The day is coming when the devil will put up his last soul to auction! Sin, and pleasure, and money, and religion, and worldliness, will bid their last bids! Satan's hammer will fall for the last time― and then he himself will be consigned to "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Matt. 25:41.
Have you ever seen flies and moths fluttering round the flame of a candle on a summer's evening? In like manner do men and women seem to be dancing on the brink of the lake of fire.
"The devil's auction!" Such was the title of a play about to be performed in a theater at Philadelphia, Pa., on the 27th of April, 1892, when a yet more awful scene was enacted instead. In the days of Noah, before the flood, "they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage... until the flood came, and took them all away." Matt. 24:38, 39. At the theater they were amusing themselves likewise, until a little accident set fire to the place, and in one short hour it, and many adjacent buildings, became a mass of smoking ruins. Horrible scenes followed as men fought for their lives, careless of aught but personal safety; and broken limbs and fearful injuries were the result, to say nothing of the dead and dying.
The horrors of that hour, who shall describe, though we are getting more and more hardened to reading of or witnessing such scenes? The devil takes care to render people callous to the "accidents" that occur on the downward road; and he tries to blind them to the fact that he is hurrying through his "auction," because there is but a short time left.
Think of it, only a short time left! The devil's auction will soon come to an end, and God, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will appear on the scene. He will take His "strange work" of judgment in hand, and there will be mercy no longer. "The vials of the wrath of God" are shortly to be poured out on this earth, this guilty earth (Rev. 16). Judgment will succeed judgment, until one will receive power "to scorch men with fire." How is it possible to write what follows? "And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give Him glory." Of others we read that they "blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.”
If the Lord Jesus wept over Jerusalem, saying to her, "How often would I have gathered thy children... and ye would not," what can be His attitude now? It was down here that He died. It was down here that His precious blood was shed to wash away sin. Yet it is here that He is being rejected as a Savior, and that the devil is being accepted as a master. No wonder then, that God's wrath is to be poured out here: do not those deserve it who refuse His mercy? But He offers it still―will you accept it?
In that same book of judgment, His last word to you is: "Come... whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." Rev. 22:17. That blessed water of life will quench your thirst, will free you from the devil, and sin, and judgment. That water of life is Jesus― Jesus who "came... to give His life a ransom for many." Mark 10:45. Only Jesus can deliver you from "the wrath to come." 1 Thess. 1:10. Will you not trust Him and thank Him?