A Sermon

BY THE REV. NEIL CAMERON, ST. JUDE’S, GLASGOW.
Preached at Oban on Monday, 2nd November, 1914.

“When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe.”—2 THESS. i. 7-10.

YOU will notice that the Word of God—especially Christ in His preaching, as set forth in the four gospels—makes it plain that terrible things were to be on the face of the earth immediately before the day of judgment. There were to be wars, and we have wars now, even the most terrible war that ever has been waged in the history of the world since God created man on the earth. We think it would not only be profitable but dutiful for us to consider such a text as this, as we are confronted with such terrible things.

We shall just now take notice of three things from the words we have read:—

I.—When are we to expect the coming of Christ to judge this world? And we hope that no one doubts the fact that Christ will come to judge the world.

II.—The manner of His coming. We have it described here and in other places.

III.—How He shall proceed to deal with two kinds or two classes of the human race that shall be presented before Him.

I.—We shall notice, before we speak of things that are written in God’s book that are to precede the coming of Christ, that the day of your death and of mine is the day in which our destiny for eternity shall be fixed. We have such deceitful hearts in us that we think if a thing is far off we have no cause for alarm; but remember that you know not—neither do I—whether we shall ever see the sun rise on the heavens again. We are distinctly told that “As the tree falleth, so shall it lie.”

Now, in regard to the time of His coming, there are several things which I desire to notice. You will see from the Scriptures that, first of all, before this time will come, the man of sin, or the antichrist, must appear in the world. This apostacy was so clearly delineated by the Holy Ghost in the Word that no one need have any doubt as to its identity. This apostacy was to appear in the city set upon seven hills, and which ruled over the whole earth at the time John wrote the Book of the Revelation. This city was demonstrably Rome. All the predictions of God’s truth till now have been fulfilled in the Papacy as to the antichrist predicted. So this has been so far fulfilled as that several steps of its downfall have been already accomplished. It will be destroyed before the beginning of the thousand years during which Satan is to be bound. You will notice that this has partly been fulfilled already, and the rest of God’s truth concerning it will be made good in its time.

The second thing that must precede the day of judgment is, the Gentiles are to be brought in. The gospel is to be preached to all nations, and we see that that is not accomplished yet. There are many in the world who have not heard the gospel or ever have seen God’s Word—more than have seen it; but at the same time that that is so you will notice we are making great progress in this direction. The Word of God, in part or in whole, is now translated into very nearly four hundred and fifty languages, and that is an extraordinary stretch made towards the accomplishment of this: that every sinner in the world should hear of God’s provision in the gospel for perishing men, or, in other words, hear of Christ—hear of the salvation He wrought out by His obedience and death—and have that salvation offered to them in the gospel. Now, that is a thing that must take place before the day of judgment.

The third thing to be noticed, and that must take place before the day of judgment, is that the Jews must be brought in. As sure as we have it in several places that the gospel is to be preached to all nations, and that then the Son of Man will appear in the clouds of heaven, so sure it is that the Jews are to be brought into the Christian Church. God shall pour His Spirit on the Jews, and they shall see that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they crucified at Jerusalem and whom they refused to acknowledge, not only then but during nearly nineteen hundred years, was the Messiah whom God promised first in the Garden of Eden, and especially to the Jews. This is the third thing, and this has not yet been accomplished. There are about twelve million Jews in the world, and there are only very few of them who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the Saviour whom God promised to perishing men, and they are perishing in unbelief, generation after generation. You find Christ saying to them, “If ye will not believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” Now, these are three things that must take place before Christ shall come from heaven to judge this world, and these things may take place very quickly. But there is another thing which I desire to notice, and it is this. After these three things which must take place—namely, the man of sin must appear; the gospel must be preached to all nations; the Jewish nation must be brought into the Church and come to acknowledge their own Messiah, and this will be as a resurrection from the dead to the Gentile church—there is to be the period of time which we call the millennium. Whether that will mean a thousand years, as the word literally means, or a shorter or longer period, no one can definitely state. God alone knows the meaning that He attaches to words that are not yet fulfilled in providence, but whatever the millennium will be, the time of it is after the gospel has been preached to all nations and there shall be one Church of Jews and Gentiles. Now, remember that the millennium does not mean at all that children will be born into the world different from what they are now. They shall be born into the world sinners as they are now, needing to be regenerated, to be born again. The means of grace shall be used in that period as they are now. The Word of God shall be read by all men in their families and in the church, and preached soundly, and so far as we can see, God shall cause His blessing to come down on the Word read and preached in such a way that almost the whole shall be converted in the days of their youth. Otherwise we cannot see how this will be true, that “the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the whole earth as the waters cover the face of the deep,” if it were not true that they were converted when they were young, perhaps when they were going to school. In our day to hear of a young man or a young woman weeping over his or her sins is a very rare thing, but at this time it will be a very common thing not only to see young men and young women but children weeping over their sins, and looking to Christ for mercy—looking to the merit of His blood as their only hope.

