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SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS IN HE A VEN
TEXT—II Sam. 23: “I shall go to him but
he shall not return unto me.”
HIS TEXT takes our minds to a
very interesting, though very sad
and pathetic experience. As we
read the story of David’s life we
are confronted, first of all, with the
view of a great palace of a great
king. A king’s palace is always
interesting. During our last stay
in London, as many as two or
three times a week, we passed the palace of the
king of England and 1 never passed the palace
without feeling an intense interest in the place
and in what transpired within its walls. But
this palace is of more interest to us than
England’s palace, because it is the palace of
the king of the people of Israel, God's chosen
people. It is the palace of the greatest king
that ever reigned over this great people —
King David. The palace is a magnificent
structure, with its great stone columns and its
many courts ; with its beautiful flower gardens ;
with its long corridors and its broad halls.
Around this palace is, constantly marking
time, a number of soldiers. They are there for
the purpose of keeping out any enemies that
might approach.
THE CHRISTIAN’S HOPE.
I fancy it was during the shades of night,
while the soldiers marked time around the pal
ace, an enemy approached, unobserved by the
soldiers or the attendants, passed the line,
entered the door of the palace, stalked down
its long halls, and crossed its corridors until
he entered the nursery in which there was
sleeping the pet of Israel’s king, and he walk
ed up to the bedside where lay this child of
fortune, and reached forth his bony, chilly
fingers, and began a grapple for his heart
strings. David realized his presence and sum
moned his wisest men, with the hope of driv
ing him out, but it was all in vain. Then he
betook himself to a quiet place, and there
prostrated himself upon the ground, and
refused to eat or drink for days, while he
implored Almighty God to drive away this
messenger. At the end of the seventh day
this death grapple was brought to an end ; this
arch enemy of the race succeeded in snapping
the brittle cord that sustained life, and the
child was dead. The news was whispered to
and fro through the palace, by the servants,
who were afraid to tell the king on account
of his severe grief, until King David, pros
trate upon the ground, heard the whisper, and
arose and asked the whispering attendants,
“Is the child dead?” When he learned the
sad message that they had to tell, he arose,
bathed his face, took food, and, in the words
of our text, said: “I shall go to him, but he
shall not return to me.”
It is interesting to speculate concerning the
vast number of people that have lived in all
the ages of the world’s history that have found
comfort in the sentiment that we take to
night for our text. There are thousands of
people living today that are comforting them
selves with the thought expressed by the heart
broken king, as he faced the death of his child,
“I shall go to him.” I was on the Southern
train recently, going North, and had to pass
through the little town of Reidsville, in North
Carolina, where I once lived; where I was
ordained to the ministry. Just on the east
side of the little town, by the side of the rail
road, there is the little cemetery, and as our
whistle blew for the station, I moved myself
from the west side of the car to the east side,
and looked out through the window until my
eyes rested near the summit of a little hill in
the center of the cemetery, where we one day
deposited the remains of our baby girl; and
as I looked upon the scene in that cemetery,
The Golden Age for February 23, 1911.
7 abernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. ii roughton, D.D.
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
while the train slowly pulled into the station,
I quoted to myself these words of David, “I
shall go to her but she shall not return to
me.” Oh, my friends, the question tonight
that I want to present to you is one concern
ing the ground of this hope. “I shall go to
him.” Is there not sufficient intellectual and
reasonable ground for this hope?—the hope
of recognizing in heaven those of our loved
ones and friends who have gone on before?
At once there comes rushing up a company
of criticisers. One comes and says, “I think
not. I don’t think that there is any reason
able, intelligent ground for such hope. For I do
not think there is any intelligent ground for
hope of heaven.” To such a one I simply have
to say, Then we will burn up our Bibles. We
will pull down our churches; tear up our
school buildings and destroy our civilization,
for this book is the foundation of our hope
of heaven, and it is the main spring of our
present day civilization.
But another says, “I think there is sufficient
ground for hope of heaven, for the Bible
teems with teachings of heaven, but I do not
think there is sufficient ground for hope of hea
venly recognition. Heaven pictured in the
Scriptures is too big.” I admit that heaven
is big. The Apostle, while banished upon the
Island of Patmos, was given the privilege of
looking into the ages to come, and God pulled
aside the curtain that separates the mainland
of time from the great endless sea of eternity,
and John saw the heavens, and he says of it
that it was so big that there were thousands
and thousands there; and then God came later
on and gave him just a little higher vision of
heaven, and he says this time, “It is a place
so big that there are ten thousand times ten
thousand there.” And then God comes and
takes his old servant a little bit higher and
gives him still another peep into heaven, and
he writes back, “It is so big that there is a
hundred and forty-four thousand and thous
ands of thousands.” And still God takes him a
bit higher and gives him yet one other view
of heaven and he writes back, “It has such a
great multitude that no man can number it.”
