A HEAVENLY ADMONITION

If God in righteousness takes away blessings from His creatures, if He sends in their midst miseries as signs of His kindled anger, if even His children are much in darkness and perplexity, it is then a time that they should search and examine their ways. It is a time to turn unto the Lord with repentance and sorrow, to be in constant prayer, to confess our many and great sins and break off sin by doing righteousness.

We live in an evil time. Darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people. Sin abounds all over in the hearts and without the hearts. Wickedness flows out of the corrupted hearts of man and covers the whole earth, bringing the judgments of a holy and righteous God very low. It is a judgment of God if He gives a sinner or a people over to blindness and pride, so that they shall work out their own destruction. What has recently taken place in our country teaches us the blindness and ignorance of a great nation. The all-seeing God has a controversy with a blessed land in which dwells a deeply sunken people. Many hearts are filled with sorrow and fears. Gog and Magog shall become more powerful in the strength of Satan whose throne is in this polluted world. The Church shall be brought into the fiery furnace of persecution and purging; the world shall and must be filled with fire and blood. All those things which the glorified Immanuel showed the Apostle John upon Patmos shall be fulfilled. These revelations were given that we may know what the King of kings shall do before the end of this world has come. He that sits upon the heavenly throne and has all power in heaven and on earth, He, the hope and comfort of a fearing and sighing people, shall destroy the throne of Satan in this world and bring an eternal deliverance and victory to His Church, ransomed with the price of His precious blood. Rev. 20.

Land, land, land, hear ye the Word of the Lord!

“Turn ye unto Him from Whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted.”

During the time of the prophet Isaiah, and more so during the time of the weeping prophet Jeremiah, the children of Israel had deeply revolted from their God and King. What a spirit of revolution: breaking away from or rising against the authority of Heaven, as by open rebellion; casting off allegiance or subjection to those in authority; rebellion and mutiny, turning away and despising that which is good. O terrible wickedness! Awful blindness, pride, and enmity! O Israel, Christendom, I the Lord must testify against you: “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. ….Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy back-slidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.”— Jer. 2:13, 19.

This is all a very bitter fruit of what took place in Paradise. There we find the origin of all sin and wickedness; of all curse and bitterness; of all woes and sufferings. In that glorious paradise we behold the most terrible revolution: devils and man in revolution against God the Almighty, the Creator of all things. O lamentable rebellion! A rebellion that kindled the anger of God as an everlasting fire and brought the most awful destruction upon angels and man, yea, forever. Woe unto us if no repentance comes and we remain in the armies of Satan and darkness. Read with solemn attention in Rev. 20 what Satan is doing now and what our King and Immanuel shall do: “And (Satan) shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

Deeply revolted from God, the glorious triune God, Who is worthy to be served and worshipped by all angels and men; worthy of all honor and glory in heaven and upon earth.

Deeply revolting from God, the God of Israel, Who only doeth wonders; not walking in His ways and statutes, not obeying His holy will, not begging for mercy and grace, not fleeing in faith to His beloved Son, Christ Jesus, for help and salvation.

Deeply revolting from God, loving sin, the world and its idols and vanities; walking in pride and presumptuousness, disobedience and enmity, in wicked self-love and self-worship; cleaving to a self-will religion, and loving to be plastered with untempered mortar (Ezek. 13), trying to serve the world and God together, which cannot exist; raising up a self-righteousness and denying and despising the blessed and perfect righteousness of Christ Jesus which alone can save from death; confessing Christ and yet denying a living Christ, in the blindness of the foolish builder (Matt. 7), and the foolish virgins (Matt. 24). How many millions there are in our evil time who deny there is a God, and how many millions of so-called Christians there are who act as if there is no God. How many of God’s dear children are much bound to the dust of the earth and flesh, having an idol, or more than one in the heart. And how true are the words: “It is possible to sleep, but impossible to be happy, with an idol in the heart.” How many silent lips amongst the poeple of the Lord; many empty closets and little communion with heaven; much moving in the dust, but not many lively exercises of faith, hope, and love.

Truly, we all have gone astray; we all have done evil in God’s sight. “We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedness.” — Ps. 106:6. Oh, that we could and would by the grace of God “accept of the punishment of our iniquity,” then the faithful Covenant God will remember His Covenant, and He will remember the land, Lev. 26.

The Lord has no pleasure in the death and destruction of Israel, of us and our children. Hearken unto the admonition of heaven: “Turn ye unto Him.”

Israel, and we also have turned away from the Lord with thoughts, words, and deeds. Adam, and we in and with him, have left God and turned to the devil, who is a murderer from the beginning. It involves a turning to everlasting death and destruction. “The wages of sin is death.” God, in His goodness and mercy, calls sinners back to Him, to His ways and communion, saying: Repent, repent, why will ye die! God at all times beholds a righteous claim to His creatures, and it is the great goodness and mercy of God to call sinners back unto Him, to repent of their evil ways, and to be reconciled with Him by faith in Christ Jesus.