Then we are told that after the millennium will have come to an end, there shall be so many enemies of the Church gathered together against it that, if it were not for the intervention of God, they would put an end to the Church in the world. When the people who are living in the world then shall see all nations endeavouring to the utmost of their power to put an end to the Church, they may expect two things. First, they may expect judgments to come on the world that were never heard of. “Fire shall come down from heaven and devour them.” And next, they may expect that they shall see the Son of Man appearing in the clouds of heaven. In a few words, these are the things which we can see in God’s Word that are to be expected before the coming of Christ, and when these things are accomplished Christ shall then appear.

II.—In the second place, we have here the manner in which Christ shall appear, and we have several things brought before us to point out how He shall appear.

(1) “He shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels.” An angel is a mighty being, and we are told in another place that their number is not few. Many angels were seen in the world. The Bible speaks—and it never speaks but absolute truth—of angels coming to this world on errands from heaven down from the beginning of the world till after the resurrection of Christ. That does not mean, my friends, that angels have ceased to come to the world. They are in it yet and they shall be in it while God has a people in it. We are told that at the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ the angels of heaven, a great multitude of them, appeared and they sang over the good news that a Saviour was born in the city of David and that was to be to the glory of God and meant peace towards men in the world. There were many angels there, but, when Christ shall appear at this day, all the holy angels shall be there, even “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,” as the Scripture says when it speaks of the number of the angels. They shall all come. Christ shall appear on the great white throne and “every eye shall see him.” This, my friends, is not a dream nor a fable. This is a thing that you will have to see. You will have yourself to be a party in this extraordinary transaction.

(2) The second thing we desire to notice is—”He shall appear in flaming fire.” He appeared before, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” and men despised and rejected Him, and they despise Him just as much to-day; but, remember you, our Lord shall come and, when He shall come, we defy any man or woman or devil to despise Him. “He shall come in flaming fire,” and we are told in connection with this that the fire in which He shall appear will put an end to the whole material creation. “The elements,” said Peter, “shall melt with fervent heat.” See, this world is composed of elements—the stones, the earth, the sea—men can tell you what the elements are, but God’s Spirit through the Apostle tells us that these elements shall be burnt up with fervent heat, and that the earth on which we are now shall go back to nothing. That reminds me of a young man I met with about twenty-two years ago. While preaching we happened to say something about the day of judgment, and he said, that surely we had not studied science when we could make such a statement from the pulpit in the name of God as that the earth was to go out of existence when, he said, you know perfectly well, if you study anything at all, that it is impossible to put even a drop of cold water out of existence. It will remain there after everything man can do. We told him that we knew that, but we said, “What power do you exercise?” You only exercise the power of one element upon another and try to destroy the one element by the other. The Scripture nowhere says that this will be the way in which this world shall end, but it says that when He shall appear “the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.” And, you see, anything that has lost place is out of existence, for everything in existence requires a place wherein to exist. We said to the young man that he had not considered in the science which he had learned that that almighty power which had brought all things out of nothing was to come into exercise again. He confessed that he had not, and that he believed almighty power was able to cause all that we see to-day to go back to nothing from whence it came. What the Scriptures claim is that the heavens on which we look, the sun, moon, and stars, the earth and sea and all the creatures which are therein, shall return to nothing, and that by fire “for the world that now is, is reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and the perdition of ungodly men.” “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.” These are the words used by God the Spirit, and you will notice, my friends, when He brings these things before men, He says—”Seeing then that these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” How ought men to live who are forewarned that such things are undoubtedly before them!

