There is one agency used of God in all His work for man, and that is His Holy Spirit. Men may be used, the Word may be used, angels may be used, trees, flowers, sun, and stars may be used, to save man; but the one thing which makes all these effectual is the Spirit of God. It is the Spirit which inspired the Word. It is the Spirit which by the Word brings conviction to the sinner. It is the Spirit which converts or changes the heart of the sinner who yields, and that writes God's law where first was sin. It is the Spirit which instructs through the Word, even to the end. Men may resist for the time this Spirit; men may grieve it away, to have it return again with reproof and pleading; men may quench it in the heart by refusing to obey it. But sometime that Spirit does its last work. It uses its last argument, makes its last plea, brings its last evidence to the sin-hardened, self-loving soul. And some sinners yield, but some turn from the sweet, tender pleadings, the mighty evidences, to the last. Such is sin against the Holy Ghost, and there is never forgiveness because never repentance.
So when some of the Jews had witnessed all that God wrought through Jesus in the power of the Spirit, had seen the work that was good and only good, and yet, in the face of it all, their sin-loving hearts could say, "He casteth out demons by Beelzebub the prince of demons," then there was no more hope for them. God had no other means of reaching them. But that soul who feels true sorrow for sin because it is sin against a loving Father, and not because of sin's consequences, may know that there is hope, because the Spirit still gives and incites repentance.
1088. Isa. 65 : 20.—The first part of the verse refers to the redeemed state, to conditions in the new earth. There will not be there henceforth what we now see. "There shall be no more thence an infant of days nor an old man that hath not filled his days." Here a great proportion die in infancy; very few fill out their days or live to extreme old age. But then God's people's days will be "as the days of a tree," the tree of life. Verse 22. The last part of verse 20 gives the reason: God's judgment has done its work, and His character is vindicated. The wicked have been raised. For a season—100 years—they are again under Satan's deceptive power. He marshals them into armies, trains them for conflict, brings them out to fight against God, and they perish. Rev. 20 : 1-9. "The child shall die an hundred years old, and the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed." Sin and its consequences in that destruction shall be evermore banished, and "the righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein forever."
