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Where the lost soul must go
From Spurgeon's sermon, "Profit and Loss"
"What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole word,
and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:36.
Consider WHERE the lost soul must go to--
There is a place of murky darkness, where only lurid flames
make darkness visible; a place where beds of flame are the
fearful couches upon which spirits groan; a place where God
Almighty from his mouth pours a stream of brimstone, kindling
that "pile of fire and of much wood," which God has prepared of
old as a Tophet for the lost and ruined.
There is a spot, whose only sights are scenes are fearful woe.
There is a place- I do not know where it is; perhaps somewhere
in a far-off world there is a place where the only music is the
mournful symphony of damned spirits; where howling, groaning,
moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth, make up the horrid
concert.
There is a place where demons fly, swift as air,
with whips of knotted burning wire, torturing poor souls;
where tongues, on fire with agony, burn the roofs of mouths
that shriek for drops of water- that water denied to all.
There is a place where soul and body endure as much
of infinite wrath as the finite can bear;
where the inflictions of justice crush the soul,
where the continual flagellations of vengeance beat the flesh;
where the perpetual pourings out of the vials of eternal wrath
scald the spirit, and where the cuttings of the sword strike deep
into the inner man.
AH! sirs, I cannot picture this!
Vain are my words; light are the things I utter.
They are but the daubings of a painter who cannot portray
a scene so dreadful, for earth has not colors black enough
or fiery enough to depict it.
Ah! sinners, if you knew what hell meant,
then might you tell what it is to lose your own souls.
"For God did not appoint US to suffer wrath
but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Thes. 5:9
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