WARNING THE
By WILLIAM LEASK, D.D.
Instead of the apostasy of Christendom,
characterized by daring impiety and atheism, under the leadership of the Man of
Sin, the Son of Perdition, popular teaching represents the gradual triumph of
the Gospel over every nation tribe, until all mankind shall become Christian,
and the Church be co-extensive with the human race.This is picture which the
pulpit delights to exhibit, and a very beautiful
picture it is. In skilful hands it is sometimes executed with such ingenuity that the moral
landscape of the nations seems to laugh before us under the sunlight of spiritual
beauty. For imagination, poetry, graphic
detail, and bursts of enthusiastic eloquence, it offers an exceedingly fruitful
theme. But there is this drawback - it
is not true! The Holy Ghost speaketh
expressly against it. It is not
only not the predicted issue of Christian testimony, so far as the nominal Church
and the world are concerned, but that issue is directly the reverse - apostasy,
direful wickedness, impiety, blaspliemy, atheism, doom! For mercy spurned, and grace refused, the end
of the age is terrible judgment! For
disobedience to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the close of the
dispensation is characterized by unprecedented wickedness culminating in
unparalleled judgments. The day of
long-suffering is ended by the wrath of the Lamb.
Responsibility! Merciful Saviour, look upon
Thy ministers! What will the deceived
people say of them, and to them, when the story of Peace,
peace, is interrupted by the uprising of the Man of Sin, and the imperious
demand that all shall worship him, and deny the Father and the Son? Sir, you
deceived me! You taught me to laugh at the millenarian
doctrine. You said that Christ would not
come until the end of the world; that the Gospel would convert the nations, and
that the idea of a personal Antichrist was a dream, and an absurdity. You
deceived me; and now I must either worship this blasphemer or die!
Can one, imagine such a speech as this
without horror?
But is it really a matter of
revelation that Christians who are looking for the coming of the Lord shall
escape the predicted horrors of the atheistic domination? Our Lord, speaking of the day that shall come
as a snare on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth, says:- Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted
worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man
(Luke 21: 36). This intimation that His watchful [and accounted worthy] disciples shall escape the terrors of the closing
scene, when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (for it is to that period, and not to the destruction of
[* In these Scriptures it is to take as a companion,
not seize (for judgment) as it is in Matthew 24: 39,
etc.]
The Vials of wrath will not
be poured forth until those who wait for the Lord
are taken to safety. Because thou hast
kept the word of my patience, I also will
keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try
them that dwell upon the earth (Rev. 3: 10).
Most remarkable is this verse, - the word of my patience;
what a revelation there is here of the dispensation of grace, and of the
certainty that, in consequence of grace rejected, it will end in judgment; and
what a proof that to look and wait
for the patient, long-suffering Saviour is t he
duty and privilege of the [regenerate] believer - an attitude which is to be rewarded by
removal from the scene of trial before the Apocalyptic judgments descend upon
the earth.
Now if these two momentous truths - namely, that
Christendom ends in apostasy, and that those who [are
accounted worthy and]
wait for the Lord will be gathered lovingly to Himself before the judgment due
to that apostasy descends upon the world - were presented to our congregations,
it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the indifference to the sublime
realities of the Gospel, the sleep, the deadness of which the complaint is so
lamentably general, would, to a great extent, disappear. The law of Heaven is - Gods blessing on His
own truth. A faithful exhibition of that truth, therefore, is the bounden duty of
all ambassadors of Christ. The great
realities of the Gospel should be presented to men as things wonderfully near, not as things afar off, or cold
abstractions concerning what curiosity may speculate. And if the day of grace, the era of divine
long-suffering, is rapidly coming to a close; if the Gospel dispensation, like
its Edenic, patriarchal, and Aaronic predecessors, is to end in apostasy; and
if the new epoch of royal rule by the manifested Messiah, with the Church of the first-born ones as
His co-assessors, converted Israel as His ministers of salvation to the
nations, and the entire world as His empire, is just about to begin, the
necessity of fidelity to Gods
revelation, always pressing, is now vehemently imperative.
The great crisis to which all generations and all
the purposes of God have been tending is near at hand. To talk now about the respective merits of
ecclesiastical systems is a waste of precious time, for they are all doomed to
dissolution that the sons of God may be manifested in glory with Him who is at
once their Redeemer, their life, their Elder Brother, and their Head. To insist now upon form, and ceremony, and ritual
is perfect madness, for the Bridegroom cometh; those who are ready will go in with Him to the marriage, and the door will be shut. We have had
trifling enough; let us now be in earnest, and give Christ such a place in our
hearts as He never had before, so that the prospect of His coming may
fill us with hope and joy!
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THE SECOND COMING*
* This is the title given to the poem of the
author. Second Adventists are sometimes
charged with being pessimists; but here is the second advent of the
Rationalist as dread a contrast as coulf be conceived D. M. PANTON.
Some day the last lone man
will lie and stare
At death, and know that in
him ends the scheme
Of life on earth, that
thought itself supreme;
And he will die with no one
left to care.
All forms of life that once
swarmd anywhere
Will vanish as the memories
of a dream,
And the great winds of
silence then will stream
Through the vast hollows of
the darkend air.
And after this quick life we
once calld ours
Has pass'd, will the world
travail in some storm
Of restless elements and
fill its crust
With breathing earth again:
wild beasts and flowers?
And will some curious life
in some strange form
Dig down and read this story
of our dust?
‑PAUL ENGLE.