THE CITY OF SAFETY by M. C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 25, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 33.

THE CITY OF SAFETY

By M. C. Wilcox

We do not have them in this world. There have been cities that were so thoroughly fortified that they have been thought to be cities of safety, cities more safe than the cities of refuge appointed of God among His own people of old. Babylon was thought to be a city of safety. Belshazzar, its last king, the son of Nabonadius, had shut himself within its walls, and laughed at the efforts of the men who were outside. He thought they would never enter those mighty walls nor cross its moats and take its palaces; but Babylon fell, and the remains of Babylon form a mere heap of dust and ruins in the plain of the Euphrates to-day.

ALL SUCH MUST FALL

Nineveh was another mighty city that thought herself safe, but Nineveh is a heap of ruins.

Rome was once mistress of the world. She ruled it with an iron hand. But Rome fell. Men have surrounded the great

capitals of the world to-day with fortifications that seem almost invulnerable. Great lines of defense are thrown outside these cities, which it is thought will keep back the armies that may invest the land. This is true of Paris and Berlin and St. Petersburg and London; but all these cities, if they do not fall before armies, will, when God's voice shall speak from heaven, be shaken to nothing. When the great earthquake will have occurred, before which all others have been the merest warnings, "the cities of the nation fell." Rev. 16:19.

A CITY THAT WILL REMAIN

But there is a city "whose Builder and Maker is God." There is a city, the coming capital of a renewed earth, which will come down out of heaven from God. Its streets are of gold, its walls of precious stones. Its gates of pearl shall be opened night and day. It needs no lines of fortifications surrounding it to keep back

the enemy; for there will be only peace in those days, and God's children will go out and come in at will. There will be no enmity in hearts and no signs of enmity in the land. "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever." There shall be no sickness there. "The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity."

To this city, to this refuge, God invites all the perturbed and tried and warring factions of earth. This is His message. This is our message. Listen! "What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation?" is the question that Inspiration itself raises. Isa. 14:32. And this is the answer that is to be given to the messengers of the nation and of the nations: "That Jehovah hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of His people take refuge."

M. C. W.