AT the close of a gospel meeting, some years ago, in the West of England, I said to a lad passing out, who was, I knew, anxious about his soul, “Well, Harry, has it been a message for you tonight?” “I feel it has been,” he said, rather sadly, “and just what I want; but tomorrow, when I get to work amongst my shop-mates, and things go all across, and they laugh and jest, Satan will be at me, and say I am not saved, not a child of God at all.” “Tell him he’s a liar,” said I. “When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” (John 8:4444Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44).)
Without thinking much of the scripture thus quoted, I bade him good-night; but it made an impression on the lad, and was a means of blessing to him in the hour of trial often afterwards. He has lived to love and serve the One who delivered him from the grasp of Satan. But, dear reader, let me ask, Who has your ear — the God of truth, or the father of lies? To one or other you are most certainly lending your ear — the ruler of darkness, or the God who is light. The very next verse in John’s gospel to the one quoted above (chapter 8:45) gives us these solemn words of the Lord Jesus: “And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” This was addressed to the religious, self-satisfied, but Christ-rejecting Jew; and the same is true today of both Jew and Gentile. The truth is the very thing that is rejected. Have you, dear reader, accepted the truth of God about yourself — that if unsaved, you are a sinner under condemnation, before whomdeath and judgment lie, as certainly as physical life is now yours. Satan will tell you this is not so; he will try and induce you to think well of yourself, that anybody and everybody else may need a Saviour, but not you; he will perhaps try the too successful bait of discrediting the word of God, will tell you that death is but the debt of nature, and not “the wages of sin,” that hell is not real, judgment not eternal, God too good to judge His creatures, and many other specious things of the same sort to quiet your guilty conscience, and assure your heart that all is right; but remember, reader, “he is a liar.” God says, “All have sinned;” God says, “It is appointed unto men once to die;” God says, “Every work shall be brought into judgment;” and He has appointed the Judge, the day, and the standard by which thy works shall be judged. Are you ready for this? But this is not all the truth. “As it is appointed unto men once to die... so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.” “By Him all that believe are justified from all things,” “that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” God has provided a Saviour; indeed He is “a Saviour-God,” “not willing that any should perish,” although your thoughts of Him may have been very different from this. But this is the truth about God, dear reader — He is love, He is light; man is hateful, and he is darkness. Now whatever tends to make a man satisfied with Himself keeps him away from God. Solemn fact for the man who thinks himself good enough; for the moral, respectable, religious man who has never faced the truth about himself as given in the only true witness — the word of God. Equally solemn fact for the well-meaning and earnest reformers of our day, who are bent upon the education and moral improvement of man; for both alike have forgotten that “there is no difference — all have sinned,” and that the moral, temperate, law-abiding citizen is equally in need of a Saviour, and equally in danger of the lake of fire if unsaved, with the poor drunkard or harlot, whose life is so hateful and loathsome to him. Such is the truth of God, beloved friend. Will you listen to it? Will you give God your ear, or listen to the soul-damning deception of him who is the father of lies?
T. R. T.