(3) We shall notice in the third place in connection with the coming of Christ that it speaks here about His enemies. “Taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and this means that those who knew not God and who disobeyed the gospel shall then appear before the bar of this Judge. See, when the great, white throne shall appear, we are told that the dead, small and great, shall appear then before God. None shall be overlooked. The child that lived ten minutes, that only drew a breath in the world; Methuselah, the oldest man that ever lived; kings, princes, beggars; all men shall be there, and we are told that the voice of the Son of God shall call them out of their graves. “Marvel not at this,” He says, “for the hour cometh in the which all that are in their graves,” whether that be in sea or land, “shall hear his voice and come forth; they who have done good shall come forth to the resurrection of life; they who have done evil shall come forth to the resurrection of damnation.” Oh! how many will desire to remain in the grave, but remain in the grave they cannot; and God, that is Christ, shall bring all men, not only in one generation but everyone from Adam to the last that shall be born into the world, before His throne and none of them shall be excepted. Little children, young men and young women—and most of the human race, my friends, die in their childhood and youth, very few come to old age—they shall all be there. You will be there and I will be there. Now, this is the third thing that shall take place at the coming of the Son of God, He who is now sitting at the right hand of the Father and who has the promise from the mouth of God, “Sit thou at my right hand until I make thy foes a stool whereon thy feet may stand.” Do you think that God’s word is not to be fulfilled so that, when you see men trampling God’s law under their feet and despising Christ in the gospel, instead of envying them in their revelry in the world you ought, my friends, to pity them? There is no person in the world who ought to be pitied more than the young man or the young woman who spends his or her time satisfying the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye and the pride of life, for this day is before us and they shall have to appear there and Christ will then have to do with men’s souls and bodies put together again. You see, the soul immediately at death goes to the place for which it was prepared in the world. If the soul of man in the world was regenerated, “born of water and of the Spirit,” it will immediately upon death go to glory as sure as the soul of Lazarus went there. On the other hand, if the soul has not undergone this change, although the man may be clothed in scarlet and fine linen and living sumptuously every day, yet whenever death comes the soul opens its eyes in the flames of hell. These are not conjectures, my friends. These are absolute truths, and you will have to find this out in time or eternity.

(4) We shall notice in the fourth place, in connection with the manner of the coming of Christ, that when the dead, small and great, shall have heard the voice of the Son of God, they shall then be gathered to Christ’s bar. When the soul of the sinner, if he dies in his sins, will come from hell, from the place where it was tormented in the flames, to join the body again, the soul and the body now must endure the punishment that God means to be the cup of the portion of such as live in sin. You will notice, my friends, that when souls will come with God’s curse on them and enter into their cursed bodies, they will then have to be gathered to Christ, to the Judge; and when the souls of the righteous will come from glory and enter into their bodies resurrected from the graves, pure like the body of Christ, they also will have then to come to the throne of judgment, and we are told that this is the work He will give to the angels. “Let all my saints,” He says, “be gathered unto me,” and they will go forth and gather in all that ever lived from the four winds of heaven, every individual, and bring them to the great white throne of judgment. This is how things will be at His coming, as we see them in the Scriptures. Men may go on, my friends, laughing, dancing, and thinking that these things are only the figments of the brains of men, although they see them written in God’s Word; but, remember this, that when this day will come, they will need no one to tell them that they were all true. “Every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him,” but we are fools in this age who deny eternal punishment altogether. We have noticed that, since this war began, men who used to laugh at eternal punishment have begun now to believe that there is such a thing, but there are others who do not make use of the little reason God has given them and go heedlessly on; but wait, my friends, and the day shall come when such men will have to learn by sad experience that they were deceiving themselves.

