- A most distressing sense even of the vindictive wrath of God is, sometimes, a consequence of their loss of comfort. True believers, indeed, can never be cast into hell; but the Lord may, as it were, cast hell into them. Some of them, accordingly, when God hath hid His face from them, have been permitted, rashly and falsely, to conclude that because they cannot see Him now, they never saw Him; that because they cannot perceive their evidences of grace now, they never had true grace; that say they never had true grace formerly, they have no saving grace now; and that the anger of God, which they now feel, is not His fatherly displeasure but His vindictive wrath (Ps. lxxxviii. 14). Thus they unjustly, as well as rashly, conclude that what they now feel is an impression of revenging wrath. It is of this wrath that Heman seems to complain when he saith, “Thy wrath lies hard upon me: Thy fierce wrath goeth over me” (Ps. lxxxviii. 7, 16). In like manner one of the prophets saith, “I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping, because of Thine indignation and Thy wrath” (Ps. cii. 9, 10). The sense of vindictive wrath is much more doleful and intolerable than even that of paternal anger, and, therefore, the Psalmist prays that if he must be chastened, that greatest of all chastisements may not be inflicted upon him: “O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy wrath; neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure” (Ps. xxxviii. 1). He prayeth not merely that the Lord may not punish him in vindictive wrath but that he may not so chasten him as to lay him under an overwhelming impression of that intolerable wrath.
When the soul of a holy man is, for a season, under that direful impression, he can see nothing, feel nothing but consuming wrath. Conscious as he is that he deserveth the fierceness of eternal wrath, he is filled with dreadful apprehensions that the Hand which presseth him sore is the hand, not of a merciful Father, but of an avenging Judge, casting him down, as a condemned criminal, into a deep and horrible dungeon. Heman, under a sense of that wrath, complains to the Lord thus: “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps” (Ps. lxxxviii. 6). When a saint is under terrible impressions of Jehovah’s infinite wrath he cannot but be under great horror of conscience and in perplexing depths of mental trouble. The sense which he hath of avenging wrath occasions a conflict in his spirit, inexpressibly agonising and terrible. When his troubled conscience is inflamed by a sense of the fiery indignation of God Almighty, the more he thinks of Him as his infinite enemy, the more he is dismayed (Ps. lxxvii. 3): every thought of Him brings doleful tidings and pours oil upon the raging flame. Trouble of conscience for sin is indeed very disquieting, but a sense of the vindictive wrath of God, kindled in the conscience, is still more dreadful. No words can express the direful anguish which the disconsolate soul then feels (Ps. cxvi. 3). The Christian cannot at that time think so much as one quieting, one cheering thought. What he first thinks of is tormenting to his wounded spirit: he changes that thought for another, and that is still more tormenting. He finds himself entangled, as in the midst of a thicket of thorns, so that which way soever he turns himself, he is pierced and grieved afresh. This dismal thought often arises in his troubled mind: that if death were, in his present condition, to surprise and cut him off, he should sink for ever and ever under the intolerable wrath of the infinite Jehovah. The most exquisite torment of body is almost nothing in comparison of the anguish of his spirit at such times (Prov. xviii. 14). Oh! how inconceivable is the anguish, the agony, especially of a holy soul, when it is conflicting with the tremendous wrath of the eternal God! The bodily torture even of crucifixion could not extort from the holy Jesus the smallest sigh or complaint, but the sense of His Father’s wrath in His soul wrung from Him that doleful outcry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. xxvii. 46).
