THE INSENSIBILITY OF THE WORLD TO THE WARNING VOICE OF CHRIST by Hon. G. T. Noel, A. M.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 31, 1876

THE INSENSIBILITY OF THE WORLD TO THE WARNING VOICE OF CHRIST.

By Hon. G. T. Noel, A. M.

If the prospect of the future be bright and consolatory to the true Christian, so ought it to be dark and oppressive to the unbelieving and the impenitent. The glory of God will receive its twofold manifestation in the awards of justice, and in the gifts of mercy. The time of vindication at length will come. During many a long year the name of Christ has afforded occasion for the exercise of mockery, contempt, and superstition. Recognized in the theory of human societies, whether political or ecclesiastical, he is practically despised; and the principles of worldly policy supersede his counsels, and nullify his decisions. The majority of nominal Christians are utterly careless of their responsibility to his tribunal; and expect the course of the world still to proceed in the same manner as it has done from age to age.

In vain the Scriptures announce a limited period to the forbearance of God; in vain they call for repentance, and faith, and godliness; in vain they proclaim “a day in which God will judge the world in righteousness” by the august Ruler “whose goings forth are from everlasting;” “whereof God hath given the assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.” A death-like torpor and incredulity rests upon the human soul, and all the judgments and mercies of the Almighty make no impression. In private life tear chases tear, and death succeeds to death; but no man learns wisdom save the despised saint whom God deigns to enlighten and heal. In public life, wars and commotions, pestilence and earthquake, anarchy and blood, attest, during successive centuries, the controversy which God has with national impiety; but national reform, humiliation, and godliness, are conditions of public life unfelt, unseen, contemned.

If there be zeal for social rights—for mental freedom—for commercial greatness—for intellectual progress; it passes short of the claims of God. Secularity pollutes the church; and while civil policy expands the enactments of legislation to the multiplied interests of the citizen, it contracts their influence over the acknowledged rights of God. On this theatre of human action, man is everything, God is disregarded. His name is indeed upon their tongue, and his authority is registered upon the page of the public liturgy; but his will, his decisions, his warnings, and his promises, are matters of cold speculation or of excitement. In the day of sorrow, sickness, or death, there may be a transient reference to his mercy; but it is the refuse offering which the world will no longer ask for nor receive.

The approaching day of account, the government of the world in the hands of Christ, the results of his incarnation, his connection with mankind, the responsibility to him incurred by talent, wealth, rank, and power—these ideas are rejected as illiberal, onerous, and enthusiastic. The secondary interests of man chase his primary necessities from his sight, and threescore years of life are preferred to eternity. The care of the body is preferred to that of the soul; and the applause of man is deemed a brighter heritage than the enduring approbation of God.

It appalls the thoughtful mind to contemplate the fearful upshot of this state of human things. The day of God approaches; but where is the preparation for his advent?

When our Almighty Redeemer foretold his return in glory to the world, in which previously he had been rejected, he announced the very manifestations which we witness of this incredulity and contempt: “As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be, for as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” The flood came upon the world unexpectedly, though the theme of incessant prediction. During one hundred and twenty years did the warning voice of God utter its mournful accents, and intreat a cessation in the work of ungodliness and sin. The accents were scattered to the desert air; they reached no rebel heart of man. The shortness of time, the approach of death, the brooding darkness of the gathering storm, interrupted not the career of sensuality, the progress of licentiousness, nor the noise of sin. They ate, they drank; “the harp and the viol, the tabret and pipe, and wine,” were in their feasts; they formed alliances; they built up many a domestic dwelling-place; they coveted individual and national renown; but “they regarded not the work of the Lord,” nor knew “the operation of his hands.” They ridiculed the prophetic record. They smiled in idle scorn, while the prophet built and surveyed his ark, the appointed refuge from the approaching wrath! But the insensibility of man delayed not the purpose of God; the neglected warning canceled not the recorded purpose; the mirth of the criminal arrested not the hand of the executioner; the horizon blackened; the tempest burst; and the teeming population lay buried beneath the waves!

And so shall it be, we are told, by infallible authority, in the last judgments of the great day. The same insensibility; the same licentiousness; the same preference of sensual to spiritual joy; the same complacency in ungodly gratifications; the same oblivion of justice and mercy; the same contempt of divine law, and attachment to human schemes, will characterize the period of time, proximate to the second advent of Christ, as characterized the period antecedent to the terrific flood of Noah. It would be an awful employment to portray to the mind, with any thing like historical accuracy, the tremendous alarm which must at length have seized upon the world, when the threatened judgment actually commenced; when the torrents of the skies and the tides of the ocean united their fearful strength; and by successive ravages marked out a storm unlike the wintry desolations of other years, a storm directed by the same Almighty hand which hitherto had restrained the furious elements, and made them subservient to human welfare. Creative power was now charged with retributive indignation, and the arm of God had shattered the schemes of man! The business of earth at length paused; the din of pleasure ceased; the strife of individuals was suspended; the politics of nations were arrested; all classes of society mingled together, appalled by a common ruin; the landmarks of property were annihilated; armies were useless; wealth was a name; and science a delusion. The avenging scourge of Omnipotence passed over the whole earth, and no criminal remained behind to tell the tale. Conviction came too late; remorse could be no substitute for repentance. The hour for contrition was forever gone.

And to this scene of utter disaster the Redeemer refers, in order to illustrate the consternation which will arrest an impenitent world when he shall return to the earth on which he has been so long despised.

The day of his advent will arrive, and who may abide his anger? Insensibility and scorn will characterize human society. The voice which warns will excite contempt; and the hand which, not in anger but in love, points to predicted judgments, will be met by no friendly eye. The business, pleasure, gains, and philosophy of life, will occupy the world, until the sign of the Son of man shall appear in the heavens, and the authority of Christ shall allow of scorn no more. It were fearful to portray that final alarm which will overwhelm a guilty world, when, too late for refusal, the cup of trembling is held to its lips!

The destruction and calamities of the last days “of the times of the Gentiles,” are delineated on the page of Scripture with a force and energy calculated to shake to the foundation the strongest confidence of the world. But the men of this world will not read; they will not listen; they pursue the game of life, and sport upon the precipice of perdition!

True religion is despised, and the authority of the Son of God is forgotten. But the obduracy of man cannot invalidate the claims of God. The records of the Omniscient no human hands can erase; resisted or received, they hasten to their accomplishment. Would to God that the great and the rich of the earth, the wise and the intelligent—the princes and the prelates, the nobles and the clergy of every land—would that all to whom God has intrusted the use of power, and influence, and eloquence, and wealth, might remember the condition of man, and the tribunal before which he must stand. And would that the mingled multitudes doomed to toil, obscurity, and penury, might alike receive the message of the eternal word. Would that if any human being hitherto occupied but with the details of earth, should scan these feeble lines, he might hear the warning voice, and remember the Saviour of whom it speaks! Painful is it to think of a ruin which no human skill can avert, of a degradation which no art of man can reclaim, of a “waste” for which no “after-thrift” can atone!

Whoso is wise will ponder these things, and he shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord.—Hon. G. T. Noel, A. M.