"Speedily!"

THAT was a solemn time before the Flood, while Noah, was a “preacher of righteousness”! The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and God said that it should not continue — His Spirit should not always strive with man; yet would He leave him for a hundred and twenty years on the earth (Gen. 6). During that time God made known to Noah what He was about to do, and commissioned him to build the ark. How surprised his neighbors must have been! How they may have laughed at Noah! Peter tells us that Noah was not silent during those years — he preached; besides which, his act of faith in obeying God proved that he believed Him, when He said the Flood was coming, and it “condemned the world,” who did not believe. They would not believe, because it was against their reason or theory; and yet every night they were one day nearer their doom. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Eccl. 8:1111Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. (Ecclesiastes 8:11)).
So it was in the days before the Flood; so it is now. The world that then was, was overflowed with water and perished (2 Peter 3:77But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. (2 Peter 3:7)); men are willingly ignorant that the world that now is, is “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” But God is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, and judgment is His strange work; hence the delay of which men avail themselves to scoff, and to cry, “Where is the promise of His coming?” God says, “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest” ... Because the sentence is not executed speedily, it is not to be inferred that it is forgotten.
One hundred and twenty long years ran their course, and, one week before the Flood came, God said, “Yet seven days and I will cause it to rain.” Then the solemn morning arrived, when “the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Gen. 7). Did they cry “Peace and safety” then? And can you tell whether God in heaven has said, “Yet seven days” and Jesus shall come? Can you say that He will not come today? Those who scoffed at Noah knew not the day of the Flood, and the Bible says, “Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:3232But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. (Mark 13:32)).
Lot’s children refused to credit the coming overthrow of Sodom, and were consumed with it. Will you choose a like fate? Think what it must be to Jesus, who sits at God’s right hand, and who shed His blood for guilty sinners, to see you refusing the priceless blessing of salvation, and to know that soon judgment must overtake you! “The day of the Lord cometh... and He shall consume the sinners” (Isa. 13:99Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. (Isaiah 13:9)). When Jesus was on earth, it was to a poor sinful man that He said, “Make haste and come down, for today I must abide at thy house” (Luke 19). He had come to seek and to save that lost sinner; and “he made haste and came down and received Him joyfully.” Will you not do likewise?
In the millennium, when the Lord Jesus shall reign over His earthly people, “the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts; I will go also” (Zech. 8:2121And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts: I will go also. (Zechariah 8:21)).
May you prove it true.
H. L. H.