“The Voice of God’s Judgement”
The Voice of God’s Judgement
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
July 5, 1953
This talk tonight will be number five in a series of talks on Voices that Entreat Us. And I have been speaking on the voice of God’s love, the voice of Jesus’ blood, the voice of wisdom, the voice of conscience, and tonight on the voice of judgment. In attempting to prepare this message for tonight, I searched the Word and found myself, strangely enough, unable to get past, or away from the house of God.
So I must speak tonight about judgment as it pertains to the house of God, to Christians, rather than to sinners. And I want to read a number of passages of Scripture, Romans 14:12, so then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. 1 Corinthians 3:13, every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man’s work.
1 Corinthians 4:5, therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart. And then shall every man have praise of God. 2 Corinthians 5:10, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men. Now, that’s part of the Scripture that I shall use in speaking tonight of the voice of God’s judgment entreating us.
Now, let me begin by calling attention to a well-authenticated historic fact, and it is that religious people are prone to select a favored truth and to hold that truth at the expense of other truths. Now you say, maybe in your heart, I know that’s true because I know a man. No, I don’t mean that. I mean that we, the sheep of God’s pasture, the children of His love, the so-called orthodox people who believe the truth and hold to traditional Christianity, we, are prone to select and favor, say, one truth at the expense of the other truths that are in the Bible, and to overemphasize that one truth so as to obscure other truths which are just as important.
I can’t think of anything drier than this. A young fellow, Brother Sandrock’s boy, was telling me with much delight today, because the joke was on me, I mean Mr. Sandrock’s boy said, let’s go down to Junior Church. It’s not so dry down there. I admit it’s dry, but if you listen, you’ll get something.
And that is that the historic records show that we are prone to take certain truths and favor them at the expense of others, and by overemphasizing them, we obscure other truths which are just as important, so that they actually disappear for generations.
Now I want to tell you what I mean by disappear. I mean that they fall into disuse. Suppose that there was a key on the piano over here and let us suppose that it just didn’t play. It just didn’t play, that’s all. It didn’t play. It’s out. And now somehow our friend could get on in an evening, but if it was somewhere up near the middle of the keyboard where it’s often used, he’d have a time of it, and he’d always be wincing under the fact that he hit the key and that nothing happened. It wouldn’t be removed from there, and if you’d photograph the keyboard, you’d find it in a picture, and if you were to run up and down the scale, you’d find your finger would touch it, but it just didn’t play.
Now that’s what I mean by certain basic doctrines of the Christian faith that have been allowed to fall into disuse, so that they just don’t play. You don’t hear them. They’re not talked about. They’re there, and if you go to the book of discipline, the statement of doctrine, you’ll find it there, because it’ll say that we do firmly hold this truth, and they’ll have it number seven there in their creed, but it has fallen into disuse. It just doesn’t play, and it has no emphasis and no power because it is slurred over and forgotten.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, there are certain great Bible truths which fall into disuse because certain other truths which lie close to them have been overemphasized to the obscuring of those truths, and then those truths, the absence of them, begins to do its deadly work, and down and down and down we go until finally some prophet of God has to come and reassert those truths and emphasize them and trumpet them forth. And at first he’s considered a heretic because he hadn’t heard that for a generation or two; that hadn’t been heard since great-grandpappy’s time, and I didn’t hear it at camp meeting last year. I didn’t hear it at that Bible conference. I didn’t hear it over here at this convention. I didn’t hear it out at that council. I didn’t hear it at the playground of the Christian world. I just didn’t hear it. Therefore, it isn’t so.
But the prophet of God keeps on blasting and trumpeting until the church wakes and adopts that truth and does something about it, and then some kind of a life comes from the dead. What did Luther do? Invent a new doctrine? He did not. He dug a doctrine out which had fallen into desuetude and never was heard, and by sounding the trumpet blast of justification by faith, he brought about the Reformation.
What did Wesley do? Not invent any new doctrine, but by sounding forth a forgotten doctrine that it was possible to have purity of heart, he roused the church.
And so, with every man who has ever been used of God tremendously in any generation from Calvary down to this hour, they have not preached any new truth. They have simply had the anointed vision to discover truths that had been obscured by the overemphasis of certain other truths, and at first, they were considered heretics and stoned out of town, but after a while the church listened to them and began to wake up, and they that slept awake from the dead, and God gave them life.
