vine-dressers, but they themselves shall be called the priests of the Lord; the ministers of God. And in the fifty-fourth chapter of the same prophet God pours forth a wealth of tenderness and endearing love for His people as He foretells the glory and blessedness that shall come to His tempest-tossed, afflicted ones— "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear: break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Jehovah. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt spread abroad on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In overflowing wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith Jehovah thy Redeemer. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed; but my loving kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith Jehovah that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted, behold, I will set thy stones in fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. 'And I will make thy pinnacles of rubies, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy border of precious stones. And all thy children shall be taught of Jehovah; and great shall be the peace of thy children." The World and Its Sins “Because inquity abounds the love of many shall wax cold" (Matt. 24:12). The Word of God has much to say of sin in the last days. One of its clear teachings is concerning. The Aboundingness of Sin. We were chatting one evening on the street corner of a great city with a Christian policeman. We watched the passing throng of gay, thoughtless, reckless people. Presently the officer turned to us and said "They say the world is getting better, but if those who say it saw life as we policemen do they would alter their opinions. The Christian people of this city are at home and asleep in their beds by eleven o'clock at night. But the devil is only beginning his work then, and it is after that hour that we see city life as it really is." The policeman's verdict was a true one. Christian men and women do not begin to see the sin that is around them. They live in cultured, refined, sheltered homes. They do not come into contact with the hideousness of sin as it exists in the world. But God's Word says that in these last days it "abounds." It fills and overflows as waves of the sea, as the sweeping flood of the great tide. It saturates, 83 |