WHY? Why should I escape? To escape from any difficulty or danger is surely the last resource? Ought not every expedient to be tried first? May we not hope to improve matters, or effect a compromise, or look for relief where we are? Is there no reason to expect that thus the evil may be averted, without going to the extreme of escaping?
Well, no doubt in ordinary cases this would be a sensible question. But this is not an ordinary case. It is the most extraordinary of all cases. It is a matter of life or death. “Escape for thy life,” is the cry; nor is there hope of deliverance in any other way. It was so with Lot. It is so with every unsaved soul now. Eternity is at stake! Heaven or hell forever! Christ in the glory, is the only Saviour; believing in Him, the only way of salvation; and that is escaping. “Come unto Me,” He says; “Look unto Me;” “Follow Me;” “Abide in Me;” “Without Me ye can do nothing;” “With Me thou shalt be in safe guard.” Satan seeks to devour, to deceive, to destroy. Death is impatient to hurry into everlasting woe. And who can tell when the last word will be uttered; when the last moment of grace and forbearance will arrive, the awful end be reached, and the soul be forever lost?
Is it not then a matter of extreme urgency? Can you afford to lose a moment, for any consideration? Can you cherish the least hope of security where you are, or venture on the most promising expedient, or hazard an experiment of any kind, or wait for relief from any source? No, my friend, there is nothing for it but to escape. Be assured of this. As when the house is burning, there is no alternative but escape or death-for the place is doomed, the fire has gained the mastery, and will devour all that remain within its reach—so, in a world lying under judgment at this very moment; ever since the Cross, indeed, as our Lord says: “Now is the judgment of this world.” The sentence is pronounced, but not yet executed, in order that grace might linger and save some. And who can tell at what moment that judgment shall descend on this doomed world, involving in one tremendous burst of wrath the destruction of all who have trifled with God, refused salvation, and chosen to remain within the precincts of such a place? And this is your position. You may doubt, or discuss, or deny, or deride, but that will not help you. The word of God cannot fail. The sword of judgment falling on those who shall be here, when once it is drawn, will devour without mercy. Now, now mercy waits, love entreats, the Spirit pleads, the blood avails, and offers its perfect shelter for all who in faith hide beneath its ample cover. But, when the day of grace is over, neither mercy, nor love, nor the Spirit, nor the blood, will befriend those who have refused the Saviour. You must escape; escape from, as well as to. The very place, I repeat, in which you are is wrong. Like the Israelites in Egypt; they had to get out of the place, as well as be delivered from the power of Pharaoh. And you, my friend, are thus doubly wrong, yea trebly. You are in a wrong place, a doomed world; you are under a wrong master, the devil; and you are on the road to a wrong end, even “the place prepared for the devil and his angels.” Yea, you yourself are wrong in God’s sight, so that “you must be born again.”
What can you do but escape? “Escape for thy life,” fly from the scene of peril and death, ere it be too late. One moment too long, and you are lost forever! One moment’s delay, may prove to be the last straw, the last opportunity, the last gleam of hope forever! Thousands have parleyed, reasoned, hoped, deferred, until they dropped, in an unexpected moment, out of this scene into the bottomless abyss, and are forever lost! Thousands have tried to make a compromise with the world, and enjoy both it and Christ, but “Ye cannot,” says He, “ye cannot serve God and mammon.” The only end of such a compromise is hell I entreat you, then, not to venture on any experiment that affects Eternity. For what will you do when you find it has failed? It will be too late ever to try again, and impossible to bring your dearly bought experience to bear on that which will be the only thing before you, and you in it, forever Oh then, escape, “escape for thy life.”
But How? is another question that may be asked. And this the angel answers: “Look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain: escape for thy life.”
That is, without one lingering look. Not thus did Lot’s wife escape, alas! She “looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” Perhaps she doubted the word of God, and looked back to see for herself how matters stood. She had no faith in God, and “without faith it is impossible to please God.” Oh, what a penalty she paid for unbelief! God had said, “Look not behind thee,” and she did look, and in an instant was riveted to the spot, not only lifeless, but a solemn monument of God’s judgment on unbelief and disobedience.
Not thus has He dealt with you, my friend. Oh, what longsuffering! what forbearance! what patience, He has had with you! You cannot deny it. Has not your conscience often told you that you deserve punishment and death? and you have feared it too. But He has waited still, and verified the word of Peter, “the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation.” Yes, that you might be saved, He has waited thus, though you have doubted, disbelieved, and even denied His word a thousand times!
