Foaming out their own Shame.
By C. S.
JUDE is very explicit concerning a class of godless wretches that should infest the world in the last days. He speaks of them as those who should turn the grace of God into lasciviousness, denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 4. What they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Verse 10. Clouds without water carried about of winds. Verse 12. Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame: wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Verse 13. Murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, and their mouth speaking great swelling words. Verse 16. Mockers, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts, sensual, having not the Spirit. Verses 18, 19. He says that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these that the Lord should come with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon them, and convince them of their ungodly deeds and hard speeches. These are not past generations of apostate dead. The dishonored graves of that class are not disturbed till a thousand years after the second advent of the Lord in glory. Rev. 20: 5, 6. But here are some upon whom the Lord takes vengeance at his second coming. They live in the last generation that is to exist in the world in its present condition. We are to see and meet them. And the righteous who are waiting for the coming of Christ, are to be vexed with the beastly doings and filthy conversation of this lust-besotted class, even as just Lot was vexed with the filthy deeds of the brutal Sodomites. But Jude says that they should foam out their own shame. This indicates an open display of their filthy dreams and shameless deeds. How this was to be fulfilled has not heretofore been so apparent. For while it has been evident that numbers were not wanting whose hearts were as corrupt as here described, a sufficient sense of decency has been left with them to restrain them from flaunting their rottenness and corruption before the face and eyes of decent people in open day. This restraint, however, is now giving way. Spiritualists (the progressive and radical portion of them) no longer attempt to keep their iniquities from the public gaze. In public prints and in public speeches, both men and women brazenly confess themselves adulterers and adulteresses, and glory in their course. A Boston, Mass., paper, noticing a lecture lately given in that city by a notorious spiritualist, speaks of it as follows:— “The lecturer openly and unblushingly advocated the vilest doctrines relating to the sexual relation. “Some of the statements contained in the lecture were of the most shameful and false character, and to repeat them would be an insult to respectable readers. The scandals in connection with the clergy were related with great gusto, and were, strange as it may appear, heartily applauded by the apparently respectable audience. “But the greatest wonder of all was, that in this city, where art and culture is supposed to have attained its highest level, an audience of ladies and gentlemen could patiently listen to the utterance of sentiments so disgraceful and immoral, and that even ladies ventured to applaud some of the most shameful statements. “This certainly indicates a condition of public sentiment which is alarming to say the least. In consideration of lectures like this, we are strongly of the opinion that there should be a limit beyond which the freedom of speech and of the press should not be allowed to extend. This lecture should have been suppressed by the strong arm of the law.” Not without cause did the inspired writers point out that beastly lust would be a leading trait in the characters of these latter-day scoffers. Paul to the Philippians speaks of them as those whose glory is in their shame. Jude says, Foaming out their own shame. We have it all before our eyes. The Bible no longer wants, in the lives of the reprobate on earth, a counterpart to its most glaring descriptions of human degradation and sin. The lines in the pictures meet and correspond. The world's cup of iniquity is about full. The gangrene will become more widely diffused through society, but in any local manifestation it can scarcely become more virulent. All this indicates the near approach of the great day. But who, as he looks at these things, does not feel to pray that it may more quickly come. O thou God of all holiness and purity, let this hell of pollution be swept from the face of the earth by that which alone can reach to its fearful depths—the red hell of thy retributive vengeance. C. S.