If there is any truth in Scripture at all, this is true – that those who stubbornly refuse to submit to the gospel, and to love and obey Jesus Christ, incur at the Last Advent an infinite and irreparable loss. They will pass into a night on which no morning dawns.
Commentary on Colossians and Philemon, Expositor’s Bible, vol. 31, Armstrong, 1905, p. 300.
The books are shut now, but they will be opened then. The things we have done in the body will come back to us, whether good or bad. Every pious thought, and every thought of sin; every secret prayer, and every secret curse; every unknown deed of charity, and every hidden deed of selfishness: we see them all again; and though we have not remembered them for years, and perhaps have forgotten them altogether, we shall have to acknowledge that they are our own, and take them to ourselves.
The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1894.
No one who saw Paul’s ministry and looked at a preacher like Paul could dream that the explanation lay in him. Not in an ugly little Jew without presence, without eloquence, without the means to bribe or to compel could the source of such courage, the cause of such transformation, be found. It must be sought not in him, but in God.
Every word spoken about a brother’s sin, that is not prompted by a Christian conscience, that does not vibrate with the love of a Christian heart is itself a sin against the mercy and the judgment of Christ.
When you were born, your mother brought you to church.
When you were married, your wife brought you to church.
When you die, your friends will bring you to church.
Why not try coming to church on your own sometime?
Hodder and Stoughton, Studies in Theology: The Church and the Kingdom of God, 1895, p. 173.
The judgment of the Church is the instrument of God’s love, and the moment it is accepted in the sinful soul it begins to work as a redemptive force.
The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Funk and Wagnalls, 1900, p. 75.
If there is any truth in Scripture at all, this is true – that those who stubbornly refuse to submit to the Gospel, and to love and obey Jesus Christ incur at the Last Advent an infinite and irreparable loss. They pass into a night on which no morning dawns.
At the bottom, the gospel is not good advice, but good news.
Second Corinthians, A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1903, p. 213.
It is natural…for us to trust in ourselves. It is so natural, and so confirmed by the habits of a lifetime, that no ordinary difficulties or perplexities avail to break us of it. It takes all God can do to root up our self-confidence. He must reduce us to despair; He must bring us to such an extremity that the one voice we have in our hearts, the one voice that cries to us wherever we look round for help, is death, death, death. It is out of this despair that the superhuman hope is born. It is out of this abject helplessness that the soul learns to look up with new trust to God… How do most of us attain to any faith in Providence? Is it not by proving, through numberless experiments, that it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps? Is it not by coming, again and again, to the limit of our resources, and being compelled to feel that unless there is a wisdom and a love at work on our behalf, immeasurably wiser and more benign than our own, life is a moral chaos?… Only desperation opens our eyes to God’s love.
It is not the main part of [the evangelist] to tell men to make their peace with God, but to tell them that God has made peace with the world. At bottom, the Gospel is not good advice, but good news. All the good advice it gives is summed up in this – Receive the good news!