It is Time for the Message of God's Wrath

God’s Wrath – by Ellen G. White

The Wrath of God It is time for the message of God’s forbearance to be proclaimed, to win men to repentance; and it is just as verily time for men to be warned that there are limits to God’s forbearance. Men may advance, as did Belshazzar, in presumption and defiance, until they pass the boundary. Blasphemy may be so developed as to exhaust the patience of the longsuffering God. . . . In the midst of mirth, feasting, and forgetfulness of God, the command will go forth for the sword of the Lord to be unsheathed, that an end may be put to the insolence and disobedience of men. The prayers of God’s people have ascended, It is time, O Lord, for thee to work; for they have made void thy law. These prayers will ere long be answered. When men pass the limit of grace, God must let the world see that He is God. The time has nearly come when transgression will no longer be tolerated, when God will interfere to repress the overflowing tide of iniquity.

A crisis has arrived in the government of God on earth. Divine compassion has been flowing to the people, notwithstanding that the heavenly current has been beaten back by stubborn hearts. But the time has come when a vast number are passing the boundaries, and a terrible alternative is to be realized; for Omnipotence keepeth a reckoning of the sum of guiltiness of every nation upon the globe. “The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.”

The forbearance of the Lord is wonderful; He putteth constraint upon His own attributes. Omnipotence exerted over Omnipotence. Why hath God kept silence? Why hath He forborne so long in looking for centuries upon a people who despised His goodness and forbearance and patience. He sees His holy law prostrated, broken, trampled under foot, by a rebellious confederate people, who give themselves to work evil, cooperating with evil angels. The whole apostasy of evil angels has conspired with evil men, and gathered in strong armies to destroy the champions of God and the truth. The Lord will come out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth shall disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain. {6MR 392.1} The hostility to heaven will go on to still greater lengths. War, bloodshed, rebellion against God’s law, will reach an aggravating pass that many do not think possible. So deep and increasingly strong is the infernal enmity and hatred to God, which has struck deep its roots into human depraved hearts throughout the mass of humanity, that anyone who shall show any inclination to return to God and keep His commandments, will be denounced as treacherous to the governments of earth. The first turning away from this impious, rebellious warfare against the law of Jehovah, will be detected by a sharp, wakeful, intense impiety. The accused will be dealt with as a traitor in the camp. Vice will be concentrated in all its forms. Men have turned away from God, and accepted satanic attributes. The only tie which will keep man in union and harmony with his fellow-men is the trampling down of the law of God. This is the principle–hatred to God, and it is the only bond of affinity in the great mass of transgressors. The hearts of the sons of men are fully set in them to do evil, exactly as was revealed in the inhabitants of the old world. {6MR 392.3} What can we say to make the wicked, the transgressors of the law of God, understand that they are at enmity to the forbearance of God? How shall we make them hear that they are surely presuming on His mercy, and that to exhaust it. The Psalmist marks the time in which he lived as that of great depravity, but what has it reached now? Centuries have been ripening up the harvest of the world for the sickle. “They have made void Thy law.” They refuse to respect God’s law, while they make human laws supreme. A more than common contempt is placed upon the holy law of Jehovah. {6MR 393.1} Men are fast exceeding the bounds prescribed by God. His interference must come, when He will vindicate His honor. Men are rushing on, to outrun the limits of His grace. God will not long delay. The swellings of unrighteousness have come to such a fearful pass that all the plagues that are prepared as revealed in Revelation, will come upon a godless world. . . . Let all who love and fear God call upon Him in sincerity of soul that He will work in behalf of His people, and He will not be solicited in vain. Ways and means will certainly be provided whereby His people shall have a place where they can worship Him. Let not Satan depress any of you. Watch unto prayer. Oh, has not our Lord made us the repository of sacred truth? Will He not open the way that it shall come to the people?

The Days of Noah As they reasoned in Noah’s day they reason today, when the warning message is proclaimed to fear God and keep His commandments. The wrath of God is soon to fall on all the sinful and disobedient, and they will perish in the general conflagration. Professed servants of Christ who are unfaithful, who do not reverence God and with fear prepare for the terrible future event, will lull themselves to carnal security with their fallacious reasoning, as they did in Noah’s day. “God is too good and too merciful [they reason] to save just a few who keep the Sabbath and believe the message of warning. The great men and the good men, the philosophers and men of wisdom would see the Sabbath and the shortness of time, if it were true.” They do not believe a merciful God who made men will consume them with fire because they do not believe the warnings given. This, they reason, is not in accordance with God. . . . God’s love is represented in our day as being of such a character as would forbid His destroying the sinner. Men reason from their own low standard of right and justice. “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself” (Ps. 50:21). They measure God by themselves. They reason as to how they would act under the circumstances and decide God would do as they imagine they would do.

God’s goodness and long forbearance, His patience and mercy exercised to His subjects, will not hinder Him from punishing the sinner who refused to be obedient to His requirements. It is not for a man–a criminal against God’s holy law, pardoned only through the great sacrifice He made in giving His Son to die for the guilty because His law was changeless–to dictate to God. After all this effort on the part of God to preserve the sacred and exalted character of His law, if men, through the sophistry of the devil, turn the mercy and condescension of God into a curse, they must suffer the penalty. Because Christ died they consider they have liberty to transgress God’s holy law that condemns the transgressor, and would complain of its strictness and its penalty as severe and unlike God. They are uttering the words Satan utters to millions, to quiet their conscience in rebellion against God.  In no kingdom or government is it left to the lawbreakers to say what punishment is to be executed against those who have broken the law. All we have, all the bounties of His grace which we possess, we owe to God. The aggravating character of sin against such a God cannot be estimated any more than the heavens can be measured with a span. God is a moral governor as well as a Father. He is the Lawgiver. He makes and executes His laws. Law that has no penalty is of no force.  The plea may be made that a loving Father would not see His children suffering the punishment of God by fire while He had the power to relieve them. But God would, for the good of His subjects and for their safety, punish the transgressor. God does not work on the plan of man. He can do infinite justice that man has no right to do before his fellow man. Noah would have displeased God to have drowned one of the scoffers and mockers that harassed him, but God drowned the vast world. Lot would have had no right to inflict punishment on his sons-in-law, but God would do it in strict justice.

In consequence of Adam’s sin, death passed upon the whole human race. All alike go down into the grave. And through the provisions of the plan of salvation, all are to be brought forth from their graves. “There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust;” “for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Acts 24:15; I Corinthians 15:22. But a distinction is made between the two classes that are brought forth. “All that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” John 5:28, 29. They who have been “accounted worthy” of the resurrection of life are “blessed and holy.” “On such the second death hath no power.” Revelation 20:6. But those who have not, through repentance and faith, secured pardon, must receive the penalty of transgression–”the wages of sin.” They suffer punishment varying in duration and intensity, “according to their works,” but finally ending in the second death. Since it is impossible for God, consistently with His justice and mercy, to save the sinner in his sins, He deprives him of the existence which his transgressions have forfeited and of which he has proved himself unworthy. Says an inspired writer: “Yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.” And another declares: “They shall be as though  they had not been.” Psalm 37:10; Obadiah 16. Covered with infamy, they sink into hopeless, eternal oblivion.