Calamities and God’s Love; Sin, Judgment, and the Shortness of Time
By Ellen G. White
1.
Our only safety
2. “In all their affliction He was afflicted.”
Isaiah 63:9
3. “An enemy has done this” Matthew
13:28
4. “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever.”
Genesis 6:3
5. “True and righteous are Your judgments.”
Revelation 16:7
6. “Redeeming the time.” Ephesians
5:16
7. “No more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.”
Revelation 21:4
Our Only Safety
The daily record of disasters shows that there is no safety anywhere.
Even in our homes we are in danger; for storms, floods, and
fire are sweeping off thousands, while earthquakes are destroying
additional thousands. If there ever was a time when we should
be sober and watch unto prayer, it is now. Our lives are safe
only when hid with Christ in God. We need every day to purify
ourselves even as He is pure. There is always hope for us in
God. Faith is our defense, for it connects our human weakness
with divine power.—Review and Herald, January 29, 1884.
“In all their affliction He was afflicted.” Isaiah 63:9
Few give thought to the suffering that sin has caused our Creator.
All heaven suffered in Christ’s agony; but that suffering
did not begin or end with His manifestation in humanity. The
cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that, from
its very inception, sin has brought to the heart of God. Every
departure from the right, every deed of cruelty, every failure
of humanity to reach His ideal, brings grief to Him. When there
came upon Israel the calamities that were the sure result of
separation from God-subjugation by their enemies, cruelty, and
death-it is said that “His soul was grieved for the misery
of Israel.” “In all their affliction He was afflicted:
. . . and He bare them, and carried them all the days of old.”
Judges 10:16; Isaiah 63:9.
His Spirit “maketh intercession for us with groanings
which cannot be uttered.” As the “whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together” (Romans 8:26,
22), the heart of the infinite Father is pained in sympathy.
Our world is a vast lazar house, a scene of misery that we dare
not allow even our thoughts to dwell upon. Did we realize it
as it is, the burden would be too terrible. Yet God feels it
all. In order to destroy sin and its results He gave His best
Beloved, and He has put it in our power, through cooperation
with Him, to bring this scene of misery to an end. “This
gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for
a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
Matthew 24:14.—Education, pp. 263, 264.
“An enemy has done this.” Matthew 13:28
Satan delights in war, for it excites the worst passions of
the soul and then sweeps into eternity its victims steeped in
vice and blood. It is his object to incite the nations to war
against one another, for he can thus divert the minds of the
people from the work of preparation to stand in the day of God.
Satan works through the elements also to garner his harvest
of unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the laboratories
of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements
as far as God allows. When he was suffered to afflict Job, how
quickly flocks and herds, servants, houses, children, were swept
away, one trouble succeeding another as in a moment. It is God
that shields His creatures and hedges them in from the power
of the destroyer. But the Christian world have shown contempt
for the law of Jehovah; and the Lord will do just what He has
declared that He would-He will withdraw His blessings from the
earth and remove His protecting care from those who are rebelling
against His law and teaching and forcing others to do the same.
Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard.
He will favor and prosper some in order to further his own designs,
and he will bring trouble upon others and lead men to believe
that it is God who is afflicting them.
While appearing to the children of men as a great physician
who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster,
until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even
now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by
land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific
hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and
earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is
exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and
famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint,
and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are
to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction
will be upon both man and beast. “The earth mourneth and
fadeth away,” “the haughty people . . . do languish.
The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because
they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken
the everlasting covenant.” Isaiah 24:4, 5.—The Great
Controversy, pp. 589, 590.
“My Spirit shall not strive with man forever.” Genesis 6:3
We are living in the time of the end. The fast-fulfilling signs
of the times declare that the coming of Christ is near at hand.
The days in which we live are solemn and important. The Spirit
of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth.
Plagues and judgments are already falling upon the despisers
of the grace of God. The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled
state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast
approaching events of the greatest magnitude.
The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating.
They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes
are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements
will be rapid ones.—Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9,
p. 11.
The time is at hand when there will be sorrow in the world that
no human balm can heal. The Spirit of God is being withdrawn.
Disasters by sea and by land follow one another in quick succession.
How frequently we hear of earthquakes and tornadoes, of destruction
by fire and flood, with great loss of life and property! Apparently
these calamities are capricious outbreaks of disorganized, unregulated
forces of nature, wholly beyond the control of man; but in them
all, God’s purpose may be read. They are among the agencies
by which He seeks to arouse men and women to a sense of their
danger.—Prophets and Kings, p. 277.
“True and righteous are Your judgments.” Revelation 16:7
But few have any conception of the wickedness existing in our world
today, and especially the wickedness in the large cities. .
. .The Lord has appointed a time when He will visit transgressors
in wrath for persistent disregard of His law. . . .God’s
supreme rulership and the sacredness of His law must be revealed
to those who persistently refused to render obedience to the
King of kings. Those who choose to remain disloyal must be visited
in mercy with judgments, in order that, if possible, they may
be aroused to a realization of the sinfulness of their course.—Testimonies
for the Church, vol. 9, p. 93.
