Featured Articles
Text: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved," --Jeremiah 8:20
Dear reader, is this your mournful condition? Warned of the judgment to come, bidden to escape for your life, and yet at this moment ’not saved!’ You know the way of salvation, you read it in the Bible, you hear it from the pulpit, friends explain it to you, and yet you neglect it, and therefore are ’not saved.’ You will be without excuse when the Lord shall judge the living and the dead. The Holy Spirit has given more or less of blessing upon the Word, which has been preached in your hearing, and times of refreshing have come from the Divine Presence, and yet you, and yet you are without Christ. All these hopeful seasons have come and gone-- your summer and your harvest have past—and yet you are ‘not saved.’ Years have followed one another into eternity, and, and your last year will soon be here: youth has gone, manhood is going, and yet you are ‘not saved.’ Let me ask you –‘Will you ever be saved?’ Is there any likelihood of it? Already the most propitious seasons have left you unsaved; will other occasions alter your condition? Means have failed with you—the best of means, used perseveringly and with the utmost affection—what more can be done for you? Affliction and prosperity have alike failed to impress you; tears and prayers and sermons have been wasted on your barren heart. Are not the probabilities dead against your ever being saved? Is it not more than likely you will abide as you are till death forever bars the door of hope? Do you recoil from the supposition? Yet is most reasonable one: he who is mot washed in so many waters will in all probability go filthy to his end. The convenient time never has come, why should it ever come? It logical to fear that it never will arrive, and that Felix like you, will find no convenient season till you are in Hell.
"Reader, suppose you should die unsaved, your doom no words can picture. Write out your dread estate in tears and blood, talk of it with groans and gnashing of teeth: you will be punished with everlasting destruction from the glory of the Lord, and from the glory of His power. A brother’s voice would fain startle you into earnestness. O be wise, be wise in time, and before another (day) begins, believe in Jesus who is able to save to the uttermost. Consecrate these last hours to lonely thought, and if deep repentance be bred in you, it will be well; and if it lead to a humble faith in Jesus, it will be best of all. O see to it that this (day) pass not away, and (leave) you an unforgiven spirit. Let not a (new day’s) midnight peals sound upon a joyless spirit! Now, Now, NOW believe, and live."
"Escape for thy life; Look not behind thee, Neither stay thou in all the Plain; Escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed." – Genesis 19:17
-Charles Spurgeon-
Proverbs 3:7 "Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil...."
"How striking is this connection between the ‘fear of God’ and the fear of sin. Where God is honored, sin is hated, loathed, and resisted. It lives indeed; but it is condemned to die. It cleaves to the child of God; but his heart departs from it. Often is it the cause of sickness in the body; always in the soul." – Charles Bridges.
Part VI
"In the case of widows and widowers, especially where there is a family, peculiar prudence is necessary.... How unseemly and inconsiderate it is for a sexagenarian to bring home a young wife, and place her over daughters older than herself, and introduce into the family circle aunts and uncles younger than some of the nephews and nieces.... Let not such men wonder, if their daughters by the first marriage are driven from their home by the consequences of the second, and are led to form imprudent matches, to which they were led by the force of parental example, and urged by the consequence of parental folly.
"In the selection of a second companion for life, where the first has been eminent for talents and virtues, much care should be taken that there be no great and striking inferiority.... Has the woman about to be selected that principle, that prudence, that self-control, that
good temper, which, if she become herself a mother, will help to conceal her partialities,(for to suppress them is impossible, and would be unnatural), and to seem no less kind to her adopted offspring than her own? That man acts a most cruel, a most wicked part towards the
memory of his first wife, who does not provide for her children a kind and judicious friend in the second."
--John Angell James
1, 1873 --David Livingstone is found dead upon his knees in an attitude of prayer. His beloved African servants, Susi and Chuma, will embalm him after removing his heart which they bury in his beloved continent of Africa. They will carry his body along with his papers and instruments for eighteen months until they reach Zanzibar where he will be taken to England to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
3, 1700 --Matthew Henry has a son today whom he names "Philip" after his father. He is the only son of 9 children! (There is Hope!)
1817 --The pastors in Geneva frame the "Riglemens" consisting of certain articles every student is ordered to sign before he should be "consecrated." It is intended to exclude from the pulpits of Geneva the doctrines they so hate: particularly the Deity of Christ, Original Sin, Grace and Effectual Calling, and Predestination.
5, 1521 --Martin Luther is kidnapped by friends and is taken to the Castle of Wartburg where he will assume the disguise of a knight known as "knight George." A price being fixed on his head at the Diet at Worms, his friends feel he cannot safely reach home at Wittemburg.
6, 1415 --The Council of Constance has condemned the work of John Wycliffe. Though dead, his very grave will be disturbed that his bones may be committed to the flames for burning.
9, 1672 --John Bunyan is licensed to preach. A member of his congregation, Josiah Roughead has purchased a barn in an orchard where people might be fed the Word of God.
1687 --Matthew Henry is ordained to the Gospel ministry.
11, 1530 --The Augsburg Confession is finished! This is Philip Melancthon’s masterpiece of a doctrinal statement.
14, 1752 --To Timothy Dwight is born a son, Timothy Dwight. The place is "Northampton in the County of Hampshire, State of Massachusetts." Young Dwight’s father is a graduate of Yale College and is a merchant. His mother, Mary, is the third daughter of Jonathan Edwards. This lad will become president of Yale College, and because of his influence, Yale will enter into her statutes that any student holding a heresy after the second and third admonition will be expelled. Oh, that this institution had kept so noble a law! He will be remembered for his Conquest of Canaan, Triumph of Infidelity, and hymn, "I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord."
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NOTE: As the house we are renting must be vacated by July 15, we ask you to pray with us for the guidance of the Lord. The owners of the house are returning after three years in Germany. Thank you.