The condition of the church at this time is pointed out in the Saviour’s words in the Revelation, “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”(492) And to those who refuse to arouse from their careless security, the solemn warning is addressed, “If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”(493) It was needful that men should be awakened to their danger; that they should be roused to prepare for the solemn events connected with the close of probation. The prophet of God declares: “The day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” Who shall stand when He appeareth who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil,” and cannot “look on iniquity”?(494) To them that cry, “My God, we know Thee,” yet have transgressed His covenant, and hastened after another god,(495) hiding iniquity in their hearts, and loving the paths of unrighteousness,—to these the day of the Lord is “darkness, and not light, even very dark, and no brightness in it.”(496) “It shall come to pass at that time,” saith the Lord, “that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil.”(497) “I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.”(498) “Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them;” “their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation.”(499) The prophet Jeremiah, looking forward to this fearful time, exclaimed: “I am pained at my very heart.” “I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried.”(500) “That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm.”(501) “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, ... to lay the land desolate: and He shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.”(502)