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Rev. xiv. 15! A day of binding in bundles and burning, and the world in all green and fresh maturity ready for the reapers, Matt. xiii. 30! Fattened, ripened, made ready, by the God of this world, and his devilish spirits! O! well has Satan vindicated his never-sleeping claim to dominion over the men of this, his world! well has he exercised his sovereignty over them! Well has he moulded them in his image! Well has he prepared them for his kingdom of hell"hell' hath enlarged her mouth without measure!" well have the unclean spirits, the devil's angels, done his bidding-men's "glory, and their multitude and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it," Isa. v. 14. O! well have the unclean spirits filled hell! O! well will they feed with wicked and cursed men, the everlasting fire of hell prepared for the devil and his angels, Matt. xxv. 41!

Reader, this work of wickedness will, nay, must, be based upon blindness and unbelief and scorn of God's word. It is the way Satan always takes to make and keep men wicked, and with a hundred-fold greater power and cunning will he take it, when he gets near the consummation of his devilish triumph over poor man. If men could see, and believe, and reverence God, men would be delivered from their sins

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and from Satan, But Satan keeps them blind, unbelieving, and scorners of God's word, and so keeps them, like himself, wicked., In the last days they will have grown into perfect devilishness, into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Satan, in unbelief and scorn, and enmity towards God. O! hearken unto God"if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath BLINDED the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them," 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4. When the Lord comes, the light of his glorious Gospel will be shining as brightly as ever unto them which believe, but will be hid to them that are lost. The saving truths of the Gospel of grace, that shine in the glorious light of a dying and risen Saviour, of a justifying Saviour, of a free-grace Saviour of poor sinners, will all be hid to them that are lost-held, it may be, in creed, professed in word, acknowledged in ordinances, by thousands and tens of thousands, but hid to them in their glorious soul-saving power. And so will the saving truths of the Gospel of the coming kingdom be hid to them that are lost-to all of them, professors of the Gospel of grace, or unbelievers in the Gospel of grace, When the

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Lord comes, the world of lost men will be blinded in unbelief and scorn of God's word. When the Lord comes, he will send thick and fast his preparatory herald-signs. Men will see the Jews gathering in to their ancient land— and will take no note of it, or pass it by, or reject it in scorn, as a herald-sign of his coming. They will see the work of the three unclean spirits doing around them on all sides, sin and wickedness abounding in exceeding sinfulness false Christs, false prophets, false gospels, false preachers, the grace of God turned into licentiousness, the truth of God held in unrighteousness, men given over to a strong delusion to believe a lie, and all of it, and especially the lie, covered with a form of godliness, a seeming setting forth and believing of Christ crucified-and yet they will not understand it as a preparatory token of the Lord's coming. They will see this universal wickedness, blindness, unbelief, falseness, and scorn of God's word, headed up into that daring consummation of hatred and rebellion against God, that legionsin, "the war with the Lamb," Rev. xvii. 14, in the "battle," to which they are "gathered" for slaughter, "of that great day of God Almighty," Rev. xvi. 14—and yet they will neither perceive in it any lineaments of its devilish cha

racter, nor perceive it as leading on to the Lord's breaking forth upon the world. They will see around them, one by one, one by one, all the other things and events and circumstances, which the Lord has revealed in his word, as the herald-signs and preparatory works, speeding on his vessel-and yet they will not acknowledge one of them, as bringing in the Lord in its appointed track. So, even so, in the midst of the completion of all his forerunning tokens, of the gathering of all his warning words and revealed signs into one body of fulfilment, will the Lord come upon a blind and wicked and unbelieving generation, with SUDDEN DESTRUCTION, as a thief in the night.

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"God's judgments, whether upon the world, or upon nations, or upon individuals, or upon one sinner in his day, have always come upon, and because of, and in the midst of, unbelief of Him and his word and his ministers. He speaks in his Providence-his word speakshis ministers speak-and all are disbelieved of man, and God judges man for his unbelief, not so much for his outward actings of sin, as for the inward root of it, unbelief of Himself

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and his word and his ministers. It always was so it always is so-it always will be so, even to the end of the world, when it will be awfully and visibly so.

Run through the Bible from the first days. to the last, and you will find it so.

God had said to the first man in the garden, "in the day that thou eatest" of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "thou shalt surely die"-the serpent, the devil, said, “ ye shall not surely die." Man believed the devil, and disbelieved God, acted upon his unbelief of God, and took and eat-God judged him for his unbelief and the act which sprung from it, and the judgment was death, Gen. ii. 17, iii. 4, &c.

After the fall, God issued his decree, or rather made known his covenant for man, that "without shedding of blood there is no remission," Heb. ix. 22. Cain disbelieved the word, and "brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord"-" unto Cain and his offering," the Lord "had not respect;" hence Cain's subsequent sin, and the Lord's subsequent judgment, Gen. iv. 3, 5, &c.

The "world of the ungodly" before the flood disbelieved God's word and Noah, the preacher of it-the inhabitants of Sodom be

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