15 Sermon Illustrations on Assurance in Christ

In the second century, a Christian was brought before a pagan ruler and told to renounce his faith. "If you don't do it, I will banish you," threatened the king. The man smiled and answered, "You can't banish me from Christ, for He says, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' " To this the king angrily retorted, "Then I will confiscate your property and take all your possessions." Again the man smiled and said, "My treasures are all laid up on high; you cannot get them." The king became furious and shouted, "I will kill you!" "Why," the man answered, "I have been dead forty years; I have been dead with Christ, dead to the world, and my life is hid with Christ in God, and you cannot touch it." In desperation the king turned to his advisers and asked, "What can you do with a fanatic like that?" The Pilot's Smile In Robert Louis Stevenson's story of a storm, he describes a ship caught off a rocky coast, threatening death to all on board. When terror among the passengers was at its worst, one man more daring than the rest, making the perilous passage to the pilot-house, saw the pilot lashed to his post with his hands on the wheel, turning the ship little by little into the open sea. When the pilot beheld the ghastly white, terror-stricken face of the man, he smiled, and the man rushed to the deck below shouting, "I have seen the face of the pilot and he smiled. All is well." The sight of that smiling face averted panic and converted despair into hope.

I envy not quality of the mind or intellect in others; nor genius, power, wit, or fancy: but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes when all hopes vanish; and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and of shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and, far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions and plains and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair. Sir Humphrey Davy.

Flavel, at one time, on a journey, set himself to improve his time by meditation; when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such ravishing tastes of heavenly joy, and such full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this world and all its concerns, so that he knew not where he was. At last, perceiving himself faint through a great loss of blood from his nose, he alighted from his horse, and sat down at a spring, where he washed and refreshed himself, earnestly desiring, if it were the will of God, that he might there leave the world. His spirits reviving, he finished his journey in the same delightful frame. He passed that night without any sleep,—the joy of the Lord still overflowing him, so that he seemed an inhabitant of the other world. After this, a heavenly serenity and sweet peace long continued with him; and for many years he called that day "one of the days of heaven." Bowes.

A short time since, I called to see one of my hearers, who was near death. She was an aged woman, remarkably quiet and unobtrusive, whose life had adorned the gospel. I took her proffered hand, and said, "How is it with you?" In a quiet way, yet with considerable earnestness, she replied, "Well, sir, I AM ON THE ROCK."

— Rev. James Smith

Rev. Mr. H. was for many years co-pastor with the Rev. Matthew Wilks, of the congregations at the Tabernacle and Tottenham-court chapel, London. His venerable colleague, who called upon him a few hours before his death, in a characteristic conversation, said, "Is all right for another world?"

"I am very happy," said Mr. H.

"Have you made your will?"

Mistaking the question—"The will of the Lord be done," said the dying Christian.

"Shall I pray with you?"

"Yes, if you can," alluding to Mr. Wilks's feelings, at that moment considerably excited.

After prayer, "Well, my brother, if you had a hundred souls, could you commit them all to Christ now?" alluding to an expression Mr. H. frequently used in the pulpit.

With a mighty and convulsive effort, he replied, "A million!"

One day a female friend called on the Rev. William Evans, a pious minister in England, and asked how he felt himself. "I am weakness itself," he replied; "but I am on the Rock. I do not experience those transports which some have expressed in the view of death; but my dependence is on the mercy of God in Christ. Here my religion began, and here it must end."

# 171. Example of Faith.

Of Mr. Stephen Marshall, an eminent divine of the 17th century, Mr. Giles Firman, who knew him in life, and attended him in death, says, "That he left behind him few preachers like himself; that he was a Christian in practice as well as profession; that he lived by faith, and died by faith, and was an example to the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, and in purity. And when he, together with some others, conversed with him about his death, he replied, 'I cannot say as one did, I have not so lived that I should now be afraid to die; but this I can say, I have so learned Christ, that I am not afraid to die.'"

In one of the general associations, held in South and North Wales, of different Sunday schools to be publicly catechised together, a young girl answered the close questions put by the Savior to Peter: "Lovest thou me?" When she came to answer the third time, she was overcome by her feelings, and burst into tears, in which she was accompanied by the larger part of the congregation. Silence continued for a few minutes, all the people solemnly waiting her reply, when, recovering herself, she cried out, "Thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee!" Happy indeed are those who, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, can thus speak!