Politicians are planning how to make a new world out of the ruins of the old one. The ghastly tragedy of the last few years has seen not only hundreds of cities totally destroyed — not only hundreds of square miles of populous countryside’s ruined―and millions of souls sent into eternity — but it has seen the upheaval of unchecked and misdirected democracy — sinning in its wild destructiveness against every law — human, moral and Divine. Mad anarchy and mad agnosticism is making the earth a very play-ground for the devil.
Men are striving for a millennium without Christ, but we know that when the millennium does come Satan will be bound for a thousand years. On every page of the world’s history now we can read, between the lines, the moving of the human race, devil led, towards the final cataclysm of destruction.
The death knell of this world is sounding. Noah heard the warning sound in his day, and in the language of Scripture we are told, “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house” (Heb. 11:77By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. (Hebrews 11:7)). He knew the world was doomed; he knew he could do nothing of himself, to save himself, or to renovate the wicked world in which he lived — therefore being “moved with fear,” he obeyed God, and by this act of faith, “condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”
Today there is no fear of God before the eyes of many. They are not “moved with fear,” but are moved to the most daring and open defiance of God, and utter disregard and contempt for the holy life and atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, and the Saviour of mankind.
The materialist believes in the stability of the world in which he lives, the progress of the human race, by its own inherent power, to the goal of ultimate perfection. “This old world is good enough for me,” he tells us, “I shall find all the heaven I want here, let the future take care of itself.” The future will take care of itself, and of him as well. He cannot escape from God, and if he is not “moved by fear” now to seek salvation from his Maker, he will be moved with awful and unending terror by and by, when he will be driven from the presence of God forever, condemned to eternal death.
The natural mind does not understand the things of God — and so is at enmity with God. The infidel disbelieves because he does not understand; philosophers and men of science cavil because they do not understand.
Man’s thoughts never rise above a human level: “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God says to the unbeliever. Men in a vain seeking to make God as one of themselves, sin against all His attributes. “On earth there is nothing great but man,” was the proud assertion of the Middle Ages — this blasphemy is current in full force today. In this reasoning age man pits his wisdom against the knowledge of the Almighty. “What reason ye in your hearts?” was the question of the Lord Jesus when on earth to His cavilers. The finality of God, and the slow but sure accomplishment of all His purposes goes on in spite of all man’s puny efforts to underrate the eternal strength of Omnipotence.
God is willing to reason with man. He says, “Come now, let us reason together,” but man must take the lowest place, as “dust in the balance,” before he can reason with his Maker, and the reasoning must be about his sins — the last thing man would seek to talk about. But the wonderful insistence of grace makes it easy for the contrite sinner to do this — “Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool.” This is divine reconstruction — not the making of a new world, but the making of a new man. The making of a new world will be the act of God alone in a future day, but the regeneration of sinners through the operation of the Spirit of God, is a present thing. The passing of a sinner from “death unto life,” and “from darkness to light,” is only possible when repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ lead a man to say, “I have sinned,” and “I believe.”
The heart cries, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” and “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief,” gives the grace to the life that brings salvation through faith, and fills the heart with the Spirit of the Son of God, so that in the new world into which he enters he will find that “By grace he was saved through faith,” God’s free gift, and that his salvation has brought glory to his God, and untold and complete happiness to his own life.
Read the Epistle to the Ephesians.
H. W.