The Day of His Wrath by Golden Censer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 10, 1875

The Day of His Wrath.

By Golden Censer

ONE of the advantages vouchsafed unto us by the gospel of grace is the tender mercies of a loving Saviour, and the offer of pardon and full salvation to all who will accept through Christ. It is the part of basest ingratitude to resist the heavenly entreaties, expostulations, invitations, and promises so lovingly, freely and mercifully held out to perishing, helpless man. We sometimes think that those who reject so great good, offered to them on so liberal conditions, do not fully comprehend or take in the magnitude of the atonement. Did they realize it in all its proportions, it would seem that no rational mind would give sleep to the eyelids until the soul’s safety was secured.

In this brief article, let us add beauty to the gospel picture, if possible, by presenting some of the considerations which will fill our minds and engage our thoughts when the “day of His wrath” shall appear. To enter more clearly into the thoughts under consideration we recommend the careful reading of the 6th chapter of Revelation. So terrible will be that day spoken of by the Revelator that the physical world shall be convulsed, the sun turned to blackness, the moon to blood, the stars fall from their orbits, the mountains be wrenched from their primal setting, the islands lashed, and the very heavens rolled together as a scroll. Men will be stricken with great fear, and in their terror will run to the mountains and caves, and will cry unto the rocks, saying, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand!” And what the wrath of the Lamb, the meek and lowly Jesus, can be in that day we do not know, unless it is to visit on those who have slighted his mercies and spurned his offers—the merited and justly deserved punishment.

But is it possible to take into the mind, and for the imagination to forecast, the terribleness of that day as it shall flash over the world in the twinkling of an eye! It will come at just such a time as men will least expect it; when the world’s great workshops shall be peopled with men, women, and children. No universal blast of death will have first swept across the earth, and depopulated it of its inhabitants. Living men and women and children will be all over the world when the day comes, as full of strength, health, vigor, activity, thought, forethought, as at any period since God first “breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life.”

It will come when men are blind to its coming, each in his own blindness, asleep—each in his own dream. The astronomer will be calculating his eclipses for years to come—the physician will be studying his arts, to add length of days to man’s body—the philosopher, with his “philosophy falsely so called,” will be improving and enlightening his species—the politician will be planning beautiful schemes for man’s welfare in ages onward—the man of riches will be saying to his soul, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry”—the “man that will be rich” will be toiling and laboring after his “filthy lucre,” rising up early and sitting up late—the man that “liveth in pleasure” will be sending for “the harp and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine,” to be in his “feast,” regarding “not the work of the Lord, neither considering the operation of his hands”—blind preachers will be speaking their smooth things and prophesying their deceits, each in his own delusion, but all of them blind men’s eyes to the day. The king, and the noble, and the magistrate, and the farmer, and the tradesman, and the laborer—the mean man, and the mighty man, the married and the unmarried, the people and the priest, the servant and the master, the maid and her mistress, the buyer and the seller, the lender and the borrower, the taker of usury and the giver of usury to him,—shall all be weaving their webs of distant years and distant things, turning time into eternity, thinking and speaking of time’s world as never-ending, at the very instant when the day of His wrath shall send the thoughtless and mercy-rejecting, and God-hating, and Christ-spurning, and rebellious, and heaven-defying multitudes on their knees imploring the mountains and the rocks to fall on them. And what a prayer of self-accusation, of self-reproach, and of despair, it will be!

But who can fathom the human heart save the Almighty? When the five cities of the plains were about to meet their doom, it is said of their inhabitants that they offered violence to the very angels who came as monitors of the impending doom. Whether the world shall be better or worse at that day than it is now is a question worthy of the profoundest thoughts of the ablest thinkers of the age. At all events, it will be bad enough. Doubtless there will be thousands and tens of thousands of living men, eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building—fluttering like the butterflies in a summer’s day about the perishing flowers of a perishing world—steeping all their senses in the earthly business of the passing hour—making everything a business, whether pleasure, daily avocation, or necessary labor. The farmer will be at his market, the planter with his trees, the builder at his house, the tradesman in his shop, the student at his books, the reveler at his feast, the gambler at his cards, the rake at his revels, the usurer at his gold, the nobleman at his pomp, the king at his court, the soldier in his camp, the laborer at his toil, the idler at his folly, the drunkard at his drink, the glutton at his meat! Each at his sin, each in his day-dream, each in his soul’s poison!

The Lord bears it no longer. His mouth has sent forth the word of all-desolating vengeance. The vengeance storm obeys, and gathers and thickens, and rolls on, and hangs over. One moment’s pause—the preachers are preaching—peradventure the sinners may repent. One moment’s pause—hark! the pause is terrible—hark! “A shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God!” And the world will roll in flames of living fires, while over the crash of burning worlds, the shrieks of startled and unprepared millions, a voice shall be heard—a voice louder than mighty thunders, louder than the lashing of ocean waves, more awful than dissolving elements: “TIME IS NO MORE!”

Oh! what a day of separation—instant and awful—will that day indeed be! Two of a household shall be in one bed, brothers, it may be, that have grown up together, eating of the same meat, and drinking of the same cup—two women of one village, sisters in neighborly love and kindness, shall be grinding corn in one mill, each for her little ones—two men of the same house of worship, dwelling together as brethren in unity, and making their daily labor good and pleasant by sharing it together, shall be working in one field;—and “one shall be taken,” “caught up to meet the Lord in the air,” and “the other shall be left.” Oh! then will the cry of those who are left, bitter and all-consuming, be, “Rocks and mountains, fall on us!” Our punishment is just, but our disappointment is more than we can endure; hide us; for the glory of the Lamb is but burning wrath to our guilty souls. Oh! the bitter lashings of these awakened consciences so often stifled and crushed, who shall be able to stand? O my soul, believe it not! But oh! be not deceived, the soul that spurned, rejected, and despised the bloody sweat of the Lamb of God in the garden of Gethsemane upon that eventful night when he cried, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me;” or sneered at the sinless One as from the cross he cries, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” will

not be able to stand before the glories of our risen Lord—the King of glory.

But we forbear carrying this thought any farther. God be merciful to us sinners! May Heaven bless these few words to every unconverted reader. We are yet on mercy’s side of the grave. The day of His wrath is yet in the future, the invitations of the gospel are yet ours to accept. O Lamb of God, help us, help these poor hearts of ours to come to thee, and that right early, while it is yet to-day!—Golden Censer.