III.—Let us notice now, in the last place, a few things in connection with the procedure of this day; how Christ will deal with all that will stand before Him, and that will mean, as I said more than once, the whole Adamic race without one exception, from the child of a minute of age to the oldest man that ever lived. “Every one of us must appear and give an account of ourselves unto God, of all the deeds done in the body.” First of all, then, in connection with this third head, we notice it says here that “when he shall appear in flaming fire,” it will be “to take vengeance on them that know not God.” What do we understand by this? Well, in one sense it is true of all men in their natural state, that they know not God. If men knew Him it would be absolutely impossible for them to live in sin as they do. “The fool says in his heart, there is no God,” and consequently he goes on in sin. But that is not what we understand by knowing not God here, for the Spirit of God divides those who are to be punished into two parties, and these two parties are (1) they that know not God, and (2) they that obey not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the two divisions, so that “they that know not God” are to be understood here as all the heathen, even the heathen that had not God’s Word or worship set up among them. They will have to appear this day, and Christ will deal with them, not as He will deal with those that know the gospel, but He will deal with them as “those that know not God.” And the reason why they came to this was that they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. See, if you go back to the days of Noah—and that is not at all so long before Abraham, only some four hundred and fifty years—you will find that the whole human race at that time knew God, for Noah was a preacher of righteousness to that generation. How, then, did they get to be in this state? Well, I will tell you what I think took place, and what is actually taking place in our own day. You see, my friends, some of those who came out of the Ark showed what desperately wicked men they were—especially Ham and Canaan—and immediately after idolatry was set up. The reason was that when young men and women married in those days, and had children, they never said one word to their children about God or that they had souls and that they needed to be saved. Instead of that there was nothing in households but vanity—not a word about their being lost, about their need of mercy, and about the knowledge that God gave of Himself. That was the way by which men lost the knowledge of God, and the poor heathen will curse those parents. In the city in which we are—and we believe Oban is not exempt from the same thing—we have to meet young men and young women, and when we examine them about the things of God, they tell us they never saw God’s Book in the hands of their father or mother at family worship. They never saw them on their knees. They would not even ask a blessing on their food, and they are just as dark as the very heathen. What a scandal to men who have got this favour, which is a greater favour than God ever bestowed on any people—that they should have His Word! And you, unto whom God has given a family, if you bring them up keeping from them the only thing that can make them wise unto salvation, what will it avail them at last that you were kind to them as to their bodies and otherwise if you neglect to teach them the knowledge of God? Well, this is the way in which the ignorance must have come in at first, for the knowledge was there, and we are told the reason why it came in was that they did not like to retain it; and then they began to worship, first, images made like unto man, afterwards like unto birds, afterwards like unto four-footed beasts, and then it came down to creeping things. These, my friends, might have had, humanly speaking, the knowledge of God among them to this day were it not for those who reared families who never heard a word about it. And, as I said already, we have plenty such in our day. We see fathers and mothers, instead of teaching their children to keep the Sabbath day holy, taking them out in their arms, to learn them before they can walk how they can break God’s holy day. But they will have to appear this day. I may mention in connection with this that one Sabbath, a long time past now, we happened to be in a place in the north where we were storm-stayed, and we tried to keep services in the place on the Sabbath. Just as we were coming back from the place of worship a man came out from his own house with his young child in a perambulator, and although this may be a common thing in Oban and perhaps a still more common thing in Glasgow, it was not common in the Highlands, and we said to the man who was with us that we should not wonder if we would hear that God would make an example of this man on account of his Sabbath-breaking; and not long after we were told that that man dropped suddenly dead. See, my friends, God can deal with sinners—let them be as bold as they will—and can strike them dead in an instant, and He is doing it. To go on, however, to speak of the poor heathen “who know not God,” you will notice that some hold—and hold very erroneously—that God will not punish the heathen, because they say “God is merciful.” Well, He says here He will punish them that “know not God,” and tells us that they had a law in their own minds accusing them and also excusing them, and that at the Great Day those who sinned without law, that is, without the written law, shall perish without law. Men try to twist that to mean “to be judged without law,” but it is impossible to translate the word in that way, for the translation of that word, as everyone knows who knows anything at all about the original language, is that they shall be cut off or destroyed, and it is the same word that was used when, in war, a town and all that were in it were put to the sword. The word “destroy” is used, and that is the word the Spirit of God uses concerning those who have not the law written but who sinned against the light of their consciences. Go you to the heathen and you will see that, instantly you tell them that it is a wrong thing to murder, their consciences at once agree with your statement; and the same applies to the breaking of the other commandments. The consciences of the heathen respond to this more quickly than the consciences of dead sinners in gospel lands; and, indeed, we have more hope of the heathen if the gospel were sent to them. As Christ said to the Jews, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”

