SOLDIERS OF CHRIST, TO ARMS...

"The kingdom of God suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." -Matthew 11:12 [KJV]

We say hunger will break through stone walls. Desperate circumstances make men violent. Thus is it with a convinced sinner. He sees himself in the city of destruction, and Moses has set his house on fire about his ears, as Mr. Bunyan says in his Pilgrim’s Progress. Now, he cannot think of God, sin, death, judgment, heaven, and hell with indifference. No, he is awake. He sees the importance of them. His soul is alive. He feels the weight of them. He finds sin has destroyed him. The law terrifies him. Death stares him in the face. Judgment alarms him. He trembles to see hell moved from beneath to receive him. 

Now his fancied good works, his morality, etc. stand him in no stead. He hungers after righteousness. His apprehensions of wrath make him violent. His hunger is keen. He besieges the kingdom of God with eager prayer. He forces his way through every opposition. He breaks through every wall of obstruction, with, O give me Christ, or I perish. Give me His blood to pardon me, His righteousness to justify me, or I am damned for ever. This is fleeing for refuge. This is like one escaping for his life, from dreadful flames and devouring fire. This is being violent. Such take the kingdom of God by force. 

Though by grace we are brought into the kingdom of God, and enjoy pardon of sin and peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ; yet the Lord forbid that we should so lose our conviction of divine truths, as to have done with holy force and violence. Soldiers of Christ, to arms. What! think of laying down your weapons of defence, and folding your hands to sleep on an enemy’s ground, when all around are up in arms against you? Come, come, there is enough yet before you to alarm you, and to call up your violence. Sin is within you. Satan is plotting against you. The world would ensnare you. Death and judgment approach you. 

“The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.” O, dream not over dry doctrines and empty speculations, so as to be proof against the force of these solemn events, and to lose your holy violence. “For seeing that all these things shall come to pass, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation, looking for the coming of the day of the Lord” (II Peter 3:11, 12.) 

Let me ask the important question, (Brethren, be not too secure) What it is to be a Christian? How we may our hearts assure? Vain is all our best devotion, If on false foundations built: True religion’s more than notion: Something must be known and felt.

-preacher William Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)

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