p. 178 | A MISTAKEN ESTIMATE by Armory

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 24, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 12.

A MISTAKEN ESTIMATE.

By Armory

MEN form their ideas of the divine Being upon the basis of their own character, experience, and observation. They think that God would do as they do, while he has plainly said, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." He who judges the Almighty by himself will find in the great day that he has made a terrible mistake. In that day when "our God shall come and shall not keep silence," he shall sternly rebuke the presumption of those who have thus dishonored him. "Unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedest with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes." Ps. 50: 16-21.

The great mistake of the wicked has been in thinking that God was altogether such an one as they, and that they, in their wrongdoing and cowardly conniving at iniquity, incurred no responsibility or danger. "These things thou hast done, and I kept silence." And this silence of God, in the midst of abounding and prevailing iniquity, has been misinterpreted to signify acquiescence in wrong and indifference to right.

The mistake is a most fatal one. God has magnified his word; and he will have men pay attention to his commands, not with the timidity of an eye-servant, but with honest obedience and strict devotion to principles of truth and righteousness. If sentence against evil work was speedily executed; if every liar shared the fate of Ananias and Sapphira; if every imitator of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram went down like them into the depths; if every sinner like Nadab and Abihu was smitten by the fire of God; if the flames of wrath were continually blazing out against all iniquity; if the thunder-bolts were smiting on the right and the left, there would be little room for the exercise of conscience and moral principle, but simple brute fear would control the conduct of mankind. But the silence, the long-suffering, the patience, the composure of the Almighty, which endure from age to age, and allow the godless man to go on in his sins and iniquity, but assure him that for all these things God will bring him into judgment, leave room for the exercise of other motives beside fear, and foster the development and growth of character for good or for evil.

Let the guilty take warning from the word of God and the judgments of ages past, and flee from the wrath to come while time and opportunity are granted them, assured that God will bring every work into judgment; that he will not at all acquit the wicked; but that, though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished.—Armory.