Who Hath Done This? by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 16, 1911

Who Hath Done This?

By C. M. S.

THE time is drawing near when God will put an end to conditions that have cursed humanity, and misrepresented and reproached the government of heaven and the love and wisdom of the Almighty. Infidelity has loudly charged the God of the Bible with responsibility for most of the sad, unfortunate, and wicked conditions that exist in the world to-day. They are here, we know; but how unjust to blame the one who is most injured by them with responsibility for their existence and continuance. A power has been busy from the dawn of time turning God’s blessings into curses. Blessings misused are always curses; and hearts in rebellion against God will always misuse his blessings. Running water brings life and happiness; stagnant water is perverted water, and its depths are full of death. So with every purpose of God that sin has put its hand to.

God designed that water should bless the earth; but sin and the curse that came in consequence of sin have frequently turned that blessing into a curse, and floods and waterspouts have wrought death and ruin.

There are deserts in the world, but not by God’s design. Had man been obedient, the whole earth would have been praising the Creator, blooming and fruiting from pole to pole. One day, when the burden of sin has been removed, this old earth will be in that condition. Then the streams will bring down only blessings from the hills, and the sun and dew will nurture the fruits and flowers.

Now the breezes, which God designed should bless the earth, are often turned into tornadoes, which devastate the land and kill the inhabitants. This is not God’s purpose, and is not to continue forever. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain,” is as truly and literally applicable to the forces of the elements as to the beasts of the field. The waters of the sea rage and swallow the ships, or roll their ponderous tidal waves beyond the boundary of the shore to scatter death and ruin. Not so will it be in the earth made new, for all such things are outside the purpose of God. His thoughts toward his creatures are “thoughts of peace, and not of evil.” Jer. 29:11.

Whence, then, all the evil, all the turmoil, all the strife and confusion, all the wars and jealousies, all the robberies and murders? As the sower of the good seed declared, “An enemy hath done this.” And he was and is the enemy of both God and man. That enemy sowed that seed, and man and the earth are reaping the fruit of that sowing. There is nothing that our hands touch or our eyes behold but carries the scars of the curse. As the prophet Jeremiah declared of his day so it is now: “We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us. . . . We labor, and have no rest. . . . We got our bread with the peril of our lives.” Men have built great dams and irrigating ditches to bring water to their thirsty ground; and they have seen their fields barren, their crops withered, and the sky giving no rain; and in earning a livelihood for themselves and their families to-day hundreds of thousands are continually taking their lives in their hands.

But when this old world is done with sin, there will be an end of these experiences. The Lord declares: “In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water.” Isa. 35:6, 7. God’s purpose will be accomplished, even though the long night of sin has come between its expression and its fulfilment. But we must bear this in mind, that

is to be carried out. The plans of the human have always had running through them the base alloy of Satan’s designs. As those designs made trouble in heaven, so have they always, and so will they always, on earth, till they and their author cease to be, as the result of the final purifying process of the Almighty.

God has permitted the sorrowful experiences of this earth to go on, he has permitted Satan to carry on his dark and wicked work through all the history of this world, not because he takes pleasure in the plans and work of Satan, but because he has promised the whole universe that “affliction shall not rise up the second time.” Nahum 1:9. How could the Lord make sure that affliction would never arise again in the universe? There is no other way than to permit Satan and sin to demonstrate themselves. They are doing it now; and that great object-lesson, which will never need to be repeated, is fast drawing to a close. Soon God will write “Finis” over the tragedy of sin. The enemy that has sowed the earth with trouble, discord, greed, distress, untruth, disobedience, hatred, and death will be eliminated with all the terrible fruit of his work, and the universe will be clean again. Toward that glad consummation we are hastening now, and the hour of our jubilant release from the woes and strifes and threatenings and fears of this doomed world is drawing nigh. Soon, if faithful, we may look up into the opening heavens, and say with the company of the redeemed, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is Jehovah; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” Isa. 25:9.

C. M. S.