Book Review: "The Thought of God" by Maurice Roberts
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"The Thought of God" by Maurice Roberts is the perfect book for daily reading or going through together in a discipleship group. The book contains thirty chapters for your soul's nourishment; thirty chapters to read daily in a month; thirty chapters to challenge and encourage your walk; thirty chapters to provoke thought and prayer. Don't miss reading this easily accessible book as there's enough meat within its pages to satisfy even the most ravenous thinker. Below are some of my favorite quotes from each chapter. Reading the quotes in the different chapters reveals the book's charms far better than anything I could say about it. Enjoy!
Chapter 1 The Thought of God
"All men are good company in fair weather but the storms of life prove spiritual character."
"The thought of God should be the Christian's panacea. It should cure all his ills at a stroke."
"The art of good thinking is to carry thought to its logical conclusion. ...The mere thought of God should end all anxiety. Then why in my case does it not? Because I fail to carry thought to its proper conclusion."
"It must follow from what has been said that the degree of a Christian's peace of mind depends upon his spiritual ability to interpose the thought of God between himself and his anxiety. ...For it is not outward circumstances that can drag us down, but our own reaction of despair to them, when we fail to perceive the hidden hand of God in all events."
Chapter 2 O The Depth!
“But our age has been sadly deficient in what may be termed spiritual greatness. At the root of this is the modern disease of shallowness. We are all to impatient to meditate on the faith we profess. We cannot say, 'O the depth!'”
“It is not the busy skimming over religious books or the careless hastening through religious duties which makes for a strong Christian faith. Rather, it is unhurried meditation on gospel truths and the exposing of our minds to these truths that yields the fruit of sanctified character.”
“It is the besetting sin of our age to trivialize sin.”
“The Christian stops making progress as soon as he stops repenting.”
“Let courage characterize our witness for Jesus and let us pray for a larger vision of God's purpose. Only in that way will our modern churches rise above the shallow spirit of this age.”
Chapter 3 The Still Small Voice
In this chapter Maurice Roberts shows how God's gentleness ministers to His children.
In speaking about Elijah after he responds fearfully to Jezebel's threats, Maurice Roberts writes: “But the prayer for death, as so often with tired preachers, is but the effect of disappointment and a sense of failure. In His exquisite care, Jehovah surrounds him with special providences and experiences which reveal the measure of his preciousness to the God who called him to this difficult ministry.”
What, after all, is the highest expression of God's greatness and glory? It is not His outward displays of vast energy in the material world, wonderful as these are, but His inward acts of grace, performed silently in the hearts and lives of men.”
“The grace of God is His infinite power used gently and for our eternal good. There is something overwhelming about an infinite, all-powerful Being acting with infinite gentleness.”
“The most important acts of God's power are those which, all unnoticed by man, touch the secret springs of his soul and heart. Regeneration, sanctification, repentance, growth in grace–all are the product of divine omnipotence acting with marvelous gentleness and love upon man's inner being.”
“God saves no man to his harm. And God saves none against his will. Grace makes the sinner willing.”
Chapter 4 Ceasing from Man
In this chapter Maurice Roberts reveals the overt and sometimes subtle ways we exalt man, rather than giving God the worship He deserves.
“All pride, all human haughtiness, all boasting in man's achievement is a fearful forgetting of God Almighty and a dangerous provocation of His holy Name.”
“What lies at the very heart of all sin is self-flattery, that good opinion of ourselves which loves to be praised by our fellow-creatures.”
Addressing churches and pastors who curry men's favor rather than God's, Roberts has this to say: “The gospel minister should be heard, and not seen. He is 'a voice crying in the wilderness.' He is there to proclaim a message on behalf of his Master. He is not in the pulpit in order to ingratiate himself with the people at the expense of the truth which he proclaims. His voice, delivery, dress and bearing ought all to be consistent with the gravity of his message, which must be to humble man and elevate God in sinners' eyes.”
“Those are the best services and that is the best singing where God is treated with most respect. He is the best preacher who most often impresses those present with the realities of another world.”
“Pride follows our heels more closely than our very shadow. It cannot be beaten away or bribed away. It is a cancer of the soul. It acts like acid upon our graces. It swells us up with ludicrous self-importance. It chokes the life of prayer, stifles our usefulness, and will, if not brutally treated, sap the spiritual life within us almost to death.”
