Desolation of the
Earth
“Her sins have
reached unto heaven, and God hath
remembered her iniquities…. In
the cup, which she hath filled fill
to her double. How much she hath
glorified herself, and lived
deliciously, so much torment and
sorrow give her; for she saith in her
heart, I sit a queen, and am no
widow, and shall see no sorrow.
Therefore shall her plagues come in
one day, death, and mourning, and
famine; and she shall be utterly
burned with fire: for strong is the
Lord God who judgeth her. And the
kings of the earth, who have
committed fornication and lived
deliciously with her, shall bewail
her, and lament for her….saying,
Alas, alas that great city Babylon,
that mighty city! For in one hour is
thy judgment come.” Revelation
18:5-10.
“The merchants of
the earth,” that have
“waxed rich through the
abundance of her delicacies,”
shall stand afar off for the fear of
her torment, weeping and wailing, and
saying, Alas, alas that great city,
that was clothed in fine linen, and
purple, and scarlet, and decked with
gold, and precious stones, and
pearls! For in one hour so great
riches is come to naught.”
Revelation 18: 11, 3, 15-17.
Such are the judgments
that fall upon Babylon in the day of
the visitation of God’s wrath.
She has filled up the measure of her
iniquity; her time has come; she is
ripe for destruction.
When the voice of God
turns the captivity of His people,
there is a terrible awakening of
those who have lost all in the great
conflict of life. While probation
continued they were blinded by
Satan’s deceptions, and they
justified their course of sin. The
rich prided themselves upon the
superiority to those who were less
favored; but they obtained their
riches by violation of the law of
God. They had neglected to feed the
hungry, to clothe the naked, to deal
justly, and to love mercy. They had
sought to exalt themselves and to
obtain the homage of their fellow
creatures. Now they are stripped of
all that made great and are left
destitute and defenseless. They look
with terror upon the destruction of
the idols that they preferred before
their Maker. They have sold their
souls for earthly riches and
enjoyments, and have not sought to
become rich toward God. The result
is, their lives are a failure; their
pleasures are now turned to gall,
their treasures to corruption. The
gain of a lifetime is swept away in a
moment. The rich bemoan the
destruction of their grand houses,
the scattering of their gold and
silver. However, their lamentations
are silenced by the fear that they
themselves are to perish with their
idols.
The wicked are filled
with regret, not because of their
sinful neglect of God and their
fellow men, but because God has
conquered. They lament that the
result is what it is; but they do not
repent of their wickedness. They
would leave no means untried to
conquer if they could.
The world see the very
class whom they have mocked and
derided, and desired to exterminate,
pass unharmed through pestilence,
tempest, and earthquake. He, who is
to the transgressors of His law a
devouring fire, is to His people a
safe pavilion.
The minister who has
sacrificed truth to gain the favor of
men now discerns the character and
influence of his teachings. It is
apparent that the omniscient eye was
flowing him as he stood in the desk,
as he walked the streets, and he
mingled with men in the various
scenes of life. Every emotion of the
soul, every line written, every word
uttered, every act that led men to
rest in a refuge of falsehood, has
been scattering seed; and now, in the
wretched, lost souls around him, he
beholds the harvest.
Saith the Lord:
“They have healed the hurt of
the daughter of My people slightly,
saying, Peace, peace; when there is
no peace.” “With lies ye
have made the heart of the righteous
sad, whom I have no made sad; and
strengthened the hands of the wicked,
that he should not return from his
wicked way, by promising him
life.” Jeremiah 8:11; Ezekiel
13:22.
“Woe be unto the
pastors that destroy and scatter the
sheep of My pasture!… Behold, I
will visit upon you the evil of your
doings.” “Howl, ye
shepherds, and cry; and wallow
yourselves in the ashes, ye principle
of the flock: for your days for
slaughter and of your dispersions are
accomplished….and the shepherds
shall have no way to flee, nor the
principle of the flock to
escape.” Jeremiah 23: 1,2; 25:
34, 35, margin.
