LITERATURE DOWNLOAD LIBRARY

Either search for topics using the search window or browse the articles in the issues of each year listed.

WWW SEARCH Tabernacle Literature

The Day Shall Declare It: ‘The Great Day of Declaration’

by C H Spurgeon

FROM SWORD & TROWEL 2001 No 3

An edited sermon of C H Spurgeon, published posthumously in The Sword & the Trowel, January 1901 (not in Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit). ‘The day shall declare it’ (1 Corinthians 3.13).

Time is a searching test of earthly things. Empires once thought substantial as granite, have melted in the lapse of ages like foam upon the waters. Philosophies which appeared to be utterly sure have proved to be fictions, no more enduring than grass mown down and cast into the oven. Even religions which commanded the faith or fear of millions have passed away like phantoms of the night. The gods of one century are the demons of the next.

In all things mortal, time writes change, and brings decay. Time rusts the bars of prisons, and frets the palaces of kings. Nothing escapes his devouring teeth. The test of time will also be brought to bear on all our actions, and if we seek to build things which will endure, we need to be very careful as to the foundation, the materials, and the method of our building.

In addition to the test of time, a severer test is to come at the end of time, when the day for which all other days were made, shall arrive. Then that fire which ever consumes the wood, hay, and stubble, will be blown up to a still more vehement heat, for ‘the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven’. Then will come the ultimate test of all.

Then every evil thought, motive, principle, act, and word, shall be detected and unmasked. ‘The day shall declare it,’ for in that day ‘the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.’

It is of that great trial day that I wish now to speak, but I must speak with stammering lips on such a theme as this. It is too great, too weighty for human language ever to convey to you the fulness of its solemnity.

My first theme will be, how different eyes will view this great day of declaration.

When it will come, we do not know: ‘Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven.’ But as a thief, unheard, unseen, it steals on us. It may be much nearer than we think, or it may be much more remote than some would have us believe. But come it will to every one of us, and we shall all take part in the proceedings of that day, not merely as spectators, but as participants.

The Vindication OF BELIEVERS

To some eyes, that day will come with brightness as a day of justification. They have been for many years trusting in Christ and seeking to do His will, and, because of this, they have been accused of foolishness. They have lost (it has been thought) much allowable pleasure. Indeed, it has been suggested that they have made a terrible mistake, because they have suffered for Christ’s sake. Many followers of Christ have been in prison, and others have been stoned or have yielded up their bodies to be burned for the sake of things which they could not see, and which other men derided.

When that last day shall come, they will be fully justified for this supposed folly. Then shall it be seen that they did the right and true and noble and best thing, and even the most judicious thing for their own welfare. It shall then be discovered that it was better to suffer for the Truth than to enjoy the pleasures of falsehood, and that it was a greater gain, in the long run, to endure reproach for Christ’s sake than to accept all the honours and all the treasures of Egypt.

Those who were reckoned fools will be accounted wise in that day. Those who were regarded as the off-scouring of all things will then be esteemed as ‘the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold’, and the acclamations of all angels will accord them the highest honours, and the wicked, by their sullen silence, will be compelled to confess that the righteous were right after all.

In that day, there will be a resurrection of reputations as well as of bodies, and the slandered saint shall come forth, like the sun from behind the clouds, and shine with the greater radiance because of its temporary eclipse.

That day will also be, to the saints, a day of great consolation. There will be great disclosures of secrets and mysteries made to them on that last, revealing day. You remember how our Lord said to Peter, ‘What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter;’ and then will the godly understand why they were persecuted, and how good it was for them to suffer affliction with Christ. Then will some of them see the reason for their poverty, and others will learn why they suffered the loss of all things.

Then will some understand the reason for those sicknesses which often deprived them of opportunities of usefulness, and others will see why they were tempted of Satan, and why they had to dwell among ungodly men and women. Then will they learn the reason for all the difficulties through which they had to enter the kingdom.

I believe that when this revelation bursts upon the righteous at the last great day they will be overwhelmed with astonishment at the infinite lovingkindness of God in their afflictions. They will then say, with David, ‘I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O Lord, will I sing.’

This mortal life is often a tangle, and we cannot unravel it. It is a puzzle and a mystery. We see the wicked prospering, and the righteous chastened every morning. But then we shall see the reason for every stroke of the rod, and for every blast of the furnace; and we shall understand that the Lord dealt graciously with His servants after all.

Further, that day will be to the righteous a most confirming day. They believed in God on earth; but, oh! what solid grounds they will then see for their faith! When they saw but through a glass darkly, they felt that it was right to trust in the living God, and in His Son, Whom He had revealed from Heaven; but when they shall see Jesus face to face, when the great Son of righteousness shall shine brightly before their mortal eyes, they will exclaim - ‘Now we know, of a surety, that the half has not been told us. We were assured, on earth, that Christ was precious; but how precious is He now! We heard, on earth, that God was just; but see how just He is, as we behold Him on the great white throne.

‘When we were down below, we were told, in the great Book of God, and by His ministers, that they who trusted in Him should never be confounded. We found that to be true even on earth, but we find it to be still more true here, for no tongue that once rose against us in judgement stands uncondemned. We are, indeed, absolved and acquitted in this last tremendous day.’