Chapter 5 The Interpretation of Providence in History
“A man's theology always determines his view of providence.”
“The way a man interprets providence proves his real theology.”
“Post tenebras lux [After darkness, light] is more than a slogan. It is an interpretation of providence. Indeed, it implies a vital creed.”
Chapter 6 Our Need of Faith at This Hour
“Faith is not merely the instrument of justification. It is the principle of the whole Christian life.”
“Our temptation is to neglect the soul–to fail in the cultivation of faith.”
“The great call of the hour is surely to become men of far sturdier faith than we have yet attained to. The examples of such men of faith as [Jonathan] Edwards, whose youthful 'Resolutions' shaped his whole life and ministry, ...are a standing reminder to us at this hour that the most useful ministries are those most full of faith, expectation of blessing, and felt enjoyment of His presence.”
Chapter 7 Christ the Lover of Our Souls
“We were not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration and the Christian who goes for a long time without the experience of heart-warming will soon find himself tempted to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not, as he ought, from the Spirit of God.”
“The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ and savoring the felt comforts of a Savior's presence. When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers.”
“The irreverent prayer is atrocious because it is a contradiction in terms. Prayer is by definition a treating of God as His majesty demands.”
“Let us recall in the midst of our busy life that we may do ourselves and the cause of God great harm by our neglect of the soul.”
“The overwhelming concern of the Christian's life must surely be to live unto God, upon God and for God. What else can the familiar words mean where the apostle Paul tells, us, 'For to me to live is Christ?'”
Chapter 8 Better Than Wine
“There are, therefore, compelling reasons why every Christian should pause frequently in life and ask himself if, amidst all the duties of his calling, he has a felt enjoyment of the love of Christ in his heart or whether, amid the welter of his conflicts and strivings, he ought honestly to confess to himself and to the Lord that he has left his 'first love' (Revelation 2:4).”
“When all due allowance is made for the difference between one Christian's temperament and another's, we must surely come back to this, that the more we appreciate the love of Christ towards us, the more comfort we shall have along the way to glory. Christ has loved us 'with an everlasting love' (Jeremiah 31:3). He has in love given Himself for us to be 'a propitiation for our sins' (1 John 4:10). Very soon we shall see Him in His glory and enjoy His love eternally. It is therefore only fitting that here and now we should seek from God a frequent enjoyment of that love. He who experiences it will both renew his strength and reinvigorate his soul.”
Chapter 9 The Christian's Refreshing
“The Lord Jesus Christ was not ashamed to be found asleep in the boat (Mark 4:38). His people therefore do not need to feel ashamed when, after exhausting service, they too must yield their aching bodies to a period of necessary rest.”
“There are certain warning signs which should tell us that we need to relax and to unwind. One such sign is when our mind becomes incapable of facing any aspect of our work with pleasure. ...When all the joy has gone from our work, it is usually a sign that the time has come to rest. ...When we inwardly fight with all the world and all our thoughts turn into battles, it is a sign that nature is overstretched. When we feel that death is our only comfort... When Christ seems to be a harsh Master and the promises of Scripture to be hollow, then it time to draw aside and seek a season of quietness.”
“We in our feverish world, perhaps more than those before us, need to wait on Christ for this comfort [of spiritual refreshing] and enlivenment of soul. Let us apply frequently to Him for it, for our own good and the good of others.”
Chapter 10 The Surpassing Love of Christ
“The Bible's message to us involves the breathtakingly good news that 'God is love.' Such a statement, were we not made of stone, would be so welcome to us in this dark world of misery that we should run to trumpet it from the housetops. Only our chronic deafness makes us so unresponsive to such transcendentally glad tidings.”
“The reality is that the God who pities both can, and wishes to, lift man above his miseries on earth. More still, He has acted in history, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, in just such a way as to solve every problem, lift every burden, unloose every bond and remove every misery when we come trustingly to Him.”
“Where shall we begin if we are to speak of the love of Christ? In marvelous kindness to us He looked past the fallen angels, leaving them irrevocably in their sins, and laid hold of mankind, who were far lower in the scale of created excellence. Let no one suppose Christ to have needed our love, our fellowship or our devotion. As God He was eternally sufficient unto Himself, and as the Son of God He knew eternally the ineffable fellowship of the Father and of the Spirit. When therefore He stooped to clothe Himself with our weak humanity, He undertook an action of such philanthropy that the whole angelic world must have gasped and stilled its wings in breathless adoration.”
