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TEXT: “And the door was shut.” Matt. 25:10.
F I were asked to state the strongest
reason or reasons why every man and
woman in this house should be a Chris
tian, I think I sould say, first, because
of the goodness of God in providing this
salvation for a lost race —lost on ac
count of its own sin. Sometime ago two
young men were riding upon a railroad
train and the train came to a stand-
I
still for quite a while and these young fellows were
talking about Divine providence, and both had had
hard luck and seemed to charge God with it and as
they talked a woman who sat behind them, who was
blind, leaned forward and said to them, “Will you
excuse me if I ask you a question or two? I do not
wish to intrude, but you have been talking upon a
most interesting subject and I would like to speak
concerning it,” and they said, “Why certainly.” She
said, “You are charging God with unkindness toward
you. May I ask you this question: Have you each
two good eyes?” They both answered, “Yes,” and
she said, "Can you see the beauties of nature around
about you?” “Yes.” “Do you enjoy nature?” “Yes,”
they said, getting a bit serious. “Well, she said,
“Do you know I have never seen what you see? I
was born blind and I would give all this world if I
could just for this moment look out this car window
by my side and see even just what is outside this
window. Have each of you a mother?” and they
said, “Yes,” still more seriously. “And is she beau
tiful?” “Yes,” one said. “She is the most beautiful
woman in this world.” “So is mine,” said the other.
She said, “Oh, I have a mother and I would just give
the world if I could go and put my arms around my
mother’s neck and look up into her face. I know it
is a beautiful face. I have felt it a thousand times,
until I can tell you every wrinkle in it, but I would
give everything if I could just see my mother’s face
once. Now do you not think God has been good
to you? I know He has been good to me, even if I
am denied some things, He has supplied so many
others.” One turned to the other and said, “You
forget the way I talked,” and the other said, “I will
never talk like that again.”
THE LOVE OF GOD.
Again, if I were asked to state the strongest rea
son why a man should be saved, aside from the all
important reason of salvation from sin in this life,
the salvation which sets him in right relation to
God and man, I think also I should say this —the love
of God. I can not conceive of any higher motive for
winning soul’s to Jesus than the love of God. I do
not know anything that wins like that love. I re
member one time preaching in an old tent in the
very heart of London, in a park. It was Bank Holi
day and Bank Holiday in England is one of the
greatest days of all days. It is a great day of free
dom. Everybody pratcically is let loose to do as he
pleases on Bank Holiday; all business is suspended
and the people go to the parks and watering places
for a gay time. On this occasion the Christian peo
ple had decided that they would stretch a great tent
in Islington Park and have an all-day service, not
letting an hour pass without a service, first one and
then another preaching, and I was invited to take an
afternoon hour. At the close of my sermon I felt like
giving the men and the women of that tent a chance
to confess Christ and I did. A man arose and said,
“Before you proceed with that invitation may I give
a testimony? I am a bank man; many here know
me and know that at one time I was an infidel.
My good wife was a Christian woman and she used
to try to talk with me about my soul, but I would
not let her. She took the children with her to
church and Sunday School, but I always objected
Finally one Sunday night I had business in th<j
White Chapel district,” that is a most degraded dis
trict in the city of London; “I went down through
this place, attended to my business and started
home. As I walked along I passed a little Salvation
Army hall, a place that held about fifty or seventy-
TZfE CLOSED DOOR
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb, Len G. Broughton, D.D,
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
five people. I heard a woman singing; I think she
had the poorest voice I ever heard, and as I heard
her singing I said, “Poor, silly, deluded people; will
they never learn any sense? she had better be home;
the song that she was singing was, ‘Jesus, Lover of
My Soul.’ The sound of that cracked voice kept
ringing in my ears even after I got out of hearing
distance. I got home and still heard it. ‘Jesus,
lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.’ I sat
down in the library with my wife and children, and
still I heard it. They soon retired, and I was left
in the library alone, and still heard that song.
Aftei’ awhile I followed them and tried to sleep but
still that phrase kept lingering in my ears. I could
not sleep. I turned over and tried the other side,
but still heard that song. I put my finger in my ear
and had the other on the pillow, but still I heard
that song. Finally I said, ‘I wish there wasn’t a sal
vation army in the world,’ and got up and tried to
read, but still I heard, ‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul.’
All night I chafed and fretted, trying to sleep, first
trying one way to seek repose and then another,
but not finding it. Finally my irritation passed and
I came up face to face with the question of all ques
tions. I waked my wife and said, “Look here, do
you reckon there is such a person as Jesus, and do
you suppose He loves an infidel, a man who has
denied Him as long as I have. She began and
preached unto me Jesus, the lover of every soul,
no matter how unworthy, and about sunrise I got
down on my knees for the first time since I was a
boy, and gave my heart to Jesus. And do you
know what it was that won my heart? It was, ‘Jesus,
lover of my soul.’ ”
That is what this world needs. To realize that
there is One whose love ever abounds, no matter
how far away we have wandered; no matter how
stubbornly we have disbelieved; no matter how far
sin has got its hold on us; no matter how deep
we are in the mire of sin, there is a loving heart
weeping over us, and an eager hand outstretched to
help.
