The Sabbath and the Earth
By Cyrus Simmons
“O EARTH, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.” Jer. 22: 29. To the earth the word of the Lord has given a sabbatical rest. “But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.” Lev. 25: 4. Neither the strength of the walls of Jerusalem, nor the grandeur of Solomon’s temple, was able to resist the army of Nebuchadnezzar, nor persuade it from fulfilling prophecy. This exalted city could have enjoyed the distinction of remaining forever, if its citizens would have hallowed “the Sabbath day, to do no work therein.” Jer. 17: 24, 25. To hearts that were hard, and to ears that were deaf, the warning words of the prophet appealed, but God’s promises were disregarded, the Sabbath was desecrated, Jerusalem became a desolation, and the foundations of the temple were plowed. Jer. 26: 18. What a sad commentary on the spirit of greed and gain, of venality and vice, that possessed this people! Her faithless sons and fair daughters were taken in captivity to Babylon, where for seventy years they contemplated the terrible results of their disobedience to the law of God,—“until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath.” 2 Chron. 36: 21. In these “last days” the seventh-day Sabbath of the Lord is not only profaned, but many Christians are keeping Sunday, the first day of the week, and many Christian organizations are petitioning legislative bodies to pass laws enforcing its observance in opposition to the commandments of Jehovah. If, for the profanation of the Sabbath, the Lord permitted his chosen people to be taken as captives by their enemies; if he would allow Jerusalem, his beloved city, to become a desolation, and his sacred temple a ruin; if pestilence and famine, disease and distress, were part of the visitations of God’s judgments then, how can the professedly godly people of these “perilous times” expect to receive the approval of heaven when they are committing the selfsame transgression, and seeking its enforcement? “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” 1 Cor. 10: 11. The earth as well as man is visited with the condemnation of his sins. “The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Isa. 24: 5. Avarice, one of the blindest of passions, still claims the mastery. All thought and ambition are becoming wholly absorbed in “the cares of this life,” in commercialism and aggrandizement. Life is a strenuous slavery. In the hurry and hurrah for an earthly crown the contestants are fast growing jaded, neurasthenic, dyspeptic. Tonics whip on the enervated, and doping drinks lull to deception the exhausted. Demands for doctors and drugs are everywhere. Sanitariums and health foods are becoming a necessity, which serve as indices pointing to the physical weakness and degeneracy of the race. The people are overworked. The land is overworked. The earth is sick. “The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away.” Isa. 24: 4. “The earth shall wax old like a garment.” Isa. 51: 6. The soil, too, must be stimulated with a tonic. Fertilizers are attempting to patch up the worn-out places in the garment—earth. In spite of the theoretical progress in farming, and the advancement agricultural students have made, speculations and misgivings attend the growth of crops, while frequent failures and famines evidence their distressing uncertainty. Numerous insects, destructive to the field, the garden, the tree, and the vine, make their annual devastations, maneuvering their visible and invisible armies under new names, and with more precipitate encounters. “That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.” Joel 1: 4. “He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree.” Joel 1: 7. “The field is wasted, the land mourneth.” Joel 1: 10. “The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered.” Joel 1: 12. “Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.” Joel 1: 15. The signs of the times are foreshadowing the finality of things. The most reliable chronologists have associated the history of this earth with its people for nearly six thousand years. When Jesus shall come the second time in the clouds of heaven, accompanied by all the holy angels, he will resurrect and gather from the four quarters of the earth his saints, and take them with him to heaven, where they will be with him for one thousand years. Matt. 24: 30, 31; 1 Thess. 4: 16, 17; Rev. 20: 4. Simultaneous with this millennial duration, the earth, upheaved and rent by mighty earthquakes, torn and shattered by violent winds, disfigured and misshaped to a void and a chaotic state (Jer. 4: 23-28), will lie in desolation for one thousand years (Rev. 20: 3-6), being the seventh part of the time allotted to the land for her sabbaths, “until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath.” It is God that says, “My word . . . shall not return unto me void.” Isa. 55: 11.