NEARLY four thousand years ago there nestled in the very heart of the garden of the East one of the most opulent, splendid, and luxurious cities of antiquity. To the valley of the Jordan had been given the glory of Lebanon, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. Resplendent with the tints of leaf and blossom and redolent with their fragrance, it was, in the language of inspired Writ, "as the garden of the Lord." Upon its breast was set, as a bright and shining gem, the far-famed Sodom. In her trade and money vaults Sodom was the ancient London; in her arts, fashions, and luxury, she was the olden Paris.
"The Dead Sea . . . is the Melancholy Monument to Sodom's Folly and Fate."
But when in the very plenitude of her power and splendor; when her presses were bursting out with new wine; when she had more than heart could wish, she forgot the Giver—forgot God, the Author of all good. First she became rich, then proud, then idle, then gluttonous and drunken, then lecherous and bestial. These, in turn, work destruction, issue in death. Note the testimony of the prophet Ezekiel: "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw good." Pride, idleness, luxury, these wrought her ruin. Pride is the mother of ingratitude; idleness and luxury give birth to all forms of vice and crime. Her moral sensibilities starved, her conscience dead, she could no longer respond to the pleadings of divine mercy. The cup of her iniquity soon ran over; she became a stench in God's earth, a foul blot in His universe. "The wages of sin is death." She suffered the "vengeance of eternal fire."
God had promised Abraham that He would spare the city if there were fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, or even only ten righteous souls within her walls. But that number was not there.
Even after the angels, or messengers of divine vengeance, had entered the city, the Lord sent a message of warning through His one remaining servant, Lot, to the people of the doomed city, saying, "Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city." But "he seemed unto them as one that mocked." They regarded Lot as a visionary alarmist. They reasoned that all things appeared as they had always been.
Lot himself was so incredulous as to make it necessary for the angels to resort to physical constraint to save him and his wife and two daughters from the fate of the city. They were saved as a brand plucked from the burning. Tho in body Lot's wife fled from the city, she left her affections behind; her heart still lingered within the city's walls. She turns to once more feast her eyes upon her idols. The awful issue every reader knows. Here let us note and heed the admonition of the Saviour. Speaking of the days of the Son of man, the days when He is about to come again, He commands us to "remember Lot's wife." Looking back after putting our hands to the plow, proves us unfit for the kingdom of God.
Our Saviour clearly teaches that the flames which consumed the ancient cities of the plain shed their warning light down even to the end of time. The woful doom of the Sodomites because of unbelief was recorded for our admonition upon whom the end of the world has come. Note the Saviour's words: "Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot: they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed." Luke 17:28-30.
In tender love God sent a message of warning and mercy, through Noah, to the antediluvian people. They scoffed at the messenger and scouted his message. They all perished. The people of Sodom laughed as they heard Lot proclaim his heaven-sent message. They all likewise perished. John the Baptist, filled with the Holy Ghost, proclaimed to the Jews the coming of the One mightier than himself.
Only a handful believed. Christ came to His own, and His own received Him not. Hence their house was left unto them desolate. A pall blacker than night soon shrouded Jerusalem; in the year A.D. 70 her streets ran with the blood of more than one million of her sons and daughters. "So shall it be in the days of the Son of man."
In the books of Daniel and the Revelation and in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew and the twenty-first chapter of Luke are many lines of prophecy bearing distinctly on the coming of Christ in power and glory. The student of these prophecies must admit that every one of them shows conclusively that the return of our Lord is near, even at the door. Thousands of the Master's servants are to-day proclaiming that solemn fact "to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." As in the days of Lot, however, the people, not only outside the pale of the church, but the vast majority within, are completely occupied in eating, drinking, planting, and sowing, etc. They make these things supreme, and the kingdom of God and His righteousness secondary. By their lives professed Christians are saying, "My Lord delayeth His coming." Through the apostle Peter we are told that in the last days scoffers will say, "Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were."
"In the last days," says the apostle, "perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers2of their own selves, . . . lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."
True, we can not know the day nor the hour of His appearing, but we are solemnly commanded to know when it is near. For 'unto them that look for Him will He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.' The prophecies bearing upon the second advent of Jesus were given for the express purpose of enabling the people living in the closing days of time to know that their Lord is about to come again and receive them unto Himself, that where He is, there they might be also. These prophecies our Lord tells us are 'as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.' As certainly as God's Word is true, those who refuse to heed this message of the second advent—who stop their ears and shut their eyes to it—will suffer the fate of those who scoffed at the message of Noah, of those who laughed at the fears of Lot, and of those who despised the lowly Nazarene.
The Dead Sea, dark, sullen, brackish, and destitute of all forms of life, is the melancholy monument to Sodom's folly and fate, and the awful monitor to all succeeding generations—an awful reminder of the woful fate which awaits all who abandon themselves to the vices made possible by the possession of great riches.
That this is an age of unprecedented wealth is notoriously patent. American millionaires have yearly incomes ranging from $1,000,000 to $30,000,000. Since 1860 our national wealth has grown from thirty billion to seventy-one billion dollars. By reference to the fifth chapter of James we learn that riches would be heaped together in the last days. Ex-Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, a few years ago declared that society had become hopelessly 'stratified into the condition of the superfluously rich and the hopelessly poor.'
Read the column in our city dailies devoted to society events, and you will see that feasts and banquets costing from one thousand even to a hundred thousand dollars are occurrences extremely common among the money lords and ladies of metropolitan society. 'Abundance of idleness and fulness of bread' will in our age work death and ruin just as certainly as it did in that of Sodom. Ladies of wealth and fashion are dawdling over champagnes and iced teas, coddling and pampering dogs, while thousands of the children of the poor, half-starved, half-clad, are growing(?) up in utter ignorance, squalor, and vice.
'Be patient therefore, brethren,' says the Lord to His poor and suffering, 'unto the coming of the Lord. . . . Establish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.' Then 'the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.'
GEO. W. RINE.
desires—which is seldom the case—will find the expected good a viper to sting his soul. 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'
The day is not far distant when a correct estimate will be placed upon the value of worldly possessions, even by the inhabitants of the earth. Then its treasures will be cast aside as utterly worthless; they will be thrown to the moles and bats. But alas for their possessors! It will then be too late to transfer them to the bank of heaven.
Who, in that day, would not prefer a crown of glory, and an inheritance that is incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, to the treasure of this earth? Let it be the one aim and object in life to seek 'the kingdom of God and His righteousness,' and there need be no fear but that every temporal need will be supplied. 'He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?'
