01.33. The Necessity of a Day of Judgment
Chapter 33 THE NECESSITY OF A DAY OF JUDGMENT.
There is absolute need for a great Judgment Day, where the Judge is all-powerful as well as infallible, and where decisions are exactly right, and all sentences are just and proper.
God is not only to be vindicated at that time, but man also. The divine character is to be revealed, and human conduct in respect to that nature is likewise to be declared. There are some features of the Day which especially impress the writer.
One of them is the complete reversal of the opinions, judgments and sentences of this world upon human character, achievement and life. Men will be horrified and all but overwhelmed to find before the blazing tribunal of Almighty God, that those who were called "first" on earth shall be "last," "and the last shall be first." At that hour. offices. rank. position in church or state, will stand nowhere when separated from character. It is absolutely nothing to be elected to the chair of a college, or to a bishopric in a church, if one be not chosen of God through the Spirit to holiness of heart and life. It will amount to nothing that the body has been burned, goods given to feed the poor, the tongue speak like an angel, if we have not the mind and possess not the Spirit of Christ.
We have thought often of the discomfort and torture of a king or queen in the spirit-world accustomed to fulsome homage and adulation on earth, yet stripped of it all out there, and finding themselves in a spiritual rank far beneath some of their humblest subjects. How also prominent officials in the ecclesiastical realm will reconcile themselves to the fact of the tremendous exaltation over them in heaven of men whom they despised, and lorded it over so much on earth. The Judgment Day is to show who was the real man in God’s sight, and to establish the fact that it is not office or position on earth, but character, and that character blood-washed, obedient to God, and possessing the Spirit of Christ. This fact alone will cause a marvelous coming up and going down in the opinions of men concerning individuals whom they had long ago graded and settled in a certain way in their own minds. Opinions will have to be changed.
Another truth equally forcible is, that some of God’s people are better than they seem, and others worse. It does not take long for us to get acquainted with these characters, but many others do not thus sees because various things militate against the discovery.
We knew a son who had the highest confidence in, and devotion to, the memory of his father. It was something beautiful to hear him speak of his departed parent. But there were parties living who knew the father to be thoroughly unprincipled. Not for any consideration would they have broken the young man’s heart by the disclosure of the real parental life. Some idea of the coming shock to him on the Day of Judgment can be easily seen.
It required a great deal of self control, as well a grace, for a group of ministers to smile pleasantly on a lady entertainer when she was enlarging upon the beautiful life, purity and high sense of honor of her husband, whom she called her "sweetheart," when they were in actual possession of knowledge sufficient to destroy her domestic happiness forever and cause the "sweetheart," as she called him, to leave the community in disgrace. On the other hand there are people who are a great deal better than they get credit for. We have known both men and women who have been made to suffer not only for years but for a life time, through the unscrupulous or careless tongue of a fellow-creature. Innocent words and acts were misconstrued, distorted by an impure mind, and a suspicion, not to say a stain, was placed upon the name and character of a good man or woman. For years we misjudged a minister of the gospel through just such a verbal wrong done him by a quick speaking and hasty judging female. A simple act of politeness on his part was misconstrued by her diseased imagination to be an impertinence and even insult. Years have passed and we have seen the man pastor of quite a number of leading churches, loved and respected by all of his congregations, while she, his detractor, has been classed and graded long ago by spiritual men in the pulpit and pew as "light" and "chaffy." But she has told the circumstances to many who, without means of discovering the truth, will go to the Judgment believing in her and doubting the individual she stabbed. So that day will hold another surprise. In applying the thought of this chapter to many happenings in life, we are constrained to say that in such a world as this, it is impossible to get justice. Sometimes prejudice is in the way; anger and hate make it impossible for some to do justice to another; facts cannot be had; witnesses cannot be found; proof may not be obtained to refute a suspicion or lie, men will not confess their own acts of guilt; people do not take time to search out and find the truth; many receive the first side of a story related and hold to that; so that more than ever we see the need of a Day of Judgment where facts will be known and the truth, and the whole truth at that, will be revealed.