“But let us see Christ in His life on earth, the holy and great God-Man, 'trailing clouds of glory' from the cradle to the cross.”
Chapter 11 “Our Unpopular Lord Jesus”
“Sin has made us all mad as well as bad. For we are so stupefied and besotted with our love of sin that we fail, till we are converted, to see that Christ is the only true friend we sinners have.”
“To run away from Jesus is to turn away from the fountain of all grace and love. To be religious but not to crown Christ as Lord of all is to insult God and injure ourselves eternally.”
Chapter 12 “At Home in the Heavenlies”
“The act of God in our regeneration is so momentous that no single category of thought is sufficient to describe the changes it brings about in and for us. It is an eruption from death to life, a translation from darkness to light, an initiation from folly into wisdom, a second birth and begetting, a transition from a broken covenant to a saving convenant, a manumission from thraldom and tyranny into glorious freedom, an immigration from the land of nonentity into full citizenship–in a word, a coming home to God.”
“To be in the heavenlies is to be in the very suburbs of glory. We do not yet see the sights that we shall see hereafter. But we are already aware of them. Like villagers who have traveled from the countryside towards a great capital city and become aware of the distant hubbub of the city while they are still on its outskirts, and before they reach the city gates, so believers are already conscious of the stir within the celestial city into which they have not yet quite entered.”
“The point we need to see is that the state of grace is nearer to the state of glory than it is to the state of sin. Believers are nearer in character to God and the angels than they are to unregenerate and lost sinners. The good that they will is greater than the evil which they do. This is so because grace in believers is more truly their character than indwelling sin.”
“There is no continuity between the states of sin and of grace. But there is great continuity between grace and glory. If God has delivered us from sin to grace, much more will He translate us from grace to glory.”
“We must strive to cultivate daily a demeanor and a bearing of heart and mind which are consistent with our heavenly position in Christ. Of Richard Sibbes it was said that 'heaven was in him before he was in heaven.' This is true in a measure of all the regenerate. But the great Christians of the past and their writings are supremely valuable because they share with us the secret of a consistent spirituality. They were in heaven as to their affections long before their souls got there.”
Chapter 13 “A Time to Afflict the Soul”
“There is a time when the believer becomes aware that he is spiritually dead. …The deadness which periodically afflicts the believer is never total but always partial. It is, however, a serious disease of the soul and weakens him in every way.”
“Another lesson we learn from our periodic deadness is that the Lord Jesus Christ will hide Himself from us when we do not genuinely desire Him. It is a moot point as to whether Christ ever withdraws from His people without provocation. But there can be no doubt that when we cease to value His communion and fellowship He may withdraw His felt presence from us.”
“Repentance ought to be a believer’s daily and hourly companion. Brokenness of heart and tenderness of spirit should be the hallmark of our whole character. Every emotion we have needs to be sweetened and purged with this spirit of penitence.”
“There is only one attitude possible for us if we mean to get to heaven. We must wage a ceaseless warfare against sin within us all the days of our life. Therefore, whenever we are overtaken in a fault or whenever we find that our souls have fallen fast asleep, we had better resort to violent measures to extricate ourselves before a greater mischief befalls us. By this advice, we mean that we must we must then afflict our souls before God and plead in earnest to be aroused from slumber.”
Chapter 14 “The Management of Our Pride”
“The art of being a Christian is very largely the art of managing the corruptions of our soul.”
“But only divine grace can enable a man to govern his own spirit and to mortify his instinctive love of human praise. The best Christian is the one who best manages his soul and most ruthlessly strikes the serpent of pride with the sword of mortification.”
“It is greatly to be feared that we do not take seriously the call to ‘humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God’ (1 Peter 5:6).”
“Happy is the believer who has learned to ‘glory only in the cross of Christ’ (Galatians 6:14)!”
Chapter 15 “Redeeming the Tongue”
“When the Christian comes to the end of his pilgrimage, one sin he will regret is his idle speech. It is assumed that no true believer allows himself to go on in outward sins such as drunkenness, theft or immorality. It is assumed, too, that the believer is concerned to put a stop to all inward sins, not least to sinful thoughts. But there is reason to believe that our sins of speech are specially in need of correction.”
