The Seventh Trumpet
Revelation 11:15-19
"And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices
in the heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world is become our Lord’s
and His Christ’s; and He shall reign to the ages of the ages."
"And
the twenty-four elders which sit before God on their thrones, fell down upon
their faces, and worshipped God, saying, ‘We give you thanks, O Lord God
the Almighty, who are and who was and are to come, because you have taken to
you your great power, and shown yourself King. The nations indeed were angry,
and your indignation is come, and the time [or season] of the dead to be
judged, and [the time or season] to give the reward to your servants the
prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear your name, the small and the
great, and to destroy the destroyers of the earth."
"And there was
opened the temple of God in the heaven, and there was seen the ark of His
covenant in His temple; and there were [or, ensued] lightnings, and voices, and
thunderings, and earthquake, and great hail" (Rev 11:15-19, RV. Text).
We here approach the grand climacteric of this world, and of the judgment-work
of the Almighty One. The seventh angel, restrained so long from ushering in the
final scenes that separate us from the glorious world to come, at length pours
out his wondrous blast. It is the Last Trumpet, so often referred to by the
sacred writers, and by the Saviour himself, as bringing with it the mightiest
scenes and changes in the whole history of earth and time, that here sounds.
And if there is anything in all the round of human thought to absorb, fix, and
intensify interest and attention, we have it in this subject.
The
particular passage we have now to consider is only a synopsis of the matter - a
rehearsal in brief of what is subsequently given in detail. It is an important
point to remark, that the seventh trumpet does not sound merely for one instant
or for one day. In that solemn oath of the cloud-robed Angel, which we were
called to consider in chapter 10, and in which it was said that the fulfilling
of the mystery of God should be finished at the sounding of the seventh angel,
it is distinctly implied, that the sounding is continuous, and extends through
a period of time.
It is said there that "in the days of the voice of
the seventh angel, when he shall sound, the mystery of God is [to be]
fulfilled." "Days" are included. What measure of "days" or how many of them, we
are not told; but a period of time is specifically indicated.
In the
case of the other woe trumpets, there is unmistakable continuity - "five
months" the one, and evidently no less a time in the other. And the presence of
this distinct note of continuity here, taken along with the tremendousness of
what turns out under this trumpet, is evidence enough that it is a mistake to
confine this last and great woe trumpet to the few summary notations of the
text, or to crowd it into an instant of time.
From the plainly
expressed character of the events, and from the oath of the Angel, we are
sufficiently assured that this seventh trumpet embraces everything involved in
the completing of the whole mystery of God, up to the termination of all this
judgment history. That fulfilment is certainly not accomplished without the
seven vials of wrath, the harvest and vintage of the world, the manifestation
of the great white throne, and the establishment of the new heavens and the new
earth. In the nature of the case, that fulfilment overspans everything this
side of the completed redemption; and yet that fulfilment is most specifically
located "in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall sound."
There is, therefore, no alternative but to take the text as only
synoptic of this trumpet - a sort of summary of its chief contents, the full
details of which are subsequently described, and spread over a considerable
period - an anticipative programme, so to speak, of the main elements and issue
of the great drama, given out in advance of the more special narration of
circumstantial particulars and related events. In other words, we now have to
do with a syllabus of the fulfilment or consummation of the mystery of God-
with a prelusive sketch of the contents of the Last Trump, in which we may
note:
1. The Symptoms that Attend It
2. The Items that it Embraces
And may He who sent His angel to disclose these wonders open our eyes and
hearts by His Holy Spirit, that we may rightly apprehend and ponder the same!
The symptoms which attend the sounding of the Last Trump are the most
remarkable, the most numerous, and the most intense, both in heaven and on
earth, that are anywhere detailed in the Scriptures.
There were many
mighty wonders attendant upon the deliverance of the chosen people from Egypt,
and their planting in the promised land. In the air and in the waters, in the
trees and in the rocks, in the clouds and in the dust, on animate and inanimate
nature, there were manifestations that stand out among the greatest marvels of
bygone time.
At the birth, in the life, and at the death of Christ,
there was also a great commotion, a stir among the angels, among the stars,
among the elements, and among men both living and dead, which make up a history
such as had never occurred before.
And so when Jerusalem was finally
destroyed there were signs, and sounds, and voices, and portents, which have
sent their report down through the ages and which still oppress the breathing
of men to hear about. But neither of these nor all of them together, can at all
approach the overwhelming intensity of the manifestations that attend the
sounding of the Last Trump.