- Another consequence of their having deprived themselves of spiritual comfort is overwhelming terror. Terror is an excessive fear and trembling of heart (Gen. xv. 12; Acts ix. 6). The troubled soul begins to dread that its present feeling of vindictive wrath is but the beginning of what it shall have to feel through an endless eternity. “The terrors of God,” saith Job, “do set themselves in array against me” (Job vi. 4). “Destruction from God was a terror to me” (Job xxxi. 23). And Heman, “While I suffer Thy terrors, I am distracted. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, Thy terrors have cut me off” (Ps. lxxxviii. 15, 16). The Lord permitteth some of His children, when they are under the hidings of His face, not only to draw from that awful dispensation false conclusions with regard to their past and present state, but to form rash and despondent conclusions concerning their future conditions. They then conclude that it will never be better with them as to their outward afflictions. Hezekiah, in a similar case, said, “I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world” (Isa. xxxviii. 11). They likewise conclude that it will never be better with them in this world with respect to their inward troubles. “I shall go softly all my years,” said Hezekiah, “in the bitterness of my soul” (Isa. xxxviii. 15). Nay, under the prevalence of unbelief, and of despondency, they peremptorily conclude that the Lord whom they have greatly displeased, will cast them off and punish them with everlasting destruction in the world to come. They do not merely question, as Asaph did, if the Lord will be favourable to them any more, but they rashly and positively conclude that He never will. They say, as the house of Israel did, “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts” (Ezek. xxxvii. 11); and as the Israelitish Church did, “My strength and my hope are perished from the Lord” (Lam. iii. 18). This they do, not during a short fit of despondency, or in their haste, as David, but for a long time. “When neither sun nor stars” of consolation, “in many days appear, all hope that they shall be saved seemeth to be taken away.” Those awful passages of Scripture, in which “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness,” do continually present themselves to their view, and by a strange kind of belief they apprehend that even every part of the word, as well as every dispensation of the providence of God, is the sword of an enemy; that promises, as well as threatenings; that mercies as well as judgments, are against them; and that by all the Lord, as with a flaming sword turning every way, doth hinder their access to the tree of life. Terrors, like fire, assimilate everything to their own nature, and so they render dejected souls unable to put a just or a favourable construction upon any of the words or dispensations of the Lord.
The terrors of God may indeed be felt, but they cannot be expressed. They are inconceivably dreadful and overwhelming. They are “the arrows of the Almighty within a man, the poison whereof drinketh up his spirit” (Job vi. 4), wounding him in the most vital and tender part, they cause his spirit within him to pine away and almost to die. “I shall doubtless perish,” saith the affrighted soul. “I am undone, for ever undone; I am already, as it were, in the place of torment, under inexpressible anguish, insupportable terror. The great and terrible God hath cast me off; and I see nothing before me but horrible darkness, blackness of darkness for ever. The shadows of the evening are stretched out over me; and what will become of me, if it shall prove an endless night! Oh! what will my eternal state be should death surprise me in my present condition! If I cannot now bear even a slight impression of the anger of God, how shall I be able to endure the full weight, the eternal fierceness, of His avenging wrath! If I am so troubled, so terrified, so amazed now, what shall I do when my tremendous doom shall be pronounced and the endless execution of it begun!” Oh! what overwhelming horror, what direful agony must an awakened and disconsolate soul feel in the awful prospect of suffering the vengeance of eternal fire! Oh! eternity, eternity, how, in the night of terror, doth the prospect of eternity amaze and even absorb the spirit!
- Satan’s being permitted to add to the trouble and terror of believers is usually a consequence of their having forfeited their spiritual comfort. In that condition they are commonly “in heaviness through manifold temptations” (I Pet. i. 6). When the Lord is chastening any of His children for being more ready to believe the lies of Satan than the truths of His holy word, He often permitteth that crafty and cruel enemy to hold them down and to terrify them. And so far as he is permitted, his constant work is to render them as uncomfortable in their way to heaven as possible. Thus he treated Job. The spiritual trouble and the dismal terror of that holy man were, for the most part, from the immediate hand of Satan. When this enemy of souls perceives that believers constantly resist his temptations to presumption he assaults them with furious and horrible temptations to despair. And when he observes any of them under a sense of Divine anger and a dread of eternal wrath, he commonly selects this as the fittest opportunity to enforce those temptations. He then, especially, labours to persuade them that when God is afflicting them with such great severity it is a sure evidence that He is not their God but their adversary, and that they are not His people but His enemies. He misrepresents both God and themselves to them, and so insults them in their misery. When that cowardly enemy perceives that their spirit is already broken down, he makes his most furious assaults on them; for he knows that when they are once cast down he can the more easily trample on and afflict them. No sooner doth the Lord depart than Satan comes: he comes to triumph over their anguish and to say, “Where now is your God?” Remember that your iniquities have been peculiarly great and aggravated and that ye have thereby provoked the Lord finally to abandon you: ye do already feel His fiery indignation and you have reason, good reason, to dread that you shall endure it for ever. He takes occasion from their anguish of spirit to represent the Lord to them as a cruel tyrant, as one who hath resolved to destroy them. And when they already fear, and even feel, that God hath departed from them, what can they say in answer to him? Perceiving their distress, and knowing their weakness, he, with amazing dexterity and unwearied importunity, urges against them even passages of Scripture and dispensations of providence, in order to enforce his infernal suggestions. When he sees that their faith is very weak and that their sense of Divine displeasure is very deep, he then shoots his fiery darts which penetrate and inflame their souls with additional anguish and horror (Eph. vi. 16). It is a pleasant sight to that wicked one to behold God afflicting His children, and to see, were it but one of them, wounded with griefs, broken with terrors, made “a brother to dragons and a companion to owls” (Job xxx. 29). He, therefore, after they have been long disquieted and enfeebled by desponding fears, assaults them furiously, in order that, when they are already pressed down, he may throw upon them additional weight.
