One of Earth's Great Vicissitudes
By Emma Hildreth Adams
HEN the planet—named Earth by the Creator Himself—was brought into existence, it was pronounced, as was every creature upon it, VERY GOOD. Yet, at a period when considerable less than two sevenths of the total week—1,000 years constituting each day of the week—of the planet's history had elapsed, there occurred a stupendous and most radical change in its external conditions and its internal structure. It was a transformation momentous in its results, and was due to some highly polluting and destructive influence, some grievous tainting, some defiling infection, which vitiated the divine product beyond its Author's endurance—a product very special, of intent very distinctive, for a purpose very exalted, the becoming the dwelling-place of the Creator Himself! That corrupting power was SIN, the mightiest of all harmful potencies, since, unrepented of, it extinguishes BEING. Its force strikes deeply, attacks life at the very heart. Only an act equivalent to a re-creation can render void its deathful work. Hence there occurred at the Flood such a renovation, such a cleansing, washing away of the results of sin, as involved changes and overturnings in the Earth for which even the profoundest geologists can propound no reason more convincing than that asserted by the Bible. Yet, the cruel, mysterious element of sin was not thereby banished from the baptized Earth; for the all-sufficient reason, undoubtedly, that God's marvelous plan with reference to the planet, to the author of sin himself, and to the race of man, included centuries more of time; involved a second and more fearful chastisement of the finally disobedient, and a second, lasting purification of the darkly stained Earth itself. Now, since the writer of this article, and all who may read it, will certainly have a part—on one side or the other, at one stage or another—in the awe-inspiring, soul-trying program, arranged ages ago, for this never-to-be-repeated cleansing of the Earth, it behooves us to heed the ringing warning, to grasp the startling information God Himself has sent out touching that great time. The prophet Isaiah had some very clear views of that transaction. Hear him in chapter 24: "Behold, the Lord maketh the Earth empty, and maketh it waste." "He perverteth [changeth] the face thereof." "The Earth is utterly broken down, the Earth is clean dissolved, the Earth is moved exceedingly. The Earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; . . . it shall fall, and not rise again." "The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled; for the Lord hath spoken this word." Jeremiah also paints for us, in language which almost takes away one's breath, the same dreary scene, desolate beyond our conception. Notice the words: "I beheld the Earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void. And the heavens, and they had no light. . . . I beheld, and lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, . . . all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by His fierce anger. . . . Every city shall be forsaken, and not a man shall dwell therein." For "I have purposed it," saith the Lord. Possibly these almost inconceivable conditions, visitations, and punishments had secondary reference to the sweeping castigations visited upon Palestine and other lands because of the flagrant sins of the people. Yet were they but typical and prophetic of the great final day of reaping after ages of haughty, contemptuous sowing to Satan, from the Garden of Eden down to the dark dawning of "that great day." Let us walk back a little and note carefully while Zephaniah paints in dismal tints the sore retributions which will distinguish "the great day of the Lord," altho his sharp threatenings and warnings applied aptly to headstrong Israel, to idol-worshiping Judah, to the sinful nations far and near. "The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness." "I will bring distress upon men, that they may walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust. . . . Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath. . . . He shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land." Woful as is the canvas, the prophet paints farther. Observe this picture also: "I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling-blocks ["idols," margin] with the wicked; . . . and them that are turned back from the Lord; and those that have not sought the Lord, nor inquired for Him." Again, using the rounded-out punishment of Babylon as a type of the final chastisement that should be visited upon the Earth, God declares, through Isaiah: "I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. . . . I will shake the heavens, and the Earth shall remove out of her place. . . . It shall be as a chased roe, and as a sheep whom no man taketh up." And in similar strain wrote Haggai, almost three centuries later: "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; Yet once, it is but a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the Earth, and the sea, and the dry land; I will shake all nations, and the DESIRE of all nations shall come." But the foregoing pictures, visions, descriptions of the terrific changes yet to be experienced by the Earth and its inhabitants, convey but partial idea of its destiny because of sin. The shaking, overturning, and speeding away into vast distance, as the orb is now doing, with the sun and its whole family of planets in company, convey but a partial idea of the radical test and trial awaiting it. Let us glance at 2 Peter 3:7. There, made by an apostle whose knowledge did not come second-hand, we find the following arousing statement: "But the heavens and the Earth, which now are, by the same word"—the word of the Lord, verse 10—"are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition [utter loss] of ungodly men." "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the Earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up. "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be, . . . looking for and hasting the coming [margin] of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?" Doubtless Peter had heard, years before, from the lips of the Master, all those thrilling words recorded in Matthew 24, which to-day stir our hearts most powerfully. And probably, on other occasions, he had heard Christ converse on the absorbing subject. Therefore he was qualified to make the decisive declarations we have quoted. But why should the Earth's second great renovation be an ordeal by fire? Many passages in the Word of God assert positively that the Earth and its atmosphere6"shall pass away"—meet with some extreme, possibly elemental change. If in the cleansing by water, nettles and thistles, and other fretting and noxious growths, failed to be eradicated, some agency more drastic will be required, in the second purifying, to render the planet a suitable abode for beings redeemed from sin. Let us now recall that for six thousand years sin has had sway on the Earth. Over all its surface diseased men and diseased animals have been returning to the ground, mingling with the dust, polluting the soil. These maladies are one giant result of sin. Therefore, from pole to pole the sphere is infested, corrupted with—SIN. Can any instrumentality less affective than flame exterminate its malign power? In thousands of minds, to-day, there exists the idea, the belief, that close at hand there is destined to occur, upon the Earth and in the Earth, a change of conditions which will affect mightily the status, the welfare, the beatitude of man thereon. The apprehension, indefinite, but full of weight, dwells in many minds which have given the subject no testing study in the Word of God. Such a study would reveal the fact that two changes—each of vast import—await place in the future history of the Earth. One will be the far-reaching purification by fire, because of sin. The other will be a restoration far exceeding Edenic condition, because sin will have passed away. Hear the beloved apostle in Rev. 21:1, 2: "And I saw a new heaven [atmosphere] and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. . . . And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, And God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. . . . And there shall be no more death. . . . THE FORMER THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY!"