Great Voices in
Heaven Utter Themselves
There is not only a stir and great
activity excited there, but also a great outcry, a giving forth of mighty
intimations. Whose voices they are is not here told us, but there is tremendous
commotion. Even eternity cannot keep quiet when this crisis comes. The
inhabitants of glory have seen too much of earth, its behaviour toward God, and
God’s doings for it, not to be excited when the final termination is
announced. Their silence breaks, and heaven rings with mighty voices.
What some of these voices are, we learn from the succeeding narrative. One is
the voice, as the voice of many waters, and as a voice of great thunder, as the
voice of harpers harping with their harps, and pouring forth a new song in the
presence of the throne. Another is the voice of a mighty angel flying in
mid-heaven, calling loud enough for every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and
people to hear. Others are the voices of angels shouting the fall of great
Babylon, and the fate of them that worship the Beast. Another is a voice crying
the blessedness of the dead. Others again are the loud voices calling for the
thrusting in of the sickle for the reaping of the harvest of the earth and the
gathering of its clusters. Still another is a great voice commanding the
pouring out of the bowls of the wrath of God; and another a voice out of the
temple, from the throne, crying, "It is done," and voices saying "Halleluia,"
"Amen," "Halleluia;" and still other voices, as it were the voice of a great
multitude, and the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty
thunderings, saying, "Halleluia," because the Lord God Almighty reigns. And
along with these are yet other great voices from the heavenly world, each in
its place and all together combining to fill all the realm of God with most
intense utterances.
When the Lamb took the book from the hand of the
Sitter upon the throne, there was something of a corresponding commotion in the
holy universe. It was an act which included and looked to the consummation
which the seventh trumpet brings; and all along the track of unfolding judgment
we find this same celestial interest and excitement continued till, at the
sounding of the last Trump, everything breaks out with cries, and shouts, and
songs, and triumphings.
The Twenty-four
Elders fall down upon their Faces, and Worship with most Sublime Thanks
When the mighty Goel took the book, they also fell down before
the Lamb and gave their solemn and adoring vote to His worthiness; but here the
prostration is still lowlier. They not only fall into the posture of reverent
adoration, but "upon their faces" they bury their immortal countenances in the
pavement around the throne - by their very emotion hurled from their golden
seats, overwhelmed and almost undone.
There they expressed their
adoring sense of the Saviour’s worthiness, exulting in the prospect of
what was to result; but here they celebrate the whole issue reached, the
blessed consummation come, the thing of hope for all these ages now translating
into fact; and, crowned princes of heaven, and anointed co-regents with the
great Eternal as they are, they cannot contain themselves. Their glorified
limbs sink under the weight of the contemplation; their heads bow down to the
place of their feet; their whole being melts into one flux of overwhelming
realisation of what now is come, and the gush of their adoring soul-dissolving
joy breaks like a sea of thankfulness against the throne.
Who these
Elders are, I have elsewhere told. They are the representatives of the
first-born of the resurrection. They are the seniors of the celestial
congregation of the redeemed. They are the ones accounted worthy to "escape"
the sad scenes and tribulations of the judgment-time, taken away and hid in the
pavilion of God while the anger of the Almighty sweeps the guilty world, and
enthroned in heaven for their valiant faithfulness when yet on earth.
They are already glorified, but that does not diminish their interest in the
on-going and completion of the same process in the case of others. They have
their golden crowns, but that does not withdraw their hearts and sympathies
from those still in the graves, or from the still remaining fulfilment of all
God’s word. There is no vanity and selfishness in heaven, no pride of
privilege and place, no vaunting of authority. The crowned Elders on their
thrones are more concerned over the conflicts still pending, and the victories
yet to be achieved, than they were in those through which they had won their
own crowns.
The destroyers of the earth were not yet destroyed. The
great multitude of the dead had not yet been finally judged. The mass of men
had not yet been assigned their just desserts. The reward had not yet fully
come to the prophets and saints and fearers of God. The divine righteousness
and honour had not yet been fully vindicated. The usurpation of Satan had not
yet been overthrown. The great redemption had not yet been fully wrought out
into ultimate fact. But the trumpet which brings all this was now ringing out
its unmistakable notes, and not even these blessed kings could keep their
seats, or restrain the outpouring of their hearts in grateful, adoring, and
exultant thanks.