This admonition to turn unto the Lord signifies and teaches the people that they should repent with true sorrow of all those sins they were guilty of, and deny themselves and submit themselves wholeheartedly unto the holy will of God. It is an admonishment unto repentance: not a false, or an outward repentance, but a true and spiritual repentance. A repentance with the whole heart, as we see amongst Israel during the time of Samuel: “And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the Lord”; as the thief on the cross, who justified God in his eternal damnation, and begged with tears: “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” In this true repentance and conversion of heart and life, the old man shall be crucified and broken down, and the new man shall arise. It is a turning away from world and sin, and a turning towards God, to serve and worship Him only.

It is an evangelical repentance unto salvation. It is the work of the Spirit of God in the heart of a sinner. The Spirit of God breaks the heart, many tears are wept, and a true confession is made before God. The sinner comes back to God as the prodigal son came back to his father. He comes back with weeping and is being led with supplication. The Spirit glorifies Christ in the heart of the penitent. He seeks strength in Christ and the forgiveness of sin in His precious blood, reconciliation through Him with God and peace with Him. It is his heart’s desire never to sin any more, to be healed and kept from backslidings. We feel such a oneness of heart with a certain writer, who has stated: “And what do we reap from backslidings? Do we reap pleasure, comfort, or peace? Do we reap the smiles of God, or the solemn testimony of the Spirit in the conscience? No. If conscience speaks in your bosom, what does it say? That every departure from the Lord has brought grief and trouble; that so far from justifying yourself in sin, your sin, you have been ready almost to weep tears of blood, that you have so wickedly departed from the Lord. It has been our mercy that the Lord has not given us up to hardness of heart and searedness of conscience, that we have not been allowed to say with Israel of old: T am innocent, I have not sinned,’ Jer. 2:35. Have not some of us (I am sure I have for one) been obliged ‘to go and weep,’ and tell the Lord a piteous tale of backsliding; how we have departed from His fear, and sinned basely against Him; how unwilling we have been to take His yoke upon us, and walk in His precepts? Have we not been forced to tell Him that we have been disobedient and stubborn, filthy and vile, and has He not, in some faint measure, led us ‘to turn our faces Zionward,’ to turn our back upon all false ministers, upon all idol shepherds, upon all the strength and wisdom and righteousness of the creature, and given to us some simplicity, uprightness, and integrity of heart and conscience, whereby we have turned our face Zionward, looking for a blessing to come out of Zion, looking for grace, looking for glory? ‘I will make thee sick in smiting thee,’ says the Lord (Micah 6:13), alluding to the feeling of sickness produced by a wound. And have not these wounds made us, in our measure, sick of the world, sick of the professing church, sick of hypocrites, sick of whitewashed Pharisees, sick of carnal professors, sick of our backslidings, sick of all but what the Word of God revealed with power, sick of all but the blood and love of the Redeemer, of all teachings but the teachings of the Holy Ghost, of all company but the company of the children of God? Can you say thus much? that you have turned your back upon everything but Christ, and Him crucified? that you have turned away from all doctrines but those which center in the blood of the Lamb? and that your spiritual affections are toward God and His people? And has there been in your soul any such feeling, as Ruth had when she said: ‘Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God?’ Any sweet response in your bosom to the voice of the Lord: ‘My son, give Me thine heart?’ ‘Take it, Lord, with all that I have and am!’ Any casting yourself at the foot of the cross, and there entreating the Lord of life and glory to speak peace to your soul?”

These good words of one of God’s servants now in glory, show us clearly what a true and evangelical repentance is. And how necessary this repentance is throughout the whole life of the traveling pilgrim, in the sanctification of the Spirit. Alas, so often is the child a backsliding child; the sheep, a wandering sheep. How unthankful, how weak and blind; how carnal and cold; how unfaithful and changeable. But the Covenant God is unchangeable and remains faithful in Christ Jesus. With Him there is forgiveness, that He may be feared. Ps. 130. He will not cast out the returning and trembling backslider. This is a blessed truth for a people and an individual: “Is Ephraim My dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore My bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” (Jer. 31:20)

“Turn unto Him from Whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted.” Oh, that He, the Almighty, may lead by His Word and Spirit into the depths of sin and misery, that the cry may be heard from convicted and wounded souls: “Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice: let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?”

I recently read on a sign along the highway: “Repent or die.” God says: Repent and live. While repentance is a fruit of the Spirit in Christ Jesus, may this blessed Spirit enter many hearts in the church and without the church, saying with Job: “I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” To then be continually led as a poor nothing on the “poor man’s market, “ as we find that blessed market of free grace in these words: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

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