ANOTHER year of the long-suffering of God is now well-nigh come to a close. “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye; return, come”(Isa. 21:1111The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? (Isaiah 21:11)).
Let us meditate a little on the year that is passed — a measured portion of “the night”— the long, dark night of man’s rejection of Christ. God has His own, those whom He has taken out of the world, who are not of it, but given to Christ. But let us not shut our eyes to the awful fact that the world has rejected and killed the Son of God, and still rejects Him. Satan, the great enemy of man, is the god of this world; and nowhere does Satan display more enmity against Christ than in the professing Church.
Is not Christendom a caricature of the Church of God as seen in Scripture in the beginning? How rapidly infidelity is increasing in it everywhere, and if not infidelity, the grossest idolatry. As a Hindu idolator said to a professed Christian: “We have no idolatry like yours. We worship an idol as representing God; but you bake a god, worship it as God, and then eat it.”
Surely this is the lowest depth of dark idolatry! And Satan calls this wickedness, holy communion! “Watchman, what of the night?” Is it not getting darker, darker, ripening for the terrible judgment? And what is the state of the world around? Violence and lawlessness, dishonesty publicly defended. Surely there never was a time when Christians even needed more to cry to God to preserve their Majesties the King and Queen of England from the hands of those who would do them harm.
Surely, if we remember the cruel death of the Holy One of God at the hands of men we cannot wonder at anything. And yet what a year this has been! The very foundations of the State shaken, and the red flag of Socialism and anarchy unfurled. The Son of God and the Holy Scriptures derided and set aside. Yea, the long night of man’s rejection of Christ grows darker and darker....
“WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?” The watchman said, “The morning cometh, and also the night”...
The watchman then bringeth these two things before us: “The morning cometh, and also the night.” If we should then close this year on earth, may the watchman’s words be our motto—“The morning cometh”! May this be the deep, settled hope of our hearts, for “we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He is”! As we shall be like Him then, so may we more and more seek to walk as He walked, until we are forever with and like the Lord.
Our Watchman never slumbers. May we also be awake, and hear His words, Surely the Holy Ghost thus speaks to us: “The morning cometh and also the night.”