And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.
Armageddon is the place and setting of the final great battle, the last great day of conflict between good and evil. Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords will stand at the head of heaven's angels to direct the battle for His people, while Satan musters his forces of evil and goes forth to the kings of the whole world to gather them under his banner for the mastery. The seven last plagues poured out upon the living wicked culminate at Armageddon just before and during the deliverance of the saints and just before the second coming, falling only after Christ has finished His interceding work as high priest and every case is decided. Those plagues are the full measure of God's wrath upon a godless world that has exceeded the limits of His grace and made void His law, and they fall without respite upon those who have no shelter, while God's obedient people are covered and hid until the desolation is overpast. That day divides the whole world into only two classes, those who keep God's law and those who violate it, and it calls now for wakeful readiness with the Holy Spirit's power sustaining faith and courage so as to escape the plagues.
Place in Revelation
Revelation 16:16 belongs to the prophecies of Revelation 12–18, which are being fulfilled as part of the prophetic sequence leading through the final events to Christ's triumph. It belongs to the account of the last events of earth's history made known to John on Patmos as a solemn warning of what is to come. That account calls for clear-mindedness, because Satan is working to deceive people and confusion can bring ruin.
The verse belongs to the account of the seven last plagues, the vials of God's wrath poured out upon the wicked and the godless world who have no shelter. They bring incurable sores and other withering judgments, from which the ungodly who worship the beast and its image and receive its mark find no deliverance, and afterward sinners bitterly reproach those who stood in their way until their hearts faint. They fall on the living wicked just before and during the saints' deliverance, as Egypt's plagues came just before and at Israel's deliverance, and they begin after Jesus finishes His work in the sanctuary. During the plagues this crisis is the time of Jacob's trouble, when the wicked blame the saints and seek to kill them, God delivers the saints by His voice, and the 144,000 triumph. The word of God explains how to escape these plagues, making it important to search God's word to know how to escape them.
Those plagues of God are already falling upon the earth in awful calamities by sea with vessels hurled into eternity without warning and accidents by land with fire consuming hoarded riches and sweeping away the most costly structures as by a breath of fire from heaven, proving the end of all things is at hand. God permits them so the world may take heed, professing Christians may come to their senses, and sinners may be afraid and tremble before Him. The Lord will not interfere to protect the property of those who transgress His law, break His covenant, and trample upon His Sabbath by accepting a spurious rest day in its place. The verse is symbolic prophecy whose deep meaning calls for close, prayerful study lest it be misinterpreted, since understanding it guides choices so people will not receive the plagues coming on the world. It is part of the judgments of Revelation that carry special meaning for the present time, showing how fast the last great crisis is approaching and calling for less time in strife and contention in view of that crisis. The judgments God is now sending upon the earth belong with those final judgments, and those who say they have no special meaning will soon be forced to understand them.
The Final Battle
Armageddon is the place and setting of a battle soon to be fought, the final great conflict and last great day of battle. It is a coming event in which the whole world takes one side or the other, revealing only two classes in the world, those who keep God's law and those who violate it, the same two classes recognized in the judgment. On one side stands the Creator of heaven and earth, and all on His side bear His signet and are obedient to His every command, while on the other side stands the Prince of darkness with those who have chosen apostasy and rebellion.
Christ, whose vesture bears the name King of kings and Lord of lords, will lead the armies of heaven in that battle. He stands at the head of the angels of heaven as Captain of the Lord's host to direct the battle for His people and to vindicate His truth in triumph. Satan is also mustering his forces of evil for that great day of God Almighty, going forth to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them under his banner to be trained for battle, making his most powerful efforts for the mastery. That gathering is connected with Satan inciting the nations to war to divert people from preparing for the day of God.
In the battle evil angels unite their powers with evil men in a desperate struggle using centuries of experience in deception and battle. Strong armies are gathered to destroy the champions of God and the truth, united by trampling down God's law and by hatred to God. Every form of evil springs into intense activity, and war, bloodshed and rebellion against God's law reach an aggravating pass, so that anyone showing inclination to return to God and keep His commandments will be denounced as treacherous to earthly governments. The verse shows armies mustering and nations marshaled for the final conflict of the great controversy, as one of the terrible scenes that will take place as signs of Christ's coming, bringing men's hearts failing them for fear, the earth moved out of its place, and the mountains carried into the midst of the sea with waves roaring and troubled. Studying history in light of prophecy helps trace the progress of events leading to that marshaling for the final conflict.
