In the Days of
Noah
LISTENING TO THE COUNSEL OF MEN AND
MEN'S REASONING IS DEADLY!
As they reasoned in Noah's day they
reason today, when the warning message is proclaimed to fear
God and keep His commandments. The wrath of God is soon to
fall on all the sinful and disobedient, and they will perish
in the general conflagration. Professed servants of Christ
who are unfaithful, who do not reverence God and with fear
prepare for the terrible future event, will lull themselves
to carnal security with their fallacious reasoning, as they
did in Noah's day.
"God is too good and too merciful
[they reason] to save just a few who keep the Sabbath and
believe the message of warning. The great men and the good
men, the philosophers and men of wisdom would see the
Sabbath and the shortness of time, if it were true." They do
not believe a merciful God who made men will consume them
with fire because they do not believe the warnings given.
This, they reason, is not in accordance with God. . . .
God's love is represented in our day
as being of such a character as would forbid His destroying
the sinner. Men reason from their own low standard of right
and justice. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an
one as thyself" (Ps. 50:21). They measure God by themselves.
They reason as to how they would act under the circumstances
and decide God would do as they imagine they would do.
God's goodness and long forbearance,
His patience and mercy exercised to His subjects, will not
hinder Him from punishing the sinner who refused to be
obedient to His requirements. It is not for a man--a
criminal against God's holy law, pardoned only through the
great sacrifice He made in giving His Son to die for the
guilty because His law was changeless--to dictate to God.
After all this effort on the part of
God to preserve the sacred and exalted character of His law,
if men, through the sophistry of the devil, turn the mercy
and condescension of God into a curse, they must suffer the
penalty. Because Christ died they consider they have liberty
to transgress God's holy law that condemns the transgressor,
and would complain of its strictness and its penalty as
severe and unlike God. They are uttering the words Satan
utters to millions, to quiet their conscience in rebellion
against God.
In no kingdom or government is it left
to the lawbreakers to say what punishment is to be executed
against those who have broken the law. All we have, all the
bounties of His grace which we possess, we owe to God. The
aggravating character of sin against such a God cannot be
estimated any more than the heavens can be measured with a
span. God is a moral governor as well as a Father. He is the
Lawgiver. He makes and executes His laws. Law that has no
penalty is of no force.
The plea may be made that a loving
Father would not see His children suffering the punishment
of God by fire while He had the power to relieve them. But
God would, for the good of His subjects and for their
safety, punish the transgressor. God does not work on the
plan of man. He can do infinite justice that man has no
right to do before his fellow man.
Noah would have
displeased God to have drowned one of the scoffers and
mockers that harassed him, but God drowned the vast
world. Lot would have had no right to inflict punishment on
his sons-in-law, but God would do it in strict justice.--Ms
5, 1876, pp. 1-3.
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