The Temple of God in Heaven
Opened
There is a heavenly temple and worship, from which the
tabernacle and temple of the Jews was copied. When Jehovah directed the
building of them, He said to Moses: "Look that you make them after their
pattern, which was shown to you in the mount" (Ex. 25:40); and the writer of
Hebrews calls them copies or likenesses of things in the heavens (9:23).
The heavenly and the earthly worship were once in close and manifest
union. It was sin that divorced them and separated between man and the divine,
excluding him from the sacred communion of Paradise, and all but the
consecrated priests from the sanctuary, and all but the high priest from the
holy of holies in the Jewish tabernacle and temple, and even him, except once
in a year, when alone he might enter it, enveloped in clouds of incense. Sin
has obscured and hidden from man the sacred and divine. It has repulsed heaven
from his view and fellowship, with only a lingering ray left here and there,
and even that so buried away as to be, for the most part, entirely
unapproachable.
Hence, when Christ paid the ransom-price for human
sin, and introduced an availing righteousness for the race, and a new
dispensation of mercy and grace received its foundation stone, the veil of the
temple rent, the way into the holiest opened, and the divine began to be
visible and approachable again. And this opening of the temple in heaven at the
last trumpet expresses the same idea.
Knowledge and vision of heavenly
things, and closer fellowship and intimacy between the worshippers on earth and
the worshipers in heaven belong to the great consummation. As the Saviour has
taught us to pray, then it is to be, "as in heaven so on earth." Oneness is
again to be restored between the worship of both worlds. All this is shown in
the 21st chapter, where the finished mystery is described. Hence, as this
trumpet begins to sound, the mists begin to lift from sacred things, the
excluding barriers give way, the seclusion yields to human gaze and approach,
the veil withdraws, the holy begins to disclose itself again, and the temple of
heaven opens.
The Ark of God’s Covenant
Appears
It is no unholy or profane exposure, but a hallowed
symptom, setting forth still further the glory of the occasion. All the
compacts of God with His people, and all His solemn promises to them, are in
that ark. All His engagements, whether particular or general, are lodged and
treasured there. In that sacred casket they have long been hidden away, as
Jeremiah is said to have hidden the Jewish ark when the Chaldeans took
Jerusalem (see 2 Maccabees 2:4-8).
But, though buried from view, it is
not lost, and its holy contents have all been preserved. Not a promise is
obsolete or dead. And now, at the ending of time, that golden box reappears. As
the Jews believed the old ark would be brought out again in the day of
Israel’s blessing, so the ark of God’s covenant is now seen in the
temple on high. A divine potency goes along with that ark. On earth the waters
of Jordan rolled asunder beneath the shadow of it. The walls of Jericho fell
down before it. The enemies of God were scattered where it set forward. The
many thousands of Israel were in safety and blessedness where it rested. And
its appearance here is a token of the recurrence of all these wonders, only on
a completer, grander, and sublimer scale.
It tells of the speedy
fulfilment of all that God has spoken, and the putting into living force of all
that He has engaged to do. Whether as respects the seed of Abraham or the
Gentiles, friends or enemies, the living or the dead, the Church or the world,
blessing or punishment, all that the Almighty has covenanted is now to be
fulfilled. And in token of this the ark, the sign and bearer of His promises,
appears. There could all now see the pledge of God’s remembrance of His
holy covenant, and of His oath which he swore to Abraham, and of all that He
has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
And Lightnings, and Voices, and Thunderings,
and Earthquakes, and Great Hail Ensued
"The days of the voice of
the seventh angel, when he shall sound," are terrible days - days of sore
scourging and affliction to the wicked dwellers on the earth, and the breaking
forth upon them of sorrows that never end. When God revealed himself on Sinai
He charged the people to beware lest He should break through upon them, and now
He is about to break through.
The sky flashes with electric fires.
Portentous voices ring out in stunning power. The air is filled with thunder.
The earth trembles and quakes. The winds rush in noisy fury, and great
hailstones fall upon the earth.
Jehovah is now risen up from His place
to punish the wicked. And as the ark of His covenant is revealed to give joy
and hope to the parties to that covenant, lower nature is set in dread
commotion to harbinger the bursting forth of His indignation upon His
adversaries.
Such, then, are the predicted symptoms that attend the
sounding of the Last Trump. Let us now look at the items that it embraces.
A Radical Change in the Government of the
World
This is what all the great unidentified voices that first
speak on the sounding of the seventh angel utter, as it is the sum of great
consummation. The mighty administrators in the upper world exultantly proclaim,
"The kingdom [not kingdoms, as the common reading is, but abstract - the
sovereignty] of the world [of the constituted order on the earth] is become our
Lord’s and His Christ’s; and He shall reign to the ages of the ages."