The great battle is held back until God's servants are sealed in their foreheads. Four mighty angels hold back the powers of the earth, hold the four winds, and keep Satan's armies at bay, though the nations are eager for conflict. Angels belt the world with linked hands and sleepless vigilance unseen by human sight, refusing Satan his claim to supremacy. When that restraining power is removed the nations will unite under satanic leadership and there will come a time of trouble and anguish, with deadly instruments of warfare invented and vessels with their living cargo entombed in the great deep.
The seventh vial brings this struggle, in which Providence has a part while the powers of evil resist. When the angel of Revelation 18 lights the earth with glory, religious forces both good and evil awaken and God's people and the armies of the living God take the field. Trumpet after trumpet sounded and vial after vial poured out upon the inhabitants of the earth are solemn scenes of stupendous interest right upon us, giving sure indication of His presence who has directed every aggressive movement and accompanied His cause through all ages and will be with His people in all conflicts to the end.
The world is now preparing for this coming Armageddon, and that preparation together with crime, murder, suicide, divorce, and the struggle between capital and labor proves the present age is the parallel pictured of the days of Noah and the days of Lot, the days of the Son of man. The present is the antitypical days of Noah, repeating the wickedness, spiritual declension, infidelity, taking wives of all they chose, and violence filling the land in Noah's time. It repeats also the impurity and licentiousness spreading over the cities of the plain in Lot's time, now repeated in social impurity, defilement of youth, corruption of age, licensed prostitution of the cities, and white slave traffic of the nations, with evil men and seducers waxing worse and worse in hurried preparation for the harvest of evil as the day of earth's desperate sorrow approaches.
Timing and Sequence
The seven last plagues described in Revelation 16:1-21 culminate at Armageddon and fall upon living people on the earth. Some of the wicked alive on earth will be subjects for these plagues just before the second coming of Christ, poured out just before and during the saints' deliverance. As Egypt's plagues came just before and at Israel's deliverance, so these come just before and at the deliverance of the saints. Among professed Sabbath-keepers then alive the fates are fixed in three ways, distinct from one another.
The plagues are poured out only after Jesus finishes His work as high priest and His interceding work for Israel in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary. He will not leave until every case is decided for salvation or destruction. God's wrath cannot come until He has finished, laid off His priestly attire, clothed Himself with the garments of vengeance, stepped out from between the Father and man, taken up His kingly role to execute judgment, and then poured out His wrath on those who rejected His truth. Before they fall God's people receive a covering that shelters them from God's wrath, while Satan tries to keep them from being ready until the sealing is past.
The anger of the nations, the wrath of God, and the time to judge the dead are separate events following one after another. Michael has not yet stood up and the time of trouble such as never was has not yet commenced, and the nations are now getting angry. When the High Priest finishes His work in the sanctuary He will stand up and put on vengeance, and then the plagues will be poured out, held back until then by the four angels holding the four winds. When Christ's priestly work and intercession have ended the opportunity to accept salvation has passed, with no atoning blood to cleanse the guilty and no Saviour to plead for them, and those who rejected mercy face the judgments without escape. The plagues are soon to be poured out when the angel of mercy leaves the world, coming upon a world filled with sin, shame, sorrow, and darkness on every side.
During the plagues this crisis is the time of Jacob's trouble. The plagues enrage the wicked against the righteous, and the wicked blame the saints and seek to kill them under a decree to kill them, thinking the righteous brought the plagues and that ridding the earth of them would stay the plagues. The saints cry out for deliverance and are delivered by God's voice, and the 144,000 triumph. Of professed Sabbath-keepers then alive, some will die a natural death beforehand and be food for worms, some will remain unprepared and suffer the seven last plagues, and some will remain prepared on the earth and be translated alive at the coming of Jesus without seeing death.
Nature of Judgments
The plagues gathered toward at Armageddon contain the full measure of divine wrath against the living wicked, bringing judgment to its full purpose in a future day of wrath after intercession ends and the kingly work of execution begins. These are judgments upon the wicked who are alive, not the final execution of judgment, which comes at the second death. That wrath is poured out upon the world in the vials as prophecy is fulfilled, upon land and sea and the elements of the air.