Now that’s introductory to say this, that justification by faith has become such a doctrine as this. It has been emphasized to a point where it has obscured certain other close related truths, and we have lost the power of those truths because we have overemphasized one truth.
Now ladies and gentlemen, it would be very difficult for any man to be eloquent enough to overstate the vital importance of justification by faith. The man shall live by his faith, and it is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. And it is through faith that we come into this state wherein we now find ourselves. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God.
Now I say it would be very difficult to overstate the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith, because it delivers us from the fruitless struggle to be good. It delivers us from the bondage of the Pharisee and the bondage of the ritualist and the legalist who attempt by certain foods or by abstaining from them, by counting your telling beads so many times before breakfast and keeping certain holy days and certain feasts to make themselves presentable to God.
It is old Adam decking himself out in his best religious garments for the sake of impressing God Almighty and getting an in so that he’ll be taken in at last as having been a man who served the Lord faithfully all the days of his life.
Now that is the bondage some of our fathers fell into because the doctrine of justification was obscured. It was dropped out of the teachings of the church. And so, they had holy beads and holy water and holy everything, and the sacred hearts of this and sacred hearts of that, and days to eat and days to abstain from eating.
And they tried to make themselves acceptable to God by money and by all sorts of methods. Then along came a man and with no new truth, but digging up an old one buried and forgotten in the Bible, he said, it’s not by works of righteousness, but it’s by faith that we are pleasing to God. And immediately the Reformation was born and the Church of Christ got up out of her long sleep. And like the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision, she walked and stood up a great army.
And then the doctrine of justification by faith has been emphasized until now. It has been thrown out of focus as badly as the opposite was before Luther’s time. So that as it is now understood and preached and emphasized and hammered on and twanged on by everybody and his brother up and down the country, here is what has happened. All responsibility has been thrown over upon God and we conceive ourselves to be happy little Christians without a responsibility in the wide world except to give out a tract occasionally. And all sense of accountability has been lost.
We no longer sing except with our fingers crossed a charge to keep I have because we have emphasized the automatic quality of faith to a point where if you believe and accept Christ, all responsibility goes off your shoulder for all time to come and all accountability passes from you to the Savior and you’re not accountable to God anymore. You simply get in the Pullman sleeper, pull down the bed out of the wall and wake up in the depot in heaven.
And also, all judgment has been bypassed. Christians aren’t thinking of judgment anymore. They’re not worried about judgment. The only thing I can ever get a Christian worried about is that he might lose what we call fellowship, that he might not be as happy tomorrow as he was the day or happy the day after tomorrow as he was yesterday. He wants to be happy, happy, sing it all together now, happy, happy, happy. He wants to be a happy little moron.
And so, the result is, that he says, now I’ve got to learn to keep my fellowship up, so I’ll be happy. But the idea of a probationary period, that there is a judgment to come, that he is accountable to God for the deeds done in the body according to these texts, has completely passed out of the theological thinking of the modern fundamentalist church.
And faith has become a kind of magic, having beneficial properties which accrue to the man who believes. And they accrue to him no matter what his state of life may be. They’re automatic. They accrue to him. He believes; therefore, it accrues. And regardless of the moral condition of the man, whether he’s obedient or not, how faithful he is, or what kind of Christian he is, he believes or has believed, and therefore the automatic benefits of this magic faith accrue to him now and in the world to come.
Now, this has obscured a Bible truth, the Bible truth that I want to deal with tonight. It is a true doctrine pushed out of focus. It is the doctrine of faith and grace and justification by faith alone, pushed by uncorrected logic to a ridiculous and grotesque extreme.
Now let’s talk about this doctrine of probation. I say that we don’t hear this very often, and I admit that in standing before this intelligent audience tonight, Bible-taught audience, I feel very much like a heretic. I feel as if I should be branded and perhaps put in the stocks. Maybe I would have been in the early days of our country. But the Bible still teaches the doctrine of probation.
Now what do we mean by probation? We mean that this life is a preparation for the next, and that that preparation is not concluded when I believe on Jesus Christ for my salvation. There is a preparation that goes on beyond that.