He says to Bethsaida and Corazin that if Sodom and Gomorrah had their privileges, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes, and we believe that if the gospel that is placed before perishing sinners in Oban were placed before the black heathen in the centre of Africa, they would receive it—they would respond to it; but our consciences are, as it were, seared with red-hot iron, so that we remain obdurate as rocks under the hearing of these terrible things. Remember that that does not make the things less terrible.

Well, Christ first of all will deal this day with those that know not God—namely, the heathen; then He takes up those who obey not the gospel. What does the gospel ask? Well, the claim of the gospel wherever it comes is—”Repent and believe the gospel,” and, if you have not repented, if you have not returned from your evil ways unto God by Christ Jesus, if you have not looked to Him by faith, you have not obeyed the gospel. See, the gospel calls you out from the world, from its ways, its habits, its fashions, its pleasures, its wickedness on Sabbaths and week-days. It calls you to holiness in life, in word, and in action. The call of the gospel is, as the Apostle puts it to the Romans, “called to be saints.” That is the meaning of obeying the gospel, and when you find men showing by their conduct from day to day that they are not saints, they certainly have not obeyed the gospel. Prayerless sinners under the hearing of God’s word—sinners who go on in their vanities, in their wickedness, have certainly not obeyed the gospel. Sinners who continue year by year without as much as a thought as to how they are to meet death, judgment, and eternity, are not obeying God in the gospel. No! Well, Christ will deal with them this day. You would think to-day that men are so mighty, and that you should not dare speak to them about these matters, but what will be true of them then? They will be “crying to the mountains and to the rocks to fall upon them and hide them from the face of him who sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the lamb.” That is a thing you will see with your eyes, and, if you continue among them that obey not the gospel, you will yourself be among those mighty men—captains and great men in the world. You will be there, although you are a servant or a slave, and you will then begin to pray to the mountains to hide you. Remember, friend, you cannot get past this. You will have to face it whether you will or whether you will not, whatever other men may say to you, for “not one jot or one tittle of all that is written in this book shall fall to the ground until all be fulfilled.” No. Now, you will notice that it goes on to speak here of how Christ will deal with them that obey not the gospel. Men tell their congregations now that God is merciful. He will not punish any man. Take care, my friend, that you will not be gnashing your teeth at the great day, cursing such a man that you ever saw him or heard a word out of his mouth. We believe that congregations that day will curse their ministers who did not tell them that these things were so, and who led them to everlasting ruin, telling them lies; and ministers will curse their congregations because they followed them when they departed from the truth. You see, flattery will have fled away, and there will be no place for it there. No man can deceive or flatter himself there, and no man can deceive or flatter another there. My friends, I am not trying to make this message worse than it is in the Bible, but only trying to bring before you what I see there, and, indeed, I am only like a babbling baby when speaking of these things, but you will yet see them with your eyes.

