Danger in Delay of Settling Day

Sam Jones, the great evangelist, was preaching in the city of St. Louis in 1884 to 10,000 people in an auditorium from the text Ecclesiastes 8.11, which reads, Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. And Sam Jones built his sermon by setting his foundation and building his framework, fastening each point with penetrating illustrations, in touching on the delay of sinners in both turning to God and the delay of God in carrying out sentences against the sinners in a delay. And he emphasized that delay in this sense, he said, that this very delay makes men reckless in sin, and he used the following illustration.

He said a man in his hometown of Cartersville, Georgia, got so drunk one night he boasted to his friends that when the evening train came through town, he was going to jump in front of it, grab hold of it, take the engine in his hands, and toss it off the tracks. Well, his friends couldn't talk him out of it, and the longer it went, the drunker he got, and when the train came barreling through town, this man leaped out in front of it to grab it, and was thrown under it and crushed to powder. And Sam Jones said that men are reckless like that in sin because God delays His judgment.

But Sam Jones did something unusual that night. Instead of announcing his text at the beginning of the sermon and reiterating it throughout the sermon, as was his custom, he just preached his message, and when he finished the message, it was then that he read his text. And this spoke of his great genius, because as the preacher waited until the end of his sermon to read his text, he was saying in so many words, so too God waits until the end of a person's life to carry out His very words and sentence against them.

Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Those two words, friends, fully set, represent a full sail on a boat where all caution is thrown to the wind. So there's recklessness to sin because of God's delay in judgment.

First, we should note that every evil work, every sin, is already sentenced. He that believeth not, said Christ, is condemned already. There's no hope for you, Christ-rejecter.

But while the sentence is passed, though the execution for a time is suspended, that's why an atheist can stand on a street corner, look up at the sky, and shake his fist in the face of God, and curse God, and cuss God, and no thunderbolt descends from a clear sky to destroy him. The sentence is pronounced, but the execution is delayed. In a small farming community years ago, an atheist wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper.

The letter began, Dear Sir, I have been trying an experiment. I have a field of corn, which I plowed on Sunday. I planted it on Sunday.

I did the cultivating on Sunday. I gathered the crop on Sunday. And on Sunday, I hauled it into my barn.

And I find I have more corn per acre that has been gathered by any of my Christian neighbors during this October. The editor of the paper published the atheist's letter with an added footnote at the bottom of the page. Dear Contributor, please be advised, God does not always settle his accounts in October.

What the editor was saying is that God has a settling day, a future judgment that awaits all mankind, where every mother's son will one day have to give an account of themselves to God. The reasons for this delay are in the counsel of God, bound up in His long-suffering. As the Apostle Peter declares, the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but His long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Though there comes a time when His forbearance ends with sinners, and the sentencing of the law is carried out upon all guilty lawbreakers, as seen in the days of Noah, while Noah was preparing the ark. Every hammered blow that echoed in the woods was a clarion call to his neighbors to come and get in the safety of the ark. But the people mocked Noah.

They said he was just a crazy old man building a boat when there was no need for it, because it never had rained. He was the song of drunkards. But a day came when God called Noah and his family into the ark and closed the door, and the sky darkened with thick, threatening clouds, ominous thunder, and heaven opened, and the floods came down in torrents.

There were nail prints on that ark, but people clawing at it in desperation and trying to hang on to it in alarm as it rose above the ground, but they were all swept away to a watery grave. And the sun shone on Sodom until light departed from the doomed city. Then all hell broke loose, and it rained hellfire and hot bricks of heaven, consuming all the inhabitants of that wicked city.

There comes a time, friends, when the hammer of divine justice falls, when God has done all. He sent his prophets, and his prophets are stoned. He's looked for grapes, and he got only wild grapes.

Grace is lifted, and he sends forth the destroying angels on Sodom, the flood on an ungodly world. There is a point in the history of nations when their cup of iniquity is full. Jesus would have gathered the people of Jerusalem to his bosom as a mother gather mother hen gathers her chicks, but they would not.

