A. W. Pink quote

I would have loved to have heard A. W. Pink preach, at least judging by the way that he writes.

I have been preaching through the life of Elijah on Sunday mornings in our church for the last couple of months. (The first of those sermons is available here and here.) It has been an exciting and challenging study as we have examined the life of this man so greatly used of God and so repeatedly emphasized in the New Testament. It has been encouraging to me that Elijah is a man subject to like passions as we are (James 5:17), for it reminds me that service to God is not limited to those who are on some type of special plane, but that God can use me as well.

Anyway, in preparation for Sunday's message, I came across this excerpt from A.W. Pink in his book, Elijah.

‘And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick.' Here was where mercy was mingled with justice: here was where ‘space for repentance' was granted the idolatrous king. O how long-suffering is God! Ahaziah's fall did not prove immediately fatal, though it placed him on a bed of sickness, where he had opportunity to ‘consider his ways.' And how often the Lord deals thus, both with nations and with individuals. The Roman empire was not built in a day, nor was it destroyed in a day. Many a blatant rebel against Heaven has been pulled up suddenly in his evil career. An ‘accident' overtook him, and though it may have deprived him of a limb, yet not of his life. Such may have been the experience of someone who reads these lines. If so, we would say to him with all earnestness, Redeem the time that is now left you. You might now be in hell, but God has given you a further season (brief at the most) to think of eternity and prepare for it. O that His goodness may lead you to repentance! Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart. Throw down the weapons of your warfare against Him and be reconciled to Him, for how shall you escape the everlasting burnings if you neglect His so-great salvation?

Just my thoughts (and A.W. Pink's thoughts),

Frank