Sealed

From time to time, God drops his judgments upon the earth, and then the earth is shaken and trembles. Men look up to heaven with fear, and all light turns to darkness and all joy to gloom.

The judgments of God fall upon man because of his sin. Rather, because of the multitude of his sins, and because God's limits of tolerance have been exceeded. God's judgments are always just. If perchance the ungodly man should doubt that it is so, and if reasons were (hypothetically) to be given, God would have the strongest arguments to prove it. It is only because of ignorance of God and of the limits to which the wickedness of mankind can reach, that man exculpates man and accuses God.

God does not send his judgments indiscriminately. In his sovereignty, he reserves his own, the righteous of the earth, so that his judgments do not reach them. In Hezekiah's day, when God decides to send exemplary punishment upon Jerusalem, he sends a man clothed in linen to mark all "the men who groan and cry out because of all the abominations that are done within it" (Ezek. 9:4). Then, when he gives the order of extermination to the executioners, he warns them that "to everyone upon whom there is a mark, you shall not come near" (v. 6).

In the same way, in Revelation chapter 7 we find the 144,000 sealed, who are defended from the judgments that fall upon the earth. God's command is: "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads" (Rev. 7:3). The evident purpose is to defend them from judgment.

Now, if God proceeded thus in the days of Ezekiel, and will proceed thus in the days appointed in Revelation, does it not mean that this is his way of proceeding in those cases? Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. His way of acting always obeys the same principles, because he is immutable.

The Bible says that God has put on all his children the seal of the Holy Spirit, which is the sign and guarantee that they belong to God, who is "the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of his glory" (Eph. 1:14).

In Abraham's day, God sent his judgments on Sodom and Gomorrah; however, Lot, who lived in one of those cities, escaped their sad fate because of his righteousness (2 Peter 2:7-9). In Revelation 3:10, the Lord says to the church in Philadelphia: "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth".

Much has been said and written about whether Christians will experience some kind of tribulation in the final days, or whether they will be raptured before it manifests itself. Whatever one's position on the matter, there is one truth that must stand out above any doctrinal position: God does not destroy the righteous with the wicked. We, who have the blessed faith of the Son of God, can then look forward with peace to the times to come, for whatever judgments God sends upon the earth, we know that he will shelter his own and hide them in the hollow of his habitation in the day of evil (Is. 26:20).

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