Evening, December 24, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.”  Isaiah 40:5

We anticipate the happy day when the whole world shall be converted to Christ; when the gods of the nations shall be cast to the moles and the bats; when godless state religion shall be blown apart, and the crescent of Mohammed shall fade, never again to cast its hostile rays upon the nations; when kings shall bow down before the Prince of Peace, and all nations shall call their Redeemer blessed. Some despair of this. They look upon the world as a vessel breaking up and going to pieces, never to float again. We know, though, that the world and all that it contains is one day to be burnt up, and afterwards we look for new heavens and for a new earth; but we cannot read our Bibles without the conviction that–

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Does his successive journeys run.”

We are not discouraged by the length of his delay; we are not disheartened by the long period which he allots to the church in which to struggle with seemingly little success and much defeat. We believe that God will never allow this world, which has once seen Christ’s blood shed upon it, to continue to be the devil’s stronghold. Christ came here to deliver this world from the detested sway of the powers of darkness. What a shout it will be when men and angels shall unite to cry “Hallelujah, hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!” What a satisfaction will it be in that day to have had a share in the fight, to have helped to break the arrows of the bow, and to have aided in winning the victory for our Lord! Happy are they who trust themselves with our conquering Lord, and who fight side by side with him, doing what they can in his name and by his strength! How unhappy are those on the side of evil! It is a losing side, and it is a matter in which to lose is to lose and to be lost forever. On whose side are you?