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A Place of Refuge

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 3, 1874

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 43, No. 8.

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A Place of Refuge.

By A. S. Hutchins

FOR the security of those who should kill any person without design, the Lord directed Moses to appoint cities of refuge, when the Israelites should come into the promised land. The heart of the refugee, as he fled from the avenger of blood, must have beat with untold anxiety to gain this asylum of safety before him.
The Bible points the sinner, exposed to the wrath of God, to a place of refuge from the power of Satan, a protection from the second death. “In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence; and his children have a place of refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.” Prov. 14: 26, 27.
And why do we remain away? Why not come to this asylum of “strong confidence,” to the fountain of life? All Heaven invites us to come. Our present and future happiness and safety, with our eternal interests, bid us come. Certainly, if we prized life eternal as men valued the preservation of this life for a season who winged their course to the ancient cities of refuge, we would come.
Who has ever found a life of sin and alienation from God to be profitable? Who has been made the wiser or better, physically, morally, or mentally, by sin? Let the present, or the vast generations of the past, ruined by the fall, answer, Who?
The apostle asks his brethren with reference to their past life of sin, “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom. 6: 21–23. Truly, “Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.”
“Whoso committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law.” The history of sin, from the fall of the happy pair in Eden to the present, as it is read in its blighting and degrading influence upon nations and individuals, and in the awful curse under which the earth has groaned for six thousand years, demonstrates and attests in the clearest manner that man needs a refuge, a protection in the merits of the crucified Redeemer, and in his atoning blood, to escape the penalty due for the transgression of God’s law; which Omniscience in the beginning pronounced to be death, and which, in the Judgment of the great day, must inevitably be inflicted upon the finally incorrigible. “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
Numerous, indeed, are the subterfuges and false hopes under which many have taken refuge for safety in view of the day of general retribution. That awful day hastens on! Then will all error and deception, with every falsehood, be unmasked, and appear in their true color. The deceiver and the long deceived awake to utter the alarming truth, “We have made lies our refuge, and under falsehoods have we hid ourselves.”
Mercy pleads no more. Justice, and the avenging law of God, will then execute upon the lost the punishment so long threatened against the sinner. Here it will be learned by the most inexpressible anguish and woe experienced by the ungodly, that it was a falsehood of the most daring magnitude, when Satan said to Eve, “Ye shall not surely die.”
As we contemplate the future reward of the righteous, as portrayed by the pen of inspiration, language is inadequate to express the joy of the devoted Christian “who by patient continuance in well-doing” has sought for “glory and honor and immortality,” and has the soul-supporting hope of eternal life, based upon the conditions and promises of God’s word.
To the heirs of this precious boon, his promise can never fail; the “immutability of his counsel is confirmed by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor to the soul both sure and steadfast.”
In humble confidence may such adopt the language expressive of the strongest assurance of divine protection, a place of refuge beyond the power of evil. “In God is my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God. Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.” Ps. 62: 7, 8.
A. S. HUTCHINS.
Greenville, Mich.