THE uncertainty of man’s life on earth has been compared to a man shut up in a fortress with only a concealed reservoir of water to draw from, whose supply is daily diminishing and can never be replenished. When it will be exhausted he knows not.
God only knows the exact compass of man’s history here. “His days are determined, the number of his months is with Thee. Thou hast appointed his bounds which he cannot pass” (Job 14:5).
But if man cannot accurately measure his span of days on earth, he may be quite certain that he cannot remain. It has been said, with truth, that “the smallest pore in the body is a door large enough to let death in.”
Jacob said to King Pharaoh, “Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage” (Gen. 47:9).
Job said, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not” (Job 14:1, 2).
David said, “Our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding” (1 Chron. 29:15). “We spend our days as a tale that is told” (Psa. 90:9). “My days are like a shadow that declineth” (Psa. 102:11). Speaking of those who seek their portion in this world, he said, “Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue forever. Nevertheless, man being in honor abideth not” (Psa. 49:11, 12).
Solomon said, “The misery of man is great upon him; for he knoweth not that which shall be; for who can tell him when it shall be? There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death; and there is no discharge in that war.” And, again, “So I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done” (Eccl. 8:6, 7, 8, 10).
“COME―GONE―BURIED―FORGOTTEN!”
What a summary! And as solemn as brief.
Who can question the truth of these divine comments on man’s sojourn in this world? All, with one consent, look us in the face, and tell us plainly, You have come; but you are not staying! Surely, it is our wisdom to consider such serious statements, and nothing but blind folly to blink them.
“Soon as from earth I go,
What will became of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be.”
To the mind of a child what brilliant expectations are enfolded in the brief sentence, “When I am a man!” But how different the feeling when the hoary-headed gives expression to those oft-repeated words, “When I was a child!” Yet both speakers, in reality, only occupy different positions on the same road. Both stand somewhere between “Come” and “Gone”! No matter who the reader may be, this is his position today. His all for eternity―and a tremendous stake it is―hangs upon what lies between these two points. They are fixed. We are moving. Every moment we are further from one and nearer to the other. As is written, “God hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26).
To be born into this world, and to awake to the fact that I cannot remain in it; to find, moreover, that the living God holds me accountable to Him, and that I cannot possibly escape the fixed reckoning; that my will has been opposed to His, my heart evil, my mind depraved, and my whole course crooked, is quite enough to fill me with the utmost consternation. But this is not all. A bearer of amazing tidings waits upon me. He brings news which may well cause the very angels to marvel. It is to the effect that, on my behalf, Another Person―One of highest dignity and mightiest power; One full of tender pity and lowly grace, with kindness never before exceeded, and love beyond all human measure―has been into this world before me.
I wonder greatly as I hear that such a Person should show any care for me. I feel so utterly unworthy of any such consideration. But I am assured that, at a tremendous cost to Himself, His coming had secured innumerable benefits for my free acceptance; and that, before he left this world, He gave directions that a special message from Himself should be delivered to me (Mark 16:15, 16). He authorized His servants to state plainly what He Himself had stated, that “He came into the world to save sinners,” not to help them to save themselves, and “not to call the righteous” (1 Tim. 1:15; Matt. 9:13). He did not come here to seek goodness from man, but to show goodness to man―to express, in Himself personally, the kindness and love of God to those who could do nothing but honestly confess that they had ruined themselves.
But what of man’s sin and God’s holiness? Here the precious message only increases in wonder. To relieve the lashings of my guilty conscience, it makes known, that not only was His love expressed with the fullest knowledge of the sins of my whole lifetime, but that, in His suffering and death, full satisfaction for every one of them had been offered to God and accepted; and that the One who had done it was no less a Person than Jesus the Son of the living God.
Then, lest I should consider my case too bad to be reached by His mercy, I am assured that it was the special desire of Jesus that the very city that planned and witnessed His betrayal and murder should be the first to hear the message which should proclaim repentance and remission of sins in His Name among all nations. “Beginning at Jerusalem” was the crowning of His gracious commands (Luke 24:47).
But His grace would go further still. The worst sinner in that wicked city must be subdued, and won, and then used to the blessing of numbers of others. It should be said, even of Saul of Tarsus, “Behold, he prayeth!” while his supplications were reaching the ear of the One he had madly persecuted. Would any of His servants be inclined to evade, rather than approach, such a determined and violent opposer? Would they consider that such a hater of the Name they loved had gone beyond the possibility of blessing? Then He Himself would arrest him. From His own exalted position in heavenly glory He would speak personally to that “Chief of Sinners,” and for all time would hold him up as a pattern of what His saving grace could do. Read 1 Timothy 1:11-16.
Oh, what grace! And “even unto me,” that grace has reached, the writer can thankfully say. Has it reached the soul of the reader also?
Your heart can easily answer for you. Does it answer in the negative? Remember, then, that you are between “COME” and “GONE,” and should your indifference continue until the word “gone” becomes true of you, you will be forever beyond the benefits of the message He has so graciously sent you. “There is a time to be born and a time to die” (Eccl. 3:2).
But there is another matter for your consideration, and by no means less serious. It is written of the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is “gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him” (1 Peter 3:22). John 14:3 gives us His promise to those of His own still left in the world, “If I go away, I will come again and receive you unto Myself.” If you are between “come” and “gone” on your own side, it is equally true that you are between “gone” and “come” on His side-between the “gone” of 1 Peter 3:22, and the “come” of John 14:3. Hence, the unconverted are exposed to a double danger: one connected with their going, the other His coming; and eternal destitution bound up with both. His own word leaves no uncertainty on that point. To those who should at last die in their sins, He said, “Whither I go, ye cannot come” (John 8:21). To those saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us,” outside the closed door, His answer will be, “I know you not. Depart from Me” (Luke 13:25, 27).
Before your “reservoir” of opportunity is exhausted, to use the figure, be entreated, dear reader, to seek the Lord; and so seek Him as to find Him. This may be your last chance, and the next thing― “GONE”! GEO. C.