We take the thief on the cross who believed in Jesus Christ and met him in paradise the same day, and we make that to be the criterion by which we judge the whole thing. And so we believe in Christ, and that prepares us. We are then prepared, and there is no such thing then as probation, as testing, as judgment to come, nothing like that now in modern theology.
And the man that will rise and declare it, may throw himself open to bitter attacks by persons who have forgotten the beginning of this sermon, the truth of it, that it’s possible to take a good doctrine and to push just as good doctrines out of the Bible with it.
That’s what happened in our day, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t think I’ll ever be the man to reform anything. I’m getting too old, and I’ve sinned too much against God in my time. I don’t think he’ll trust me with it. But I do say this, somebody may yet arise in America who is willing to be unpopular and to be thought a heretic and a fool, who will be willing to endure the heartache and agony and misunderstanding of daring to face out and stare down the hierarchy that has said that the doctrine of probation is not biblical, that we are, everything is taken care of by one act of faith, and there’s no such thing as a judgment nor an expectation of a judgment to come.
Now, I say that the doctrine of probation teaches that life is a preparation, this life is a preparation for the next, and that accepting Jesus Christ settles some things forever. It settles forever my past sins. It settles forever my justification before my Father. It settles forever that my name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. It settles that I am a regenerated man, and the seed of God is in me. It settles that. That’s what accepting Christ does.
But our mistake is that we forget that we Christians are on probation. All Christians are now on probation to prove character and to test us for the world to come, to see what we’ll do with the light when we’ve been given, to test our repentance, how real it is, to test our obedience, whether we plan to be an obedient Christian or not, to prove our faithfulness, to see what we’ll do with time and gifts and opportunities and money.
But because we have emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith to the obscuration of this doctrine, there’s practically nothing at all said anymore ever by anybody about the fact that you and I are going to have to give an account to God for our time, your years and my years.
We’re going to have to give an account to God with the gifts we have, for the gifts we have. We’re going to have to give an account to God for the opportunities, that is, the situations which enabled us to act that we didn’t take advantage of.
We’re going to have to give an account to God for the money we have. We’re riding high in America now. Our dollars, they just lie, just fly around like leaves in the fall. Everybody’s got money now.
I know a boy that wanted to get a little quick money in the summertime between semesters, so he’d go back to school. He got a laborer’s job in a factory. He worked overtime one day and made thirty dollars, which was two weeks’ wages in 1933. Thirty dollars in one day, a laborer.
Now, we’ve got all kinds of money, and most of us are overlooking this, that we are on probation, and God is testing us to see what we’re going to do with that money. Nothing to giggle about, boys. Nothing to smile about. This is a serious and grave situation, that God has given to us Americans more money than to any other people in all the world, in all history. And we have taken it as a matter of course and tossed it around as loosely as dandelions.
Now, there’s nothing I can do about that. I might just as well sit down and shut up, because I know you people, you’ll do as you please anyway. But you’re on probation, and God is going to hold you accountable for what you do with your money. And He’s going to hold you accountable for what you do with your abilities. Every man according to his ability, said the Holy Ghost.
And he’s going to hold you accountable for what you do with your time. You say, now Brother Tozer, you stay out of our business. I’ll do what I please with my time. Well, I know that. But I also know you’re on probation, and God is now testing you to find out if you have moral sense enough to know what to do with time.
Time is a creature gift which God has given you, but he hasn’t given it to you foolishly. He has given it to you to see whether you have moral wisdom enough to know what to do with it. And the result of that testing will be seen in the judgment of the great day. Now, I say that every Christian is saved, but on trial.
And every Christian is awaiting the final severe test. Look at this test. Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire.
Now, he’s not talking about communists here. He is talking about born-again believers. He’s talking about his own children. He’s writing to the Corinthian church. And he’s even talking in this instance about the servants of the Lord who teach. And he says that every man’s work shall be made manifest for the day. Paul used that word as a solemn catchword. The day, he would say, the day.
One man said that Paul lived with one eye on the judgment seat of Christ and one eye on the perishing world. Only we’ve forgotten the judgment seat of Christ, and we’re so happy that we’re saved that we have forgotten that we are men and women on trial. Not for our sins, for our past record. That would damn us forever, too deep ever, to find our way out of the hell where we’d be placed.
