The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from The MTP, volume 12, sermon number 676, "Man's thoughts and God's thoughts."
"God's thinkings are declared by himself to be exceedingly above man's, and yet if ever man is to dwell with God, he must think as God thinks."
A more current idea still is, that God will put away the past and give men a new start, and that if they go on well for the future, then in their dying hour, when it comes to a wind-up, God will speak pardon. But soul, there is nothing of that kind in the Word of God.
That truthful book tells us solemnly that as far as the matter of keeping the law is concerned, and being saved by our good works, we have all of us but one opportunity, and the moment we commit one sin that opportunity is over; nay, before we began life our father Adam had spoiled that chance for us by his sin. The Word of God never speaks about giving us a second trial.
The law says, “Cursed is every man that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” It says nothing whatever of starting you in business again, in the hopes that you may at last make your spiritual fortune; nothing of the kind: and those of you who are trying your hands at reformation, and so hope that in a dying hour you will get peace to your souls, are spending your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which profiteth not, for if you never sinned in the future, what would that have to do with the past?
Will a man’s paying ready money in the future defray the debts, which he has already incurred? God has a right to the obedience of your whole life; do you suppose that giving him the obedience of a part of it will be accepted as a satisfaction for the whole?
Moreover, who art thou that thou shouldst be holy? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. Thou wilt only repeat thy former life, thou wilt go back again like the dog to its vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
As for peace in the hour of death, he who is not pardoned living is not likely to be pardoned dying. Nine out of ten, perhaps nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of professed death-bed salvations are a delusion.
We have good facts to prove that. A certain physician collected notes of several hundreds of cases of persons who professed conversion who were supposed to be dying. These persons did not die but lived, and in the case of all but one they lived just as they had lived before, though when they were thought to be dying they appeared as if they were truly converted.
Do not look forward to that, it is a mere snare of Satan. God save you from it; for in this case his thoughts are not your thoughts.
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