He starts with thousands and ends with num
berless myriads.
HEAVENLY POSSIBILITIES.
That is something of the magnitude of hea
ven. But, my friends, we forget when we
speak of that as being an obstacle in the way
of recognition of our friends that God will
be in charge of heaven absolutely, and being
in charge God will, for the first time, have a
chance to work out all of the mysterious laws
that today are interfered with by the imper
fections of man. If some years ago a man
had said, “It will be possible, in the near
future, for one to flash a message out into
space and that message be caught up on the
other side of the Atlantic,” we would have
said, “Such a man is an impractical dreamer,
a fool.” But is it not possible today? When
I returned from England last November, I
came on the ship on which there was the man,
Jack Binns, who was in charge of the wireless
message station on the “Republic,” when she
went down a short time ago. He was sought
out by all the passengers. They wanted to
see the man that flashed the message that
brought relief and saved from drowning hun
dreds of men and women. When that ship
was sinking he simply put his finger to the
button and flashed out into space the three
letters, “C. Q. D,” and “C. Q. D.” was caught
up by the waves of atmospheric ether and
wafted throughout the bounds of space, touch
ing every shore. And a passing ship caught
the message “C. Q. D.”—“Come, quick, dan
ger”—and, turning her prow, she plowed the
sea to the place of danger and saved the pas-
sengers.
Oh, my brethren, if God can work such a
wonder as this, with all of the imperfections of
the earth to work through, and to co-operate
with, what are we to expect when God is
absolutely in charge of all people £nd all
laws and means of sight and communication
in the heavenly world? It will then be just
as easy for God to introduce us to the whole
of heaven, at one flash of the eye, as today
for God to make it possible to transmit a mes
sage across space without wires.
Somebody said to me, “I do not think hea
venly recognition is possible, because heaven
is so beautiful; we are going to be absorbed
in the beauties of heaven.” Heaven is beau
tiful, as beautiful as language can describe, and
I fancy that John, in his efforts to describe it,
broke down and flung away his pen, because
he could not say what he wanted to say. It is
so beautiful as to be pictured with its streets
of gold and walls of jasper and gates of pearl
and throughout all of it there is described
jewels and precious stones of every kind and
character, each flashing its light into the face
of the other until the mingled light flashing
by these different colored stones light up the
atmosphere, outrivaling in their glory the
glories of ten thousand sunsets! That is a
picture of the beauty of heaven. But, oh, my
friends, what is beauty without somebody to
enjoy it with you? Those of us that know
what it is to love and to be loved, those that
know what it is to have friends and to be
friend, what care we for beauty, unless we can
share it with them. I confess to you, in the
midst of all that dazzling splendor, I had
rather look for one minute into the face of one
I loved than to drink in the beauties of hea
ven alone.
And then somebody else says, “I think it is
unreasonable because heaven is a place of
spirits.” Do we forget that these spirits have
intelligence, that they have form, that they
have a body; that this body is risen and that
it is like unto the body that they laid down
in the grave?
But, oh, I fancy that there is scarcely any
here who are raising such objections, and we
are all of us agreed to know what of actual
proof have we that there is any such thing
as recognition in heaven. I must say to you
that so far as direct teaching is concerned, the
Bible is practically silent upon the truth, but
while it is silent in so far as its direct teach
ing is concerned, it is not silent in so far as the
implied teaching goes, and it is often a fact
that implied evidence is of more signifi.. ance
than direct or positive evidence, and it is so
here.
Come with me back into the Old Testament
regime, away back toward the beginning and
we find a description of the end of Moses; it
is said that “he died and was gathered to his
people.” Then we find descriptive of the
end of Jacob that “he died and was gathered to
his people.” Os the end of Joseph, it is said
that “he died and was gathered to his people.”
What does it mean, this gathering to his people
unless it means what it says, that those faith
ful servants and patriarchs of old, when their
day of toil was ended were gathered up to
mingle and be with their beloved?
We come to the New Testament Scriptures
and stand for a moment upon beautiful glory
crowned Mount of Transfiguration, where as
Jesus and His disciples stood together be
holding the glory they had never beheld be
fore, there appeared in their midst two oth
ers, Moses and Elias, and the disciples looked
upon them and knew them. If the disciples,
my friends, could look upon those that thex
had never seen and know them, why should
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