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The Latter Rain

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 30, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 44.

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The Latter Rain

By Milton C. Wilcox

"I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh."

The Latter Rain

By Milton C. Wilcox
"Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain."
PRIMARILY, the scripture at the right is God's promise to Israel in the days of the speaking prophet. The Bible represents God as the giver or withholder of rain, and its lack or abundance was proportionate to Israel's backsliding or faithfulness. Drouth and famine came when Israel departed from God and became Baal-worshipers and burned incense to Ashtoreth. The drouth was broken in response to the anguished cry of an afflicted people and the prayer of God's prophet, Elijah.
Like California, the summers of Palestine were and are long and dry, no rain of account falling from May to October. A shower or a thunderstorm in midsummer was counted a remarkable or miraculous phenomenon. The drouth was broken by the early rains, which began to fall in October, and softened and prepared the ground for cultivation and seed. Occasional rain, and sometimes snow, falls thru the winter. In March and April falls the abundant "latter rain" to develop the growing crops, and fill kernel, ear, and fruit for the harvest soon to be gathered.
How important were these rains to the husbandman of the Holy Land! How gladly he welcomed the early rain on the parched, thirsty land! How gratified was he when the early rains were sufficiently abundant to moisten and soften the land so that the plowshare found free entrance, and the loosened, mellow soil received the promising seed! How disappointed was he if the latter rains fell not! The growing corn withered and died. The bare pasture lands gave no sustenance to flocks and herds. The lowing kine and bleating sheep wandered from hill to plain and plain to valley in search of food. The heavens glowed as brass and desolation and famine and starvation followed. But if the latter rains fell in abundance, plenty smiled upon all. Contented cattle ruminated under spreading terebinth trees, and creaking wagons groaned under the burden of plenteous grain.
God uses these figures of the early and the latter rain as symbols of the outpouring of His Spirit in the Christian dispensation.
Long and severe was the spiritual drouth following the reformation under Nehemiah. Dead, Pharisaic formalism followed ante-Babylonian idolatry, and took the place of vital godliness in the life and character. This condition grew worse till the very priesthood itself had become a thing of barter and trade, of political plot and counterplot.
Upon this parched and barren soil fell the early rain which accompanied the mighty preaching of John the Baptist. The hills and valleys of Judean moral life softened, received seed, and began to bloom again. Christ and His disciples scattered the seeds of truth far and wide and nurtured that sown by the Baptist. The harvest was reaped on the Day of Pentecost and following, when thousands yielded to the pleading of the Spirit in the preaching of the Gospel, and gave their hearts to God. The outpouring of the Spirit in the latter rain of that little period did more seemingly to save souls in a few weeks' time than the preceding four years of the labors of Jesus and His forerunner. But we must not forget His seed-sowing of truth which made that harvest possible.
The "latter rain" of that brief period became the "early rain" of the Christian dispensation. God's Spirit was poured out "upon all flesh," "to convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." Christ had died and had risen again. Spirit-baptized and Spirit-filled heralds went forth to proclaim a living, personal Saviour, who had conquered death and the grave. Everywhere they found the influence of the Spirit before them. The former rain was percolating the soil, parched, thirsty, and barren of good under the blasting, blighting influences of Babylonian religion and Greek culture; and everywhere the Gospel seed took root and grew. Mightily it spread till we are told by the apostle Paul that all the world heard the good tidings.
The "latter rain" of the Christian age prepares the harvest for the Master's reaping when He shall come to gather the sheaves of living truth in character to His gar-ner. Long has He waited. Impatient oftentimes have become His children, as they have beheld the increasing wrongs of earth; but patiently He waits, and thus we are exhorted in a prophecy of "the last days:" "Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; establish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord is at hand." See James 5: 1-8.
But the harvest for which the heavenly Husbandman is waiting, patiently, longingly waiting, is not a harvest of the seed-sowing of man-made religion, of "higher criticism," of hoary tradition, of a gospel perverted by specious, speculative philosophy of uncertain science, or of any creed or cult which finds man's salvation in himself. These bear fruit but for the burning. The harvest for which God waits is the harvest of eternal truth, the harvest of the seed-sowing of the "everlasting Gospel," "this Gospel of the kingdom," that shall go to all nations, and "then shall the end come." Matt. 24: 14.
With the true preaching of that truth goes the Spirit. Nay, more, the Spirit has gone out before the seed-sowers to prepare the way. Again in mightier measure is God pouring out His Spirit "upon all flesh." Poor blind souls do not know that the heart-hunger which they have for something better, something soul-satisfying, is the hopelessness of all their human efforts, and the longing begotten within by the Spirit of God. The devil knows it, and is endeavoring to satisfy the vitiated tastes by the poisoned brewings of Satanic ingenuity, pleasing to the carnal taste, soothing and benumbing to the troubled awakening conscience, exalting the human, shutting out God, and turning to the bitterness of eternal death at last. Sad it is, bitterly, eternally sad, that professed heralds of the cross should present before the longing, hungry, blinded soul the human and Satanic substitutes, which can not save from sin and death, and which lure and win only to deceive.
God's "word is truth." His "law is truth." Sin is a great and awful fact. The(Continued on Page 20.)

The Latter Rain.

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judgment of God awaiting every sinful soul is a dreadful reality. All that will save the soul from sin and death—the only remedy—is the Gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ. His blessed Spirit of truth prepares the way for that Gospel, accompanies the heralds who proclaim it, is in the word itself and makes it spirit and life, and will in abundant outpouring ripen for the harvest of God the souls who receive the seeds of Gospel truth.
It is time again for the preaching of the unperverted Gospel of God, "the eternal good tidings . . . unto every nation and tribe and tongue and people." It is Heaven's time to proclaim with a loud voice, "Fear God, and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made the heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters." Rev. 14:6, 7. To all the world that last phase of the Gospel is to go. To all the world the impending judgment of God is to be proclaimed. All the world is to be called from the fear of man to the fear of God; from giving glory to man to giving glory to God; from the worship or service of the creature to the worship of the great Creator, who redeems not by a long process of evolution, but by His eternal creative power.
The rejection of that message by scattered and divided Christendom means her "fall," the fall of Babylon, because she would not be healed by God's remedy. And the further turning away from the Gospel of God means the turning to, and union with, earthly powers, constituting the beast and its image. This apostasy ends in destruction; but the reception of God's Gospel develops a class of whom it is said: "Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:12. The next event noted in the prophecy is the coming of the Son of Man to reap the harvest of earth. Verse 14.
Upon that proclamation of the "eternal good tidings" it is God's design that His Spirit shall be poured out in abundant measure, poured out as "the latter rain." Too often the heralds of His truth lack the earnestness and unction and life and power of the Spirit of truth. "Ask ye of Jehovah rain in the time of the latter rain, even of Jehovah that maketh lightnings; and He will give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field." Zech. 10:1. "For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring; and they shall spring up among the grass, as willows by the watercourses." Isa. 44:3, 4.
Willing to give His Spirit?—God waits to give it. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. And of which of you that is a father shall his son ask a loaf, and he give him a stone? or a fish, and he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him." Luke 11:9-13.
O brethren in the Gospel ministry, heralds of the cross, by whatever name ye may be called, preach the word, preach Christ. Be loyal to Him. Be loyal to His Book, loyal to His truth and its cross. So may you claim His Spirit in outpouring abundance far exceeding Pentecostal days. In life, in character regeneration, it is needed. It is time to lift up the standard of the Spirit against the oncoming flood of the enemy.