Warning Messages, December 2

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Luke 17:26, 27.HP 343.1

The Lord God of Israel is jealous for His honor. How then, I inquire, does He regard the inhabitants of this world, who live in His house and from His liberal treasury are provided by Him with food and clothing but who never so much as say, Thank You, to Him? They are unmindful of His goodness. They are like the inhabitants of the antediluvian world, who were destroyed because they worked continually in opposition to their Creator.HP 343.2

Of the antediluvians we read, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.... And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:5, 13).HP 343.3

God warned the inhabitants of the old world of what He purposed to do in cleansing the earth of its impurity. But they laughed to scorn what they regarded as a superstitious prediction. They mocked at Noah's warning of a coming flood. When Christ was upon the earth He gave warning of what was coming upon Jerusalem because the people had rejected truth, despising the messages that God had sent. But His warning was unheeded.HP 343.4

The Lord has sent us, by His ambassadors, messages of warning, declaring that the end of all things is at hand. Some will listen to these warnings, but by the vast majority they will be disregarded.HP 343.5

Thus will it be when Christ comes. Farmers, merchants, lawyers, tradesmen, will be wholly engrossed in business, and upon them the day of the Lord will come as a snare.HP 343.6

“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch” (Mark 13:35-37).^{2Manuscript 161, 1897.}HP 343.7