By
Harry Ironside
More than once in the Holy Scriptures we are
distinctly told that God speaks to men in the wonders of creation.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his
handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night
showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their
voice is not heard” (Psa. 19:1-3). Yet nature in itself, beautiful
as it is in some things and unspeakably terrible in others, is not
sufficient to bring guilty man to repentance. The marvels of the
universe ought to convince any thoughtful mind that back of all this
amazing machinery is a Creator and a controlling Master Hand to whom
every intelligent being owes allegiance. But something more is
needed to subdue the sinner’s proud spirit and bend his haughty will
to submission, and it is here that the work of the Holy Spirit comes
in, acting in power upon the conscience of the godless soul.
We have seen that, while the goodness of God was designed to lead
man to repentance, yet, experiencing all the benefits of that
goodness, men drifted farther and farther along the downward way
that leads eventually to everlasting ruin. It is one of the facts
hardest to explain that people who are grateful to their fellows for
the smallest favors can yet be recipients of God’s goodness daily,
and that in ten thousand different ways, and still ignore completely
the Giver of all good forgetting that “Every good and every perfect
gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with
whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
We need not therefore be surprised that, on the other hand, the
judgments of God expressed through what many regard simply as
natural calamities also fail, in themselves, to produce repentance,
even though they may fill men with fear, horror, and anxiety. Our
Lord when predicting conditions that will prevail immediately before
His return describes a world in chaotic upheaval, nation rising
against nation, kingdom against kingdom, on the earth distress of
nations, with perplexity, earthquakes in many places, the sea and
the waves roaring, men’s hearts failing them for fear for looking
after those things which are coming on the earth—yet no intimation
of repentance because of sin and a turning to God for deliverance.
It was so in olden days. The prophet Amos furnishes us with a
striking picture of the dire circumstances that Israel passed
through in the days of her apostasy; but the horrors of famine, the
loathsomeness of the plague, and the destruction wrought by fire,
storm, and earthquakes, all alike failed to produce repentance.
In this connection we cannot do better than read carefully a part of
his fourth chapter, verses 6-12: “And I also have given you
cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your
places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. And also I
have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months
to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it
not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon and the
piece whereupon it rained not withered. So two or three cities
wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied:
yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I have smitten you
with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and
your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm
devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I
have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your
young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your
horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your
nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I have
overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye
were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not
returned unto me, saith the LORD. Therefore thus will I do unto
thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to
meet thy God, O Israel.”
These sore judgments are similar in character, though not nearly so
severe, as those predicted to fall upon Christendom in the last
days, when transgressions have come to the full. And in that day,
just as when in God’s long-suffering toward Thyatira, He “gave her
space to repent” and she repented not, so, three times over, we find
the same thing declared concerning those who shall experience the
sorrows of the tribulation era. In Revelation, after we pass the
third chapter, we have a series of visions in which is set forth
most graphically the climax of the age-long struggle between the
forces of evil and those of righteousness. Often has it seemed to
the doubting and half-hearted that the victory over sin was never to
be won, but that the powers of darkness grew even stronger at times
than they had been before. But faith could ever look forward to the
triumph of the Lamb and His hosts over the dragon and his deluded
followers. In these great visions the final outcome is clear — “A
king shall reign in righteousness”; yea, righteousness shall cover
the earth as the waters cover the great deep.
But ere that time there will come the last terrific struggle, when
the wrath of God and of the Lamb shall be revealed from heaven, and
the wrath of the devil will be manifested on the earth as never
before. Ungodly men caught in the vortex of this dynamic crash of
opposing forces will have to suffer indescribable anguish, if they
persist in high-handed opposition to the Kingdom of God. But all
that they shall be called upon to endure will fail to work
repentance in their hearts.
However one may interpret the ninth chapter of the Apocalypse, there
can be no question that it is a portent of a condition unspeakably
evil which will prevail upon earth for a time, inflicting terrible
physical and mental suffering upon men, and destroying millions of
the race. Then note the solemn words of verses 20 and 21: “And the
rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented
not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship
devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of
wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented
they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their
fornication, nor of their thefts.” It is evident that suffering does
not necessarily produce repentance. Twice it is so stated in these
two verses.
Advocates of the larger hope and universalists generally insist that
all punishment is remedial and that eventually God will perfect
through suffering all who now reject His grace. This passage lends
itself to no such delusive dream. Those who are to endure the
horrors of the judgments here depicted are not thereby brought to
confess their sins and seek divine forgiveness. Instead, they harden
themselves against God and persist in their immoral and ungodly
behavior.
