Friday, February 15, 2008

The Day of the Lord

Lightning

You must confess, my dear hearers, that Jesus Christ was the most tender-hearted of men; never was there one of so sympathetic a disposition; but not all the prophets put together — though some of them be stern as Elijah, though many of them seemed commissioned expressly to dwell upon terrible things in righteousness — not all of them put together can equal in thunder-shocks the sound of that still voice of him, who albeit he did not cry nor lift up his voice in the street, spoke more of hell and the wrath to come than any that preceded him. The loving lips of Jesus have furnished us with the greatest revelations of God’s vengeance against iniquity. None ever spoke with such terrible emphasis, no preacher ever used figures of such glaring horror, as did Jesus Christ the Son of Man, the friend of publicans and sinners. Let me remind you, that the wrath of God and the judgment of the day of the Lord cannot be a trifling matter. How emphatically are we told in Scripture, that it is “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Upon such a subject we cannot afford to trifle.

From a sermon entitled "Tender Words of Terrible Apprehension," delivered November 4, 1860. Flickr photo by Jared Smith; some rights reserved.

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