The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 38

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shall be wholly withdrawn from the wicked, no longer to hold in check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 s pirit
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

37