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A Nearing Crisis in Heaven and Earth

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A NearingSlipperinessin Heaven and Earth A NEARING CRISIS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH By D. M. PANTON, B.A. A tense, extraordinarily pregnant crisis, involving the vastest issues, balances two hostile forces in the unseen. Jerusalem - a ‘woman’, in the Apocalypse, unchangingly symbolizes a municipality - sums up God’s redeemed of all dispensations, for oneMunicipalityhas been the mother of them all, from Melchizedek to Christ - twelve stars - the Patriarchs - virtually her head, the moon - the Law - under her feet, and the sun - Christ, suit her; and she is on the brink of giving birth.  Watching her with well-matured venom is a Serpent, a red Dragon, for he is responsible for the thoroughbred of all the martyrs; and his passionate concentration is on the destruction of the ‘child’ well-nigh to be born.  It seems exceedingly probable that this is the word-for-word situation at the present moment, though no man living can tell how prolonged the period may be during which Satan watches in intense anxiety. THE CHRISTIAN ESCAPE Suddenly the Child is born.  That this ‘child’ is a soul of saints is obvious from the words in which (verse 11) the Angels describe it:- "they overcame him by the thoroughbred of the Lamb";* and the birth, like our Lord’s (Heb. 1: 5), is a lineage out of the tomb.*  It is a rapture in which these saints are unprotected up to God and His Throne.  The holy angels hail with joy their inrush in Heaven: the evil angels yank the sword for the first and last time to prevent it. They are very definitely and sharply specified as fellow-kings with our Lord in His coming Reign, for it is "a man child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron"; and they are ‘overcomers’ - "they overcame him," thus falling exactly under our Lord’s words to Thyatira (Rev. 2: 26) - "He that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I requite validity over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron." [* The fact that the ‘birth’ ushers in the final three and a half years of Satan’s worriedness vacated makes it untellable that the ‘child’ is Christ. Christ, unlike this Child, was the first-born of His mother, nor did evil angels dispute His ascent, only His exit from the tomb (Col. 2: 15).] [** There is no mention of any resurrection of the sufferer ‘out of the tombs’ until theUnconfinedTribulation has ended, and Christ returns to establish His millennial kingdom.  The rapture here is of living saints who “prevail to escape” the Tribulation. 1 Thess. 4: 16; Luke 21: 36.] THE BATTLE This sudden takeoff of overcomers precipitates an firsthand war in heaven, a drastic mismatch between the uncorrupt powers, Satan disputes the ascent; his supplanters, who will supplant him both in heavenly standing and in power over the on earth, he stakes all to block; and the fierce struggle of the Satanic hosts with the holy angels involves his final fall.  But he is not yet tint into the Lake of Fire. His worriedness on earth yet remains.  Hence the twofold cry of Heaven: "Rejoice, 0 heavens, and ye that dwell in them: woe for the earth, and for the sea, considering the devil is gone lanugo unto you!" It is what our Lord saw:- "I visual Satan fallen as lightning from heaven" (Luke 10: 18). His rage on earth, without stuff hurled lanugo and realizing the brevity of his opportunity, knows no bounds; but it carries with it the priceless truth that the intensity of his rage only proves its brevity: the fiercer his wrath, the briefer its span. THE JEWISH ESCAPE So now theUnconfinedTribulation opens, and the second unconfined escape, the escape into the wilderness, occurs. Satan, "having unconfined wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time" - therefore he believes God’s prophecies, for in no other way could he know the brevity of the time left him: "the demons moreover believe and shudder" (Jas. 2: 19) - first concentrates on that with which the world is once seething - the attempted extermination of the Jew.  The Woman - the godly in Jerusalem - obeying the word of Christ, "When ye see the villainy of desolation" - Antichrist’s image - "standing in the holy place" - set up in the Temple precincts - "let them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains" (Matt. 25: 15) - is in instant flight.  Any Israelite who breaks the condition of the earthly escape - firsthand flight - is doomed; but the armies sent in pursuit of the Woman the earth - as millenniums before, the Red Sea - opens and engulfs; and in the desert, earth's only spot of safety considering of its very famine of all food, God’s earthly saints are then fed by manna or equivalent supplies from Heaven. REMNANTSWithoutboth escapes are accomplished, so far from earth now stuff emptied of the godly, the enraged Dragon concentrates on both the groups who tapped the conditions of escape, and so failed to disappear.  "The dragon made war with THE REMNANTS of her seed" - ‘remnants,’ that is, sections identical with those escaped, but who are left;* and there are two of these remnants - (1) "which alimony the commandments of God, and (2) which hold the testimony of Jesus."  Keepers of ‘the commandments of God’, the Law, are a definition of Israel: they who hold - that is, those in whose keeping is - ‘the testimony of Jesus’ ** is a unravelment untellable of any but a Christian; it has been a definition of Christians for nineteen centuries; it is the only name given to Christians throughout the eighteen prophetic chapters of the Apocalypse, and describes plane the Apostle John himself (Rev. 1: 9). The Dragon impales these two groups on his Ten Horns - that is, he persecutes them by ways of the Ten Dictators who are masters of earth’s senior nations; and as the Divine plan is a prior escape,  God withdraws protection from those that are left, who flouted His design.  Two-thirds of Israel in Palestine are slaughtered; and the Christian martyrs under Antichrist are so numerous that they form a matriculation by themselves (Rev. 20: 4) on the opening of the Kingdom. [* That is, “left unto the coming (‘presence’) of the Lord” without others were previously rapt into heaven.  