A dead soul’s epitaph in every face.’
“To-day, friends, I know that ‘the anointed eye’ must have traced ‘The dead soul’s epitaph,’ in my life, if not in my face.
“Now let us face our present position, as those who are left! What is the future to be? This is what you need to know, what I need to know! First, let me say, the next thing for each to do is to seek the Lord, to cry unto Him for mercy and pardon, while all our hearts are shocked and startled, and our thoughts are turned God-wards. For unless we close with God, become His, and live out the future to Him, our portion will be an Eternal Hell.”
An awful hush rested upon the gathered thousands, as he proceeded:—
“One thing appears very plain from Scripture, that is, that when, last night, Christ came into the air and caught up His Church, living and dead, that the Devil, who has been the Prince of the Power of the air, had to descend to earth. Christ and Beelzebub can never live together in the same realm.
“In the re-creation of this earth, recorded in Genesis, God blessed everything that He created, save the atmosphere, He did not, He could not bless that because Satan, driven from the re-created earth, by the breath of the divine Spirit, had taken refuge in the air. He is therefore called in Scripture, not only the ‘Prince of this World,’ but ‘The Prince of the power of the air.’
“Now, beloved, the Spirit of God has left the earth. The Devil has taken up his abode here with all his myriad agents, and he is going to make earth as hot for those of us who will witness for God, as is hell itself to the lost.
“If we will witness for God during the years we are beginning to-day—called the years of ‘The Great Tribulation,’ they will probably be seven in number, and extend therefore to the dawning moment of the Millennium—if we witness therefore for God, I say, during these intervening seven years, we may expect to meet with hideous trial and suffering.
“Antichrist will now soon make himself known—he will be a man, not a system, mind,—he will mislead the Jews, who will now, immediately, return to their own land, and build their New Temple. For a time, Antichrist will appear to be the friends of the Jews, but he will seek to force the most awful idolatry upon them. The mass of Jewry will accept all this.