Ministers and people
see that they have not sustained the
right relation to God. They see that
they have rebelled against the Author
of all just and righteous law. The
setting aside of the divine percepts
gave rise to thousands of springs of
evil, discord, hatred, iniquity,
until the earth became one vast field
of strife, one sink of corruption.
This is the view that now appears to
those who have rejected truth and
chose to cherish error. No language
can express the longing that the
disobedient and disloyal feel for
that which they have lost forever
– eternal life. Men whom the
world has worshiped for their talents
and eloquence now see these things in
their true light. They realize what
they have forfeited by transgression,
and they fall at the feet of those
whose fidelity they have despised and
derided, and confess that God has
loved them.
The people see that
they have been deluded. They accuse
one another of having led them to
destruction; but all unite in heaping
their bitterest condemnation upon the
ministers. Unfaithful pastors have
prophesied smooth things; they have
led their hearers to make void the
law of God and to persecute those who
would keep it holy. Now, in their
despair, these teachers confess
before the world their work of
deception. The multitudes are filled
with fury. “We are lost!”
they cry, “and you are the cause
of our ruin;” and they turn upon
the false shepherds. The very ones
that once admired them most will
pronounce the most dreadful curses
upon them. The very hands that once
crowned them with laurels will be
raised for their destruction. The
swords that were to slay God’s
people are now employed to destroy
their enemies. Everywhere there is
strife and bloodshed.
“A noise shall
come to the ends of the earth; for
the Lord hath a controversy with the
nations, He will plead with all
flesh; He will give them that are
wicked to the sword.” Jeremiah
25:31. For six thousand years, the
great controversy has been in
progress; the Son of God and His
heavenly messengers have been in
conflict with the power of the evil
one, to warn, enlighten, and save the
children of men. Now all have made
their decisions; the wicked have
fully united with Satan in his
warfare against God. The time has
come for God to vindicate the
authority of His downtrodden law. Now
the controversy is not alone with
Satan, but with men. “The Lord
hath a controversy with the
nations;” “He will give
them that are wicked to the
sword.”
The mark of
deliverance has been set upon those
“that sigh and that cry for all
the abominations that be done.”
Now the angel of death goes forth,
represented in Ezekiel’s vision
by the men with the slaughtering
weapons, to whom the command is
given: “Slay utterly old and
young, both maids, and little
children, and women: but come not
near any man upon whom is the mark;
and begin at My sanctuary.” Says
the prophet: “They began at the
ancient men which were before the
house.” Ezekiel 9: 1-6. The work
of destruction begins among those who
have professed to be the spiritual
guardians of the people. The false
watchmen are the first to fall. There
are none to pity or to spare. Men,
women, maidens, and little children
perish together.
“The Lord cometh
out of His place to punish the
inhabitants of the earth for their
iniquity: the earth also shall
disclose her blood, and shall no more
cover her slain.” Isaiah 26:21.
“And this shall be the plague
wherewith the Lord will smite all the
people that have fought against
Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume
away while they stand upon their
feet, and their eyes shall consume
away in their holes, and their tongue
shall consume away in their mouth.
And it shall come to pass in that
day, that a great tumult from the
Lord shall be among them; and they
shall lay hold everyone on the hand
of his neighbor, and his hand shall
rise up against the hand of his
neighbor.” Zechariah 14: 12,13.
In the mad strife of their own fierce
passions, and by the awful outpouring
of God’s unmingled wrath, fall
the wicked inhabitants of the earth
– priests, rulers, and people,
rich and poor, high and low.
“And the slain of the Lord shall
be at that day from one end of the
earth unto the other end of the
earth; they shall not be lamented,
neither gathered, nor buried.”
Jeremiah 25:33.
At the coming of
Christ, the wicked are blotted from
the face of the whole earth –
consumed with the spirit of His mouth
and destroyed by the brightness of
His glory. Christ takes His people to
the City of God, and the earth is
emptied of its inhabitants.
