The popular god is not the God of this Bible. The popular god is a dead trunk. He has no eyes, he cannot see; no ears, he cannot hear; no feet, he cannot pursue; no arms, he cannot punish.
Listen, O heavens! God has changed (though in our simplicity, we used to think Him unchangeable)! Our modern god is not at all the same as the ancient God. The God of the ancients had iron for Sodom and Samaria, and Tyre and Jerusalem, and Balaam and Belshazzar, and Judas and Robespierre. The God of Abraham used to thunder in His ire. He ruled with a rod of iron, and dashed to pieces sinning nations like a potter’s vessel. But our modern god has no iron in his constitution. He has sheathed the sword, and doffed the cap of doom, and sat down helpless in heaven, an indulgent weakling! Sinai’s thunders are hushed forever; and the arm which used to visit vengeance swift and dire upon impenitent sinners, now hangs nerveless and paralyzed. That is the popular god, and I, for one, refuse to worship him; for I have nothing to do with the creation of men’s wishes, but with the God of the Bible.
I am here today to put half-a-dozen strokes into the face of modern thought and popular infidelity. So help me God. I stand here today in the face of everything, to say that God is unchanged and unchangeable. “I am Jehovah, I change not,” is a word that smites modern thought and popular infidelity right on the cheek-bone and teeth, and will one day put an end to all unbelief in His power to punish—in hell.
The reign of iron lasts still! The same God who hurled oceans over Alps and Andes, drowning a world, and scorched Sodom to cinders in hurricane of fire, and choked the streets of Jericho with corpses, and threw the Roman dogs on Jerusalem, to tear it limb from limb until, in wild struggle of darkness and fire, a nation found its grave—reigns still The same God who cursed Cain, and sent remorse upon Esau, and dug a grave for Korah, flung Jezebel to the dogs, and slew Belshazzar at his own banquet-table, and hurried Judas to a suicide’s eternity—reigns still, unchanged forever; and what He has done before He can do again.
God has two sides—mercy and justice. At Calvary He is just and merciful. At Sinai He is not merciful, but just. Don’t look at God with one eye, or you make a fatal mistake. God has two side to His nature now, iron and wool, even as He has two sides, left and right, to His judgment throne.
If you find me a god who is all mercy and no justice, I will not scruple to call him an idiot of your imagination. I totally refuse to have anything to do with your India-rubber god, whom you can spit at and live, for he is not the god of this Bible. Justice and mercy are the twin pillars of His throne; and the day God ceases to be just and punish sin, He will cease to be, and heaven grow dark!
I say, the popular god, who is all mercy, is not the God of this Bible, is not the God of His people, is not the God of Calvary, is not the God of heaven! I scout him from my soul as the devil’s god and yours.
There is a hell, understand, first, and be mercilessly clear on this point. This is the key of the situation. If hell is “not proven,” I deny the truth of God in toto; and, ere I finish, I am prepared to impeach the prophets and apostles as liars, and Jesus Christ as the biggest impostor that ever trod God’s earth. Therefore be mercilessly clear.
There is a hell. The Hebrews took their idea of that awful place from Hinnom’s Vale, a deep gorge on one side of Jerusalem. Here red-handed Manasseh passed his children through the fire to Moloch—horrid king! — whilst the thunder of drums drowned their dying screams.
It was the sewer of the city—the abominable receptacle of every conceivable filth and impurity, to consume which fires were kept constantly burning. The cries of bloated vultures, the constant fires—now smoldering, now blazing out anew, as the winds rose and fell—and the deep banks of stenchful smoke always lying over that horrid vale, made it, in the eve of every Jew, a picture of hell!
There is a hell. We are treated to some fine new theories of the future of wicked men now-a-days.
Universalism (or the devil’s theory of hell!) with the blandest of smiles, comes to tell us that, all alive, saint and sinner, will turn up in heaven at last! The murderer and the murdered, the seducer and the seduced, the hater and the hated, the robber and the robbed, to their surprise will all find heaven at last! Nero and Paul, John and Herod, Judas and Peter, Cain and Abel, Elisha and Jezebel, Tom Payne and Murray M’Cheyne, will all come out at the same side of the judgment throne! (The devil laughs here). A pretty heaven indeed! With all the hypocrites, and whoremongers, and drunkards, and backbiters, and blasphemers, standing on the glassy sea!
I say, in the name of reason, the thought is blasphemous. There must be two places in eternity for two kinds of character. Character is permanent. Sin is being burnt into your soul as with a red-hot iron. You cannot throw it off as you do your clothes. It is part of your being. Look out, men! sin is no trifle. It will live when the sun is buried. You are forging a chain or fashioning a crown, digging a hell or building a heaven for yourself, and you are busy at it now!