So the day came when the Roman soldiers cast their torches into their beautiful temple where the fathers had praised him and sinned against him, and it was left desolate. You better put this down, big, plain, and straight, friend. The intensity of the execution is aggravated by all the sins committed during the delay.

How many treasure wrath against the day of wrath? The day comes when the sentence is carried out, and the sword of justice falls. But notice how it falls. Look at Ecclesiastes 9.12, which states, For man also knoweth not his time, as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare.

So are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. This speaks of sudden death. We live in a land of sudden death.

Why, it's not even safe to go outside these days. You can be gunned down in a grocery store. You can be gunned down standing in line in public.

You get in your car, and your car becomes your coffin. You get in a plane, and the plane drops out of the sky, and you are taken out of this world suddenly and quite unexpectedly. Though these two verses from Ecclesiastes 8.11 and 9.12 are separated by a chapter, they naturally go together.

One is a declaration, and the other is a warning. They should be placed one right after the other. Like twelve follows eleven is naturally preceding the other.

The other follows the other. These two verses go together like biscuits and gravy. Therefore, friends, let me read them together, and improve the weight and solemnity of each of them to you.

Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. For man also knoweth not his time, as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in a snare. So are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.

Notice, friends, both verses talk about the sons of men. Both verses talk about delay and the sovereignty of God over all things. One describes men knee-deep in reckless sin during the delay, and the other describes their untimely death that suddenly falls on them like a plane falling out of the sky.

I had a close friend who was a millionaire, and one day he told me he bought himself a plane, and one morning he kissed his wife goodbye, climbed into the plane with some of his friends to go out of town, and they never made it to their destination. That plane crashed headlong into the ground. I said goodbye to a co-worker one time, a young man in his late forties.

He was standing in the hallway of a building, but that evening he woke up at midnight, clutched his chest, took two steps out of bed, and dropped to the floor like a block of cement. You can't guarantee yourself you'll be here tomorrow, friend. God could snatch you without warning right out of the world.

God's Word declares, Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. And for the lost sinner, if there is a verse in Job that is chilling, it is Job 18.18, which states, He shall be driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world. Jesus spoke of hell as a region of outer darkness.

Why, it's so dark in hell you can't see your hand in front of your face. The evangelist, Mordecai Ham, had a sermon called Sudden Death, and in that sermon he had a story that brought chills to strong men in the congregation. It was a story about Lulu going straight into hell.

Let me read it to you, friends, from Mordecai Ham's own words from his biography. God caused me to witness the horrible death of one eternally lost. Two sisters were living in a log hut near the church where I was holding meetings.

Both were just young girls and were dying with tuberculosis. The mother of those two girls met me at the door of the little log cabin and begged me to hasten in and do something. Lulu was dying, the mother sobbed.

I hurried to the girl's bedside and tried to talk to her about her need of salvation. I plead with her for a long time, but to no avail. She refused to hearken.

Then she closed her eyes in death. I called to her, Lulu, how is it? A voice came back, not the voice of one living, but that of one who was in another world. It was a voice that came up from the depths without any sign of movement over the dead girl's lips or throat muscles, a voice that I have heard only once in my life and that I have never been able to forget.

Lost, lost, oh, oh, so dark, so dark. There are few things more terrifying than being thrust into a place of utter thick darkness. You can't see a thing, but you can hear the screams of the damned suffering all around you.

No one will help you in hell. Nobody cares about you in hell. Jesus described hell as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Weeping speaks of great loss and grief, and gnashing of teeth signifies great anger and regret. Hell is a never-ending region of darkness and regret. Then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot and take him away and cast him into outer darkness.

There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. He should be driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world. Oh, what a horrible thought, friend, to leave this world of light and sunshine, a blue sky and white clouds, to have it all turn into a dark tempest of utter chaos.

Well, who chases you out? There is an unseen world all around us. Let me tell you a story. I once knew a Satan worshiper, and I asked him to tell me a story how he came to worship the devil.

And he told me it all began when he was a young man. He would listen to hard rock music every night in his bedroom. And one night, while listening to the lyrics of that music, he felt an urge to pray to Satan.

