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It Cannot Be Burned

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 21, 1874

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 43, No. 19.

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It Cannot Be Burned.

“HAVE you anything like this in the old country?” asked a young American of me one day, in the wonderful city of Chicago, as he pointed to a handsome warehouse, built of stone. “This, sir, is fire-proof; it cannot be burned. There is not a bit of timber about it which is not covered with zinc, and if every other building around here were destroyed, this would be safe.”
His eye sparkled as he told me of the various means used to make it resist the power of fire, and he firmly believed what he said was true. But Chicago was ashes. Many of its boasted fire-proof buildings have perished, and persons who took refuge from the flames in them were burned to death.
Reader! have you made any provision against the awful calamity that very soon shall sweep over this guilty world? Are you trusting your soul’s salvation to anything, or any one, except Christ and the great salvation which he accomplished for sinners on Calvary’s cross? Human devices for salvation may look well now, and promise great things in the future, but when “the day cometh that shall burn as an oven” (Mal. 4:1), when God’s “hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies” (Isa. 28:17), they shall all fail, and those who have trusted in them shall perish. Nothing shall stand the searching fire of God’s judgment in that day but the refuge which God himself has provided, as a shelter in the coming day of wrath.
Fellow-sinner, once I trembled much, and my heart quaked for fear, when I remembered that the time was fast approaching that I must stand before my God. I discovered that I was a poor, lost sinner. My guilt and sins could not be denied. The wages of sin is death, and I was condemned and sorrowful; but I heard of the death of the Lord Jesus for sinners; I heard that he had said, “Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish;” I believed it was true; I cast myself, just as I was, upon his finished work, and I had the peace of those who know their sins are forgiven. I saw the tempest rising—the storm gathering; I trembled and was sad, until I heard that Jesus was a “hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest” (Isa. 32:2), and then I fled to him for refuge and was safe.—Message of Peace.