It is his usual method so to impress terror on their minds that it frequently comes upon them by sudden fits. These fits or paroxysms commonly return whenever the troubled soul would promise itself some degree of ease. Accordingly, the usual time of refreshing the body with food and sleep are for ordinary the seasons which Satan watches, for his renewed assaults (Job iii. 24 and vii. 13, 14). He commonly injects at such times blasphemous and atheistical thoughts, which fill them with horror; and when he has thereby prepared their hearts he seizes the opportunity to persuade them that such a heart must be wholly destitute of regenerating grace. And when he perceives that any of them are afflicted with melancholy he considers that as a distemper which affords him advantages peculiarly suited to his design: the imagination is then disordered, and so is fitter than at any other time to receive impressions from him. It also affords him much advantage if they have lately fallen into some great and grievous sins, especially, as one observes, into sins against the third or sixth or seventh commandment. Arguing from such crimes, he labours to persuade them that they are reprobated and doomed to eternal destruction. When he perceives that they have been guilty of some atrocious iniquity he will suggest that it is even the unpardonable sin. He argues likewise from their perturbation of spirit that their heart is so hardened by the deceitfulness of sin as to be utterly incapable of exercising repentance unto life. The more he distracts and amazes their minds with terrors, the more unable they are to detect the fallacy of his arguments, and the more disposed they are to admit the force of them. Excessive fear removes their souls to such a distance from true comfort that they will not be persuaded to trust in the Lord Jesus, either for his salvation or for the joy of that salvation. Under such perplexing fears they seem disposed so far to take part with Satan as, with much eagerness and wonderful subtlety, to plead against themselves. Believer, when thy transgressions are at any time so exceedingly aggravated in thy view as to exceed either the mercy of God or the blood of His Son, or the power of His Spirit, or the grace of His covenant, thou mayest be sure that it is one of the lies of the devil. Oh! be henceforth so wise for thyself as no longer to expect truth from a liar or sound argument from a deceiver, or true comfort from an enemy.
- To be discountenanced or coldly treated by Christian friends is often a consequence of a believer’s having forfeited his spiritual comfort. When the Lord is angry with His rebellious child and is chastening him He not only giveth Satan leave to trouble him but permitteth some of the saints who are acquainted with him to discountenance him, and by their cold treatment of him to add to his grief. When the father of a family resolves the more effectually to correct his obstinate child, he will say to the rest of his household, “Do not be familiar with him; show him no countenance; put him to shame.” In like manner, when the Lord is smiting, especially with spiritual trouble, His disobedient child, He, as it were, saith to others of His children, Treat him with coldness and neglect in order that he may be ashamed and humbled for his iniquity. Job, under his grievous affliction, complained thus, “He hath put my brethren far from me and mine acquaintance are utterly estranged from me,” etc. (Job xix. 13-19). And likewise Heman, “Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them. Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness” (Ps. lxxxviii. 8, 18). When the favour of God to the soul is clouded, the comfort of Christian society is also obscured. When He frowns on one, His children commonly appear to frown likewise; and when He makes Himself strange to one, so for the most part do they. If a holy man, then, under trouble of spirit begins to be treated with disregard, and even with contempt, by some of his Christian brethren, he ought not to be surprised; neither should he take occasion to be angry or to quarrel with them, but he should look above them and take the afflictive dispensation only out of the hand of the Lord as a necessary part of the chastisement intended for him. He ought to say with respect to them, as David said concerning Shimei, “The Lord hath hidden them,” or as Heman did, “Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me.”
(To be continued.)