Isaiah 25:8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces… Nor even now that Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light, is there any misconception of this Divine achievement into which we fall that does not become a veil, dimming our eyes, and a web, entangling our feet. 1. Those, for instance, who while professing to entertain this great hope, practically put it away from them, and who therefore sacrifice the future to the present; — is not the veil still on their hearts, the web about their feet? 2. So, again, in a less but sufficiently obvious degree with those who so misconceive of life and death as to sacrifice the present to the future; who miss or forego all the sweet and wholesome uses of the world because they have not learned, what yet the Gospel plainly teaches, that wisely to use and enjoy this present world is the best of all preparations for the world to come. 3. And even those who, despite the Gospel teaching, will think of dissolution as death rather than as victory over death, or as separating and alienating them from the dear ones of whom they have lost sight, rather than as bringing their "lost ones" nearer to their true life and binding them to them by closer because by invisible and spiritual ties, — even these have their eyes still dimmed by the veil which Christ came to lift, and their feet still entangled in the net from Which He came to deliver their feet. (S. Cox, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it. |
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