“Our sins of thought bring us much shame inwardly; but our sins of speech expose us to shame in the eyes of others. Our sinful words are our sinful thoughts verbalized. They are audibly broadcast. They reflect the corruption within us as in a mirror. They do harm to ourselves and they do harm to others.”
“Our folly, formerly known only to ourselves, is now apparent to all men.”
“There is a wide difference between the everyday conversation of one Christian and another. All believers speak the language of heaven; but not all speak it equally consistently or fluently.”
“There is a two-fold duty placed before us in these words: to refrain from careless and unprofitable talk and to study to build one another up by well-chosen, soul-fattening conversation.”
Archbisop Ussher engaged in soul-fattening conversation. He once said to a friend, “A word about Christ ere we part.” What if we put that into practice in every conversation, with each new person? How would the heaven be perfumed with our God-exalting conversation?
Chapter 16 “A Dose of Moral Courage”
“The task of the pulpit is to sharpen blunted convictions in those who hear us and to renew their confidence in the things they have believed out of God’s Word.”
“Whatever weaknesses a minister may have, however, let him not be spineless. A spineless prophet is a contradiction in terms and an unnatural monster.”
“The pulpit’s task is to declare the sinfulness of sin and the one divine remedy for its removal.”
Chapter 17 “Glorying in Our Infirmities”
“It is a sign of passing beyond the stage of infancy in the life of grace when we have learned to glory in infirmities. The apostle Paul tells us that this was a leading feature of his life: ‘Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me’ (2 Corinthians 12:9).”
“But it (the infirmities and afflictions the apostle Paul was experiencing) was God’s way of leading him to see the entire life of grace in a new light. He perceived that there lies a paradox at the very heart of all true Christian experience.”
“When Christians ‘glory in infirmities,’ they make a kind of appeal to Christ to be their compensation. In confessing their weaknesses, believers are warranted to expect that the Lord will infuse into their souls an additional degree of grace to sustain them in their felt weakness and need.”
“No serpent suns himself more proudly than fallen man in the warmth of his own importance. …This tendency is in every Christian, even the best. Its presence in our hearts should be a constant source of mortification and horror to us.”
“If we are to take Paul the apostle for our guide, we must avoid glorying in ourselves and in our strong points as we would avoid a plague. That was what the false apostles of Paul’s day were doing. It was what he refused to do at all costs. Paul tells us the reason why he will glory only in his weaknesses, infirmities, trials and sorrows. It is so that ‘the power of Christ may rest’ upon him (2 Corinthians 12:9).”
“The conclusion seems inescapable. The way to grow in strength is to diminish in self-importance.”
Chapter 18 “Satan’s Advantages from Christians’ Frailties”
“The general rule of operation used by Satan, it would appear, is the obvious one of striking against God by means of His closest friends and most honored servants. In this way Satan endeavors to inflict as great a blow against heaven as possible and to injure God’s work from the least-expected quarter.”
“The devil has proved masterful in exploiting the excesses or shortcomings, the over-enthusiasm or thoughtless incaution of eminent preachers and churchmen in the past. No doubt they aimed at perfection in all things. But in that they missed the mark they gave occasion to Satan to push their errors to undreamed of lengths. This he has done contrary to their intentions at the time, but by a skillful use of their respected names and using their authority among all the lovers of orthodoxy. …Hence we must not only watch our weaknesses, but our strengths as well.”
“Satan is expert at starting fires with other men’s matches and leaving them to get the blame for it.”
Chapter 19 “Where Have the Saints Gone?”
“Sin has had two remarkable effects on our critical powers. It has made us super-sensitive to the faults of others and insensitive to our own. We are born experts at seeing the shortcomings of our neighbor. But a spiritual long-sightedness renders us oblivious to the same shortcomings in ourselves.”
“Robert Burns was no saint but he felt the need to exclaim: ‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as others see us!’”
“If we could see ourselves as we should, what would we see?”
“We live in an age in which Christianity has parted company with holiness. Religion has become a thing rather of the mind than of the soul.”
“There will be no marked growth in Christian holiness if we do not labor to overcome our natural disinclination towards secret spiritual exercises. Our forefathers kept honest diaries where the soul’s battles were recorded. Thomas Shepard, Pilgrim father and founder of Harvard, wrote in his private papers, ‘It is sometimes so with me that I will rather die than pray.’ So it is with us all. But this honesty is not commonplace. Such men climbed high only as they labored with sweat and tears to cultivate the soul. We, too, must ‘exercise ourselves unto godliness’ [1 Timothy 4:7].”