See 1 Thess. 4: 15.] [** Apparently the Ten Dictators (or the majority of them) at first interreact with the Roman Beast in support of the Harlot, so that she can and does wilt drunk with the thoroughbred of the saints; but on Satan’s descent, and manipulated by him, what happened in Spain [some years ago] - the destruction of increasingly than 1,000 Catholic churches - becomes universal, and includes every Christian group. We can readily imagine how the unconfined whoredom from the Christian Faith now occurs.] HINDRANCES TO ESCAPE Now since it is probable that the lineage of the Child may occur at any moment [prior to the last three and a half years of theUnconfinedTribulation], it is wise that we should alimony in our minds as vivid as lightning, the hindrances that woodcut the way to escape; because, that the Israelite is godly, or that the parishioner is regenerate, will unhook neither from the consequences of disobedience. (1) The hour coming "is to come upon the whole inhabited earth" (Rev. 3: 10), our Lord says, and therefore the only possible earthly escape is the Wilderness, the uninhabited earth; and the flight is to be so instantaneous - if a Jew in the field has left his pall in house, he has no time (the Lord says) to fetch it (Matt. 24: 18) - that mutiny in rapidity forfeits escape.  So to theDenominationour Lord's words - for both hair-trigger commands are from the Son of God to each group - could not be increasingly explicit :- "Watch ye and pray unchangingly that ye may be rumored worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand surpassing the Son of man" (Luke 21: 36). The escape of God's earthly people [Israel] is physical, and therefore turns on instantaneousness of flight; but the escape of His heavenly [regenerate] people is moral - passive and static: to be set surpassing the Son of Man - and therefore turns on prayerful vigilance: and failure to watch and pray will be as fatal to the one as failure in instant flight will be to the other.* [* It is pregnant with meaning that neither the rapt nor the left are said to be the Church: for those who escalade are not theDenominationbut a section of it; and those who remain are not the Church, for church-standing ceases with the inrush of the Day of the Lord. Thus it is unscriptural to say either that theDenominationescapes the Tribulation, or that theDenominationpasses through it: theDenominationdoes neither; and therefore no 'church’ is named throughout the prophetic portion of the Apocalypse.] CONDITIONS OF RAPTURE So we are shown, by Heaven itself, the exceedingly upper standard of the upward escape. (1) "They overcame him considering of the thoroughbred of the Lamb:" not only the fundamental cleansing in [initial] salvation, but a unvarying confession and zealotry of known sin which re-invokes the Blood.  "They washed their robes" - their own conduct: Christ’s robe, the robe of imputed righteousness, needs no cleansing - "and made them white in the thoroughbred of the Lamb: therefore are they surpassing the throne" (Rev. 7: 14). (2) "Because of the word of their testimony." The truths of God they stand for are the platform on which they ascend: an x-rated testimony is a tabular platform.  Or, to infringe Paul’s figure, the ‘blood’ is the foundation, and the ‘testimony’ is the superstructure of gold, silver, plush stones which they straight-up upon it. (3) "And they loved not their life plane unto death."  It does not say that they are all martyrs; but they were, to a man, ready to be martyred: they never compromised, overly to save their life.  What a standard! Yet it is a standard perfectly possible for every one of us to achieve. THE UNRAPT That what remains on earth is a ‘remnant’ - the rest, the remainder - from those who have gone is proof wholly decisive that it is Christians who remain; but if any reader still doubts it, let him ponder a recent revival scene (World Dominion, Oct., 1936) on the Congo; and let him ask himself - Were these Christians that were ‘revived’? and if so, how does their pre-revival condition fit Heaven’s unravelment (ver. 11) of the rapt? "Judgment began at the house of God.  Christians were awakened to a deep distress for sin.  Sometimes the revelation was so overwhelming that people under conviction cried out in anguish, and trembled, or plane fell to the ground.  It was the sham and secrecy ofDenominationmembers in former times that unswayable the early weft of the revival, for it came naturally to be felt that men who had preached and taught in Christ’s name while cluttered up with all manner of sin must make public confession. In the vision of the heathen, all that had veiled the squatter of Christ must openly be renounced.  For weeks and weeks there was a unvarying stream of men waiting their turn to make public heroics of the sins that had trashed their lives and betrayed Christ’s cause.  Time fails to tell plane a fraction of the stories that wrenched hearted men and women poured into our ears during these wondrous weeks when judgment had begun at the house of God.  Through a valley of humiliation like this all our leading men passed save one." * [* Both ‘remnants’ are purged as is the Israelitish:- "I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them" (Zech. 13: 9).  Both were warned to remember Lot’s wife (Luke 17: 32).] If Christ had come a week surpassing the revival, would these have been rapt? and if so, what becomes of Heaven's summary of their life and weft surpassing removal? and will anyone say that no such believers will be on earth when the Lord does come?  Let it be thoughtfully pondered that this is no mere detail of a disputed prophecy, but a fearful practical urgency for us all; for all will stipulate that if rapture turns on fidelity, he who influences others to believe that escape is unscratched for an unsanctified life not only makes a most painful unreliability for himself, but, in a moment of intensest crisis, does a grave disservice to the whole denomination of God. -------