CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Last Generation
God is ready for the challenge. He has
bided His time. The supreme exhibition has been reserved until the final
contest. Out of the last generation God will select His chosen ones. Not
the strong or the mighty, not the honored or the rich, not the wise or
the learned, but common, ordinary people will God take, and through and
by them make His demonstration. Satan has claimed that those who in the
past have served God have done so from mercenary motives, that God has
pampered them, and that he, Satan, has not had free access to them. If
he were given full permission to press his case, they also would be won
over. But he charges that God is afraid to let him do this. "Give
me a fair chance," Satan says, "and I will win out."
And so, to silence forever Satan’s
charges; to make it evident that His people are serving Him from motives
of loyalty and right without reference to reward; to clear His own name
and character of the charges of injustice and arbitrariness; and to show
to angels and men that His law can be kept by the weakest of men under
the most discouraging and most untoward circumstances, God permits Satan
in the last generation to try His people to the utmost. They will be
threatened, tortured, persecuted. They will stand face to face with
death in the issuance of the decree to worship the beast and his image.
(Rev. 13: 15.) But they will not yield. They are willing to die rather
than to sin.
God removes His Spirit from the earth.
Satan will have a greater measure of control than he has ever had
before. True, he may not kill God’s people, but that seems to be the
only limitation. And he uses every permission he has. He knows what is
at stake. It is now or never.
God, to make the demonstration
complete, does one more thing. He hides Himself. The sanctuary in heaven
is closed. The saints cry to God day and night for deliverance, but He
appears not to hear. God’s chosen ones are passing through Gethsemane.
They are having a little taste of Christ’s experience—those three
hours on the cross. Seemingly they must fight their battles alone. They
must live in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor.
But though Christ has finished His
intercession, the saints are still the object of God’s love and care.
Holy angels watch over them. God provides them shelter from their
enemies; He provides them with food, shields them from destruction, and
supplies grace and power for holy living. (See Psalms 91.) Yet they are
still in the world, still tempted, afflicted, tormented.
Will they stand the test? To human eyes
it seems impossible. If only God would come to their rescue, all would
be well, They are determined to resist the evil one. If need be they
will die, but they will not sin. Satan has no power—and never has had—to
make any man sin. He can tempt, he can seduce, he can threaten; but he
cannot compel. And now God demonstrates through the weakest of the weak
that there is no excuse, and never has been any, for sinning. If men in
the last generation can successfully repel Satan’s attack; if they can
do this with all the odds against them and the sanctuary closed, what
excuse is there for men’s ever sinning?
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