It will be a great blessing that you will not, in that day, have to cast aside all you learned on earth. You will learn more concerning the Truth, but you will not have to learn a new Gospel. The great fundamentals of the faith, on which your soul now rests, will stand as firmly throughout eternity as they do today.

The substitution of Christ will still be your joy; the covenant of grace will still be your comfort; the everlasting love of God will still be your Heaven. That which you loved on earth, you shall love then. That which was your comfort on earth, shall be your comfort then. You shall not need to leave the good old road, which your fathers trod.

What acclamations of adoration will the righteous give in that day. They will rejoice with exceeding joy, and their enlarged capacities will enable their bodies and souls together to hold greater bliss. Thinking of all this, we may long for that day.

The Loss of UNBELIEVERS

But that day will wear quite another aspect to those who are not in Christ. I would speak to them very earnestly, and with deep affection. Friend, if you live and die without a Saviour, that day will clothe you with unutterable shame. You will say to yourself, ‘What a fool I was to live for a world that has now gone from me! What a madman I was to choose the little transient happiness that sin gave me, and to forget all about the great assize, and the verdict of that Judge Who now cries to the ungodly, "Depart from me, ye cursed!" ’

Then will remorse come to you without relief, and your own conscience will join in accusing you. I tell the greatest and richest of you that, if you are found without Christ, you will wish that you had been the meanest pauper that ever died in a workhouse, if you might have had a Saviour. Kings will disdain their crowns, and princes wish their honours to be trampled in the mire, desiring that they might rather have been like Lazarus lying at the rich man’s gate full of sores if, after all, they might but have had a portion amongst the blessed.

Then they who said, ‘Let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die,’ will be worse off than the beasts that perish; and they, who defiantly asked, ‘Who is the Lord, that we should obey Him?’ will seem to be monsters of folly. They who said, ‘There is neither angel, nor spirit, nor resurrection,’ shall know the truth of all they denied, and they shall find themselves promoted into shame, for ‘shame shall be the promotion of fools’.

With this shame shall come convicting power. Some disbelieve, or pretend to disbelieve, in the existence of God, and truths revealed in Scripture, but that great day will banish all infidelity. When He shall come, every man shall then discover that he is in God’s power, and that he must stand face to face with his Creator.

There will be no atheism, and no more theism either, for He Who sits upon the throne will be Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, and all who despised and refused Him shall tremble at the sight of His face, and desire to be hidden from it. That face will convince them in a moment, better than all our arguments and reasonings, for the eyes and ears of the ungodly shall convince them, and the fact that they have been raised from their graves shall convince them that God is God, and His judgement is about to be passed on them.

But, alas, that day will bring to them a state of confusion as well of conviction. You remember that man, who did not wear a wedding garment, and who stood speechless before the king? What else could he do? I can think of many reasons with which a man can stultify his conscience, but I cannot think of one that he would have the audacity to bring out in the light of that tremendous day.

No, speechless he must be, for he will know that the justice of God cannot err, and that, if the thunderbolts of the Almighty fall upon him, it will be just. No matter how strongly he may wish to clear himself, yet he will not be able to answer for one sin out of a thousand. He must, by his silence, plead guilty to all, and own the justice of the sentence which will follow.

This last great day will wear a truly awful aspect to all who are out of Christ, for their conviction and their confusion will be followed by their condemnation. Why, possibly within a few months, or a few years at the outside, we shall all have passed into the realm of spirits; and however long or short the interval may be, ‘we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.’ It will not then seem to be a trivial matter, when you wake up from the grave, and find yourself without a hope, without a Saviour, naked before your God, and driven for ever from His presence.

Give heed to these things. Do not fling away your souls, and make your eternal destiny to be one of unbroken wretchedness. Ask God deeply to impress eternal things upon your thoughtful hearts, and even now to give you the grace to repent of all your sin, and to trust the merits of His Son.

Aspects of JUDGEMENT DAY

Now, let us think, for a little while, how different things will bear the test of that great day of declaration.

What a mass of professions will be brought to the test on that day! Here we are, some thousands of professing Christians, who have been avowedly baptised into Christ. Some of our professions, when put into the fire, will come out as they went in - solid, substantial, golden professions. Will that be your case? Preacher, will that be your case? Hearer, will it be yours?

On the other hand, there will be some professions which look very golden now, but which will begin to shrivel almost before they reach the fire. The gilded public demeanour will curl up, and disappear, and that person’s profession will be detected to have been mere tinsel and counterfeit. Will that be your case, my friend?

We did our best, when we received you into church fellowship, to judge the truth of your profession. Since then, you have done your best to maintain the outward morality which is required of a professing Christian. But were you ever born again? Were you ever really converted? That question none of us can answer; you yourself must judge the matter, and in that judgement you will need the Lord to be your Helper. Therefore, pray the prayer of the psalmist, ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’

Reputations, too, will be tested on that last, tremendous day. On earth, reputations go very much according to success or wealth. I have seen men who have been admitted into all classes of society as most reputable persons, yet those who knew them well, knew that their money was not gained in a right way. There were frauds, perhaps, or they grew rich on the tears of widows, who were made such by the liquor these men sold.

