But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9)
Last night just before the service started the power went out and I preached in the dark. We are preaching and living and raising our children and grandchildren in the deepening darkness in our culture and in our time. Spurgeon had a sense of the waning spiritual light during the years of the Downgrade Controversy in England. If Charles Spurgeon lived in a dark hour, how much more do we? Spurgeon’s words may apply to our time more than they did to the people and in the era in which he spoke them:
“Look you, sirs, there are ages to come. If the lord does not speedily appear, there will come another generation, and another, and all these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to God and to his truth today. We have come to a turning-point in the road. If we turn to the right, mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to his Word.
I charge you, not only by your ancestry, but by your posterity, that you seek to win the commendation of your Master, that though you dwell where Satan’s seat is, you yet hold fast his name, and do not deny his faith.
God grant us faithfulness, for the sake of the souls around us! How is the world to be saved if the church is false to her Lord? How are we to lift the masses if our fulcrum is removed? If our gospel is uncertain, what remains but increasing misery and despair? Stand fast, my beloved, in the name of God! I, your brother in Christ, entreat You to abide in the truth. Quit yourselves like men, be strong. The Lord sustain you for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”
-Charles Spurgeon, “Holding Fast The Faith,” pp 83-84
