Who Can Stand the Test?
By G. W. Rine
NO ONE can thoughtfully read the thirty-third chapter of Isaiah without instantly detecting the fact that it is a prophecy dealing with the events that mark the closing days of this world of sin, and with those that will mark the bringing in and the setting up of the kingdom of Christ—the kingdom “which shall not be destroyed.” Note particularly verses 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22. Verse 17 reads thus: “Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land [Eden restored] that is very far off.” In the fourteenth verse several questions of exceeding moment are asked, and a detailed answer is recorded in the fifteenth verse. Verse 14: “The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling hath seized the godless ones: Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire? who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” The answer, verse 15: “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppression [margin: fraud], that shaketh his hands from taking a bribe.” The “devouring fire” referred to in the question can not possibly mean any other than the fire of God, which shall finally consume the irreclaimable sinner and purge and purify the earth from the “curse” that sin has laid upon her—from “the works of the devil.” See Malachi 4 and Rev. 20: 9, 10, 14, 15. In the answer it is clearly stated who will be immune from those fires, whom the “devouring fire” can never touch. They are the righteous, the saints of God. Observe carefully that one of the distinguishing marks of the righteous is that he shakes his hands “from taking a bribe.” These latter words show unmistakably that the taking of bribes will be a characteristic sin in the closing years of time. How clearly also the first verse of this chapter shows that at the same time men would “deal treacherously,” that is, fraudulently, with one another. It means, in short, that venality would be a dominant last-day sin; venality is born of greed. No reader need be told that the taking of bribes is notoriously prevalent in the political and the commercial world. In the parlance of the day, the euphemism GRIFT has been substituted for the forbidding term bribe. Not all the multifarious forms of graft are bribery, but a very large proportion is nothing but the rawest sort of bribery with its concomitant crime of perjury.