harvest . The Spirit of God , persistently resisted , is at last withdrawn from the sinner , and then there is left no power to control the evil passions of the soul , and no protection from the malice and enmity of Satan . The destruction of Jerusalem is a fearful and solemn warning to all who are trifling with the offers of divine grace and resisting the pleadings of divine mercy . Never was there given a more decisive testimony to God ' s hatred of sin and to the certain punishment that will fall upon the guilty .
The Saviour ' s prophecy concerning the visitation of judgments upon Jerusalem is to have another fulfillment , of which that terrible desolation was but a faint shadow . In the fate of the chosen city we may 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 during its long centuries of crime . The heart sickens , and the mind grows faint in contemplation . Terrible have been the results of rejecting the authority of Heaven . But a scene yet darker is presented in the revelations of the future . The records of the past , --the long procession of tumults , conflicts , and revolutions , the " battle of the warrior . . . with confused noise , and garments rolled in blood " ( Isaiah 9:5 ), -- what are these , in contrast with the terrors of that day when the restraining Spirit of God shall be wholly withdrawn from the wicked , no longer to hold in check the outburst of human passion and satanic wrath ! The world will then behold , as never before , the results of Satan ' s rule .
But in that day , as in the time of Jerusalem ' s destruction , God ' s people will be delivered , everyone that shall be found written among the living . Isaiah 4:3 . Christ has declared that He 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 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 . Then shall they that obey not the gospel be consumed with the spirit of His mouth and be destroyed with the brightness of His coming . 2 Thessalonians 2:8 . Like Israel of old the wicked destroy themselves ; they fall by their iniquity . By a life of sin , they have placed themselves so out of harmony with God , their natures have become so debased with evil , that the manifestation of His glory is to them a consuming fire .
Let men beware lest they neglect the lesson conveyed to them in the words of Christ . As He warned His disciples of Jerusalem ' s destruction , giving them a sign of the approaching ruin , that they might make their escape ; so He has warned the world of the day of final destruction and has given them tokens of its approach , that all who will may flee from the wrath to come . Jesus declares : " 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 ; Matthew 24:29 ; Mark 13:24-26 ; Revelation 6:12-17 . Those who behold these harbingers of His coming are to " know that it is near , even at the doors ." Matthew 24:33 . " Watch ye therefore ," are His words of admonition . Mark 13:35 . They that heed the warning shall not be
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