The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 37
destruction of Jerusalem are a demonstration of Satan’s vindictive power
over those who yield to his control.
We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and
protection which we enjoy. It is the restraining power of God that
prevents mankind from passing fully under the control of Satan. The
disobedient and unthankful have great reason for gratitude for God’s
mercy and long-suffering in holding in check the cruel, malignant power
of the evil one. But when men pass the limits of divine forbearance,
that restraint is removed. God does not stand toward the sinner as an
executioner of the sentence against transgression; but He leaves the
rejectors of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have
sown. Every ray of light rejected, every warning despised or unheeded,
every passion indulged, every transgression of the law of God, is a seed
sown which yields its unfailing 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resisted, is at last withdrawn from the sinner, and then there is left no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,
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