It is the glory of God to be merciful, full of forbearance,
kindness, goodness, and truth. But the justice shown in punishing
the sinner is as verily the glory of the Lord as is the manifestation
of His mercy.—Review and Herald, March 10, 1904. The same
destructive power exercised by holy angels when God commands,
will be exercised by evil angels when He permits. There are
forces now ready, and only waiting the divine permission, to
spread desolation everywhere.—The Great Controversy, p.
614.
When God gave Christ to our world, He gave in this one gift
all the treasures of heaven. He held back nothing. He can do
no more than He has done to bring men to repentance. He has
no means held in reserve for their salvation.
God bears long with the rebellion and apostasy of His subjects.
Even when His mercy is despised and His love scorned and derided,
He bears with men until the last resource for leading them to
repentance is exhausted. But there are limits to His forbearance.
From those who to the end continue in obstinate rebellion, He
removes His protecting care. Providence will no longer shield
them from Satan’s power. They will have sinned away their
day of grace.
God keeps a reckoning with the nations. Not a sparrow falls
to the ground without His notice. Those who work evil toward
their fellow men, saying, How doth God know? will one day be
called upon to meet long-deferred vengeance. In this age a more
than common contempt is shown to God. Men have reached a point
in insolence and disobedience which shows that their cup of
iniquity is almost full. Many have well-nigh passed the boundary
of mercy. Soon God will show that He is indeed the living God.
He will say to the angels, “No longer combat Satan in
his efforts to destroy. Let him work out his malignity upon
the children of disobedience; for the cup of their iniquity
is full. They have advanced from one degree of wickedness to
another, adding daily to their lawlessness. I will no longer
interfere to prevent the destroyer from doing his work.”
This time is right upon us. The Spirit of God is being withdrawn
from the earth. When the angel of mercy folds her wings and
departs, Satan will do the evil deeds he has long wished to
do. Storm and tempest, war and bloodshed-in these things he
delights, and thus he gathers in his harvest.—Review and
Herald, September 17, 1901.
“Redeeming
the time.” Ephesians 5:16
The
work that should long ago have been in active operation to win
souls to Christ has not been done. The inhabitants of the ungodly
cities so soon to be visited by calamities have been cruelly
neglected. The time is near when large cities will be swept
away, and all should be warned of these coming judgments. But
who is giving to the accomplishment of this work the wholehearted
service that God requires?—Review and Herald, September
10, 1903.
Four mighty angels are still holding the four winds of the earth.
Terrible destruction is forbidden to come in full. The accidents
by land and by sea; the loss of life, steadily increasing, by
storm, by tempest, by railroad disaster, by conflagration; the
terrible floods, the earthquakes, and the winds will be the
stirring up of the nations to one deadly combat, while the angels
hold the four winds, forbidding the terrible power of Satan
to be exercised in its fury until the servants of God are sealed
in their foreheads. Get ready, get ready, I beseech you, get
ready before it shall be forever too late!—Review and
Herald, June 7, 1887.
“No more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.” Revelation 21:4
Pain
cannot exist in the atmosphere of heaven. In the home of the
redeemed there will be no tears, no funeral trains, no badges
of mourning. “The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick:
the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity.”
Isaiah 33:24. One rich tide of happiness will flow and deepen
as eternity rolls on.
We are still amidst the shadows and turmoil of earthly activities.
Let us consider most earnestly the blessed hereafter. Let our
faith pierce through every cloud of darkness and behold Him
who died for the sins of the world. He has opened the gates
of paradise to all who receive and believe on Him. To them He
gives power to become the sons and daughters of God. Let the
afflictions which pain us so grievously become instructive lessons,
teaching us to press forward toward the mark of the prize of
our high calling in Christ. Let us be encouraged by the thought
that the Lord is soon to come. Let this hope gladden our hearts.
“Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come,
and will not tarry.” Hebrews 10:37. Blessed are those
servants who, when their Lord comes, shall be found watching.
We are homeward bound. He who loved us so much as to die for
us hath builded for us a city. The New Jerusalem is our place
of rest. There will be no sadness in the city of God. No wail
of sorrow, no dirge of crushed hopes and buried affections,
will evermore be heard. Soon the garments of heaviness will
be changed for the wedding garment. Soon we shall witness the
coronation of our King. Those whose lives have been hidden with
Christ, those who on this earth have fought the good fight of
faith, will shine forth with the Redeemer’s glory in the
kingdom of God.
It will not be long till we shall see Him in whom our hopes
of eternal life are centered. And in His presence, all the trials
and sufferings of this life will be as nothingness. . . . “For
yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will
not tarry.” Verse 37. Look up, look up, and let your faith
continually increase. Let this faith guide you along the narrow
path that leads through the gates of the city of God into the
great beyond, the wide, unbounded future of glory that is for
the redeemed. “Be patient therefore, brethren, . . . for
the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” James 5:7, 8.—Testimonies
for the Church, vol. 9, pp. 285-287.
Scripture
quotations in the subtitles are from the New King James Version.