And the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.

The judgments of God

1. The judgments of God’s mouth, and the judgments of God’s hand--the word and the work of God--the manifestation of His truth by verbal announcement, and the manifestation of His truth by providential dispensation, are alike efficacious, through the Divine blessing, to the conversion of the souls of men. “The remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.”

2. The terrible judgments of the Almighty, overwhelming the wicked with alarm and awe, are the last means--where the other have been despised and unavailing--by which infinite mercy operates for the salvation of the souls of men (Proverbs 29:1).

3. These means are also, historically or prophetically, the last means by which shall be accomplished that national regeneration which shall precede and usher in the glory of the millennial era, which is thus described by revelation (Revelation 11:15).

4. “Wars and rumours of wars,” “and great earthquakes in divers places, and famines, and pestilence, and fearful sights and great signs from heaven,” shall be the principal instrumentalities of judgment by which the enemies of God and His Church shall be dealt with in these predicted “days of vengeance.”

5. The present condition of Christendom--its Churches and its nations--viewed in the light of prophetic intimation, reveals that “monitory pulse-like beating” which is symptomatic of the approaching end.

6. In the meantime, let the Church of Christ, by the enterprise of faith and the devotion of worship anticipate the anthem of her triumph when, commingling her own gladness with the hymnal joys of the world’s jubilee, she shall sing (Revelation 11:17). (Thos. Easton.)

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