So every night he would pray more and more to Satan, until one night he was visited by an entity not of this world. It was a demon entity with an ancient name, and he could see it, he could hear its voice. It was at first alarming to look at, but commanding, as it was a high-ranking demon entity with much authority.

This entity asked the young man if he would like to have his eyes opened to the unseen world. And when I heard him say that, immediately my thoughts ran to 2 Kings, where the servant of the man of God fears the approaching Syrian army. And he asks Elijah, Alas, my master, how shall we do? And the text reads, Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.

And Elijah prayed and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elijah. So when this young man was telling me this story, how this demon entity asked him if he wanted his eyes opened to this unseen world, he said yes.

The demon gave instructions to follow, and he said, if you follow these orders, then this will happen to you. It was to test him and to make it a reality to him. He told the young man to go out in the country with his pickup truck to drive to a certain farm where he would find a goat.

He was to bring a rope and a knife, and his instructions were to capture the goat and cut the goat's throat with the knife, kill it, offer it to Satan in a ceremony as a sacrifice. Well, this young man did it. He did the very thing.

And the next evening, the demon appeared again in his room and spoke some ancient words over him that he did not understand. And he told him to close his eyes, and he closed his eyes, and then he told him to open his eyes. And when the young man opened his eyes, he saw demons all around him.

But this Satan worshiper told me he could go out in public and see demons walking down the street in broad daylight. He could go to the shopping mall and see demons walking between the shoppers right along beside them. He could see demons everywhere.

He told me he even visited the city of ancient Rome one time, and the city was absolutely crawling with hordes and hordes of demon entities. An unseen world is all around us, friends. So who's going to chase you out of the world if you die in your sins? Demons will grab you by the ankles, grab you by the shoulders, and drive you from light to darkness as you're chased out of this world.

Listen to me, friend. If you are resistant to turn to God and surrender to Him, He will give you enough time and enough rope to hang yourself in reckless sin. So we have a declaration.

Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Then we have the warning. For man also knoweth not his time.

As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in a snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them. Sudden death is all around us. Men are no more able to guard against a time of calamity which comes at once upon them than the poor fishes swimming in the sea or the silly birds to avoid the net and the snare, and like them when they are in the utmost security indulging themselves in ease and pleasure.

So the day of death and judgment will come like a thief in the night or a snare upon men when they think that nothing of it but are giving themselves up to their lusts and pleasures. Let me stop here friends to pray. I feel I must pray right now.

Oh great God, if there is someone here asleep in their sins, wake them up Lord and alarm them to their great danger of being damned in a devil's hell. I pray great God that the Holy Ghost will come and disturb folks. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen. Let me get back to my message friend. I'm getting near the conclusion of it, but listen to me friend.

You have heard the word of God preached to you tonight by this old preacher, and I hope you haven't just heard my frail shaky voice, but somehow by God's grace you will hear his voice speaking to you with conviction and authority. There is a danger in delay, and that's the title of my message, Danger in Delay, but God doesn't always settle his accounts in October. Listen to me now, but there comes a settling day for sure where the sentence is carried out upon all guilty lawbreakers.

At the end of the book of Revelation, we find a warning and a wooing. First the warning, He that is unjust, let him be unjust still. And he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.

And he that is righteous, let him be righteous still. And he that is holy, let him be holy still. Now friends, I want to bring you the wooing, but I give it to you solemnly.

For some of you, you'll fall on deaf ears as we see in 1 Corinthians 1.18. The receptivity of the gospel is different to others. For the preaching of the cross is them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. That word power in the Greek is the word dunamis, where we get our English word dynamite, and when the Spirit of God attends the preaching of the word of God, why, it's absolutely dynamite.

I leave you now, friends, with the wooing of the word of God. It's an invitation to come to Christ. I pray it takes effect.

For some of you, this may be your last call, your last invitation to be saved, to come to Christ. For your cup of iniquity may be getting full. Listen to me, you come and surrender your all to Him, because you may be suddenly taken out of this world quite unexpectedly, like the fishes and the birds from the net and the snare, and driven from light to darkness, and chased out of this world into another world that you are quite unprepared for.

Listen to this final gospel plea from God's word. Don't delay any longer. Hell is dark and a terrible place.

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.