Theaters in West Coast cities were flaunting the above awful words before the public. On the advertising boards, in the daily papers, and house to house in handbills, these terrible words met the eye.
Of course the masses are keen to know what the "screen" and the "talkies" hold for them in the way of a "thrill" on the subject announced. The results are big returns to the theatrical producers, and a hardened indifference of heart and conscience in those to whom the solemn realities of sin and its consequences are caricatured before their fevered gaze.
Hell? Who believes in that today? It is tossed into the wastebasket as worthy of no more consideration than "old wives' fables" "it is just the relic of a superstitious past"!
Depend upon it, as God and the truths of His Word lose weight in human estimation, so morality descends in scale and tone, and wickedness increases and spreads like the green bay-tree.
God, righteousness, sin, heaven and hell are ridiculed today as never before. And we ask in earnest tones and grave—"What will the harvest be?" What, we ask, was the "harvest" at the expiration of Noah's 120 years of preaching and ark building? It was universal destruction by water. And what, we ask, was the harvest when the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah reached the limit? God's rain of fire and brimstone reduced those licentious cities to ashes.
In Luke 17 Christ prophetically forecast the end of this age as He went back into the "deeps" of history.
There He recounted to His auditors how the flood in Noah's day destroyed "the world of the ungodly." He told of the overthrow of the guilty cities of the plain by fire. Then mark how He solemnly and emphatically declared: "Even thus shall it be when the Son of Man is revealed.”
Such is the sure and awful HARVEST that awaits this world. Why? Because man loves sin and despises righteousness. And because God hates sin and loves righteousness, He is going to exercise His power to banish iniquity from the world that He created for His glory, and that has been redeemed by the blood of His Son for His praise.
The judgments of God, as recorded in the past, are indeed appalling. He calls judgment His "strange work." Though He delights in mercy He must resort to judgment, else sin and rebellion must forever defy His power and holiness.
He permitted His Son to be crucified by wicked hands on a cross of shame in order that His love and mercy might flow out in salvation to a perishing world. He has tolerated the open sore of sin and lawlessness throughout this protracted age of grace in order that the magnificence of His compassion might win a multitude of rebels for Himself. Thank God, the gospel has done and is doing this! But the day of His mercy must end in the night of His wrath.
We hear the knell of this world's doom come ringing down the ages, freighted with the stirring solemnity of inspired truth: "When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." 2 Thess. 1:79. To repeat the heading of this article:—that mighty host will be "hell-bound.”
Two destinies await earth's teeming millions. All the human-born, to a unit, are "hell-bound" or "heaven-bound." All who are heaven-bound have been twice born: first naturally, then spiritually; but all who are hell-bound have been born only once—naturally, born in sin.
Reader, at this moment you are either hell-bound or heaven-bound. You certainly would not deny that you are grave-bound, and eternity-bound; then you cannot deny the other either. But if you are hell-bound you have the glorious opportunity of receiving Christ by faith as your Savior now, and at once you will be born again—born of the Spirit. Then bright as the glory of God will be your destiny, for you will be heaven-bound.
"Trust that Savior who came in His love
From the bright scenes of glory above;
Then blessing and bliss your portion shall be,
While eternity rolls like a measureless sea.”
BUT "Ye must be born again.”