There is many a man who is reckoned respectable because of his money, yet every farthing of it was coined in the mint of hell, and came to him directly through the damnation of the souls of others. That last, tremendous day will shrivel up some famous men. There are many who have been knighted, but their method of business could not be proclaimed upon the housetops.

Some of your great men - how small will they become in that day. I almost wish it were already come, for the infamies of this city cry to God to hasten the hour when He shall in righteousness draw up the curtain, and let the wicked be known to be wicked, and the churl to be a churl, and the oppressor to be an oppressor.

Your eloquent preacher, also, who spoke so well, but who lived so ill; your fine orator who was so great at telling others how they should live, but who did not live so himself; your professing Christian, who was pious in church or chapel, who sat regularly at the Lord’s Table, but who, meanwhile, was at home a despot and a tyrant, unforgiving, unrelenting - how the fine feathers will be pulled off these fine birds; and what a come-down there will be for them!

In that day, too, there will be a testing of positions. There will be first who shall be last, and last who shall be first.

There will be a testing also of boastings and those who now talk loudly and proudly will be dumb; while those who now are silent shall sing out for joy. Talk of ‘turning the world upside down’, this will indeed be accomplished in the day when God shall judge the world in righteousness by Christ Jesus.

I pray that we may have nothing about us that need dread the fire. May we be free from shams and hypocrisies. May we be clear as the morning light, straight as an arrow. May we be consistently truthful in thought, word, and deed. And even should mistakes arise - as they will, for we are frail - let us never forget that the blood of Christ is prepared to remove the guilt of those mistakes, and when the great testing time shall come, we, having been saved by our Redeemer’s sacrifice, shall stand forth, clear as the sun, accepted before the throne of God.

How Should This AFFECT US?

Now I come to the last point of my discourse, which is this - in what ways a consideration of this great day ought to affect us all.

First, it ought to startle some of us. Dies declarabit: ‘the day shall declare it’. If there be any hearer who has some secret transgression in which he or she is still living, if you are not discovered now, you will be then.

Certainly, all unrenewed hearts ought to begin to tremble. You are unsaved, though outwardly excellent in other respects, yet you are unsaved!

Young man, with much about you that we can commend, you are yet unsaved, and that day will reveal to the world your unforgiven sin. You will have no robe of righteousness to wear. You will have no fountain full of cleansing blood to wash away your guilt. What will you do amidst the terrors of that last, great day? I plead with all who have not Christ as their Saviour, to seek Him now.

The way of salvation is very simple; it is just this. Jesus Christ suffered in the room, and place, and stead of as many as will trust Him. If you trust Him, it is certain that all your sins were laid upon Him, that He suffered all that you ought to have suffered on their account, that you are forgiven for His sake, and that you shall never be condemned, for, ‘he that believeth on him is not condemned.’ Why don’t you believe in Him now?

I have no greater joy, out of Heaven, than when I hear of those who commit themselves to Christ. Never a day passes but that I hear of those who find peace with God under the Gospel. I wonder how long it will be before you, dear hearer, to whom I have preached these many years, will be added to the happy throng of those who are resting in Christ.

A day or two ago, I had a letter from one who says, ‘I heard you preach, in a certain street, some twelve years ago,’ and he brings to my recollection the subject of my discourse. It was about being almost persuaded to be a Christian. He was a youth then; but the Truth stuck in his conscience, wounded him, and led him to come to Christ.

He wrote to tell me that, in the class which he is teaching in the Sunday School, ten boys have been brought to Christ, and added to the church, and now he himself has become a deacon of the church, and he thought it was time that he made me a partaker of his joy, by letting me know how he was brought to Christ. It was only once that I preached there, yet that soul was won, but I have preached to some of you hundreds of times, yet you do not come to Christ. Oh, when will the fire dissolve the rock?

O blessed Spirit, do save these my hearers yet! Let them not be cast away in that last day that shall declare it; but may they even now lay hold on eternal life, and be saved!

My last word is to you who believe in Christ. It is - ‘Wait.’ If you are a true Christian, you will be sure to be misrepresented, you will be sure to be slandered, but ‘the day shall declare it,’ so wait! I believe we never do worse business than when we try to set ourselves right before unbelieving people. Let them lie about us, if they will; and let them misjudge us, if they please. We are no servants of theirs; we serve a higher Master, before Whom we shall stand or fall.

They call you ‘hypocrite’. ‘The day shall declare it.’ They say that you are officious and proud, because you are zealous and earnest. ‘The day shall declare it.’ Wait! Be not in a hurry. ‘The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it,’ so, you must wait. The day of your deliverance is at hand; the Judge is even at the door.

Bear the reproaches of the ungodly, endure their oppressions, hold yourself still, and bide your time; for the day of recompensing when the wrongs are righted, will be worth waiting for. Think of when we shall ‘see the king in his beauty,’ and shall be like Him, and shall hear Him say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’!

This day shall for ever shut the mouth of calumny, and make the face of slander to turn pale and die. God bless you; and may you be ‘looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God’! ‘Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.’