are set to carry
their spirit of revolt, and they are not, and never will be, forced to
submission. The judgment which God brought upon the antediluvian
world declared it incurable. The destruction of Sodom proclaimed
the inhabitants of the most beautiful country in the world incorrigible
in sin. The fire and brimstone from heaven consumed everything
except Lot, his wife, and two daughters. The wife, looking back in
disregard of God’s command, became a pillar of salt.
How God bore with the Jewish nation while they were murmur-
ing and rebellious, breaking the Sabbath and every other precept of
the law! He repeatedly declared them worse than the heathen. Each
generation surpassed the preceding in guilt. The Lord permitted
them to go into captivity, but after their deliverance His require-
ments were forgotten. Everything that He committed to that people
to be kept sacred was perverted or displaced by the inventions of
rebellious men. Christ said to them in His day, “Did not Moses give
you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?” And these were
the men who set themselves up as judges and censors over those
whom the Holy Spirit was moving to declare the word of God to the
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people. (See
John 7:9-23, 27, 28
;
Luke 11:37-52
.)