“There is good to be got from our spiritual exercises which nothing will make up for if neglected. It is in soaking our spirits daily in Scripture to the point of fatigue and in daily secret wrestlings with the Almighty to the point of tears and crying that the soul is made strong.”
“Real holiness is not the pale and passive medieval kind but that which kindles with a consuming passion in the regenerate soul and cries, in the face of our decadent and indifferent society, ‘Let God arise! I shall give Thee no rest, O Lord, till Thou come!’ Such saints this world sorely needs. Perhaps more now than ever.”
Chapter 20 “Where Godliness is Leaking”
“Godliness is soon lost. It is a delicate plant. A great preacher does not always have spiritual sons and does not often have spiritual grandsons. The saintly parent cannot guarantee godliness in his children, still less in his grandchildren. Holiness is vulnerable in this world.”
“If we are to maintain and preserve the spirituality of our homes and churches we must act decisively and purposefully. We ought therefore to begin with the conviction that neither health nor happiness, wealth nor education, nor any other thing is comparable in importance to knowledge of God.”
“Generally speaking, the fault of Christian parents in this day is not to expect enough of their children in terms of the work and study which they do. The Christian parent needs to correct this imbalance. The biblical ethic is in the words: ‘six days shalt thou labor’ [Exodus 20:9]. That is to say, work is the main business of life and play is very secondary. …Work is a blessing in many ways, not least because it leaves less room and strength for mischief and temptation.”
“Good parenting is vitally important for the good of the overall cause of God in the world. Not for nothing does the Bible tell us the names of the mothers of so many Old Testament kings. Most of us are either made or marred by our mothers. Good parenting can only be done by the parent.”
“It was a good saying of an old divine: ‘We have filled our children’s bones with original sin and we must spend all our strength rooting it out.’”
“Christian character is largely formed, where it is correctly formed, in the secret place. This is why it is all-important for the believer to attend to his private devotions each day.”
“It is as we meditate on the Word of God and hold communion with Him in private prayer that the soul is transformed, we cannot say how, ‘from glory to glory’ [2 Corinthians 3:18].”
Chapter 21 “The Fellowship of Saints”
“A great deal of what passes for ‘fellowship’ is often no more than human friendship such as men might have in a club or lodge. It is good and necessary but not equivalent to the precise thought conveyed in God’s Word by the term ‘fellowship.’”
“A believer’s duty is to promote true fellowship by all the means open to him in this life. He should also regard it as his privilege and duty to improve the quality of his fellowship as far as he can.”
“It will help our fellowship meetings when we come together with some well-prepared spiritual thoughts to share with one another. Let each of the group keep a little manna by him in his pot which he can share with his fellows in company. This is to be the fruit of his own study, reading, meditation and recollection. And let us talk of the sermon!”
“Fellowship is the place where the religion of the heart is much promoted. Here we draw forth from one another those deep counsels which lie hidden in the soul. Experiences of God in providence, enjoyment of God in secret, the answers to prayer, the hand of God in guidance—these are matters on which true fellowship feeds.”
Chapter 22 “The Supreme Grace of Christian Love”
“No religious act is of any value in God’s sight if it does not accompany and flow from Christian love.”
“But the quality of man’s actions, Paul reminds us, is to be measured at last not by what men see, but by what God sees in them of love to Himself.”
“God takes special notice of the way and manner in which men think of Him as they attend to His service and worship.”
“The reason why there is so little brotherly love among religious people is that there is so little real love of God in us. The former is the visible index of the latter. It ought to be one of our main reasons for wishing to live another day upon earth, that we have a duty to grow in love.”
“A man has developed in holiness by the degree to which he has learnt to do all things on a principle of love.”
“Love is the only sure balsam for a church’s wounds. Where love reigns among believers, sin is virtually expelled. Where each strives to love his brother as himself, to esteem his brother in honor more than himself, to put his brother up and himself down, to speak generously or not at all, to conceal pardonable faults and to draw a veil over shortcomings, what room can there be for discontent or division?”
“Then let every Christian take up the duty of Christian love with ten-fold seriousness. Our life’s work must be to call down heaven’s help upon ourselves that we may bend towards the great command to love one another.”
Chapter 23 “When Good Men Fall”
“Christians cannot fall away; but they can fall far.”
