Convinced Too Late by M. A. Dake

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 27, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 38.

Convinced Too Late

By M. A. Dake

ESUS died on the cross to save you from sin and its doom. He never would have left the purity, glory, and comforts of heaven, to live, suffer, and die amid the sin and anguish of earth, if you had not been in deadly danger. Can you not see the truth of this?

O, that somehow you might be enabled to feel the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and realize the depth and breadth and awfulness of its results and penalty! If you would only pause to note the ill effects of sin, and consider the probability and reasonableness of its doom as revealed in the Bible, you would surely shun all forms of sin, and make haste to seek the closest acquaintance with Christ, who alone can take sin out of your heart and life, and save you from its terrible penalty. Sin’s havoc abounds on every side. Not all diseases, nor every case of any disease, is due to sin in the suffering one; but vice and crime are directly responsible for some of the most hideous and revolting forms of insanity, disease, and deformity!

Sin is a dangerous, repulsive thing, but has every feature skilfully disguised. It is such an insidious, cunning, ever-growing thing, that none but the all-wise, all powerful Sin-Bearer has power to disentangle you from its increeping roots, keep you from its onsweeping, overwhelming tide, and save you from its deadly penalty.

“All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” and only “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Reader, have you believed that Christ’s righteousness is yours through faith, and have you praised God “in the great congregation” because Jesus’ blood “cleanseth from all sin”?

We need the unchanging measure of God’s law; for sin can not be detected and recognized except as we bring our ambitions and our lives to the one unfailing standard of morals. Studying the lives of men and nations carefully in the light of divine ethics, we see that Christian faith and love, truth and purity, sobriety and industry, have promise, not only of this life, but also of the life which is to come; while “the way of the transgressor is hard,” and “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death”—the resultant death to the individual and the nation now, and the final, hopeless, fiery, penal death, in the judgment-day, to all whose names are not written in the Book of Life.

Surely sinners would be wise enough to “flee from the wrath to come” if they could once realize their swiftly nearing doom; but men and women in authority fail to execute human law properly, and so men scoff at any impending penalty for broken divine law. When I look forward to the awful doom of sin, my heart cries out, “O, is there no way to show our generation their danger? Is there nothing that can convince them that for the ungodly wrath is treasured up against ‘the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men’?”

How can we see the alarming multiplication of frivolity, selfishness, and crime, and note the startling increase of shocking casualties and overwhelming disasters, and fail to understand that once again Jehovah’s judgments are abroad, and men need to be exhorted to repent lest final justice overtake them unprepared?

Listen! Above the Slocum disaster, the Iroquois holocaust, mine and fire and ocean and plague disasters, and the untimely deaths of indifferent or unholy workmen or gay pleasure-seekers, we should be able to hear “the still small voice” whisper, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, . . . and thy neighbor as thyself.” “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And out of groaning earthquake, roaring volcano, and rushing cyclone, we may hear a loud voice saying, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” and “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” for “the Lord cometh . . . to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly . . . of all their ungodly deeds . . . and hard speeches.”