The Final Reckoning

Notes

1. "It is vain." This is the sight of the fleshly eye, the worldly view, the darkness of unbelief. David said that he was envious when he saw the prosperity of the wicked, until he went into the sanctuary of God, where he looked at them as the Lord saw them; then he saw their latter end. "Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and prolong his days, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God; . . . but it shall not be well with the wicked." Righteousness is always gain, even though it seems to end in defeat. It is not yet revealed what the children of God shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. They are here now, but they are not revealed. What they suffer makes it seem as though they were counted as sheep for the slaughter; but in all these things they are more than conquerors through the love of Christ.

2. "Healing in His wings." From the time of Adam the race has deteriorated, and God's people have gone down in death through wasting disease, starvation, and in every conceivable ill way; but when Christ comes, He will heal all these defects and restore man to his normal size and beauty.

3. "Leave them neither root nor branch." God gives to all existence and life that He may be glorified. His glory is always for His creatures' best good. If man will not use God's life aright, he will revert to his original elements, the dust of the earth. They who have triumphed over and oppressed the good have perished with the sin they have chosen; sin can not exist in the unveiled presence of God when He comes into His own, and they perish in the burning glory of His presence. Satan, the root of all, and the wicked, the branches, perish forever in what they have chosen.

4. "Remember ye." The law of Moses for all Israel, with the statutes, would include all typical offerings, all the truths connected with the sanctuary, and the significance of the ceremonies, as well as the nature of the moral precepts. Remembering this would lead to the development of all the truth of the great threefold message of Revelation 14. It would show the service of the Levitical priesthood to be no meaningless service, but replete with Gospel truth, a service unto the shadow and example of heavenly things.

5. "I will send you Elijah." "But did not God send Elijah in John the Baptist?"—Yes, in a sense. Matt. 11:14; 17:10-12. But John declares that he was not Elijah. John 1:21. What, then, are we to understand?—Simply this: Elijah in his work of reform was a type of John, who went before Christ "in the spirit and power of Elias." Luke 1:17. But the "great and terrible day of the Lord" did not then come, save to that one people as a nation. All these were types of the great and terrible day of the Lord upon the world. We have in Elijah's time the apostasy of Israel through the influence of Jezebel, a sun-worshiping Zidonian. We have the antitypical Jezebel in the great apostate church. We have the union of that church with the state, even as Jezebel with Ahab. There is demanded the spirit and power of Elijah to reprove of sin, preach again God's downtrodden truth, be very zealous for His law, and reprove the sun-worshipers of Baal. These will be manifest, not through one person, to one country, but through all God's true people to the world.