“Few are the Christians in or out of Scripture who can stand up to a rigorous scrutiny of their personal record and still emerge with no blemish visible to the eye of their fellows.”
“There is nothing half so bitter to a good man as the realization that he has brought disgrace on the Name of the Lord. That is truly the wormwood of the soul. It is as near as the believer will ever come to the miseries of hell. When a good man falls and he becomes conscious of his fall, he does not need to be scourged with the tongues of men. His own conscience will heap coals of fire on his head.”
“There is only one safe course to follow and that is the unglamorous one of taking heed to the injunction, ‘Watch and pray.’ Dull, uninventive and old-fashioned as that may read to some who name the Name of Christ in our day, this is the only sure route by which to win a blameless reputation.”
“The root of our folly and the cause of our falls is pride. ‘Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall’ [Prov. 16:18]. The words come readily to mind and are as readily forgotten. Pride is a more deadly sin than man recognizes on this side of eternity.”
“Pride in man’s heart sets up a rival in the soul to God’s very existence and authority.”
“It follows that the best and the safest course is to study humility. There ought to be nothing flashy or cock-sure in the Christian. …The man of God, however, ought to see that humility is the spirit of heaven itself and the mind of Christ.”
“’He that is down need fear no fall,’ declared Bunyan sagely. That is the golden rule.”
Chapter 24 Christian Friendships
“Christian friendships are no doubt ordained to draw forth from us the highest powers of our soul and so to lead to our greatest usefulness and sanctification.”
“Friendship is far more beneficial to us than admiration because it makes sanctifying demands upon our character.”
“It [friendship] corrects our angularity and rubs off our corners. The recluse is the first to fall into eccentricities. The more we are with ourselves the more we become like ourselves. It is only when we come back into the circle of our godly friends once again that we realize how awkward, or else opinionated, we have become as Christians.”
“Healthy Christian character, which is full-orbed, well-rounded and rich in good fruits can best be formed within the circle of sanctified friendships.”
“It is a common proverb that ‘a man is known by his friends.’ This is not surprising because, as the Romans put it, ‘a friend is a second self.’ That is to say, our intimate friends are what they are to us because they are essentially like us in all that is morally important. We choose our friends, not by accident, but because their souls mirror ours and their minds vibrate in harmony with ours.”
“Our best friends are those whose company most makes us afraid to sin.”
“The temptation we all have is to keep to the company of those who only admire us and never dare to stand up to us.”
“We generally prefer keeping a criminal silence to giving a well-timed rebuke. But when we do so, we do not act as friends should.”
“To start the day with a short phone call or a brief letter from an esteemed saint can be the difference between a day of victory and triumph, and a day of depression and temptation.”
“Depression dislocates all the parts of the soul and paralyzes our creative powers.”
“Sin makes men ‘hateful and hating’ [Titus 3:3]. Let us see to it that we have grace to be good friends one to another for life, or rather, for eternity.”
Chapter 25 “The Prayer for Revival”
“Weakness in prayer is a feature of our times. One chief cause is no doubt the widespread neglect of Scripture. For all our modern privileges of books, prosperity and education our prayers fall conspicuously short of biblical standards, not merely in point of utterance but of urgency.”
“God’s lovingkindnesses to the church are not purely voluntary. They are indeed gracious but not voluntary. God’s mercies to worldly men are voluntary. He is laid under no obligations to do them good. But it has pleased God to lay Himself under obligation to us in Christ to do us good and to bless us. Such mercy, though gracious, is, in a proper sense, a matter of necessity. For if He has sworn to do us good for Christ’s sake, then He is bound by the terms of His own infallible veracity to make good His covenanted promises.”
Chapter 26 “Until the Day Break…”
“The reason why men without an eye to the day of judgment are unfit for present service is not that they lack ability perhaps or energy, but because they lack a true sense of direction. Not to see by faith the imminence of the end is to be blind to what are the priorities of life.”
“No class of persons in this world should be more moved by the thought of the Last Day than Christians. It should be our constant topic of thought and our frequent theme in conversation. It is a theme which we ought to rehearse again and again in our minds till it shapes and molds our entire character. For in the end nothing will matter like appearing well before the judgment seat of Christ.”
