Close of Probation Passes Unnoticed

For you yourselves know perfectly well that the day of the [return of the] Lord will come [as unexpectedly and suddenly] as a thief in the night. I Thess. 5:2

The righteous and the wicked will still be living upon the earth in their mortal state - men will be planting and building, eating and drinking, all unconscious that the final, irrevocable decision has been pronounced in the sanctuary above. Before the flood, after Noah entered the ark, God shut him in, and shut the ungodly out; but for seven days the people, knowing not that their doom was fixed, continuing their careless, pleasure-loving life, and mocked the warnings of impending judgment. "So," says the Savior, "shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Silently, unnoticed as the midnight thief, will come the decisive hour which marks the fixing of every man's destiny, the final withdrawal of mercy's offer of guilty men.

The people are fast being lulled to a fatal security, to be awakened only by the outpouring of the wrath of God.

The Lord in judgment will at the close of time walk through the earth, the fearful plagues will begin to fall. Then those who have despised God's word, those who have lightly esteemed it, shall wander from sea to sea, and from north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it....

The ministers of God will have done their last work, offering their last prayers, shed their last bitter tear for a rebellious church and an ungodly people.

The eye of Jesus, looking down the ages, was fixed upon our time when He said, "...Would that you had known personally, even at least in this your day, the things that make for peace (for freedom from all the distresses that are experienced as the result of sin and upon which your peace--your security, safety, prosperity, and happiness--depends)! But now they are hidden from your eyes"  Luke 19:42.

The Amplified Bible  Source: BibleGateway.com

Source: Maranatha: Compiled from the Writings of Ellen White, Review and Herald Publishing Association (1976), Page 264, Washington, D.C., USA 20012   Bookstore Online: http://www.AdventistBookCenter.com/