But we’re on trial for whether we have moral wisdom enough and moral courage enough and faithfulness sufficient to be able to know what to do with this hour and these moments and this day and time and money and opportunity and the times in which we live. There’s a great deal of groaning and bemoaning the times crushed between the nutcracker of communism on one side, liberalism and Catholicism on the other side.
And I could spend the next five hours describing the dark side of the times in which we live. But they’re God’s gift to you, sir. God sent some Jews down into Babylon where they knew not the language, hung their harps, some of them did on the willows.
But there were certain ones that were tested there. Daniel and his brethren, they were tested men, and the times they lived in became the very acid, to test them and prove to God what kind of men they were. And I won’t be coward enough to wish for one minute that I lived in any better times than these.
I don’t wish for one minute that I lived in any better city than Chicago. I know it’s rotten. I know it. And I know that we’re a great top-heavy country, and we might come crashing down as other empires and nations have done. But I don’t wish myself in any other period of the world’s history. These times are God Almighty’s gift to me as a Christian, and I’m on probation and God is seeing what one of the least of his servants is going to do about the times in which he lives.
Justified and saved, but on trial, there’s where the Christian should hold himself. But we’re so eager to get out from under all responsibility, and like an unbroken colt, romp from one side of the field to the other, kick up our irresponsible heels in the sunshine, and snort our defiance of all judgment.
And ladies and gentlemen, we had better, while we can, listen to this rather pessimistic preacher, and be warned in time that you and I are on probation.
Now, you can get away with almost anything now. And the reason we Christians can get away with almost anything is that this is not a period of judgment, this is a period of probation. If this was a period of judgment, you’d sin and the Lord would let you down, the Lord would punish you immediately, the Lord would prove to you immediately that you weren’t worthy of his kingdom.
But this is not a day of judgment, this is a day of probation. This is the period of probation, and the Holy Ghost says, therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart. Then shall every man have praise of God.
So this is not the judgment day, this is a period of probation. If I were to put it around like this, this is not the trial, this is the preparation for the trial. This is not the last examination; this is the getting ready for the examination.
Now, doesn’t this sound like strange doctrine to be coming in a fundamentalist church in the city of Chicago in the year 1953 A.D.? For it is simply all out of harmony with everything you hear. Polly and the cracker. Polly wants a cracker, he says. And if you put a ribbon around his neck and teach him to say Polly wants the cracker in a high-cracked voice, you get a reputation of being somebody.
And the crowds will rush in to hear this Polly say Polly wants a cracker as no other Polly ever said it. You should come and hear that bird. You should come down and hear him, he’s wonderful. He says Polly wants a cracker in a tone and with an inflection you’ve never heard before, but he’s awful careful to stick to his one lone text, Polly wants a cracker. He doesn’t dare get out of that, he doesn’t dare change his text, he has to say the one thing that he’s been told to say and taught to say.
So, the idea of probation and a period of trial when God gets us ready to be judged in that day, not for our salvation, understand, I insist justification makes us justified and that settles that, but whether we’re fit to live in God’s heaven among God’s great, whether we’re morally and spiritually wise enough and good enough that you say we’ve got to be because we’re clothed in His righteousness alone. Yes sir, clothed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. And if it were not for that you wouldn’t appear before the judgment seat of Christ, you’d appear before the judgment of the great white throne and with the lost of all the ages be judged. But I’m talking about something else altogether.
Now, I admit that sometimes, according to the Bible, God’s people can get so out of hand that God has to precipitate judgment. First Corinthians 11th chapter says there, let a man examine himself for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself not discerning the Lord’s body for this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep.
And if this teaches anything, it teaches that at the Lord’s table, at least at one time, things had become so sacrilegious, so irreverent that God did not wait for the day of judgment, the testing day to decide what to do. He precipitated the judgment and allowed some of these Corinthians to become physically weak and sickly and some of them to die before their time because they handled holy things in an unholy manner.
At the Lord’s table, they were irreverent and drunken. Because they were, God reached out and pulled the judgment in a little for them. I say sometimes God does that, but for the most part He does not. For the most part, He simply lets us go because we’re on trial, saved but on trial. This is a period of probation for the world to come.