“The present life is marked for the child of God as a place of darkness and shadows. He is made aware of the imperfection of all things here below. He finds the shadow of sin upon the best of men. There is scarcely a church where some shadow of error is not to be found. There is not a preacher free from the shadow of frailty. There is not some relationship without its shadow of sorrow. There is not a home without its shadow of trouble. There is not an hour of life in which the shadow of past failure or future fear has no part. If it were not for the hope of the great day soon to dawn, the believer would be on the verge of despair many a time. But the sum of all a believer’s sad yesterdays is as nothing to him when he remembers the glory which is to be at the Lord’s return."
“The physical presence of Christ will slake our thirst for ever in glory. The spiritual presence of Christ must slake our thirst in part in this present life.”
Chapter 27 “When the Trumpet Sounds”
“A Christian should take each day cheerfully as the gift of God and seek to glorify God each day, so that when he comes to die he may have nothing to do but die.”
“This [weakness] will be entirely changed in the day when the believer is glorified. Body and soul will then be filled with power to live eternally, without such encumbrances as illness, sleep or rest. We shall be fitted for an unending Sabbath of worship. We shall have all needed power of will to do what we long to do. The absence of that power now causes us to say with Paul: ‘To will is present with me; but how to perform…I find not’ (Romans 7:18). In glory we shall will to do the will of God and we shall find strength to match up to the full measure of our desire and of our endeavor, which will then fully comply with the divine demand for perfect holiness.”
Chapter 28 “Heaven—The Home of Saints”
[In heaven] “there will be nothing to disquiet or ruffle the endless peace and security of the redeemed. They will be saved both ‘to sin no more’ and to fear no more.”
“Heaven will be a world of sanctified excitement.”
“How much more will the redeemed in glory commune one with another in the upper world when all their present failings and imperfections are gone forever! There at long last, with the Lord Himself and with angels will the ransomed of the Lord hold sublime converse. Each word will add to the comfort of heaven because there will be no ‘idle words’ there and no ‘corrupting conversation.’ All eyes will be directed towards the vision of the Lord Jesus Christ and the other persons of the ever-blessed Trinity. Every thought will then be captive to him. God will be in every heart, mind and imagination. All hearts will beat in a common unison. The Almighty Jehovah will be the goal of every man’s aspiration and every desire for God will be reciprocated by Him. A sacred fellowship will be held between God and his people which no fear of sin, Satan or death will every mar.”
Chapter 29 “Heaven—A Perfect State”
“It is the hallmark of entire holiness fully to delight and to acquiesce in the will of God.”
“The memory of our past sins will not cloud our joy in heaven as believers because we shall have a complete sense of assurance that they are pardoned through the death of Christ.”
“There will be some Christians in heaven whom we did not particularly like on earth. There is no doubt that this is true. But in heaven all the imperfections which here make us unlovable and unlovely will be wholly removed. There all the redeemed will be ideal companions and utterly compatible each with each other. They will forget the differences of the past. …They shall all ‘see eye to eye’ and be consumed with holy delight in one another’s company. The motes in their eyes will be gone, and because they will ‘know even as they are known’ [1 Corinthians 13:13], they will be beyond all possibility of further disagreement or disharmony.”
Chapter 30 “The Happiness of Heaven”
“Whatever of ecstasy or delight we may have known in this life will be immeasurably surpassed by those of heaven.”
“All happiness is the enjoyment of God in one way or another. Of course, people are not aware of this. They usually look no further than the momentary sense of pleasure which they feel. But the Christian knows that ‘every good gift’ is from God (James 1:17) and that therefore we should thank God for everything. Those who do not thank God for their pleasures will one day eternally lose them. Moreover we have no right to enjoy anything which God forbids in His Word. To do so is to set out on a path which leads, not to happiness, but to disaster. …Without God there is nothing to enjoy.”
“The happiness of heaven will exceed that of earth also in that it will not fade. All our joys here are limited and fading but there they will be endless.”
“All the time the Christian is on earth God takes steps to limit his happiness and to put a brake on his pleasures. This is because we are now in a state of preparation and progressive sanctification. If we had too much pleasure here we should be content with our present lot. We should ‘reign as kings’ (1 Corinthians 4:8) without God and should make an idol of this life. Hence He wisely and kindly puts a thorn in the nest and a crook in the lot. He skillfully breaks our foolish schemes over and over again until we learn at last to seek our true happiness only and always in Him. Here on earth, God empties us out from vessel to vessel.”
