A solemn place, my reader, where you and I are standing now, at the close of 1923. What will be our eternal destiny? All the world is standing there. All the men, and women, and children of the world; and all must enter those solemn portals-enter as sinners saved, or as sinners lost. There is a difference after death, the Bible tells us—a difference in condition that will last through all eternity. None of my readers can believe that Cain is in heaven, or Balaam, or Judas, or Voltaire, or Tom Paine. You know they cannot be, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.” Listen to this text: “He that overcometh shall inherit all things: and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.” This is one side, bright and beautiful. You can only overcome by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Wholehearted faith in God’s beloved Son—the world’s Redeemer. Now listen to the other side, and judge where you are as regards eternity, at the close of 1923: “But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death” (Rev. 21:77He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. (Revelation 21:7) and 8).
Now, where are you in all this? We will give you dying examples of saints and sinners, the saved, and the lost, who went into eternity rejoicing or despairing, to face endless happiness or eternal woe, and they knew in either case what was before them. Do you?
Bishop Gilbert Haven.
“The lifting of the veil to the dying Christian,” a writer says, “oftentimes permits a spiritual vision of as much of God’s presence, and as much of the glory and rapture of heaven’s joys as the soul can endure while in the body. There is perhaps no more wonderful illustration of this than in the last moments of Bishop Gilbert Haven, in 1880. When Daniel Steele, who had been hastily summoned to his bedside, entered the room, the Bishop exclaimed: ‘O Dan! Dan! a thousand blessings on you; the Lord has been giving you great blessings and me small ones, but now He has given me a great one. He has called me to heaven before you.’ Dr. Steele asked: ‘Do you find the words of Paul true: “O, death, where is thy sting?” The Bishop replied: ‘There is no death; there is no death. I have been fighting death for six weeks; today I find there is no death.’ Then he repeated the Scripture: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death.” Shall never see death. Glory! glory! glory!
“When Dr. Mallalieu came into the room, Haven put his arms around his neck, drew him to his face and exclaimed: ‘You and I would not have it so if we had our way, but God knows best. It is all right; all right. Oh, it is so beautiful, so pleasant, so delightful. I see no river of death. God lifts me up in His arms. There is no darkness; it is all light and brightness. I am gliding away into God, floating up into heaven.’ As the hour of death came near, his faith failed not. His right hand was dead, and black from mortification, but holding up his arm, and gazing at his perishing member ‘for a moment, he said with triumph: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body.’ Lying in the arms of Dr. Mallalieu, his life fast ebbing away, he rallied a little from a death-like exhaustion, and exclaimed: ‘I am wonderfully upborne, angels are all around me.’ To another he said, ‘He is a whole Saviour, a full Saviour. Glory to God for such a salvation!’”
Last words of Mirabeau. ― “My sufferings are intolerable; I have within me a hundred years of life, but not a moment’s courage. Give me more laudanum that I may not think of eternity.”
Voltaire. ― “I am abandoned by God and man! Oh, Christ! O, Christ Jesus!” He then said “Doctor, I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months of life.” The doctor answered, “Sir, you cannot live six weeks.” Voltaire replied, “Then I shall go to hell!” and soon after expired.
Tom Paine. ― “I would give worlds if I had them, if the Age of Reason had never been published. O, Lord, help me! Christ help me! stay with me; it is hell to be left alone!”
Mrs. Mary Francis. ― “Oh that I could tell you what rapture I possess! The Lord doth shine with such power upon my soul. He is come! He is come!”
Margaret Prior. ― “Eternity rolls up before me like a sea of glory.”
Sir Francis Newport. ― “See how I have despised my Maker and derided my Redeemer; I have joined myself to the atheists and profane, and continued this course under many convictions, till my iniquity was ripe for vengeance and the judgment of God overtook me, when my security was the greatest and the checks of my conscience were the least. Oh, that there were no God, or that this God could cease to be, for I am sure He will have no mercy upon me. I wish there was a possibility of getting above God; that would be heaven to me. Oh, that I was to lie upon the fire that is never to be quenched a thousand years to purchase the favor of God and be united to Him again! But it is a fruitless wish. Millions of years will bring me no nearer to the end of my torments than one poor hour.” Just before the end came he cried out: “O, Eternity! Eternity! Oh, the forlorn hopes of him that has no God to flee to!”
J.D.L.
Poor Carlyle, in his last sickness, said, “Here am I, a poor lone old man, dimly looking into a dark, uncertain future.”