“Behold, the Lord maketh the
earth empty, and maketh it waste, and
turneth it upside down, and
scattereth abroad the inhabitants
thereof.” “The land
shall be utterly emptied, and utterly
spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken
this word.” “Because they
have transgressed the laws, changed
the ordinance, broken the everlasting
covenant. Therefore hath the
curse devoured the earth, and they
that dwell therein are desolate:
therefore the inhabitants of the
earth are burned.” Isaiah 24: 1,
3, 5, 6.
The whole earth
appears like a desolate wilderness.
The ruins of the cites and villages
destroyed by the earthquake, uprooted
trees, ragged rocks thrown out by the
sea or torn out of the earth itself,
are scattered over its surface. While
vast caverns mark the spot where the
mountains have been rent from their
foundations.
Now the event takes
place foreshadowed in the last solemn
service of the Day of Atonement. When
the ministration in the holy of
holies had been completed, and the
sins of Israel had been removed from
the sanctuary by virtue of the blood
of the sin offering, then the
scapegoat was presented alive before
the Lord; and in the presence of the
congregation the high priest
confessed over him “all the
iniquities of the children of Israel,
and their transgressions in all their
sins, putting them upon the head of
the goat.” Leviticus 16:21.
In like manner, when the work of
atonement in the heavenly sanctuary
has been completed, then in the
presence of God and heavenly angels
and the hosts of the redeemed the
sins of God’s people will be
place upon Satan; he will be declared
guilty of all the evil which he has
caused them to commit. And as the
scapegoat was sent away into a land
not inhabited, so Satan will be
banished to the desolate earth, an
uninhabited and dreary wilderness.
The revelator
foretells the banishment of Satan and
the condition of chaos and desolation
to which the earth is to be reduced,
and he declares that this condition
will exist for a thousand years.
After presenting the scenes of the
Lord’s second coming and the
destruction of the wicked, the
prophecy continues: “I
saw an angel come down from heaven,
having the key of the bottomless pit
and a great chain in his hand. And he
laid hold of the dragon, that old
serpent, which is the devil, and
Satan, and bound him for a thousand
years, and cast him in to the
bottomless pit, and shut him up, and
set a seal upon him, that he should
deceive the nations no more, till the
thousand years should be fulfilled:
and after that he must be loosed a
little season.” Revelation 20:
1-3.
That the expression
‘bottomless pit” represents
the earth in a state of confusion and
darkness is evident from other
scriptures. Concerning the condition
of the earth “in the
beginning,” the Bible record
says that it “was without form,
and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep.” Genesis 1:2.
Prophecy teaches that it will be
brought back, partially at least, to
this condition. Looking forward to
the great day of God, the prophet
Jeremiah declares: “I beheld the
earth, and, lo, it was without form,
and void; and the heavens, and they
had no light. I beheld the mountains,
and, lo, they trembled, and all the
hills moved lightly. I beheld, and,
lo, there was no man, and all the
birds of the heavens were fled. I
beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place
was a wilderness, and the cities
thereof were broken down.”
Jeremiah 4: 23-26.
Here is to be
the home of Satan with his angels for
a thousand years. Limited to the
earth, he will not have access to
other worlds to tempt and annoy those
who have never fallen. It is in this
sense that he is bound: there are
none remaining, upon whom he can
exercise his power. He is wholly cut
off from the work of deception and
ruin which for so many centuries has
been his sole delight.
The prophet Isaiah,
looking forward to the time of
Satan’s overthrow, exclaims:
“How art thou fallen from
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning! How art thou cut down to the
ground, which didst weaken the
nations!… Thou hast said in
thine heart, I will ascend into
heaven; I will exalt my throne above
the stars of God… I will be like
the Most High. Yet, thou shalt be
brought down to hell, to the sides of
the pit. They that see thee shall
narrowly look upon thee, and consider
thee, saying, Is this the man that
made the earth to tremble, that did
shake kingdoms; that made the world
as a wilderness, and destroyed the
cities thereof, that opened not
the house of his prisoners?” Isaiah
14: 12-17.
