Chapter 10 - THEY REPENTED NOT
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" (Psalm 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-rejecters 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 needs 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" (Psalm 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.
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