18 March 2012

It Is Not Death to Die

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson




The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Tomb of Jesus," the 18th sermon in the New Park Street Pulpit series. It was preached on Sunday Morning, 8 April 1855, at Exeter Hall in London.




ie I must—this body must be a carnival for worms; it must be eaten by those tiny cannibals; peradventure it shall be scattered from one portion of the earth to another; the constituent particles of this my frame will enter into plants, from plants pass into animals, and thus be carried into far distant realms; but, at the blast of the archangel's trumpet, every separate atom of my body shall find its fellow; like the bones lying in the valley of vision, though separated from one another, the moment God shall speak, the bone will creep to its bone; then the flesh shall come upon it; the four winds of heaven shall blow, and the breath shall return.

So let me die, let beasts devour me, let fire turn this body into gas and vapor, all its particles shall yet again be restored; this very self-same, actual body shall start up from its grave, glorified and made like Christ's body, yet still the same body, for God hath said it. Christ's same body rose; so shall mine.

O my soul, dost thou now dread to die? Thou wilt lose thy partner body a little while, but thou wilt be married again in heaven; soul and body shall again be united before the throne of God. The grave—what is it? It is the bath in which the Christian puts the clothes of his body to have them washed and cleansed. Death—what is it? It is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality; it is the place where the body, like Esther, bathes itself in spices that it may be fit for the embrace of its Lord. Death is the gate of life; I will not fear to die, then, but will say,

"Shudder not to pass the stream;
Venture all thy care on him;
Him whose dying love and power
Stilled its tossing, hushed its roar,
Safe in the expanded wave;
Gentle as a summer's eve.
Not one object of his care
Ever suffered shipwreck there."

C. H. Spurgeon

6 comments:

Sandi said...

So Spurgeon preached this message in 2012? :)

Phil Johnson said...

He being dead yet speaketh.

David A. Carlson said...

great song by Henri Malan. Sovereign Grace did a very nice job with it.

Unknown said...

Interesting timing in posting this--my husband was diagnosed with cancer a week ago.

Ebeth said...

Two families close to us had loved ones pass away very recently; this post is no doubt a comfort to them

MikeSnow said...

Phil Johnson said...

He being dead yet speaketh."

Would that that were so.

Charles Spurgeon: “The Church of Christ is continually represented under the figure of an army; yet its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the establishment of peace, and its soldiers are men of a peaceful disposition. The spirit of war is at the extremely opposite point to the spirit of the gospel.”

“If there be anything which this book denounces and counts the hugest of all crimes, it is the crime of war. Put up thy sword into thy sheath, for hath not he said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and he meant not that it was a sin to kill one but a glory to kill a million, but he meant that bloodshed on the smallest or largest scale was sinful.”

“Long have I held that war is an enormous crime; long have I regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale.”

But, of course, men in their depravity scorn such.
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Pacifism-Fruit-Narrow-ebook/dp/B005RIKH62/ref=cm_rdp_product