There is a deep-seated unbelief among Christians, just now, about the eternity of future punishment. It is not outspoken, in many cases, but it is whispered. It frequently assumes the shape of a spirit of benevolent desire that the doctrine may be disproved. I fear that, at the bottom of all this, there is a rebellion against the dread sovereignty of God. There is a suspicion that sin is not, after all, so bad a thing as we have dreamed. There is an apology – or a lurking wish – to apologize for sinners, who are looked upon, rather, as objects of pity than as objects of indignation and really deserving of the condign punishment which they have willfully brought upon themselves. I am afraid it is the old nature in us putting on the specious garb of charity which, thus, leads us to discredit a fact which is as certain as the happiness of believers. Shake the foundations upon which the eternity of hell rests and you have shaken heaven’s eternity, too. – Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), from a sermon on Genesis 19.27-28 preached on November 20, 1864
Category Archives: Punishment
A Warning to Sinners
What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the character of God – His absolute sovereignty, His ineffable holiness, His inflexible justice, His unchanging veracity. What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the condition of the natural man – his total depravity, his spiritual insensibility, his inveterate hostility to God, the fact that he is condemned already and that the wrath of a sin-hating God is, even now, abiding upon him. What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the alarming danger in which sinners are – the indescribably awful doom which awaits them, the fact that, if they follow only a little further their present course, they shall, most certainly, suffer the due reward of their iniquities. What is needed today is a scriptural setting forth of the nature of that punishment which awaits the lost – the awfulness of it, the hopelessness of it, the unendurableness of it, the endlessness of it. – Arthur W. Pink (1886-1952)
