Breaking the Power of Death

Like the Niagara, sin comprehends each missing of the mark, ten million drops each moment of man’s day, a mighty fall indeed. Vast energy is wasted, countless ages lost, the total of innumerable lives away from God, as blinded minds forsake creation’s Source and plunge to that abyss oblivious of all meaning to life’s course, for they deny its Cause. These on their swift descent, without relent, pursue their flight from things above, and yet cannot escape redeeming love.

When we survey the scene, that darkness try to probe that fills this earth, we fail to sum the tears, assess the weight, the total burden tell of human grief, the legacy of sickness, pain and loss, but man’s Creator knows, and man’s Redeemer took that load. Can it be turned, this tide? Can earth be cleansed of sin? Can countless myriads like the sand be washed? Can any change of heart thus wrought in man by any scheme, teaching of righteous ways, or course of holiness, the reaching of those deep emotions of man’s heart, can any change of mind achieved change also that deceit of heart, that fickleness of loyalty and love, that trend to infidelity so deep ingrained within the human soul? Can this as well be changed?

We see no profit, though a thousand years be spent transforming guilty ways of man to innocence, unless each step along that upward path of holiness be one of permanence. The trend to sin that now controls man’s path, a prison for man’s ways, how humanly impossible to break through cold steel bars, those solid walls. Perhaps at time some soul may glimpse another world beyond it cannot reach, and powerless to attain falls back. As gravity decides the downward pull upon each body, so does sin, and from its hold none can break free.

Yet greater far the heavenly force the sun exerts upon this earth controlling in its course each planet that would wander from its path. Nor does it let go hold, or each would make its headlong plunge through depths of space. Such is the greater power than sin, that from its mighty Source above will grip this earth and draw each heart, each intellect, to influence all thought and overwhelm with love divine. When stars that "turn to righteousness" shall shine, their holy power will mightily combine to beam into this darkness with a grace reflected from the heavenly Father’s face, to captivate and thus forever hold each human mind, and reach the "blind", the "deaf", and loosen tongues now tied that cannot tell His praise. Oh may that joy be mine!

Donald Holliday, "The Gathering Home of Saints"