But with all of these reasons for accepting the
salvation proffered by a loving Father, I think the
possibility of having the door shut in our faces is
the greatest reason why we should come to Christ.
In Matthew 25, from which we get our text, Jesus is
giving us a picture of the great marriage feast. The
world is divided by Him into two parts; those who
are ready and those who are not; those that believe
and those that do not; those that are saved and
those that are not, and the saved enter into the
marriage feast and the door is shut. After the door
is shut then the unsaved come and they knock upon
that door, but the door does not open; it can not
open. The door once shut is shut forever; and
therefore I say the possibility of having that door
shut in your face involves so much that you can not
afford to neglect this greatest of all questions.
THE CLOSED DOOR.
There are three things that I want briefly to con
sider that will close this door. The first is death.
Have you ever seen a man out of Christ die? Have
you ever stood by and kept account as the watch
ticked away that man’s last hope, and see in that
man not a single solitary possibility of salvation?
If you have, then you do not need that I should stop
here to speak of it, but while I do not usually deal
in deathbed stories I do want to to tell you an expe
rience I had in this very city. I tell it for the pur
pose of illustrating one or two things. There was a
gambler in this city, one of the worst men I ever
saw; a gambler and a drunkard, and a bad man all
round. He was dying and about two o’clock in the
morning, greatly to my astonishment, I was called
out of my bed to go to that man’s room in a bad
part of this city and talk with him and pray with
him. I was surprised because these very people
who called me that night when that man was dying
had been the very people in this city that had abused
and villified and cursed me more than all the rest
of the world put together. I was surprised to be
The Golden Age for June 2, 1910.
called there but I went. I did not know just what
kind of a trap I was going into. When I got upstairs
into that man’s room I found all sorts of people. I
never found myself in the midst of such a mob in
my life—men, women and dogs. The first thing that
greeted me was the biggest old bulldog that I ever
saw and a woman had him by a chain and I was
afraid she would let that chain loose. I did not know
whether he was a dog of real refined taste or not,
and did not know what would be the outcome until
I found he was well in hand. And when I entered
the room I saw him lying on his bed. I saw him
breathing suspiciously and heard his groans, and
taking my overcoat off I advanced to the side of
his bed and knelt down and ran my hand under the
cover and took his hand and felt his pulse which
was very weak, and I said, “My friend;” he said,
“Dr. Broughton, I have not been your friend, but I
am now.” I said, “Have you given your heart to
Jesus?” He said, “No, sir, I thought perhaps you
could help me to do that; I just can’t believe there
is any hope for a man like me now.” I tried to help
him believe but every time he would meet me with
"I can not believe.” After awhile those people gath
ered around him, saying: “Oh, yes, you can believe.”
There they were, the vilest of the vile, and yet
trying to persuade their dying comrade to look to
Jesus. Finally I said, “Let us pray,” and I tried my
best to pray, and when I got up he said, “I just can
not believe that Jesus would save a man like me.”
His voice got very feeble and I turned to get a
chair, and as I took hold of the chair and pulled it
up and started to sit down, a blood vessel burst in
his neck, and a stream of blood larger than my
thumb spurted across my arm and I threw myself
across the bedside, took the sides of that blood ves
sel and held it with a tight grip until my hands
were almost paralyzed, while they endeavored to se
cure surgical aid. All that time my hand was
gripped hold and the blood was trickling down my
own arm I was trying my best to show that man
how to believe but the last word that that poor
gambler ever spoke on this earth was,- “I can not
believe,” and he passed away; and I never felt in
all my life as that night when I was just standing
by the side of the man whose soul was just slipping
into the grip of the devil down in the pit where an
immortal spirit was hurled to burn forever. And it
need not have been so. There never has been a
time since that man was a baby at his mother’s knee
that he could not have been saved; but he was lost;
the door was shut forever.
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN.
Another way by which men cause the door to be -
shut to them is by committing the unpardonable sin.
The unpardonable sin is of two kinds. First, it is
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, attributing the
work of God to the work of the devil; and second
it is grieving the Spirit of God until He can make
no impression upon a human heart. I believe there
are men by whose side we shall work tomorrow,
men whom we pass in the street, possibly our friends,
who are just as certainly doomed for hell as if they
were in the pit; lost because they have hardened
their hearts so against the Spirit of God that He can
make no impression. What means this giving up
of interest in spiritual things? What means this loss
of feeling? It must mean that God’s spirit has gone
out; it means to say that you are growing harder
and harder until perhaps at last you have locked
the door of your own heart and God’s mighty Spirit
can not enter it.
When I was engaged in a meeting recently a law
yer came to my room and said: “I want to say that
several years ago in my father’s church, for my
father was a preacher, I felt as never before that
the time had come when I should give my heart to
Christ and become a Christian. There sat by my
side a young woman; she was a member of the
church, and she saw that I was greatly affected and
was likely to go forward and make a public confes
sion, and she said to me, “I would not do it tonight;
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