Those who are eaten up with the world will be rejected, as ungodly, at the bar of judgment. To be godly and earthly is a contradiction: "For many walk, of whom I now tell you even weeping, that they are "the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose god is their belly, who mind earthly things" (Phil. 3:18, 19). We read that the earth swallowed up Korah alive (Num. 16:32). This judgment is on many - the earth swallows up their time, thoughts and discourse. They are buried twice; their hearts are buried in the earth before their bodies. How sad it is that the soul, that princely thing, which is made for communion with God and angels, should be put to the mill to grind, and made a slave to the earth! How like the prodigal the soul has become, choosing rather to converse with swine and feed upon husks than to aspire after communion with the blessed Deity! Thus does Satan befool men, and keep them from heaven by making them seek a heaven here.  ~Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture

The Hands of an Angry God

The bow of God’s wrath is bent and straining. The arrow is already set on the string, and justice aims it directly at your heart. It is nothing but the mere pleasure of God–an angry God–who is not restrained by any promise or obligation, that keeps that arrow from being drunk with your blood. This means that all of you whose hearts have never been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and have never been born-again and made new creatures, raised from being dead in sin to a new light and life–all of you are in the hands of an angry God.  ~Jonathan Edwards

Oh, if there be a place where sinners are more loathsome to God than anywhere else, it is in His church.  Of all men, who stand in the most likely place to receive the mightiest thunderbolt, and the most terrible lightening's flash, those are the men who have a divided heart, and profess to serve God, while with their souls they are serving sin. ~Charles H. Spurgeon

Think, you who take comfort in some fancied ideas of your own goodness – think, you who wrap up yourselves in the notion, “all must be right, if I keep to my Church,” – think for a moment what a sandy foundation you are building upon! Think how miserably defective your hopes and pleas will look in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment! Whatever people may say of their own goodness while they are strong and healthy, they will find but little to say of it when they are sick and dying. Whatever merit they may see in their own works here in this world, they will discover none in them when they stand before the tribunal of Christ. The light of that great day of judgment will make a wonderful difference in the appearance of all their doings. It will strip off the tinsel, shrivel up the complexion, expose the rottenness of many a deed that is now called good. Their wheat will prove nothing but chaff, their gold will be found nothing but dross. Millions of so-called ‘good works’ will turn out to have been utterly defective and graceless. They passed current here in this world, and were valued among people, but they will prove light and worthless in the balance of God. They will be found to have been like the whitened sepulchers of old – fair and beautiful on the outside – but full of corruption on the inside. Alas, for the person who can look forward to the day of judgment, and lean their soul in the smallest degree on anything of their own now! ~ J.C. Ryle Tract: The Cross of Christ

Goodbye to Glory

. . . a church deserves to have Ichabod written from its lowest cellar step to the sky-touching point of its steeple which prefers the adulation of saints to ardent anxieties concerning lost sinners as well as abhorrence of that which is evil. Glory yields up its scepter - when the fancies of literary notables have place along with the facts of the gospel, when there is the frivolity of the flesh instead of the fervor of the spiritual in serving the Lord - godliness in form only instead of glorying in the cross of Christ - a groping after eternal verities - and a guessing that only borders on godliness as to the certainties of God's promises instead of a guidance of others into paths of righteousness. Glory "packs its baggage for a one-way trip" when in the church people are noted for faultfinding instead of being notable for forgiveness - when offense is quickly taken and there is overlordism instead of the offering of self for lowly service - when the making of money means more than the mastery of money. ~R. G. Lee, Goodbye to Glory-Ichabod

God's Judgment

God’s justice stands forever against the sinner in utter severity. The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unregarded. As responsible moral beings, we dare not so trifle with our eternal future. ~A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

Prepare To Meet Thy God

I like going to Cyber Hymnal and listening to old hymn tunes and reading the lyrics and reading about the composers. I heard an old hymn sang by a preacher on a radio station in North Carolina and I had to look up the verses (of which I think he sang all of them). It's not the kind of song you're going to hear in the typical happy, clappy, feel good, you can be all you want to be type of church - yet the lyrics are quite sobering

Prepare to Meet Thy God

Careless soul, why will you linger?
Wandering from the fold of God?
Hear you not the invitation?
O prepare to meet thy God.

Refrain

Careless soul, O heed the warning,
For your life will soon be gone;
O how sad to face the judgment
Unprepared to meet thy God.

Why so thoughtless are you standing
While the fleeting years go by,
And your life is spent in folly?
O prepare to meet thy God.

Refrain

Hear you not the earnest pleadings
Of your friends that wish you well?
And perhaps before tomorrow
You’ll be called to meet your God.

Refrain

If you spurn the invitation
Till the Spirit shall depart,
Then you’ll see your sad condition,
Unprepared to meet thy God.

Refrain