EARTH, NEW
As if in sympathy with the woes of earth, the sea is for ever fretting along a
thousand shores, wailing with a sorrowful cry like her own birds, booming with a
hollow crash of unrest, raving with uproarious discontent, chafing with hoarse
wrath, or jangling with the voices of ten thousand murmuring pebbles. The roar of
the sea may be joyous to a rejoicing spirit, but to the son of sorrow the wide, wide
ocean is even more forlorn than the wide, wide world. This is not our rest, and the
restless billows tell us so. ME503
We believe that God will never suffer this world, which has once seen Christ’s blood
shed upon it, to be always the devil’s stronghold. ME719
However red with blood, however black with sin the world may yet be, she shall one
day be as pure and perfect as when she was created. WC108
Under the Levitical dispensation the cleansing of vessels which had been defiled was
effected by passing them through the fire, as a type of the intense energy needed to
remove sin, and the Lord’s abhorrence of it; even thus shall this earth dissolve with
fervent heat, and thus the Lord shall proclaim to the whole universe that he hates
even the garment spotted by the flesh. When a house was defiled with leprosy it was
destroyed, and so must this earth be, for the plague of sin has polluted it. 1125.435