Rev. 6:17 ... "For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?"
Paul wrote in Rom. 10:18, "Have they not heard? Yea verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." To the discerning Christian it is a perplexing thing that the majority of people conduct their lives separate and apart from any consideration for God's will. For them, religion is not a motivating force, and their decisions are made with respect to material, social, and sensual circumstances of the moment. One would like to think that people live irreligious lives out of ignorance of what religion teaches; hence Paul's question, "Have they not heard?" We must, however, largely dismiss this charitable explanation when we consider that, at least in America, the case for religion is continually made publicly. On any day of the week and at any place in the country, a person has access via television, radio, the internet, or the printed page to a presentation of the gospel (the good news) of Jesus. Indeed, it is more true than ever that, "Their sound (the preaching of the gospel) went into all the earth, and their words (the content of the gospel) unto the ends of the world."
It is important for the irreligious to know that a day is coming when they will be held accountable for their disregard of God's will for man. Our featured text refers to their baleful cry when the Lord requires them to acknowledge His universal sovereignty and confess that their persistent indifference was a dreadful mistake. In Rom. 11:22 Paul wrote: "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God." As long as this earth continues, God's goodness is manifest in His patience with sinful men and His effort through the gospel to save them, (II Pet. 3:9). But when God chooses to terminate this earth "with a great noise, and ... fervent heat," (II Pet. 3:10), the severity of God will be seen as "the elements ... melt with fervent heat and the earth ... and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
These final events of world destruction constitute "the great day of His wrath" of which the lead text above speaks. Indeed, when that "great day ... is come ... who shall be able to stand?" Those who ignore His will throughout their lives will no longer be able to stand against God with their pride, arrogance, ridicule, boasting, and passive indifference. They must suffer defeat with all of the irreligious when "the Lord comes with 10,000 of His saints to execute judgment upon all," (Jude 14-15). It is unfashionable in our present age of "enlightenment" to believe in a Day of Judgment. and it is considered ridiculous to voice such a conviction in public conversation. But for an entire population to dismiss a reality as a myth is powerless to make what is real be nonexistent. Reality is that the Lord "has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness," (Acts 17:31). And universal human denial thereof cannot break that Divine appointment.
One of the wonderful traits of God, however, is that He takes no pleasure or satisfaction in destroy-ing that which He Himself created in His own image. We are assured that God is "longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, (II Pet. 3:9). The Scrip-tures are very clear that He will certainly destroy those who reject His love, defy His will, and live in alienation to Him. But He strongly desires that people will respond to His love, submit graciously to His will, and seek daily communion with Him in compliance with His wish expressed in II Cor. 6:16, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." Thus it is that God is "longsuffering toward us." He grants us long periods of time to discover our folly and for-sake it. For all who renounce their infidelity and obey God in love and faith, the day that ends time and launches eternity will not be a "great day of wrath," but a "great day" of victory. When the defiant and rebellious cannot find any place "to stand" before "His wrath," the humble and obedient will stand securely in His love in total victory.
