LESSON: REVELATION 7:9‒12

Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. 1 John 5:4

You cannot train the youth in particular for God’s kingdom without proper schools nor uphold the Word of God without preaching it from the pulpit. If one allows schools and the pulpit to decline and disappear, one can only expect a Sodom and Gomorrah to eventuate. One must expect also results like those which fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah when these cities cast off the restraints of God’s Word and no longer listened to pious Lot or tolerated him.

The prophet Ezekiel faced a similar situation when he prophesied concerning Jerusalem, “As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before Me; therefore I removed them, when I saw it” (Ezekiel 16:48‒50).

This is how matters stand on all sides today. Every man—the peasant, the burgher (citizen), the nobleman—gathers together nothing but money; he keeps on scraping in his greed, gluttonizes and imbibes and carries on just as if God were nothing at all. No one takes up the beggar’s staff of the poor Christ, but rather tramples it underfoot. As in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, all obedience, discipline, and respect will go by the board. No amount of admonition and preaching seems to have any results, and evils seem only to increase so that it does not appear that we can continue like this much longer.

SL.XI.1898,32‒33

PRAYER: Give us courage and strength at all times, O God, to carry on bravely in the midst of pressing difficulties and even indifference and opposition. Prove Yourself to be God for us by giving us a faith that really overcomes the world, for Christ the Savior’s sake. Amen.