Universalism is a damnable heresy! built on rotten props. Here is one of them. On a public platform in Shotts, I asked J. U. Mitchell: “Can a man go to heaven without repentance?” “Certainly not,” was his answer. “Then,” said I, “would you be so good as to tell me when the suicide who throws himself from the parapet of London Bridge, and is dashed dead on the rocks beneath, repents?” Let the reply stultify Universalism forever! “He repents between the parapet of the bridge and the rock on which his brains are dashed out!”
This theory is not often boldly avowed, but secretly believed, I am convinced, it generally is; and, by God’s help, I will blast your soul-damnation heresy today. “The wicked shall be turned into hell!”
The more popular theory of this age is Annihilationism; that is, “I die like my dog,” I die a sinner, and I am nowhere ever after. The coffin that holds my body is the grave of my soul, and, of course, punishment of any kind in eternity is an impossibility, as there is nobody nowhere to suffer it! Now this theory denies the immortality of the soul, which I shall someday have the pleasure of proving beyond the possibility of doubt to anyone who can listen to reason, and revelation, and history, and common sense.
When my body dies, my soul dies! What! Then there is not a saint in heaven! though John saw armies of these following Jesus on white horses. Moses and Elias are not, though they came from heaven to talk with Jesus—phantoms on Transfiguration Mount! David and Solomon, and Daniel, and Mary of Magdala are dead—dead, body and soul! The thief on the cross, who was to be in Paradise with Jesus that day, is not in Paradise yet; and Paul, who had a desire to depart and be with Christ, which was far better, is not with Christ—he is nowhere—has been nowhere these nineteen centuries!
Why, even the heathen shame your unbelief! Tartarus was the Roman hell—a gulf of gloom! Its gates of rock guarded by Furies, whose every hair was a coiled adder! From within sounded the clanking of chains, the crack of the scourge, and the shrieks of the damned! All kinds of torture were there, according to the degree of sinfulness. Tantalus (our worldling) was smitten of burning thirst, and plunged to the chin in Water; but to cool the fire in his throat not a drop! (Compare rich man of Luke.) Tityus the giant stood forever chained to a rock; a vulture eternally tore his liver which as eternally grew (our undying worm)!
You will not believe the Romans. To the law and to the testimony then. To your Bibles, men, and let us have the truth, whatever it be. I will not cite Paul, or Matthew, or John, lest you should doubt them. I will cite the eternal God Himself, and hear what He says: “The wicked shall be turned into hell” (Psa. 9:1717The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. (Psalm 9:17)). You may scatter the everlasting mountains, or split the sun in twain, until, with shorn locks and dimmed eye, it stumbles on the pathway of light; but you won’t alter God’s word. I cite the tender-hearted Jesus; and several times in one chapter (Mark 9) He speaks of a “Worm that never dies, and a fire that never shall be quenched.” Now be mercilessly clear, for your soul is at stake. Answer me this question, Did Jesus lie when He spoke of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire? Did the Son of God picture a lie when He shows us the rich man lifting up his eyes in torments, and begging a drop of water to cool his tongue? Did He mean to harrow up our souls with lying pictures of what never existed? Nay; but answer me. Of course not, you say: “It is impossible for God to lie.” Well, then, it is impossible there can be no hell, and Let that settle the question forever.
Why, men, if there is no hell, there is no heaven. They have the same foundation—God’s truth—and if hell be a fable, heaven is a fable, too! There is as much proof in this Bible for a hell as for a heaven. The threatening’s are as numerous as the promises. God woos, and as distinctly thunders. Drown the fires of hell, and you drown the music of heaven, and, like our dogs, let us die. The plan of redemption is one. Take hell out of it, and the whole scheme is a dead failure!
There is a hell, then. Be mercilessly clear; let no doubts rest in your minds here, as you love your soul. Because if not, Calvary was a huge mistake! The death of Jesus was the biggest blunder of the ages. The eternity of punishment and the deity of Jesus stand or fall together. Jesus was not God if there is no hell. The Book which tells of one, tells of the other.
By the permanency of sinful character, the demands of a broken law, the truth of God’s Word, and the death of yonder Son of God, there is a hell.