They come upon a godless world when people exceed the limits of grace and forbearance, and He must intervene to vindicate His honor. Through centuries the harvest has ripened for the sickle, men have exceeded the bounds prescribed by God and outrun the limits of His grace, made void His law while making human laws supreme, and because Omnipotence keeps a reckoning of the guilt of every nation His interference must come. That disobedience is seen in exalting a false Sabbath in place of the seventh-day Sabbath, in transgressing His law, breaking His covenant, and trampling upon His Sabbath by accepting a spurious rest day, and He will not interfere to protect the property of those who do so.
The pestilence, earthquakes, and destruction on land and sea now seen are only faint, preliminary representations and premonitory convulsions of the greater judgments to come. Awful calamities by sea hurl vessels with their living cargo into eternity without warning, and accidents by land consume with fire hoarded riches, much of it gathered by oppression of the poor, sweeping away the most costly structures as by a breath of fire from heaven, and these plagues already falling prove the end of all things is at hand. Drops and sprinklings from the vials are already falling in destructive fires, earthquakes burying cities and villages, railway accidents, tornadoes, floods such as at Johnstown and Williamsport, vitiated air, pestilences, cholera, diphtheria, and great mortality and crimes in 1889 and 1890, resulting from not restraining the powers of darkness in their deadly work. They warn of what will come in the near future when the full vials fall with greater earthquakes opening the earth, terrible shocks rending the crust, lordly palaces becoming heaps of ruins, wealth swept away, and the religious world terribly shaken, with the world divided into the just and the unjust before the coming of the Son of man.
God permits these judgments so the world may take heed, professing Christians may come to their senses, and sinners may be afraid and tremble before Him. The judgments now being sent belong with those final judgments, and those who say they have no special meaning will soon be forced to understand them. Before the plagues fall His people receive a covering that shelters them from wrath, while the adversary works to keep them unready until the sealing is past. Many will come up to the falling of the plagues without a shelter, and when the plagues begin to fall they will wring their hands in distress, for the hour will then be too late to get ready.
The plagues bring incurable sores and other withering judgments, from which the ungodly who worship the beast and its image and receive its mark find no deliverance. When punishment of transgressors begins there will be no period of respite until the end, even after the angel of mercy has left a world filled with sin, shame, sorrow, and darkness on every side. Only those sanctified through the truth in the love of God will stand, hid with Christ in God until the desolation shall be overpast. Those who cannot recognize the signs of the times in a wicked and adulterous generation will perish under these plagues poured from the vials of wrath.
In that time false religious leaders who led people astray face the plagues and ultimately acknowledge that God loved the saints because they held to the truth and kept His commandments, and the unrighteous are then destroyed from the earth. The wicked are brought to fearful agony in which they blame their families and ministers for keeping them from receiving the truth and warning of that hour, and afterward sinners bitterly reproach those who stood in their way and obstructed the work of warning sinners, causing their hearts to faint. The ministers suffer wrath even more severely than the people. Kings and nobles, rich and poor alike, will be humbled as the plagues fall upon them, until human haughtiness is made low and the Lord alone is exalted in that day.
Before the plagues are poured out deceptive religious excitement will lead some to think God is still working through fallen churches, but honest people will leave those churches and join the remnant. War, bloodshed, and rebellion against God's law will reach an aggravating pass, and anyone who shows inclination to return to God and keep His commandments will be denounced as treacherous to earthly governments.
Call to Readiness
The word of God explains how to escape the plagues, and for that reason searching God's word to learn the way of escape is of the highest importance. The day of this battle demands spiritual alertness like that of the wise virgins, with grace as the oil in their vessels. Believers need the power of the Holy Spirit sustaining faith and courage, supplying motives and power of purpose with hope and courage and valor. The warning now is that He is coming, get ready, and receive the Holy Ghost as the preparation and shelter for the plagues.
That day must find none sleeping but wide awake, remaining awake and ready through grace and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. It comes at a solemn, fearful time when the angels are already girded awaiting the mandate of God to pour their vials of wrath upon the world. Destroying angels take up the work of vengeance because the Spirit of God is gradually withdrawing from the world. Then fundamental principles will be brought out and decisions made in regard to them amid prevailing skepticism and abounding ungodliness.
The faith of individual church members will be tested as though each stood alone in the world. There will be eternal life to those who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, and indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul that does evil, without respect of persons. Even now God still holds out to every soul the precious privilege of exchanging darkness for light, error for truth, and sin for righteousness. But His patience and mercy will not always wait.
In view of how fast the last great crisis is approaching there should be less time spent in strife and contention. It is time for the voice of warning to be heard in the land.