But oh, doubt Him no more. And if now you resolve to escape, ―if, receiving Christ for yourself, you really turn your back on the world to follow Him, ―let it, I beseech you, be without one lingering look on the doomed and dangerous scene you have left. Doubt not that it is doomed. This for you would be the fatal look of Lot’s wife, though judgment might not be as speedily executed. Believe Him. Think not of proving for yourself anything He has said. For He that cannot lie invites your confidence, and says, “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.”
But perhaps she cherished a lingering love for the doomed city, and looked back sorrowfully on leaving it. She had left her heart there evidently. Her treasure being there, and not where God was awaiting her on the mountain, her heart was there also. And so she looked back to gaze once more on the loved spot. Thoughts of happy days now forever gone, of loved ones now forever left, of pleasures now forever lost, may have impelled her to look back; and that one look cost her, her life. But if she was one in heart with that which God was about to destroy as too bad to be borne any longer, was it not right that she should be destroyed too? As with many, who love the world yet hope to go to heaven; what would they do there, or find to love or to enjoy there? Heaven is not a refuge for the destitute, who love the world, and hate God in their heart, but don’t want to go to hell. It is rather the home of the Father for. His beloved children, who love Him and His dear Son, and whose joy and delight it will be to praise Him and enjoy His presence forever. So Lot’s wife did but find her right place after all. Sodom was destroyed, and so was she, for she and it were one. Therefore, my friend, if you do escape, look not back on the painted harlot world you have left, for it is not worthy of your love, and the sooner you forget it the better.
Again, let me urge you to escape without one faltering step; “stay not in all the plain.” “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it” (Heb. 4:11Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. (Hebrews 4:1)). To linger at the first, to look back afterward, or to stay in all the plain, are equally incompatible with the purpose of God for us. He longs to deliver the sinner from Egypt, only that he may bring him into Canaan (Ex. 3:88And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. (Exodus 3:8)). Any one of the three would be destruction, as much and as certainly as to remain in Sodom. To come short of the glory of God, is to perish forever. There is no middle place. Oh, learn that “Christ suffered for sins once, that he might bring us to God.” Rise to the height of His thoughts about you, my friend. He can never be satisfied without having all whom He has given to Christ with Him, forever. Not to save you, but to have you, is his desire. Therefore, find no resting-place in all the plain, whether in a good part or a bad part of it. Too many, I fear, stay in the plain, and settle down there, because they think it pleasant and profitable and allowable. But no, it is what God says that must decide us. And His word is clear: “Stay not in all the plain.”
WHITHER then must I escape? is yet another question to be answered. “Escape to the mountain, least thou be consumed.” Nothing short of that, the place “where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God,” will satisfy either Him or us. Christ now in the glory, as the One risen from the dead, is really the only place for the soul to apprehend as its ground of acceptance before God; though possibly, as with Lot, He may show grace to those who fail to reach it experimentally. Lot sought to find rest in the half-way house of Zoar, having no heart for God’s heavenly place. Yet even he could not rest there long, and soon left it for the mountain. How much better had he gone there at the first! And because this is the only right place for the believer, the Word of God most beautifully and blessedly assures us that He has provided this place for us as a free gift. “He has made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus;” yea, He “hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” As soon as we become “the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,” we are carried up to the mountain of His presence, and seated there, in Christ; all, in His rich grace, having been done to entitle us to the place through the wondrous work of Calvary. But if any escape from Sodom, this doomed world, without being made the children of God, they are as much without Christ as if they had never left the city, and will perish even at the door. As in Matt. 7, He says to such: “I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Whereas with Christ, our life, our salvation is secure. Still, our responsibility is to keep the eye and the heart fixed on Him, never looking back, and our feet ever pressing on, neither staying in all the plain nor halting, until we reach, in glorified bodies, the glorious home on the mountain top!
Is not this enough, my friend, to inspire you with both dread and desire? With dread, lest the fearful doom pronounced on “this present evil world” should be yours; lest the wrath of the Lamb should fall on you; lest, having neglected to escape whilst the door was open, you find it shut against you forever. And with desire too, for your own admission into the place which Christ has gone to prepare for them that love Him, the eternal meeting place of the redeemed, forever free from sorrow, suffering, and sin, with Him in whose presence there is fullness of joy, at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore!
The Lord give you now to take that one step, that will both “deliver you from the wrath to come,” and unite you to “him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” T. L.