Understand, second, that the wicked shall be turned into it. I have no delight in preaching hell. It cost me more than one heavy thought ere I could face this text. I would refrain from harrowing your feelings, but the necessity is laid on me. Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel! the half of which is “He that believeth not shall be damned.” I dare not, on peril of my soul, preach a one-sided Gospel, lest I should be found smoothing your road to perdition. I was told by a clergyman last year that he had given up preaching hell to his people altogether.
Well, men and women, immortal, look here! If there is no hell, certainly we ought to stop preaching the lie. But if there is, I ask you, as you love your soul, is it a thing to be hid from you until you are in it? On your soul, say now is he your friend who hides it from you till you are in it, and past redemption? If you were walking hard by the edge of a precipice, and about to put your foot on thin air unawares, would I not be branded as a murderer did I not with loud cries warn you? With endless torment on the track you tread, and only a few steps to it, how dare I stand silently by while you, move forward? At the peril of your soul, I dare not and will not do it. You shall not descend into hell unwarned, to curse me forever!
Now for one warning ere you sink, sinner! “The wicked shall be turned into hell.” Many have had foretastes of it ere they died. Esau finds no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. Saul’s troubled spirit foreshadows the restlessness of hell, with no harp of David to soothe it. Judas feels the undying worm twisting in his soul, and takes to the halter to escape it. The dying cries of Voltaire were echoes of the shrieks of the damned. Mirabeau prays for laudanum that he may forget the eternity to come—a wail from the sea of woe!
These last moments of wicked men ought to burn in your soul the stern fact, that “the wicked shall he turned into hell!”
Colonel Charteris, while dying, offered thirty thousand pounds to have it proved conclusively there was no hell, but it was no use.
Unsaved sinner, you shall be turned in there; God says it. You may wish it otherwise, you shall wish in vain. Turned in there! Your companions fiends, and murderers, and adulterers, and hypocrites, and blasphemers. Your torment in body and soul unsupportable, and that forever! There is no death in hell; mark that, unbeliever. Death, which is a monster on earth, shall be an angel in hell. If Death went there, all the damned would fall down and worship him, and a shout of triumph rend the fiery vault till all was still! But there is no death in hell. Long as heaven lasts hell will last! Farewell, offers of mercy and wooing’s of love! Farewell, voices of mirth and songs of gladness! No more forever shall mercy woo thee. No more forever shalt thou rest in thy sin. It was sweet. Now it will hunt you, and scare you, and damn you; and as you rise to your feet, it will hurl you down again—your sin! Never shall you rest again Black clouds thunder it from above, “No rest,” and tongues of flame around say, “No rest,” and the tortured everywhere shriek, “No rest.” I remember when a boy reading a book entitled “The Horrors of the Damned,” in which a harrowing description of the torments of the lost was given; bur words fail to paint hell.
You must go there. You shall be turned into hell. It will be by force. No entreaties shall save you. No power can rescue you. The arm of God Almighty will turn you into hell! Drunkard you shall be hurried from your cup, smitten of everlasting thirst. Swearer! God will rivet the last oath on your tongue, and drag you to judgment. The last laugh you have at Jesus, scoffer, will remain in your lungs, and echo there forever. Ye drunkard-makers, who put the bottle to your neighbor’s mouth and make money by the murder of souls, ye shall be turned into hell, damned forever!
Break His bands in sunder! “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have you in derision” (Psa. 2:44He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. (Psalm 2:4)). Oh, to be laughed at by the God who once wept for and now woos thee The echo of that laugh shall live in your soul like lead.
I warn you, decent and respectable sinners, you shall be turned into hell. All ye that forget—not despise, nor reject, nor hate, nor deny, nor blaspheme—merely forget God, ye shall die the second death. Cowardly and unbelieving, you shall have your portion with the hypocrites, where is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Your decency is damning you while it keeps you from Jesus. The harlots and the publicans shall go into heaven before you who make a Christ of your morality. Decent unbelievers, you are going from the communion-table to an endless hell. “He that believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark 16:1616He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. (Mark 16:16).)
“When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,
And the sermons and prayers shall be o’er,
When the beams cease to break of the sweet Sabbath morn,
And Jesus invites thee no more!
When the rich gales of mercy no longer shall blow,
The Gospel no message declare, —
Sinner, how can’st thou bear the deep wailings of woe,
How suffer the night of despair?
“When the holy have gone ‘to the regions of peace
To dwell in the mansions above,
When their harmony wakes in the fullness of bliss
Their song to the Saviour they love, —
Say, sinner that livest at rest and secure,
And fearest no trouble to come,
Can thy spirit the swellings of sorrow endure,
Or bear the impenitent’s doom! or bear the impenitent’s doom!”
G. G. Macleod.