Armageddon is the place and setting of the final great battle, the last great day of conflict between good and evil. Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords will stand at the head of heaven's angels to direct the battle for His people, while Satan musters his forces of evil and goes forth to the kings of the whole world to gather them under his banner for the mastery. The seven last plagues poured out upon the living wicked culminate at Armageddon just before and during the deliverance of the saints and just before the second coming, falling only after Christ has finished His interceding work as high priest and every case is decided. Those plagues are the full measure of God's wrath upon a godless world that has exceeded the limits of His grace and made void His law, and they fall without respite upon those who have no shelter, while God's obedient people are covered and hid until the desolation is overpast. That day divides the whole world into only two classes, those who keep God's law and those who violate it, and it calls now for wakeful readiness with the Holy Spirit's power sustaining faith and courage so as to escape the plagues.
Place in Revelation
Revelation 16:16 belongs to the prophecies of Revelation 12–18, which are being fulfilled as part of the prophetic sequence leading through the final events to Christ's triumph. It belongs to the account of the last events of earth's history made known to John on Patmos as a solemn warning of what is to come. That account calls for clear-mindedness, because Satan is working to deceive people and confusion can bring ruin.
The verse belongs to the account of the seven last plagues, the vials of God's wrath poured out upon the wicked and the godless world who have no shelter. They bring incurable sores and other withering judgments, from which the ungodly who worship the beast and its image and receive its mark find no deliverance, and afterward sinners bitterly reproach those who stood in their way until their hearts faint. They fall on the living wicked just before and during the saints' deliverance, as Egypt's plagues came just before and at Israel's deliverance, and they begin after Jesus finishes His work in the sanctuary. During the plagues this crisis is the time of Jacob's trouble, when the wicked blame the saints and seek to kill them, God delivers the saints by His voice, and the 144,000 triumph. The word of God explains how to escape these plagues, making it important to search God's word to know how to escape them.
Those plagues of God are already falling upon the earth in awful calamities by sea with vessels hurled into eternity without warning and accidents by land with fire consuming hoarded riches and sweeping away the most costly structures as by a breath of fire from heaven, proving the end of all things is at hand. God permits them so the world may take heed, professing Christians may come to their senses, and sinners may be afraid and tremble before Him. The Lord will not interfere to protect the property of those who transgress His law, break His covenant, and trample upon His Sabbath by accepting a spurious rest day in its place. The verse is symbolic prophecy whose deep meaning calls for close, prayerful study lest it be misinterpreted, since understanding it guides choices so people will not receive the plagues coming on the world. It is part of the judgments of Revelation that carry special meaning for the present time, showing how fast the last great crisis is approaching and calling for less time in strife and contention in view of that crisis. The judgments God is now sending upon the earth belong with those final judgments, and those who say they have no special meaning will soon be forced to understand them.
The Final Battle
Armageddon is the place and setting of a battle soon to be fought, the final great conflict and last great day of battle. It is a coming event in which the whole world takes one side or the other, revealing only two classes in the world, those who keep God's law and those who violate it, the same two classes recognized in the judgment. On one side stands the Creator of heaven and earth, and all on His side bear His signet and are obedient to His every command, while on the other side stands the Prince of darkness with those who have chosen apostasy and rebellion.
Christ, whose vesture bears the name King of kings and Lord of lords, will lead the armies of heaven in that battle. He stands at the head of the angels of heaven as Captain of the Lord's host to direct the battle for His people and to vindicate His truth in triumph. Satan is also mustering his forces of evil for that great day of God Almighty, going forth to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them under his banner to be trained for battle, making his most powerful efforts for the mastery. That gathering is connected with Satan inciting the nations to war to divert people from preparing for the day of God.
In the battle evil angels unite their powers with evil men in a desperate struggle using centuries of experience in deception and battle. Strong armies are gathered to destroy the champions of God and the truth, united by trampling down God's law and by hatred to God. Every form of evil springs into intense activity, and war, bloodshed and rebellion against God's law reach an aggravating pass, so that anyone showing inclination to return to God and keep His commandments will be denounced as treacherous to earthly governments. The verse shows armies mustering and nations marshaled for the final conflict of the great controversy, as one of the terrible scenes that will take place as signs of Christ's coming, bringing men's hearts failing them for fear, the earth moved out of its place, and the mountains carried into the midst of the sea with waves roaring and troubled. Studying history in light of prophecy helps trace the progress of events leading to that marshaling for the final conflict.
