Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

December 30– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“Don’t you know that the end will be harsh?”

—2 Samuel 2:26

O my dear reader, if you are merely a professing Christian and not a possessor of the faith that is in Christ Jesus, how harsh your end will be.

You may be a respectable attender of your local place of worship; you go because others go, not because your heart is right with God. Perhaps for the next twenty or thirty years you continue to live as you do now, professing religion by an outward practice but having no heart in the matter.

Be careful, for I must show you the deathbed of someone who lived like you. Look at him! See the clammy sweat is on his brow, and he wakes up crying, “O God, it is hard to die. Did you send for my minister?” When the minister comes, the man says. “Sir, I fear that I am dying! Do you have any hope for me? I can’t say I have any hope for myself. I’m afraid to stand before God; oh! pray for me.”

The minister prays earnestly, and the way of salvation is for the ten-thousandth time put before him, but before the man grasps the rope of salvation, I see him sink. I put my finger upon his cold eyelids, for his eyes will never see anything here again. Where are his true eyes? The Scripture says, “In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment.” Ah! why didn’t he lift up his eyes before? He became so accustomed to hearing the gospel that his soul fell asleep.

If you lift up your eyes in hell, how bitter your wailing will be. Jesus tells us of a man who cried out in hell, “If only I could have a drop of water to cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.” There is a frightful meaning in those words. May you never have to discover what those words mean in the red glow of Jehovah’s wrath! [M&E]