Today's reading in Isaiah, we see how God's judgements continue to fall upon the land. In fact, the Bible tells us that the Lord turns the earth upside down... And a curse devours the earth and they that dwell here are desolate. Basically we see the protecting hand of God being removed from the world (a prophecy of what is to come) and the enemy is allowed to wreck his destructive work...
I don't think we as a people recognize how much we owe to God for His sustaining grace and protection. Consider the following sobering reminder from Inspiration on what is happening in our world...
"Satan works through the elements also to garner his harvest of unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows. When he was suffered to afflict Job, how quickly flocks and herds, servants, houses, children, were swept away, one trouble succeeding another as in a moment. It is God that shields His creatures and hedges them in from the power of the destroyer. But the Christian world have shown contempt for the law of Jehovah; and the Lord will do just what He has declared that He would—He will withdraw His blessings from the earth and remove His protecting care from those who are rebelling against His law and teaching and forcing others to do the same. Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard. He will favor and prosper some in order to further his own designs, and he will bring trouble upon others and lead men to believe that it is God who is afflicting them.
While appearing to the children of men as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. “The earth mourneth and fadeth away,” “the haughty people ... do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Isaiah 24:4, 5. (Great Controversy, p. 589)All around us the world is falling apart. But this is only the beginning of sorrows to come. Let us use the time we have wisely, while the day is still at hand. For the night cometh, when no man can work!
Tomorrow's Reading: Isa. 25-26 and Ps. 104
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