The great battle is held back until God's servants are sealed in their foreheads. Four mighty angels hold back the powers of the earth, hold the four winds, and keep Satan's armies at bay, though the nations are eager for conflict. Angels belt the world with linked hands and sleepless vigilance unseen by human sight, refusing Satan his claim to supremacy. When that restraining power is removed the nations will unite under satanic leadership and there will come a time of trouble and anguish, with deadly instruments of warfare invented and vessels with their living cargo entombed in the great deep.
The seventh vial brings this struggle, in which Providence has a part while the powers of evil resist. When the angel of Revelation 18 lights the earth with glory, religious forces both good and evil awaken and God's people and the armies of the living God take the field. Trumpet after trumpet sounded and vial after vial poured out upon the inhabitants of the earth are solemn scenes of stupendous interest right upon us, giving sure indication of His presence who has directed every aggressive movement and accompanied His cause through all ages and will be with His people in all conflicts to the end.
The world is now preparing for this coming Armageddon, and that preparation together with crime, murder, suicide, divorce, and the struggle between capital and labor proves the present age is the parallel pictured of the days of Noah and the days of Lot, the days of the Son of man. The present is the antitypical days of Noah, repeating the wickedness, spiritual declension, infidelity, taking wives of all they chose, and violence filling the land in Noah's time. It repeats also the impurity and licentiousness spreading over the cities of the plain in Lot's time, now repeated in social impurity, defilement of youth, corruption of age, licensed prostitution of the cities, and white slave traffic of the nations, with evil men and seducers waxing worse and worse in hurried preparation for the harvest of evil as the day of earth's desperate sorrow approaches.
Timing and Sequence
The seven last plagues described in Revelation 16:1-21 culminate at Armageddon and fall upon living people on the earth. Some of the wicked alive on earth will be subjects for these plagues just before the second coming of Christ, poured out just before and during the saints' deliverance. As Egypt's plagues came just before and at Israel's deliverance, so these come just before and at the deliverance of the saints. Among professed Sabbath-keepers then alive the fates are fixed in three ways, distinct from one another.
The plagues are poured out only after Jesus finishes His work as high priest and His interceding work for Israel in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary. He will not leave until every case is decided for salvation or destruction. God's wrath cannot come until He has finished, laid off His priestly attire, clothed Himself with the garments of vengeance, stepped out from between the Father and man, taken up His kingly role to execute judgment, and then poured out His wrath on those who rejected His truth. Before they fall God's people receive a covering that shelters them from God's wrath, while Satan tries to keep them from being ready until the sealing is past.
The anger of the nations, the wrath of God, and the time to judge the dead are separate events following one after another. Michael has not yet stood up and the time of trouble such as never was has not yet commenced, and the nations are now getting angry. When the High Priest finishes His work in the sanctuary He will stand up and put on vengeance, and then the plagues will be poured out, held back until then by the four angels holding the four winds. When Christ's priestly work and intercession have ended the opportunity to accept salvation has passed, with no atoning blood to cleanse the guilty and no Saviour to plead for them, and those who rejected mercy face the judgments without escape. The plagues are soon to be poured out when the angel of mercy leaves the world, coming upon a world filled with sin, shame, sorrow, and darkness on every side.
During the plagues this crisis is the time of Jacob's trouble. The plagues enrage the wicked against the righteous, and the wicked blame the saints and seek to kill them under a decree to kill them, thinking the righteous brought the plagues and that ridding the earth of them would stay the plagues. The saints cry out for deliverance and are delivered by God's voice, and the 144,000 triumph. Of professed Sabbath-keepers then alive, some will die a natural death beforehand and be food for worms, some will remain unprepared and suffer the seven last plagues, and some will remain prepared on the earth and be translated alive at the coming of Jesus without seeing death.
Nature of Judgments
The plagues gathered toward at Armageddon contain the full measure of divine wrath against the living wicked, bringing judgment to its full purpose in a future day of wrath after intercession ends and the kingly work of execution begins. These are judgments upon the wicked who are alive, not the final execution of judgment, which comes at the second death. That wrath is poured out upon the world in the vials as prophecy is fulfilled, upon land and sea and the elements of the air.