Then the Judge goes on to punish them, to pass sentence, and we think that those on the left hand of Christ will be in two parts—”they that know not God,” and again, “they that obey not the gospel,” and it will be much more terrible on the day of judgment for those who did not obey the gospel than for those who knew not God. We have it from the mouth of Christ. “It will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah” than for the places where the mighty works of Christ were revealed, and that will be true of Oban. The men and the women of the Free Presbyterian Church would that day give much if they will be lost that they were born into the world in the wilds of Africa, and were among them “that knew not God” instead of being among them that “obeyed not the gospel,” for their punishment will be infinitely greater. You will know them when you look at them on the great day. How their agony will be more than the agony of those that will be punished because “they knew not God!” And it is not only what punishment may come from without, but how much punishment will come from your own conscience. You will then say, “What a fool of fools was I that, when God was offering mercy, forgiveness freely and fully through the blood of His own Son, I was going on satisfying the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life.” You see, my friends, these things will come back on that day and men will begin then to feel what a fearful word this will be, “everlasting,” and that they were such fools as to lose their souls for the pleasures of sin which were but for a season. There is a great deal of vain talk to-day about these things, and men are speaking like mad men and deceiving poor, lost sinners, but you will notice here that the punishment, my friend, is to be everlasting. It is not to be for a month, for a year, for a hundred years, for a million of years, but it is to be everlasting. Oh! think of this, my friend! How can you face a punishment, of which you are told that it “will be the worm that dieth not and fire that shall not be quenched,” and that by the mouth of God Himself? How can you face it, and that it will be everlasting? There will be no hope that an end shall ever come. No. And as godly Dr. Duncan more than once stated, “It is a thing of infinite importance that you are a man.” See, a man is a creature that must exist as long as God will exist, even should you die disobeying the gospel of Christ, or without coming to repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether you believe it now or not, that does not change the fact that Christ on that day will punish you, and your punishment shall be everlasting. I met that eminently godly man, Archibald Crawford, who was in Tighnabruaich, and had many conversations with him. He told that when God awakened him to what sin was and the punishment due to it and the eternity to which he was going, “I was,” he said, “for three years, and, although I would give the whole world to get my mind out of eternity for a minute, I could not do it.” For three years the man could not take his mind out of eternity, and I tell you, if God were to awaken you and bring before you what the consequences of sin will be at the end and what that eternity will be to which you are going, you would very quickly find that that would swallow up every other thing and you could think of nothing else. Well, this is to be everlasting or eternal punishment and how bitter now will be the pleasures of sin! I warn my young friends in Oban that this will be the end of the pleasures of the sinner—the dance, the vain song, Sabbath desecration and all other sins added—if he will not forsake his ways and his thoughts and turn to the Lord that He may have mercy upon him. He will be destroyed that day from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power. Sinners who disobey the gospel will be conscious of this—and God forbid that you should be, but that you would come to repentance and turn to Him in time—that their punishment now comes from the presence of God, and that it is the glory of His power that deals with them now. Time will not allow me to enlarge on this further.

You will notice that there is brought before us here another thing which Christ will have to do that day. He brings in another “when” here. “Who shall be punished when he shall come to be glorified in his saints,” and you will notice how wonderfully these words are stated—”when he shall come to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed).” There is a glory at the great day in connection with believing the gospel of Christ. The saints will have a glory. Christ will be glorified in them and they will be glorified in Christ, and this will take place “when he shall come in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints.” This is the real purpose; this is the great work of that day. To condemn criminals is not a thing in which He has pleasure, but being the Judge—for God appointed Him judge of the quick and the dead—He will punish sinners that day, but He will that day come on purpose to be glorified in them that believe; come for His own bride to bring her home, those whom He will call “the blessed of His Father,” that they may inherit the kingdom prepared for them before the foundation of the world. How will men look at God’s people that day! They may now be causing suffering to God’s people in many ways and it will be a righteous thing for God on that account itself to punish sinners at last, but you will notice, my friends, this will be the great errand of Christ. He will come to bring home all who repent and believe the gospel in time. “Come, ye blessed of my Father,” and there will be many from Oban there. We miss them out of the pews in Oban to whom Christ will say this day “Come.” There are others in Oban and we are afraid they are going to the other side, but this day shall put all things right. There will not be a sinner among saints nor a saint among sinners that day. In all who repented and believed in Christ, lived a holy life in the fear of God in the world, you will see a difference then, in their faces, in the glory in which they will appear; and you will hear it in the different way in which Christ shall address them, calling them “Blessed,” while he calls those on the left hand “Cursed,” and commands them to depart from Him. That difference will appear at the great day and you and I shall be there, but what are we going to do with these things now?

We have endeavoured to bring before you how sure it is that these things will come—the awful day and the things that will take place on that day, and that it is in time men have to prepare for that day. The gospel is in our hands and in our hearts. It is the gospel that will make the difference, and I beseech you to see to it that you will cease from your ways of sin and begin in real earnest to seek God in Christ, and, if you will not take that advice, not from me but from God, there shall be a day in which you will begin to weep over it and never cease that weeping as long as eternity will last.

May God bless our consideration of His own Word!