As we review the leadings of Divine providence during the year that is past, let God's goodness and mercy stimulate our faith and confidence in Him as respects the new incoming year. A proper retrospect on the part of a proper child of God will enable him not only to render thanks for the past but also to look up and lift up his head, realizing that our deliverance is nearer than when we first believed; and that He that began a good work in us is both able and willing to complete it, if we will but continue to submit our wills, our lives, our all, to His wisdom and loving care.
The word year in the Bible is sometimes used for a period averaging nearly 365¼ days, and sometimes for an Age. Both kinds of years the Lord crowns with His goodness. He crowns the natural year with His goodness, bearing up the Universe, and operating its stupendous machinery for His glory and the good of His creatures, giving them the blessings of the seasons. Thus amid the limitations of the curse the Lord abundantly blesses. Viewed as "the acceptable year of the Lord," the Gospel Age has been crowned with the Lord's goodness, in redeeming, teaching, justifying, sanctifying, completing, delivering and glorifying the Church; bringing the Great Company to eternal life; developing the non-Spirit-begotten consecrated for princeship in the earth; and preparing Jews and Gentiles for the Millennial Reign. So, too, the Millennial Age will be crowned with the Lord's goodness—forgiving, awakening, instructing, compassionating, drawing and blessing the whole race; lifting up the earth and the obedient to perfection, and giving the faithful everlasting life in Paradise.
REPRINTS
Ex. 33:19; 34:6; Psa. 33:5; 34:8; 73:1; 107:8, 9, 43; 145:7, 9; Isa. 61:1, 2; 63:7; Matt. 7:11; Luke 4:18, 19; Rom. 2:4; Titus 3:4.
