Knowing such a God gives us security. Mr. Smith, a church elder, was so religiously prim that he deprived his children of many of the joys of childhood. His pastor walked by the house one afternoon after the church service, and found a group of boys quitely eating a picnic lunch behind a clump of trees. The pastor asked, "Whynot go on the other side of the house? There's a big lawn there."
One boy spoke, "No, thanks, we don't want Mr. Smith to see us enjoying oursleves on the Sabbath."
"But," said the startled pastor, "God sees you, doesn't He?"
"Sure," replied the boy, "but we'd lot rather that God would see us than Mr. Smith. God understands." Religious difference do not prejudice God. He understands and appreciates His own, and He will find them everywhere.
The third point that we need to learn is that God won't miss a soul. Twelve thousand will come from each tribe. Revelation 7:5-8 states, "Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand," and on down the list through "the tribes of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand." God is speaking John's language. He is "tuning in" on John. There will be a people, and the Lord will find them everywhere. He won't miss a soul. What God was saying to John and what He attempts to tell us is that He is exhausting every possibility.
A fact that has always fasinated me is that once a name becomes entered in the Book of Life, it stands registered there even if the person apostisizes. It remains there, even though the person turns from God, until the time of the investigative judgment. God just won't give up. Why is He this way? Why is He holding out so long?
Consider our Master's treatment of Judas. Jesus knew, the Scriptures inform us, who would betray Him, yet we watch him putting forth much effort, almost as if He didn't know the outcome and somehow thought that Judas was a special candidate for His kingdom. If ever we see our Lord going out of the way for someone, we certainly witness it in His relationship with Judas. Yet we treat it rather glibly. We claim the reason our Lord did it was so He could say, "Judas, I gave you every chance." It is an accusation against God! That isn't why He worked so hard with Judas. God is not a petty person going around thrying to close up every loophole so that He can finally beat us down with circumstancial evidence. The reason Christ did so much for Judas was (and I say it reverently) that He couldn't help himself. It is the way God is. Even though He knew that Judas would turn against Him, the Lord had to be Himself. He always choses to act, not react, and God will be Himself whatever else someone else decides to be. That is the only basis for security in the universe.
"What shall we then say to these things?" the apostle Paul asks in Romans 8:31-39, "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Jesus Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, whois ever at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor hright, nor depth,nor any other vreature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord."
Because of the certainty of such love, Ellen White urges us, ""Let us strive with all the power that God has given us to be among the hundred and forty four thousand" (RH, March 9, 1905).
We do not know precisely what the future holds, but we do know specifically who holds the future. We each ask the question: Can I be among the 144,000? The answer comes to us in the security of salvation: "By My power, through My love - you can make it!"
