FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
July 13, 2021
‘ESCAPE FOR THY LIFE’: ITS ANTITYPICAL MEANING DURING THIS JUDGMENT HOUR
“He [the Lord said to Lot], Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed [by the fires of judgment].” Gen. 19: 17, KJV.
Obviously this “life” is not the temporal one that we can lose without a moment’s notice anytime, anywhere, for any number of causes or reasons. Rather, this is the “eternal life” that is still a promise, not yet a possession for those who will “endure to the end,” and Christ returns with His just rewards determined in His pre-advent judgment, “to give every man as his work shall be” (Rev. 22:14). Now this:
“The SAME ANGEL who visited Sodom is sounding the note of warning [today], ‘Escape for thy life.’ The bottles [also called “bowls,” “vials,” “four winds of strife” of the seven last plagues] cannot be poured out to destroy the wicked and their works [particularly stubbornly persisting to “worship the beast or his image” and received the mark of the beast in their foreheads] UNTIL all the people have been JUDGED, and the cases of the living as well as the dead are decided.
“And even after the saints are SEALED with the seal of the living God, His elect will [still] have trials INDIVIDUALLY. Personal afflictions will come, but the furnace is watched by an eye that will not suffer the GOLD fo be consumed. The INDELIBLE MARK of God is upon them [See Ezekiel 9]. God can plead His own name is written there.
The Lord has SHUT THEM IN [even as He shut Noah and his family inside the ark by Himself closing the only entrance to ark after 120’ years of warning the antediluvian world]. Their destination is inscribed, ‘God, New Jerusalem.’ [Meaning] They are God’s property. His possession.
“Will the seal be put upon the IMPURE in mind, the FORNICATOR, the ADULTERER, the man who COVETS his neighbor’s wife? Let your souls answer the question: Does my character correspond to the QUALIFICATIONS essential that I may receive a PASSPORT [seal of God] to the MANSIONS Christ has prepared for those who are FITTED for them? [John 14:1-3]. HOLINESS must be inwrought in our CHARACTER.” – E. G. White, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 446.
“God has a CLAIM placed in one scale, and man’s CHARACTER on the other, and by the balances of the SANCTUARY every man’s doom is fixed for eternity. Look at this, you that have lived carelessly and have regarded sin LIGHTLY.
For years you [whoever only is guilty] have continued without a sense of your responsibility to God—years of SELFISH INDULGENCE in a forbidden course, Consider the perfect, unchanging character of the LAW whose claims you have VERBALLY vindicated. The law demands perfect, unswerving obedience.
“In the latter scale [weighing man’s character] is also place the sin, the folly, the deception, the unclean thoughts, the unholy actions, and the preponderance or lightness of the weight, determined the weal or the woe of INDIVIDUALS. ‘Thou art weighed on the balances, and art found wanting.’
“Will those before whom this letter [straight testimony of the True Witness] shall come, consider their OWN INDIVIDUAL CASES, PASS JUDGMENT ON NO ONE ELSE, BUT CONSIDER THEIR OWN CHARACTER IN THE LIGHT OF GOD’S LAW.” – Ibid, pp. 439. 440.
This helps us better understand how and why salvation is individual in the light of the ongoing investigative judgment while the antitypical Zerubbabels, Ezras, and Nehemiah’s are faithfully and bravely “rebuilding the walls and repairing the breach” against the apparently overwhelMing confederacy of the antitypical Geshems, Tobiahs, and Sanballats. This global triumvirate is rapidly jelling as Romanism, apostate Protestantism, and Spiritualism.
Let us collectively and harmoniously Watch, Work and Pray, and Wait patiently on the Lord lest, in our zeal we fall into the snares of fanaticism and conspiracies presently proliferating now. Bless all, NMF