For six thousand
years, Satan’s work of rebellion
has “made the earth to
tremble.” He has “made the
world as a wilderness, and destroyed
the cities thereof.” And
he “opened not the house of his
prisoners.” For six thousand
years, his prison house has received
God’s people, and he would have
held them captive forever, but Christ
had broken his bonds and set the
prisoners free.
Even the wicked are
now placed beyond the power of Satan
and alone with his angels he remains
to realize the effects of the curse
which sin has brought. “The
kings of the nations, even all of
them, lie in glory, everyone in his
own house [the grave]. But thou art
cast out of thy grave like an
abominable branch…. Thou shalt
not be joined with them in burial,
because thou hast destroyed thy land,
and slain thy people.” Isaiah
14: 18-20.
For a thousand years,
Satan will wander back and forth in
the desolate earth to behold the
results of his rebellion against the
law of God. During this time, his
suffering will be intense. Since his
fall, his life of unceasing activity
has banished reflection; but he is
deprived of his power and left to
contemplate the part which he has
acted since first he rebelled against
the government of heaven, and to look
forward with trembling and terror to
the dreadful future when he must
suffer for all the evil that he has
done and be punished for the sins
that he has caused to be committed.
To God’s people
the captivity of Satan will bring
gladness and rejoicing. Says the
prophet: “It shall come to pass
in the day that Jehovah shall give
thee rest from thy sorrow, and from
thy trouble, and from the hard
service wherein thou wast made to
serve, that thou shalt take up this
parable against the king of Babylon
[here representing Satan], and say,
How hath the oppressor ceased!…
Jehovah hath broken the staff of the
wicked, the scepter of the rulers;
that smote the peoples in wrath with
a continued stroke, that ruled the
nations in anger, with a persecution
that none restrained.” Verses
3-6, R.V.
During the thousand
years between the first and second
resurrection the judgment of the
wicked takes place. The apostle Paul
points to this judgment as an event
that follows the Second Advent.
“Judge nothing before the time,
until the Lord come, who both will
bring to light the hidden things of
darkness, and will make manifest the
counsels of the hearts.” 1
Corinthians 4:5. Daniel declares that
when the Ancient of Days came,
“judgment was given to the
saints of the Most High.” Daniel
7:22. At this time the righteous
reign as kings and priests unto God.
John in Revelation says: “I saw
thrones, and they sat upon them, and
judgment was given unto them.”
“They shall be priests of God
and of Christ, and shall reign with
Him a thousand years.”
Revelation 20: 4, 6. It is at this
time that, as foretold by Paul,
“the saints shall judge the
world.” 1 Corinthians 6:2. In
union with Christ, they judge the
wicked, comparing their acts with the
statute book, the Bible, and deciding
every case according to the deeds
done in the body. Then the portion
that the wicked must suffer is meted
out, according to their works; and it
is recorded against their names in
the book of death.
Satan also and evil
angels are judged by Christ and His
people. Says Paul: “Know ye not
that we shall judge angels?”
Verse 3. And Jude declares that
‘the angels which are kept not
their first estate, but left their
own habitation, He hath reserved in
everlasting chains under darkness
unto the judgment of the great
day.” Jude 6.
At the close of the
thousand years, the second
resurrection will take place. Then
the wicked will be raised from the
dead and appear before God for the
execution of “the judgment
written.” Thus the revelator,
after describing the resurrection of
the righteous, says” “The
rest of the dead lived not again
until the thousand years were
finished.” Revelation 20:5. And
Isaiah declares, concerning the
wicked: “they shall be gathered
together, as prisoners are gathered
in the pit, and shall be shut up in
the prison, and after many days
shall they be visited.” Isaiah
24:22.
