Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2910
“And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud One sat like unto the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in Your sickle, and reap: for the time is come for You to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And He that sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out of the temple which is in Heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in your sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God and the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.” Revelation 14:14-20.
I AM no Prophet, nor the son of a Prophet. Neither do I profess to be able to explain all the prophecies in this blessed Book. I believe that many of them will only be explained as the events occur which they foretell. Yet there are some things which are plain even to the most superficial reader. It is plain, for instance, that it is certainly foretold that the power of antichrist shall be utterly and eternally destroyed and that Babylon, that is to say, the Papal system, with all its abominations, shall be cast like a millstone into the flood to rise no more forever. It is also certain that the Jews, as a people, will yet acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, as their King, and that they will return to their own land, “and they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.” It is also certain that our Lord Jesus Christ will come again to this earth and that He will gloriously reign among His ancients and that there will be a thousand years of joy and peace such as were never known on this earth before! It is also certain that there will be a great and general judgment when all nations shall be gathered before the Son of Man sitting upon the Throne of His Glory—and His final word concerning these upon His left hand will be, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment” and, concerning those upon His right hand, “but the righteous into life eternal.”
How all these great events are to be chronologically arranged, I cannot tell. This I know—for I have read a multitude of books upon this subject, and of making them there is practically no end—all the authors seem to me to be wonderfully wise in confuting one another, but not to be so successful in establishing their own theories! Therefore I am content to believe what I see to be clearly taught in the Scriptures and to leave to abler minds than my own the arrangement of the various events in some sort of historical sequence. This, however, seems to me to be clearly revealed in the Scriptures—that there is to come—we know not when—a solemn winding up of all the events of this world’s history. Whatever else may happen, or may not happen, the Apostle Paul plainly declared that God “has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He has ordained. Therefore He has given assurance unto all men in that He has raised Him from the dead.” Even though we cannot comprehend some things that are foretold by John, or Isaiah, or Daniel, or Ezekiel, we know that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” And that “we must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according
to what he has done, whether it is good or bad.” Judgment must certainly come, even to the house of God, for Peter says that there it shall begin And if it shall begin there, “what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God?”
That there will be a Day of Judgment appears to be clear even to human reason, for, apart from Revelation, or, perhaps, assisted by some dim relics of it, all nations—I think I may say all, for no exceptions are known to me—have believed in a judgment. They have called it by different names and they have described it in various ways, but they have all believed, more or less clearly, in a great Throne of Justice, before which wrongs will be rectified, sin will be punished and righteousness will be rewarded. This has seemed so self-evident, even to the crudest thoughts of the lowest of mankind, that, in some shape or other, the most unenlightened nations have believed it! And it strikes one, at once, as being most reasonable, for, in this world, how often does infamy triumph! How often is oppression linked with power to destroy innocence and virtue! What are the groans, sighs and wails that I hear and what are the tears that I see but the outbursts of men who are being crushed beneath the awful burden of lifelong injustice? The best of men are, all too often, trodden down as the very mire of the street, while the worst are sitting proudly in the high places of the earth! If there is a God at all—and we know that there is—there must be a time and a way of rectifying all this in another state! And so there is, as David says, “Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily He is a God that judges in the earth.”And, therefore, verily there must be a time ofjudgment for the ungodly—even common reason seems to teach us that!