The tense of the expression is that peculiar to prophetic language,
which fixes upon a result yet future, or only beginning to be, as if already
accomplished. It is not until the scenes narrated in chapters 20 and 21 are
fulfilled that this change of sovereignty is finally completed; but when God
announces a thing, and especially when He proclaims himself in motion to do a
thing, it is the same to the heavenly orders as if it were already wrought out.
The word of God is truth, and what it says is the same as fact and verity
already, although not yet distributed out and located in present time.
His word has virtue to make its contents present to those who really know Him.
The seventh trumpet brings this change, and on the first tone of it, all heaven
sees and celebrates the work as already done, and the kingdom of the world
become their Lord’s and His Christ’s.
Not yet has the
sovereignty of this world become the Lord’s. All earthly governments,
principalities, and powers, from the beginning until now, are uniformly
represented in the Scriptures as wild beasts, having no lawful owner, and full
of destructive savageness and offensive uncleanness. A lion with eagle’s
wings, a bear crunching bones and flesh, a four-winged and four-headed leopard,
a nondescript with many horns, dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly,
having great iron teeth to devour and break in pieces - these are the prophetic
symbols of the greatest and most lauded of them. Even the premiership of Daniel
himself in one of them does not alter its general character.
It is but
folly and fanaticism for men to talk of Christian states and governments in
this world. Christian and good men may be concerned in their administration,
and Christian ideas may sometimes temper their enactments, but earthly states
and governments themselves are not Christian, and in the nature of things
cannot be. They are all the products of devastated nature’s wilds, and
full of savage nature’s passions and ungodliness.
Fix it as we
may, such is the result. The best-planned institutions and the wisest laws are
ever disappointing their framers. The very law which God himself promulgated
from Sinai’s thunder-shaken heights was "weak through the flesh," and did
not serve to keep the Jewish commonwealth from like apostasy to that of other
nationalities. To this hour there is nothing so great a desideratum among men
as good and just government, nor another department in which the native
evilness and God-antagonising passions of men are so potent and defiant.
True, the kingdom is by right the Lord’s. All authority and power
originates with Him and belongs to Him. Government is His own ordinance. But
since the apostasy of the race to Satan’s standard, usurpation, falsehood,
and other powers than the rightful sovereign of men and nations have held and
directed the sway in this world. Many revolutions have been wrought, and men
have laboured, and sacrificed, and bled, and died to achieve them, believing
that now they would secure the precious boon for which the race has sighed and
cried for ages; but it was only the turning of the sick man on his bed, who
keeps his pain however he may change his place.
In our day especially,
people are looking and labouring for a grand jubilee of nations, shaped to
popular rule, and compacted by common laws, interests, and creed, in which
enlightened ideas shall be the king, and all the world be one; but the result
will be only a more horrible beast than any that preceded it, a leopard with
bear’s feet and a lion’s mouth, full of heads and horns and names of
blasphemy; the very embodiment of hell, whose infamies so outrage High Heaven
as to bring the great day of God Almighty upon the world.
No, no; your
revolutions, and reforms, and progress of liberal ideas, and overturning of old
creeds, and grand conventionalities in revision of the Decalogue, and
internationalities for the redemption of the world without Christ, and glorious
philosophies ruling out a personal God and exalting self and passion in His
place, and all your glittering ideals to which to reconstruct society and
relocate the highest interests of man, much as they may promise, and
successfully as they may draw the heart and energy of the world after them, are
but the nurslings of Satan’s bosom in which this world lies, and the
inspirations of his foul breath.
Dream, and prate, and preach, and
glory as men may, the devil is de facto the god and king of this world. His
mantle may be often changed, and every day may exhibit a new garb, but the
presiding genius within is still and always the devil, with all his pride, and
malice, and spoliating falsities. And so it will go on, "wicked men and
seducers waxing worse and worse," till the last trumpet sounds.
But
then shall come another order not developed from below, but enforced with
sudden and resistless power from above. We will see how when we come to
consider the details of the ensuing chapters. Meanwhile, however, the fact
itself is sure to the exultant voices in heaven. God is king, and the
sovereignty has He given to His Son, Jesus Christ. And having given the world
6,000 years in which to choose and settle upon its proper allegiance, and
finding after all only a more intense and more malignant apostasy, He causes
the final trump to sound, breaks in with His almightiness, and enforces His
rightful dominion. A kingdom comes which breaks in pieces, and consumes all
other kingdoms, and stands forever. Laws are given - to be changed no more. And
the true Anointed reigns on earth in an empire of sinless, deathless life and
peace, to the ages of the ages. The government is changed.