But you say, Mr. Tozer, if I thought that, I never could be a happy Christian. If I thought that there was a time coming when my deeds were to be tested and judged, my life was to be examined by the eye of God, I never could be quite a happy Christian.
Well, there are two or three answers to that. One of them is that the Bible makes a great deal less of your being happy than it does of your being holy. The Bible doctrine is a doctrine of holiness, not necessarily a doctrine of happiness. And to my mind, one of the proofs of the infantilism, the spiritual infantilism of the church of Christ today, is that we insist upon being happy and let hell freeze over. We’ll be happy anyhow. We had better not seek to be happy.
We had better seek to discharge our spiritual obligations and then believe that in so doing God will allow an overtone of spirituality to accrue to us and the joy of the Lord will come. Paul used to write his letters weeping and wet the paper with his dropping tears, and at the same time have a joy that wouldn’t stay down.
There’s your paradox, beloved friend. It’s possible to be solemn and serious and grave with the thought that I am in a period of probation, that I am a probationer, and that sometime I’ll stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the deeds done in the body, at the same time to have a well of joy springing up within my heart.
But the average Christian in our day trusts to what he believes to be the magic of faith that automatically fixes everything up for him for all time to come. So, he’s on board, streamers waving, whistles blowing, and the band playing.
No, that’s not Christianity, brethren. Read your Bible with the thought in mind that I’ve given you tonight. Read it. Try to think your way past all this notion that’s been funneled into our heads in the last few years and try to remember that a Christian is one who’s justified but on trial, who is saved but on probation. Are you following me?
You say, all right then, Mr. Tozer, are you saying that I won’t know whether I’m saved or not until the judgment day? If you still think that’s what I mean after all I’ve said tonight, you and I might as well shake hands and quit because I never can make you see it.
I have said boldly that that’s not what I mean. I mean that I am saved by faith and forgiven and justified and regenerated and protected by the Advocate at the right hand of the Father, all by faith. But at the same time, I’m a man on trial still.
For all shall appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the things done in the body, whether they be bad or good. And every man’s work shall be tested by fire, for the fire shall declare it. Now that’s in the Bible too, but we’ve obscured that doctrine. Our Plymouth brethren friends occasionally refer to it. They call it the Bema, the judgment seat. That’s, I guess, the original Greek, and they like to use occasional original Greek.
You know, we all do to make folks believe it. Well, anyway, this Bema business, you see, but you don’t hear it emphasized much. The average man isn’t worried as half as much about the Bema as he is about Life magazine and how popular he’ll be and how much money he’ll have and all the rest. But this bothers me. I don’t know about you, but it bothers me.
Now, this whole doctrine is set forth by our Lord in Matthew 25. He tells there the story of the man who went into a far country. Before he went, he called his servants in. He had just had three. He gave one of them five talents, he gave one of them two, and he gave one of them one, each one according to his ability. They couldn’t complain because one man had five talents worth of ability, one man had two, one man had one, each got what he deserved. Now he said, use these, I’ll be back.
The man that got five began to use them. The man that got three began to use them. The man that got one buried his. After a while, the Lord returned. This man returned and called his servants in.
Now, while he was gone, they could have done just as they pleased. They could have spent that money at a card table. They could have done what they pleased with it, and nobody would have judged them. They could have written books, led singing, sung solos, preached sermons, been on boards, run prayer bands, young folk societies, Sunday schools, edited magazines. They could have done all those things and still squandered their master’s money and foolishly betrayed his trust. Still, they could have been as religious as a cross between a Muhammadan and a Buddhist. But when he came back, he just called them in.
They were on probation during his absence. Two of them knew it and one of them didn’t. One of them, two of them, one said, I used your money wisely, here it is, with interest. The other one said the same. The other one said, I was afraid, and so I hid the money. And the Lord said to the ones that he approved, he said, well done, good and faithful servants. You’ve been faithful over a few things. I will make thee rule over many.
Now, those three servants didn’t know that they were on trial. He didn’t tell them that. He just said, here, use this, and went away. But they were on trial, and the [Lord] had promotions ready for those men. And when he came back, he promoted two of them and cast the other one out. What are you going to do with that passage?
Now, the ultra-dispensationalists, they have gotten rid of it by saying that Matthew doesn’t belong to us. I just as soon believe the modernist when he says Isaiah doesn’t belong to us, as to believe the dispensationalist when he says Matthew doesn’t belong to us.
