p. 32 | The Earth Is Getting Old

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CAL., KANSAS CITY, NEW YORK · Nov 28, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 48.

The Earth Is Getting Old

The Earth Is Getting Old.—The Word declares that it shall "wax old like a garment." We know how that is, threadbare and frayed in spots, giving way in places, ripping at the seams, easily torn, yet in parts looking as good as new. So it is with the old earth. It has in it and upon it the evidences of age. Drought, famine, pestilence, malaria, under the most improved conditions, mark its yearly course. And all this is the result of sin, which will eventually culminate in destruction. God keeps it back from that destruction now by the outpouring of His Spirit, with its restraining power. But when His Spirit is withdrawn from a people who have rejected utterly His ways, that withdrawal will be manifest in the physical earth. The scenes already witnessed will be almost insignificant compared with those yet to come. Now Satan's wrath is held in check; the effects of evil are modified by the restraining power of God's Spirit and truth; but when man, to whom the earth was committed as a blessed trust, turns that trust to wholly selfish uses, perverting and rejecting the ways of God, the great Master lets men have their own way; He withdraws His rejected Spirit, and men reap the fruit of their own selfish sowing. To be kept in that day we must know the power of God over sin now. Then God says to the righteous, "There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." See Psalms 91.