When I was a little lad, I one day read at family prayer the chapter in
the Revelations concerning the “bottomless pit.” Stopping in the midst
of it, I said to my grandfather, “Grandfather, what does this mean–’the
bottomless pit?’” He said, “Go on child, go on.” So I read that chapter,
but I took great care to read it the next morning also. Stopping again I
said, “Bottomless pit, what does this mean?” “Go on,” he said, “Go on.”
Well it came the next morning, and so on for a fortnight; there was
nothing to be read by me of a morning but this same chapter, for
explained it should be if I read it a month. And I can remember the
horror of my mind when he told me what the idea was. There is a deep
pit, and the soul is falling down,–oh how fast it is falling! There! the
last ray of light at the top has disappeared, and it falls on–on–on, and
so it goes on falling–on–on–on–for a thousand years! “Is it not getting
near the bottom yet? won’t it stop?” No, no–the cry is, on–on– on, “I
have been falling a million years, is it not near the bottom yet?” No,
you are no nearer the bottom yet: it is the “bottomless pit;” it is on–on–
on, and so the soul goes on falling, perpetually, into a deeper depth still,
falling for ever into the “bottomless pit”–on –on–on, into the pit that
has no bottom! Woe without termination, without hope of it’s coming
to a conclusion. The same dreadful idea is contained in those words,
“The wrath to come.” Mark, hell is always “the wrath to come.” If a
man has been in hell a thousand years, it is still “to come.” As to what
you have suffered in the past it is as nothing, in the dread account, for
still the wrath is “to come.” And when the world has grown grey with
age, and the fires of the sun are quenched in darkness, it is still “the
wrath to come.” And when other worlds have sprung up, and have
turned into their palsied age, it is still “the wrath to come.” And when
your soul, burnt through and through with anguish, sighs at last to be
annihilated, even then this awful thunder shall be heard, “the wrath to
come–to come–to come.” Oh, what an idea! I know not how to utter it!
And yet for little sins, remember you incur “the wrath to come.” Oh, if I
am to be damned, I would be damned for something; but to be
delivered up to the executioner and sent into “the wrath to come” for
little sins which do not even make me famous as a rebel, this is to be
damned indeed. Oh that ye would arise, that ye would flee from the
wrath to come, that ye would forsake the little sins, and fly to the great
cross of Christ to have little sins blotted out, and little offences washed
away. For oh,–again I warn you,–if ye die with little sins unforgiven,
with little sins unrepented of, there shall be no little hell; the great wrath
of the great king is ever to come, in a pit without a bottom, in a hell the
fire of which never shall be quenched, and the worm of which ne’er
shall die. Oh, “the wrath to come! the wrath to come!” It is enough to
make one’s heart ache to think of it. God help you to flee from it. May
you escape from it now, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