I’m not going to have books of the Bible ripped out from under my nose just when I’m getting a stomach full of the green pastures by some dispensationalist who says, That’s not for you, brother, just a minute. You need not eat from Abraham’s book. Abraham and I are brethren, and he lets me come to his table and nibble with him? Sure.
And I don’t believe any dispensationalist needs to get excited for fear I’m going to get blessed on a verse that he has marked verboten. No, sir. Good German words, isn’t it? Oh, did I miss one? I thought I had.
But this verboten business, I forbid you to use that, brother Tozer. It’s not for you. Rightly divide the word of truth. Oh, get on out. I’ll take the word of God, and this book of God was given me. It’s not all about me, but it’s all for me. It’s one of the rules at Moody Institute, and it’s a good rule.
Now, I ask you tonight, brethren, whether this is not an eloquent voice. It is an eloquent voice to me. People say to me, why don’t you take it easy? Get rid of some jobs and take it easy. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’ve wasted so much of my time. People say, Oh, you’re such a busy man. If they knew how much time was wasted. I ask you if this is not eloquent, this voice, not mine, but the voice of probation, the voice of judgment.
And remember that there is not and there will not be one lonely friend. See, when we get under conviction now and get feeling low and feeling bad, we can run to our friends, a little religious talk, a little chitchat about the Church, about the evangelists and about this and that, pretty soon we feel better. But in that day, there won’t be a friend, for every man shall give an account of his own deeds. And there won’t be one lonely friend to go to for help.
In that hour, when our smiling but serious Father and our gracious and kindly faced but serious Savior call us to their feet and say, now, my redeemed children, I must have an account of the deeds done in the body since you were saved. I must now have an account.
What about the money that you got in your lifetime, and I gave you a lot of it. What about the abilities that you have, so many more abilities than lots of people? What about the times in which you lived, when you could shine as a star in the darkness? What did you do about it? What about it?
There will be no place to hide then, brethren. No running to a soda fountain and nurse on a malted milk while we laugh away and joke away the seriousness of it.
You can’t do it then, too late then. You can do it now. Some of you are going to do it just as soon as we’re over here now in the next few minutes. Maybe you’ll go home because it looks as if it’s going to storm, but normally you wouldn’t go home, you’d go somewhere and joke off tonight’s sermon. Because you’ve forgotten you’re on probation. You have tried to settle everything by one act of believing. You settle some things by one act of believing, I’ve insisted, but there are some that aren’t ever settled until death cuts us off or until the Lord comes.
Now, what is the way of all this? The way is the way of self-judgment. If we should judge ourselves, we should not be judged–self-judgment and obedience. I want to warn against one thing. I want to warn against the tragic moral error of always confessing and yet never making any change in the life.
When you confess a thing, it goes without saying that you intend to abandon it. So instead of forever confessing, I must confess and abandon it, if God is going to believe my confession, so self-judgment and obedience.
Oh, I say, we don’t sing anymore the song that has this stanza in it. Arm me with jealous care as in thy sight to live, and O thy servant, Lord, prepare, a strict account to give. Someone says, if I believed I had to give a strict account and serve in the eyes of God, I never could be happy. The man that wrote that was only one jump short of hysterically happy. That was Charles Wesley.
That man was so spiritually happy, that old Dr. Samuel Johnson, the English philologist and critic, said of John Wesley, he is the loftiest example of complete moral happiness that I have ever seen. And his brother Charles was happier still, if there could be any difference. Happy in God and in Christ, and yet he said, arm me with jealous care as in thy sight to live, and O thy servant, Lord, prepare a strict account to give.
He believed he was on probation. He could sing, arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears, the bleeding sacrifice in thy behalf appears. Before the throne my surety stands, my name is written on His hands. He could sing that, but he could also sing, and O thy servant, Lord, prepare a strict account to give. We’re having ourselves a time that never came down from heaven. It doesn’t sparkle with the pure shine from the waters underneath the altar.
But we’re determined to be happy if we can burst a lung that we forget we’re on probation, and that your day-by-day service to God and your fellow man will be sharply scrutinized and severely judged before the feet of Jesus Christ in that day. To me, that’s an eloquent argument. What do you think about it?