The Destruction of Earth’s Destroyers
This is announced in the thanksgiving of the Elders. The same word is used to
denote Jehovah’s act — that describes the character of those on whom
the action is inflicted. What men and governments in this world sow, that shall
they also reap. They that are a curse to the world shall be accursed. The word
means to spoil, corrupt, ruin, make away with, kill, destroy; and those who act
in this line shall be dealt with in the same line. Usurpers, liars, tyrants,
persecutors, and murderers who thus spoil God’s world shall be reacted
upon by the violence of their own deeds, overwhelmed, and utterly put out of
the way.
Peter gives it as one of the great objects to be achieved by
the awful demonstrations of the day of the Lord that then shall come "the
perdition of ungodly men." That day shall find wickedness and confederation in
iniquity ripened to the full.
The very prince of hell shall then have
incorporated himself personally in the government of the world, speaking
through its heads, dictating its religion and its laws, controlling its trade,
enforcing the worship of himself as God, cutting off the heads of those who
dissent, filling the world with the worst of blasphemies, and compelling all
that would live to receive the mark of allegiance to him. All existing nations
on the prophetic earth shall have organically conjoined themselves with him as
the representative of all authority and power, "and all that dwell upon the
earth shall worship him."
But when the seventh trumpet sounds, the end
of this infamous confederation has come. Then the maddened nations shall
suddenly be dashed to atoms, as a vessel of pottery struck with a rod of iron;
and their armies slain by the blasts of Jehovah, as the Syrians of old; and the
great beast that did rule them, and the deceiver that was with him, shall be
cast alive into the lake of fire; and great Babylon shall fall, as a millstone
cast into the sea; and the dragon shall be seized and shut up in his proper
hell; and death and the grave shall be extinguished; and all the destroyers of
the earth shall be destroyed!
O! Glorious riddance of our weary world,
when "the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of
His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast
them into a furnace of fire!" (Matthew 13:41-42). Well may the enthroned Elders
fall on their faces and cry their thanks to the Lord Almighty for it.
The Judgment of the Dead
This
also is recited in the thanksgiving of the Elders. When men die, and their
bodies waste in the ground, it is not the end of them. Whatever may be their
state meanwhile, they reappear again. John sees them, the small and the great,
given up by the sea, and death, and Hades, all standing before the great white
throne to be judged, everyone of them, according to their works. There is to be
a resurrection, even, of the wicked. They that put an end to their existence on
earth, resolving not to live any more, must still live and take the judgment
and sentence of Heaven for all their deeds. Not one of all the race can escape
it. And the time of the dead to be judged is "in the days of the voice of the
seventh angel."
This side the grave, full justice is never done; and
up to the great day, no one receives entirely all his desserts. That is
reserved for the period of resurrection. Soul and body, having wrought
together, shall reap together of what they have sown. Only the resurrection
life is full retribution life. Incomplete and unequal are all the
administrations here. Many a great criminal dies without having had his guilt
so much as known, while perchance innocent ones have had to suffer for his
sins. The wicked go unpunished, are even honoured in their crimes, and pass
away with no experiences to mark how they stand in the estimate of God.
Fortunes are made, and enjoyed, and respected, and their holders held in
favourable esteem to the end of their days, every dime of which is stained with
blood, corroded with crime, and marked with fraud, oppression, and soul-damning
deeds of injustice.
So marked and constant are the inequalities that
occur, that even the holiest of men have often been tempted to despondency and
doubt whether their faith and godliness are not after all a mistake. Nor is
there any stay for the good man’s confidence, or adequate justification of
his course, but in the fact that the end of the matter is not in this world.
Beyond is the theatre on which final settlement is to be made, and there is the
invincible throne of inexorable justice. There shall all earth’s wrongs be
righted, all present inequalities adjusted, and the administrations of God
forever vindicated.
The dead have not gone beyond His reach. The grave
does not cover them from His sight, nor bar them from His approach and power.
Having escaped unpunished from this world, their just portion still awaits them
in the next. People may call it fable and dream, and reason it an
impossibility, but that will not alter it. And when the seventh angel sounds,
there will be exultant thanksgiving in heaven, that "the time of the dead to be
judged" is come.
