There awaits them a new and eternal ministry for which this is but a short apprenticeship. Sometimes I look at an old picture of myself stand ing with two other young preachers who long have been taken home. I do not think of them sadly as though their work had been abruptly terminated while I was allowed to continue. We are continuing either there or here. They were promoted earlier and I shall join them in due time. Our promotion days do not come on the same day, but they are assured in the calendar of God. And so is your graduation from this elementary course, if you have taken His yoke upon you to learn in the school of Christ. You’ve got it coming to you. It may be that these lines will fall under the eyes of some faithful servant of God who has toiled long years in a small and obscure place. There has not come the recognition accorded to others. There has been little appreciation. You have seen men promoted by clever politics and very doubtful devices. Sometimes you have a weak spell and wonder whether your labor has been in vain. But you have been faithful over a few things and you have His Word for it that you will be: made ruler over many things. “ Pie in the sky” the cynic calls it but you know better. “ Promotion cometh neither from the east nor from the west nor from the south but God is the judge: he putteth down one and setteth up another.” You will rest your case with that Judge of all the earth and He will do right. You await the ver dict of eternity. Pharisees have their reward here and now but you can wait. Your pay check is drawn on a better bank than any poor vault of earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. You’ve got it coming to you. Or it may be that you are sore beset in body or mind. Maybe your original equipment is playing out. You are growing old. The keepers of the house tremble, the strong men bow themselves, the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be dark ened. You rise at the voice of the bird and the grasshop per is a burden. Never forget that part of your salvation is a brand new body one of these days, like unto the glorious body of your Lord. If you have trusted Him, you enjoy now but a small down-payment of your eter nal inheritance. You have in store a never-dying body and a never-ending life free from pain and sin and sorrow. You are destined to be more than a glorified ghost sitting on a cloud strumming a harp. You will “ walk in Jerusalem just like John” with a new body not subject to the present limitations of time and space. You’ve got it coming to you. Most blessed of all is that divine event toward which the whole creation moves, the return of our Lord. The world is waiting for the sunrise. Most of humanity does not know what that means but all who love His appear ing know. They watch for Him more than they that watch for the morning. We are not merely looking for something to happen, we are looking for Someone to come. The lurid headlines in the papers, the gloomy forecastings of commentators strike no alarm in the hearts of God’s remnant. They are not disturbed by evil tidings for their hearts are fixed, trusting in the Lord. To all such, however hard the stresses of these peril ous times, I would say, “ The night is far spent, the day is at hand. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. When ye see these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” You’ve got it coming to you!
soul that sinneth it shall die: Here is something worse than our mortal decease. It is the separation of the soul from God. The Scriptures make it plan that hell awaits the sinner. A prominent preacher wrote recently that there had not been a sermon on hell heard in his church for the past forty years. His church is no exception in that respect. But hell has not disappeared from the Word of God. Our Lord said more about it than anybody else. H e used the most vivid and lurid figures of speech to de scribe it. It is declared to be an everlasting experience. If we persist in sin and refuse the Divine provision for our salvation there is no other place to go. We choose it for ourselves. We have it coming to us. We may be tempted sometimes to complain at the prosperity of the wicked. The prophets of old were bothered, about it. We see wicked men carry out their evil schemes unhindered. We see Communism terrorize the world. We see Satan work his clever devices and the powers of darkness beset the children of God. But this is not the last chapter. Judgment awaits the sinner. Russia will meet her doom. Gog and Magog are headed for disaster at Armageddon. And the devil is getting closer to the lake of fire all the time. They have it com ing to them. An ungodly but prosperous farmer once boasted to a visiting preacher: “ I plowed much of this ground on Sunday. I planted it and cultivated it on Sunday as well as weekdays and I gathered part of it on Sunday and I have the best crops gathered around here this October.” The minister replied, “ God does not always make full settlement in October.” Indeed the Lord may sometimes seem slow but He is never late. Every one of us has an appointment with the Almighty, a date with Deity, and it will be kept. We cannot postpone it or have the secretary say we are not in. The ancient proph et cried, “Prepare to meet thy God!” We have been given sufficient notice in advance. “He that being often re proved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy.” We have it coming to us. Nations have demonstrated the eternal truth that when we run against the purpose of God we run into trouble. It is written on the Pyramids, on the Parthenon, on the ruins of ancient Rome. It is demonstrated in the scattered Jews. The Pharaohs, the Caesars, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, all these built on the sand and the storm came and the house fell and great was the fall of it. Peace palaces in Geneva and the Hague are monu ments to building without the Chief Cornerstone and the glass house in Manhattan that now houses so many vain hopes will be next in line. “ Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” They build only for disaster. They have it coming to them. But this law works for good as well as ill. If un belief and disobedience bring sure retribution, it is just as true that faith in God and obedience to Him bring richest blessing. They that sow to the flesh reap corrup tion but they that sow to the Spirit reap life everlast ing. And there again God does not always make full settlement “in October.” That fine lad cut down when he had just begun a life of service; that missionary stricken after only a year or two on the field; that minister called home in the very bloom of his worfc-^we lament their early departure and call it “untimely” and sadly sigh “ Too bad.” But it was not “ too bad” for “ to depart and be with Christ is far better.” Nor is it untimely, for they have not ended their ministry, they have only begun it. “ His servants shall serve Him” in a better world, we are told, and we sing, “ Thou too shall be fitted For service above.”
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' AUGUST, 1961
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