HEALING OR DESTRUCTION

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 12.

HEALING OR DESTRUCTION.

Which Shall It Be?

In Mal. 4:1-3 is a graphic description of the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, including the second coming of Christ. It is as follows:—

“For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.”

It is not the purpose of this writing to enter into a detailed exposition of this prophecy, but to point out a very striking lesson concerning God’s presence and its effect.

It may be stated that the great day of the Lord, noted in so many scriptures, begins with the close of probation, and ends with the punishment of the ungodly. It includes, in order, the seven last plagues, the second coming of Christ, the first resurrection, the thousand years of judgment on high and of desolation on earth, the second resurrection, and the execution of the “judgment written.”

When the earth came from the hand of God, it was filled with His glory. Everything—animate and inanimate—voiced forth His praise or manifested His wisdom and power. Upon all nature was written, so clearly that all could read, “God is love.” Man talked with his Creator face to face. No veil was needed to hide God’s glory. Righteousness and innocence were glad in His presence.

“A Consuming Fire.”

“Our God,” says the writer of the Hebrews, “is a consuming fire.” Heb. 12:29. This is but the echo of Ex. 24:17: “And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire.” God has not changed. His glory at creation was as great, His brightness as transcendent, as now. Men could rejoice in it who were sinless; for God’s presence is deadly only to sin.

Since sin entered, man could not endure God’s glory. Even Moses, “the man of God,” could not look upon God’s face and live. Mortality, a result of sin, could not endure the sight. So when Christ, the Son of God, the express image of the Father, was manifested to the children of earth, He veiled His divinity with humanity, that men might neither be terrified nor perish. Should His dazzling glory burst upon the world, sinful flesh would perish utterly. To man God gave the dominion of the earth. God would rule His creation by ruling man. He would rule all the material by ruling the spiritual—the heart—of the king of earth. But man sinned, yielded his heart to Satan, and so yielded all the earth, placed in his keeping in trust by the King of the universe. Man became a traitor and Satan a usurper. Yet it is still true that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”

There will come a time when God shall take His own. He has sworn by His own life that “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” Num. 14:21. But He desires that men shall be willing and glad in that glory; that they shall not only not hinder its forthshining, but that they shall reflect and refract the pure white of that glory, even as the prism the light, till the whole earth is filled with its beauty.

God’s presence destroys sin. Sin can not exist in His presence. It was because Israel was sinful that God in mercy came down upon Mt. Sinai veiled in a cloud. It was because of their sinfulness that God’s glory was “like a devouring fire.” Ex. 24:17; 20:18, 19; Deut. 5:25-29. That man may endure God’s unveiled presence, He desires man to admit that presence into the heart, the very citadel that yielded to Satan. For this purpose Christ gave Himself. “He was manifested to take away our sins.” “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 3:5, 8. But first of all He wishes to enter the heart, cleanse it, dwell there, reign there, destroy the works of the devil there. Gal. 2:20; Eph. 3:17. His presence, admitted by faith, will destroy the sin, and make the body a holy temple. And when every soul who will thus receive Him, has admitted His presence, and glory, and power in their lives; when every soul who will not receive Him has rejected Him, then God will come into His own again to reign, thru Christ, the second Adam. “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels.” Matt. 16:27. “When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory.” Matt. 25:31.

In that undimmed glory no sin can live. It will burn to the very depths of all earth’s iniquity. His coming at Sinai, fearfully glorious as it was (see Hab. 3:3-6), will be to His final coming as the prelude to the grand chorus. The earth shook then; but at His coming heaven shall be shaken. Sinful men hid themselves then from His veiled glory; when He shall appear again, all who are identified with sin shall be consumed with the breath of His mouth and be destroyed by the brightness of His coming. 2 Thess. 2:8.

But not so with the righteous. In the forthshining of that glory, those whose hearts have already been glorified by His living presence, will be changed “from glory to glory.” The wings, the bright streams of radiance of the Sun of Righteousness, which consumes sin, will bring healing to the child of God, who will say, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us.” Isa. 25:9.

Reader, in which class will you be found in that day? “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?”