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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 62. The Process
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The Process
Now it is fairly fascinating to find that with this principle goes ,a process. The two go together hand in glove. The principle of love is side by side with a rare process of love. I refer to the process by which a man goes to hell (the pen sticks with sheer pain at putting down the necessary words,) if he go.
He is not sent there. He is not put there. It is not a case of superior physical force taking possession of him, overcoming his resistance, and compelling him somewhere against his will. All human analogies, such as arrest by officers of the law, and enforced imprisonment in the penitentiaries, quite fail to tell the story here.
And further, it is not by any arbitrary action of God's, however fair and just it might be, by common consent. The process is simply this The man is left to himself. What God does is this: Ho does nothing. He leaves the man to himself.
Now, the look into the Book. In the story of man's being put out of Eden it says of God, "so He drove out the man" (Gen_3:24). And the picture we have all had, pretty much is that of God in some forcible way driving Adam and Eve out, and they reluctantly forced to yield to a power they could not withstand.
The same identical word is used by Cain on the other side of the page, "Behold, thou hast driven me out this day . . . and from thy face shall I be hid" (Gen_4:14). And one gets precisely the same picture as in the case of Adam and Eve.
But, mark thoughtfully, what it says a few lines further down in describing what actually took place: "And Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah" (Gen_4:16). This at once throws light on the expulsion from Eden, as well. That last sentence would naturally mean that there was no physical force used, but only moral.
The whole probability, practically to the point of certainty, is that Adam and Eve were greatly awed by God's presence and words. They were conscience-stricken, humiliated to the very dust. And they went out even as Cain. The sense of God's love and goodness to them, and his purity, and the bitter sense of their shame, their awful failure, the terrible break that they had caused between themselves and God, that sense and that only, drove them out. The whole fair presumption is that the sense of the character of God was so strong upon them that they walked out of their own accorde, so far as any action on God's part was concerned, of the sort that we think of as physical.
This fits in perfectly with the very striking language Paul uses in that outstanding First of Romans. There is a terrific indictment of the whole race in its sin of going its own way clean against God's way. And then Paul clearly states God's treatment of them.
Three times over its says "God gave them up." (Rom_1:24; Rom_1:26; Rom_1:28). He did His best to restrain them. His love, His creative and sustaining and preserving care, His pleadings and wooings, were lavished on them. Then came the terrible words quoted, "He gave them up." He simply answered their tacit persistent prayer to be left alone. He left them, alone. He left them to themselves. The process is quite clear.
A few years later, writing from Rome to the Ephesians, Paul traces the steps in the process, on the human side, by which a man goes away from God to his doom (Eph_4:17-19). He says, "Walk no longer as the outsiders (Gentiles) also walk in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling give themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness:"
The natural steps in the process are partially reversed here. He begins where the outsiders are at the time walking, or living the wrong sort of life. Then he traces the steps backward toward their starting-point, and adds the climax. Let us put them in the order in which they naturally happen. First, there's the "hardening of the heart," or setting one's will against God. This results in their being "alienated," that is, cut off from God. Their action automatically cuts them off from God, but in their wilful ignorance they don't realize what they are doing.
Then quickly follows their being "darkened in their understanding." The whole mental processes are affected. The moral vision blurs. They call good evil, and evil good; darkness light and the reverse, and so on (see Isa_5:20). With this is joined naturally "the vanity of their minds." In failing to get things straight, they easily get full of their own ideas spun out of the fancy of their colored imaginations.
And this of course controls their "walk," that is, the practices of their daily life. And when this stage is reached, it quickly gets to the sad "past feeling" stage, morally. They give them-selves up to unrestrained passion and lust. And the last, hardened stage is where lust is traded in for sordid gain. The whole movement, it will be thoughtfully noticed is automatic. It is the natural logical staircase downward. And that is describing things in this life. It is like that here. What will it be there? Here, now, grace still influences, even though resisted. There, then, it apparently is quite kept out, shut out.
Jesus' treatment of Judas that betrayal night sheds a flood of light here (Joh_13:21-30). There was the utmost effort to keep Judas in. The plain-spoken warning Judas instantly recognized as meant for himself. Then there's the bit of tender personal love-touch in handing Judas the tid-bit, the first morsel from the dish containing the simple evening meal.
But Judas hardens his heart against warnings and tender pleadings alike. That hardening, which was a shutting out of God, was a letting in of some one else. Then Judas, bent on carrying his purpose, rises and goes out. And it was black night out where he had gone.