On a certain day, I sat on my back porch enjoying the crisp morning air, when my wife informed me that the morning sky was strikingly red. A cold front had moved in, with many clouds, casting a burning scarlet glow on the eastern horizon. I immediately thought of that ancient proverb, “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.” As I mused on this scene, my mind drifted to the time, in Acts 17, when the apostle Paul preached the gospel to the intelligentsia of the day in Athens. In verse 16 we read, “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.” To these men of Athens, Paul issued the warning that God “now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness.” This warning is just as true today.

Should we not as well be stirred in our souls as we behold the sin and idolatry in our world today? Around us we see the signs of the times, just like the reddened skies in the morning predicting a coming storm. The warning to all is that judgment is coming upon the earth. Faith in the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross is the one and only way to escape the terrible storm of judgment that is coming. In John 5:24 we read, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”

In these last days, let us be about our Father’s business, sharing the good news of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ with our neighbors, for the morning sky is quite red for our sin-sick world.