The Giving of Reward to the
Prophets, and the Saints, and to Them that Fear God, the Small and the Great
Piety and the fear of God are poor recommendations for the
favours of this world. Our religion is the religion of the cross, and that
cross has to be borne by all who are faithful and true. Nothing can abolish it;
nothing can exempt from it. Since the days of Abel, whose confiding devotion
and humble obedience to his God cost him his life, there has been no age, no
nation, no realm or country on earth, where saintship and holiness have not
subjected to losses, trials, and pains.
The prophets all were
persecuted and injured men who lived martyr lives if they did not come to
martyr deaths. For all these ages, the children of God have been children of
affliction and sorrow. Some were tortured; others had trial of cruel mockings
and scourgings, of bonds and imprisonments; some were stoned, sawn asunder,
tempted, slain with the sword; some wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins,
being destitute, afflicted, tormented, compelled to hide themselves in deserts,
in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
He that would come
after Jesus must deny himself. He that would live godly in Christ Jesus must
suffer persecution. There is no rest, no recompense, no hope for us here. For
if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
But no Christian looks for his recompense in this world. So long as he
is in this tabernacle, he groans, being burdened, troubled on every side,
distressed, perplexed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord
Jesus.
The only thing that reconciles to such a lot is that God’s
servants "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are
not seen." Glorious promises have come forth, and these the good have embraced
and are persuaded of them, and confess themselves strangers and pilgrims on the
earth, looking for a better country, believing that God is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek Him. And the realisation of all these fond desires and
blessed hopes belongs to the time of the seventh angel, when he shall sound.
Piety may not pay as regards this world, but it will pay then. Not
even the gift of a cup of water to the thirsty shall then go unrewarded; nor a
loss, or pain, or labour of love, or pang of hardship, or tear of sorrow,
incurred for Jesus or His truth’s sake, fail of its just recompense.
Rewards - rewards - for the wronged prophets, for the suffering saints, and for
all that fear God, small and great, are in reserve. Jesus has gone to make them
ready. In heaven, in the counsel and purpose of God, in His covenant and
promise, in His hand, secure from all peradventure, they are stored away. Faith
sees them there, and waits for them with eager hope. And when the last trumpet
sounds, they shall be given.
Then shall Paul get his crown of
righteousness, and all the apostles take their everlasting thrones. Then shall
Daniel stand in his lot, and Moses possess the recompense to which he had
respect, when he chose rather "to suffer affliction with the people of God than
to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." And everyone that has forsaken
houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or
lands, for the sake of God and His Christ, shall receive an hundred fold, and
shall inherit everlasting life.
No wonder, then, that the blessed Elders
fall on their faces before God and praise and thank Him with profoundest song
when the signal for so glorious a consummation sounds.
Nor is all this
without the most intense moment to us. We are all concerned with that last
trumpet’s sound. Our most sublime eternal interests are wrapped up in what
it is to bring. Big is it with the doom and destiny of everyone and everything
that is. Be our place, our state, our occupation what it may, our fate and lot,
and every question, every doubt, shall then come to final settlement. Near or
remote as those scenes may be, we shall all be in them, and take from them the
character of our forever. Believe it or not, we everyone shall be there; there
as victims of the great day of almighty wrath, as prisoners brought forth for
final execution, or as the friends and servants of Jesus, to be confessed,
rewarded, and glorified by our blessed Lord.
As we spend these
swift-passing days, and conduct ourselves in this brief life, will be the
character of our experience and portion then. Building on Jesus in humble faith
and lowly steadfastness, we are safe, and our work is safe. Then may we sing,
and exult, and give thanks with all the holy ones of heaven, as we see the day
approaching. Then may we rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is the
reward that we shall get.
Otherwise there is no more dreaded sound
than that of the Last Trump. And when we think of the millions of dead and
living for whom it has no blessing, and of the utter destruction which it shall
bring on them that know not God and obey not the Gospel, is there not reason
for us all to be moved with fear, lest that day should come upon us unawares?
It will be too late then to remedy present mistakes, negligence, and omissions.
If we are to meet that day with joy and escape the horrors it brings to
the unprepared, we must be getting ready now; getting ready, by honest
repentance of our sins, joining ourselves to Christ and His people, and with
all our heart and energy seeking to be in accord with His word and will. Happy
they, who, when the Last Trumpet sounds, shall be found in such a case!