Yet it cannot be denied that suffering has had a very salutary
effect on many people; but this does not refute the position taken
above. When the grace of God co-operates with the trying
circumstances to bring one to a sense of his personal need, his
unworthiness of the divine favor, and his dependence on God for that
which alone can enable him to rise above the adverse conditions in
which he finds himself, suffering will be used to produce
repentance. But where this is not the case it results in greater
hardness of heart just as the same sun that softens the wax hardens
the clay.
A kindred passage to that we have already been considering is
Revelation 16:10-11: “And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon
the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and
they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven
because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their
deeds.”
Here we see that the most intense anguish, instead of producing
repentance, only hardens men in their sins and in fact leads them to
add to the enormity of their guilt by blasphemously blaming God
Himself for the distress which their own unholy ways have involved
them in.
Again and again we have seen this principle exemplified in actual
life. The student of history will recall how in past centuries, when
wars, famines, and pestilences have decimated whole nations, the
survivors in most cases have become worse rather than better. One
thinks of the days of the plague in Paris in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, when terror seized the populace, yet there was
a turning from, instead of to, God, and the frenzied citizens
plunged into all kinds of vile excesses and orgies of infamy in
order to help them to forget the ever present danger.
If a small minority sought after God and recognized
that the plague was His voice calling them to repentance, it was
only because of His grace working in their hearts. And now that
science has demonstrated the possibility of conquering such dire
visitations as yellow fever, cholera, and bubonic plague by proper
sanitation and extermination of vermin, the majority in place of
gratefully owning the Creator’s goodness in making known such things
to His creatures, that they may protect themselves against disease
and physical suffering, actually deride religion and scorn the Word
of the Lord, supposing that increased scientific knowledge has made
the concept of an intelligent Creator and an overruling Deity
unnecessary, if not altogether absurd.
In view of the well attested saying, that “character tends to
permanence,” we may readily see what place these considerations
should have as we contemplate what the Holy Scriptures reveal
concerning the eternal destiny of those who leave this world
impenitent and unreconciled to God. We would all like to believe
that there is something cleansing in the great change called death,
so that eventually all men will attain the beatific vision and
become pure and holy, purged from all earth stains and fitted for
fellowship with the infinitely righteous One. But the Scriptures
positively declare the very opposite. There we learn of two ways to
die and two destinies afterwards, according to the state of those
who pass from time into eternity. The Lord Jesus Himself has said,
“If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins” (John
8:24). And in verse 21 He declares, “Whither I go, ye cannot come.”
In Revelation 14:13 we read: “And I heard a voice from heaven saying
unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from
henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their
labors; and their works do follow them.”
Observe the vivid contrasts here. Some die in their sins; others die
in the Lord. Those who die in their sins never go where Christ is;
those who die in the Lord enter into rest and are rewarded for their
devotion to their Redeemer. There is no hint that some post-mortem
method of purification will be found whereby the first class will be
brought to repentance and so to turn to Christ for the salvation
they spurned on earth. And those who are in the Lord will never be
in danger of apostatizing from the faith and losing at last the
knowledge of the divine approval.
The solemn words of the Revelation 22:11, “He that is unjust, let
him be unjust still: and he which is filthy let him be filthy still:
and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is
holy, let him be holy still,” make this position doubly sure.
Instead of death leading to a continued probation, we find that it
rather settles forever the state of the saved and also of the lost.
Character remains unchanged thereafter. The righteous continue
righteous. The unrighteous continue in their unrighteousness. The
holy remain holy for eternity. The unclean are defiled forever. And
the reason is that the saved will then be fully conformed to the
image of God’s Son, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, while the unsaved
will, by their own refusal to heed the message of grace, have become
hardened in their sin so that they will be beyond all possibility of
repenting.
“Sow an act, you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, you reap a character;
Sow a character, you reap a destiny.”
Our Lord’s story of the rich man and Lazarus has been treated by
some as a parable solely, and by others as all intensely literal;
while many see in it a true story in which figurative language is
employed in part when describing the unseen world. But however one
may take it, the solemn figure of “a great gulf fixed” and forever
impassible either by those who would go from hell to paradise, or
from paradise to hell, remains suggestive. It was surely intended to
teach the impossibility that anything the wicked might suffer in
another world would lead them to repent of their sins and seek to
get right with God. The great lesson the Lord meant to impress upon
every listener was the importance of repenting here and now, and not
indulging the vain hope of some after-death purgatorial cleansing
that would accomplish for the one who died impenitent what the
believer may know on earth when he takes God at His word. “If they
hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded,
though one rose from the dead.” And if men now spurn the grace of
God, trample on the blood of Christ, and do despite to the Holy
Spirit, God Himself apparently has no other resources upon which to
draw, no other means of bringing hardened sinners to repentance than
are now in operation.