They come upon a godless world when people exceed the limits of grace and forbearance, and He must intervene to vindicate His honor. Through centuries the harvest has ripened for the sickle, men have exceeded the bounds prescribed by God and outrun the limits of His grace, made void His law while making human laws supreme, and because Omnipotence keeps a reckoning of the guilt of every nation His interference must come. That disobedience is seen in exalting a false Sabbath in place of the seventh-day Sabbath, in transgressing His law, breaking His covenant, and trampling upon His Sabbath by accepting a spurious rest day, and He will not interfere to protect the property of those who do so.
The pestilence, earthquakes, and destruction on land and sea now seen are only faint, preliminary representations and premonitory convulsions of the greater judgments to come. Awful calamities by sea hurl vessels with their living cargo into eternity without warning, and accidents by land consume with fire hoarded riches, much of it gathered by oppression of the poor, sweeping away the most costly structures as by a breath of fire from heaven, and these plagues already falling prove the end of all things is at hand. Drops and sprinklings from the vials are already falling in destructive fires, earthquakes burying cities and villages, railway accidents, tornadoes, floods such as at Johnstown and Williamsport, vitiated air, pestilences, cholera, diphtheria, and great mortality and crimes in 1889 and 1890, resulting from not restraining the powers of darkness in their deadly work. They warn of what will come in the near future when the full vials fall with greater earthquakes opening the earth, terrible shocks rending the crust, lordly palaces becoming heaps of ruins, wealth swept away, and the religious world terribly shaken, with the world divided into the just and the unjust before the coming of the Son of man.
God permits these judgments so the world may take heed, professing Christians may come to their senses, and sinners may be afraid and tremble before Him. The judgments now being sent belong with those final judgments, and those who say they have no special meaning will soon be forced to understand them. Before the plagues fall His people receive a covering that shelters them from wrath, while the adversary works to keep them unready until the sealing is past. Many will come up to the falling of the plagues without a shelter, and when the plagues begin to fall they will wring their hands in distress, for the hour will then be too late to get ready.
The plagues bring incurable sores and other withering judgments, from which the ungodly who worship the beast and its image and receive its mark find no deliverance. When punishment of transgressors begins there will be no period of respite until the end, even after the angel of mercy has left a world filled with sin, shame, sorrow, and darkness on every side. Only those sanctified through the truth in the love of God will stand, hid with Christ in God until the desolation shall be overpast. Those who cannot recognize the signs of the times in a wicked and adulterous generation will perish under these plagues poured from the vials of wrath.
In that time false religious leaders who led people astray face the plagues and ultimately acknowledge that God loved the saints because they held to the truth and kept His commandments, and the unrighteous are then destroyed from the earth. The wicked are brought to fearful agony in which they blame their families and ministers for keeping them from receiving the truth and warning of that hour, and afterward sinners bitterly reproach those who stood in their way and obstructed the work of warning sinners, causing their hearts to faint. The ministers suffer wrath even more severely than the people. Kings and nobles, rich and poor alike, will be humbled as the plagues fall upon them, until human haughtiness is made low and the Lord alone is exalted in that day.
Before the plagues are poured out deceptive religious excitement will lead some to think God is still working through fallen churches, but honest people will leave those churches and join the remnant. War, bloodshed, and rebellion against God's law will reach an aggravating pass, and anyone who shows inclination to return to God and keep His commandments will be denounced as treacherous to earthly governments.
Call to Readiness
The word of God explains how to escape the plagues, and for that reason searching God's word to learn the way of escape is of the highest importance. The day of this battle demands spiritual alertness like that of the wise virgins, with grace as the oil in their vessels. Believers need the power of the Holy Spirit sustaining faith and courage, supplying motives and power of purpose with hope and courage and valor. The warning now is that He is coming, get ready, and receive the Holy Ghost as the preparation and shelter for the plagues.
That day must find none sleeping but wide awake, remaining awake and ready through grace and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. It comes at a solemn, fearful time when the angels are already girded awaiting the mandate of God to pour their vials of wrath upon the world. Destroying angels take up the work of vengeance because the Spirit of God is gradually withdrawing from the world. Then fundamental principles will be brought out and decisions made in regard to them amid prevailing skepticism and abounding ungodliness.
The faith of individual church members will be tested as though each stood alone in the world. There will be eternal life to those who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, and indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul that does evil, without respect of persons. Even now God still holds out to every soul the precious privilege of exchanging darkness for light, error for truth, and sin for righteousness. But His patience and mercy will not always wait.
In view of how fast the last great crisis is approaching there should be less time spent in strife and contention. It is time for the voice of warning to be heard in the land.