Among other happenings of earth are the separations and divorces taking place in so many families over the land. We have discovered that the sympathy from the first with the public is with the woman. Before a line is read about the sad occurrence the man is sentenced and hung, so to speak, in the judgment of countless millions. The black dress, drooping head, and tears of the woman in the court house will generally carry with a sweep of emotion judge, jury and audience.
Men as a rule appear at their worst in such a scene. No man looks well in an altercation, dispute, or legal suit with a woman. The sympathies are with the weaker vessel. Few stop to inquire into the merits of the case. People do not recall at such a time the possibility of art being brought to bear in the pose of the head, the droop of the eyelid, and even the flowing of tears; that the affecting scene has been studied out before, and even practiced. So the man is legally sat down on, and socially damned, and goes to the grave and to Judgment with a side of the question directly opposite to what the court and audience saw, and which history will astound people on that day when the white light of truth is poured on human conduct and life.
Even in trials by jury, where witnesses are brought out by the score, and days are spent and every effort put forth to get at the real facts of different cases of crime, how impossible is it even after all this labor, to secure perfect justice to the accused. But when we are confronted with instances of accusation, where no effort is made to obtain proof or evidence, where the party is pronounced guilty without a trial, without a single chance to clear himself or herself, we see the very essence of the injustice and unreliableness of human judgment.
Even in the courts of law run by unconverted men, they ask the prisoner at the bar whether he is guilty or not guilty. But we have to enter the social and church circle to behold the amazing spectacle of a man being tried without a jury, condemned without a hearing, and after being hung, asked if he has anything to say why he should not be executed.
Truly the spirit of wrong and oppression is seen everywhere. We heard a mother once say to her son, who had misjudged her, "I thank God that a man is not my judge, even though that man may be my son." Few sons-in-law expect justice to be done them by a mother-in-law. Political parties have not the slightest expectation of receiving proper treatment from the hands of their opponents. One religious denomination seems incapable of judging another ecclesiastical body properly and truly. When a man obtains the blessing of holiness, he might as well from that moment give up all idea of being understood, and of obtaining justice at the hands of his brethren in the church. All defense of self and explanations of words and works is that much breath lost. The sanctified man soon learns that he need not look to his conference, or bishop, or his church paper for endorsement and approval, no matter how close he may walk with God. Having found this out through bitter experience, many holiness people nowadays never make the slightest effort to defend or explain their conduct under various charges and accusations in what is called the church press.
Recently an evangelist was prohibited from holding a meeting in Texas by the pastor of the M. E. Church South. The Christian Advocate’s account of it placed the evangelist in a most unenviable light. He was represented as a recalcitrant, as a defier of authority, and as thrusting himself upon a community where he was not wanted. The whole article was as untrue as it was unkind. As the man read the piece, his heart sickened and ached for minutes over this unjust editorial sentence. But he was to make a still more painful discovery, for behold, in the columns of a Holiness paper published in Texas, he was more severely handled than he had been by the church organ. The holiness paper said he had acted the coward in leaving the place.
Perfectly conscious of the injustice of both charges; that he had not come in a defiant spirit, as one paper said, nor had he left with a single feeling of man fear in his heart, as the other journal asserted--he was made more than ever to see the impossibility of obtaining justice in this world, even though our judges be preachers and editors of religious periodicals; and that many a sentence issued by an editorial tripod will, most fortunately for us all, be completely upset, and altogether reversed by the decision of the highest and Last Court on the Judgment Day of the Son of God. When David was offered one of three troubles, war, famine or pestilence, he said to the prophet, "Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord, let me not fall into the hand of man." This was almost the exact language of the captain of a merchantman, who, seeing himself and crew about to be captured by pirates, said, "I would rather trust to the mercy of God than the mercy of man," and firing his pistol into the powder magazine, blew himself and most of his followers into eternity. Of course this dreadful act was wrong, but at the same time it showed the discovery by unsaved men of the very fact concerning which we have been writing.
Truly, the longer we all live, the more thankful we should be, and are, that we are not to be finally judged by men in their shortsightedness, ignorance, and prejudice, but by a holy, all wise, pitiful and just God.
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