This accounts for the few among aged Christ-rejectors who repent ere
called to give account to God. No one who has worked much in
government hospitals, prisons, and other public institutions, where
he has had to contact large numbers of hoary-headed sinners, can
fail to realize how exceedingly difficult it is to deal with them
about eternal things. Often has my very blood seemed to freeze in my
veins as some aged blasphemer has cursed me for my temerity in
seeking to tell him of Christ. Never have I heard such torrents of
vile words poured forth from human lips as when such a one has
openly expressed his hatred for God and his contempt for all things
holy. One could not but realize that years of persistency in sin had
hardened the heart and seared the conscience as with a hot iron, so
that all desire for anything better had seemingly passed away,
reminding one of the awful description of lost souls given in
Revelation 18:14, where a literal translation would read, “the fruit
season of thy soul’s desire has gone from thee.”
In the light of these considerations, how earnestly ought we who
know Christ ourselves to seek after the lost and endeavor now, while
the day of grace lingers, to bring men to repentance that they might
come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and in turn be His
messengers to others. But if we would do this we must be wise
evangelists, not soothing unrepentant sinners to sleep with a
“simple gospel” that has no place in it for showing them their great
need, ere attempting to present the Remedy.
To Jeremiah God said, as we noticed in an earlier chapter, “Break up
your fallow ground, sow not among thorns.” The ploughshare of God’s
truth must break up hard hearts if we would hear men crying in
anxiety, “What must I do to be saved?” When they see their lost
condition they will be ready to appreciate the salvation provided in
grace.
This is what our forefathers in the Gospel ministry called
“law-preaching.” It was the application of the righteous commands of
God to the souls of their hearers, in order that “sin by the
commandment might become exceeding sinful.” We may possibly have a
better understanding of “the dispensation of the grace of God” than
some of them, but do we get as good results from our so-called
“clear Gospel sermons” as they did from their sterner preaching? We
are apt to be so occupied with the doctrinal presentation of the
Biblical truth of justification by faith alone that we forget the
indifference of the masses to this or any other supernatural
message, and so we really fail where we hoped to help. Never be
afraid to insist on man’s responsibility to glorify God, and to
drive home to his conscience the fact of his stupendous failure.
Where there is no sense of sin, there will be no appreciation of
grace. Do not daub with untempered mortar. Do not be in such a hurry
to get to Romans 3:21 that you pass lightly and hastily over the
great indictment of the entire human race in the preceding chapters.
There is a world of meaning in Mary’s words: “He hath filled the
hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.” It
is the “poor in spirit” who appreciate the “riches of the glory of
his inheritance in the saints.”
Our Lord Himself has told us, “They that are whole need not a
physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance.” And we may be certain that only a sense
of their sinfulness will lead any to avail themselves of the skill
of the Great Physician. I have already said that this does not mean
that men must pass through a certain amount of soul trouble or feel
just so much compunction for sin ere they can be saved. But it does
mean that men who have sinned with impunity, who have forgotten God,
who have scoffed at His grace, or have trusted in a fancied
righteousness of their own, should be brought through the Word and
Spirit of God to a changed attitude that will make them eager for
the salvation so freely offered.
An evangelist had noticed a careless young woman who throughout his
preaching had giggled and chattered to an equally thoughtless youth.
At the close, an overzealous and most unwise “personal worker”
stopped the girl at the door and asked, “Won’t you trust in Jesus
tonight?” Startled, she replied, “Yes, I will.” He directed her to
the well known verse, John 3:16, and read it to her: “For God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “Do
you believe that?” he inquired. “Sure, I believe it all,” was the
ready reply. “Then, don’t you see, God says you have eternal life?”
“O sure, I guess I must have,” she answered with nonchalance and
passed out the door. Elated the young worker hurried to the
evangelist with the information that “Miss — found peace tonight.”
“Peace!” exclaimed the preacher. “Did she ever find trouble?” It was
a good question. Far too many are talked into a false peace by
ill-instructed persons who would not know what David meant when he
exclaimed, “The pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and
sorrow” (Psa. 116:3). It is the troubled soul who comes to Christ
for rest.
How important that such should be urged to immediate decision lest,
resisting the Spirit of God as He strives with them, they at last
reach the place where they are given up to hardness of heart and
“find no place of repentance,” though seeking it with tears. It is
not that God will refuse to give repentance, but that there comes a
time when it is too late to seek to change conditions that have
become settled.
