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The Sixth Seal Opened.

JOHN F. HARVEY. CALIFORNIA.

In the closing verse of the sixth chapter of Revelation there is a most startling announcement which is immediately followed by a pertinent question: “For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”

The opening of the Sixth Seal will be the signal for loosing the thunderbolts of divine wrath upon the rebellious, God-hating, Christ-rejecting world.

That will be an awful day! In that day, the throne of God and the Lamb will be visible to the eyes of the inhabitants of this earth, who will have been wholly given over to the worship and leadership of Satan.

And in that day king!, princes, great men, rich men, chief captains, mighty men, bond men and free men, will cry to the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them, and hide them from the sight and presence of Him who sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.

God's judgments are coming on this earth. Let no man deceive himself as to that! Men are going to feel in their bodies the terrors that will accompany the opening of this Sixth Seal.

A great earthquake! The sun black as sackcloth of hair! The moon like blood! The heaven departing! The mountains and islands moving out of their places! Such are some of the physical phenomena that will accompany the opening of the Sixth Seal.

I take this language as literal. I believe these things are coming to pass exactly as described. I believe the Bible to be supernaturally inspired and the holy revelation says what it means and means what it says.

The day of vengeance is coming! The holy prophets foretold it. It will be the day when God will deal with persistent sin, when His grace and forbearance will be at an end, and judgment will fill the earth.

THE LAMB OF GOD.

“The wrath of the Lamb.” Certainly few would deny that the Lamb spoken of here is the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah said: “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.” John the Baptist, the wilderness preacher pointed to Jesus, and said: “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”

The Scriptures present Jesus as the suffering, bleeding, dying Lamb of God, through whose shed blood all who will, may have access to God and forgiveness from all sin. To-day we enjoy God's mercy and grace. The Lord Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, is still calling to all men, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And the divine assurance is, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

But there is another side to the work of Jesus Christ about which men are reluctant to think. The Scriptures not only reveal Him as the Lamb of God, through Whose passion and death men are saved, but also as the Judge, into Whose hands is committed the execution of the justice of Almighty God.

He declared this, when He said, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.” Writing to the Roman Christians, the Apostle Paul said, “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”

“The Lord cometh,” said Jude, “with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

WITHOUT MERCY.

When the Sixth Seal is opened, the mercy now offered through Christ will have been withdrawn, and in its place will be the “wrath of the Lamb.” The evil, pleasure-mad world hates the thought of judgment. Not many preachers even warn their hearers of the wrath to come.

But the time is coming when the sixth seal will be opened, and all who neglected, or rejected, Salvation through Jesus Christ, together with those who failed to warn them of coming destruction, will cry for the mountains to obliterate the sight of the Lamb in His wrath.

The grace and mercy of God through Christ! The love and compassion of God through Christ! How precious are these things to our hearts to-day.

And how still more precious will they be to us in the day of His wrath! For then the forbearance of God shall have ended, and the hatred of God against persistent sin will be loosed. God's well-beloved Son, despised and rejected of men, will execute judgment upon the enemies of God.

What a mighty host will be present when the Sixth Seal is opened.

The constitution of earthly society will be much the same then as it is to-day. There will be nations, with their presidents and kings, dictators and statesmen, diplomats and generals, and great and mighty men. Who will say, for instance, that men like Stalin, Litvinoff, Trotsky and the other red beasts who have brought the curse of atheistic Bolshevism upon the world, at the same time taking the lives of millions of Russian Christians—who will say that these do not deserve the wrath of the Sixth Seal?

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The language of Scripture is plain. The Sixth Seal will riot only be an assemblage of low, degraded and abandoned souls, but the aristocracy of the earth will be represented, as well.

These things are coming to pass on this earth. Living men will witness these scenes, and feel in their bodies the vengeance of an outraged God.

UNAVAILING PRAYER.

Men are going to pray when the Sixth Seal is opened.

The most hardened men pray in times of great disaster. They pray for physical protection, not for salvation from their sins. On the Titanic, men and women were eating and drinking, but when the ship struck the iceberg, the band played “Nearer my God to Thee.”

A few years ago an earthquake shook all of Southern California, and men prayed. Some years before that, another earthquake wrecked San Francisco, and, amid the rocking and burning of buildings, men prayed, in awful terror.

And when the great earthquake of the Sixth Seal shakes the mountains and islands, and every city of earth, men will fall upon their faces and pray. When disturbances occur in the heavens above them which we can now scarcely approach with our imaginations, then men will pray.

Men who despised prayer, who never attended a prayer meeting, will pray in that day. Kings and presidents, dictators and powerful men, rich men and fashionable women of society, will all pray.

They will cry when it is too late. They will call when there is no one to hear. They would not seek the Lord when He was near, nor call upon Him in the day of His mercy, when He could be found. But in the day of His wrath, they will pray to deaf mountains and dead rocks. Thy will cry to inanimate objects in their desperation. Prostrate upon their faces in awful terror, they will cry to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him who sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb!”

The burden of their prayer will be that they may be concealed from the eyes of Almighty God! What folly! How impossible to escape the all-seeing eye of Jehovah!

“Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about -me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”

NONE ABLE TO STAND.

There is no intimation that anyone in that mighty multitude will be able to stand in that day.

If man could be appraised by his own standards of weights and measures, almost everyone would go to Heaven. But the fact is that to-day the majority of the people about us are travelling in the broad way that leads to destruction.

Man may be moral, educated, and respectable, but unless he accepts God's plan of salvation through Jesus Christ, he is as much under condemnation as the most hardened sinner. We need to get rid of our foolishness about nice, kind respectable people being saved without the blood of Christ.

Even church members need to be warned to-day. Many are under the impression they are saved because their names are on the Church record. The man who has not been born again is without spiritual life. Only those whose names are in the Lamb's book of life will be saved.

—”Defender.”