p. 1 | HEAVY UPON IT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 16, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 29.

“HEAVY UPON IT.”

WHEN this earth came from the hand of God, beautified for the home of man, it was by Him pronounced “good.” It was a perfect world. It knew neither sin nor death. It was instinct with the life and love of God. Its revolutions, the currents of its streams, its winds, its electric impulses, were normal. No blighting, scorching, withering winds swept over its surface. No appalling cyclone or tornado made havoc of tree or primitive dwelling which may have been fashioned by man. No deluge of desolating rain, no pelting hail swept over its mountains or plains. Volcanoes—“vent holes of hell”—there were none. Earthquakes were unknown. The great grandeur of indescribable peace, growth, and beauty rested upon the home of man, God-made and God-given, and which Divinity pronounced “good.”

A VIEW OF THE ONCE MAGNIFICENT CATHEDRAL OF ST. PIERRE AFTER THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION.

IT was then a living earth; for the living God has brought into existence no dead things. It was a part of a living whole. It was a member, so to speak, of the great body of the universe, held by mighty tho invisible bonds to the great Heart of the Universe, connected by living wireless telegraphy to the universe’s great Mind, obedient to His will. Thus it was the will of God that the fresh, glad earth should roll on forever.

THE king of earth’s dominion was man, free to serve God, his normal duty, which would preserve forever normal conditions; or free to pervert, if he so elected, all God’s beneficences to selfish purposes, and so render abnormal all his gloriously beautiful dominion. An enemy came, once the fairest, the most beauteous, the most knowing, the wisest of all God’s creatures. So resplendent was he then that God called him Lucifer, “Son of the Morning,” “Light-bringer.” He, too, had the power of choosing God’s normal law of love, always outflowing, always laden with life and blessing, always glorifying Him who is only good, and ever opening the heart, and mind, and body, for more of His life and love for larger service and larger joy. But Lucifer, beautified by the glory of the Maker’s power, surrounded by all the resplendent loveliness of the “garden of God,” normally “perfect in all his ways,” chose the way of self, made self the center of worship instead of God, and so “brought death into the world and all our woe.” “His heart was lifted up because of his beauty; he corrupted his wisdom by reason of his brightness.” His wisdom became subtlety and craft, and every power of his giant mind was consecrated to selfishness, sin, perversion, destruction. The cherub of God became a devil; Lucifer, the Light-bringer, became Satan, the “adversary.” He suggested to the rulers of earth the same malefic principles, and they yielded to his devilish hypnotism. He promised them liberty from the law of God, which he termed bondage. He gave them hatred instead of love, and bondage to Satan and sin, instead of freedom in God. For “know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves

as bond-servants unto obedience, his bond-servants ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” The man obeyed Satan; Satan became the usurping lord of the earth.

WHEN the living lord over a living earth, the one perfectly adapted to the other, failed, his dominion failed with him. The whole earth became poisoned with the virus of sin. The thrill of pain, bondage, and despair passed through its every fiber. The law of beneficence became perverted to that of selfishness. Love became hatred and cruelty, and the earth drank in the blood of malice and violence. It, too, came under the service of the evil one. The soft, fragrance-laden breezes of heaven became, ever and anon, chilling, biting blasts, withering, scorching winds, or fearful tempests of destruction. The curse was felt when man first sinned. Henceforth the earth would not yield its strength. Thorns and thistles choked wheat and flower. When man’s blood was shed by man, the curse rested still heavier; and when transgression was piled up, more and more weighty became the curse of sin. Great convulsions seized the earth. “The windows of heaven were opened.” “The fountains of the great deep” were “broken up.” The earth was overwhelmed. Continents sunk and rose. Volcanoes vomited forth the product of the mixing of abnormal and diverse elements; disease and pestilence spread abroad; and earth became a great charnel-house of sin. Nay, more, every part of God’s universe felt the shock of sin. God is giving His creatures their choice, and He must let them know the results. They have chosen their seed-sowing; they must witness the fearful harvest, that the universe may forever know the heinousness of departure from God.

GRAPHICALLY has the prophet of the Most High set forth the connection of sin with the condition of the earth:—

“Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled; for the Lord hath spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.” Isa. 24:1–6.

This passage carries us clear down to the final days of earth’s present age, the days which are to usher in the great day of wrath, in which sin itself shall be destroyed. These great calamities will not come all at once. The fearful disease of sin will not culminate suddenly. The goodness of God will restrain and ameliorate its awful outbreaks, and yet permit its fearful foreshowings, that men may know its nature. The prophet continues the picture:—

“The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merry-hearted do sigh. The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth. They shall not drink wine with a song; strong drink shall be bitter to them that drink it. The city of confusion is broken down; every house is shut up, that no man may come in. There is a crying for wine in the streets; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction.” Verses 7–12.

But while many will not learn the true lesson, there will be some that will heed God’s message. These He will gather out.

“When thus it shall be in the midst of the land among the people, there shall be as the shaking of an olive tree, and as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done. They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the Lord, they shall cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires, even the name of the Lord God of Israel in the isles of the sea.” Verses 13–15.

There will be another class who have looked to men instead of God. They have trusted to the assurances of scientists who have left God out of the question, even as did the people of St. Pierre. They believed the report of the “scientific commission” that St. Pierre was not in danger. Even so men everywhere are now trusting in human hypotheses, saying, as it was foretold they would say, “Where is the promise of His [Christ’s] coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” 2 Peter 3:4. This message of “willingly ignorant” men is believed. But the vindication of God’s Word and the undeceiving of the world will come, as they came to St. Pierre on that fateful, fearful May morning. Listen to what the prophet says further of that time:—

“From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, even glory to the righteous. But I said, My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously.” Isa. 24:16.

And here is the irrevocable sentence of fact:—

“Fear, and the pit, and the snare are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare; for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.” Verses 17–20.

THEN shall sin and all identified with sin be manifest as it is. Rebels against God will receive their just punishment:—

“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.” Verse 21.

BUT this is not the entire story, dear reader. Beyond the utter disintegration of sinful earth; beyond the destruction of Satan, and demons, and all and everything identified with sin, will roll on in majestic and everlasting righteousness, and glory, and life, the “new heavens” and “new earth,” created by the power of God from the ruins of the old. “And He that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. . . . These words are faithful and true.” Rev. 21:5. Every soul may have part and everlasting inheritance there. He whose trust is in God may go down to death, but its bars are broken by Jesus Christ. “The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein forever.” “For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah; and there is none else.” Isa. 45:18. “It is better to trust in Jehovah than to put confidence in man.”