Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1219
“Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. And I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from now on: Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.” Revelation 14:12,13.
THE text speaks of a Voice from Heaven which said, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” The witness of that voice is not needed upon every occasion, for even the most common observer is compelled to feel, concerning many of the righteous, that their deaths are blessed. Balaam, with all his moral shortsightedness, could say, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” That is the case when death comes in peaceful fashion. The man has lived a calm, godly, consistent life. He has lived as long as he could well have wished to live and, in dying, he sees his children and his children’s children gathered around his bed.
What a fine picture the old man makes, as he sits up with that snowy head supported by snowy pillows. Hear him as he tells his children that goodness and mercy have followed him all the days of his life and now he is going to dwell in the house of the Lord forever! See the seraphic smile which lights up his face as he bids them farewell and assures them that he already hears the harpers harping with their harps—bids them stop those tears and weep not for him but for themselves—charges them to follow him so far as he has followed Christ and to meet him at the right hand of the Judge in the day of His appearing. Then the old man, almost without a sigh, leans back and is present with the Lord!—
“Heaven waits not the last moment; Owns her friends on this side death, And points them out to men; A lecture silent but of sovereign power! To vice, confusion—and to virtue peace.”
Even the blind bat’s-eyed worldling can see that, “blessed are the dead which die in the Lord” in such a fashion as that! Nor is it difficult to perceive that this is the case in many other instances. We have, ourselves, known several good men and women who were afraid of death and were, much of their lifetime, subject to bondage. But they went to bed and fell asleep and never woke again in this world. And as far as appearances go, they could never have known so much as one single pang in departure, but fell asleep among mortals to awake amid the angels! Truly, such gentle loosing of the cable. Such fording of Jordan dry shod. Such ascents of the celestial hills with music at every step are desirable beyond measure! And we need no Voice out of the excellent Glory to proclaim that blessed are the dead who in such a case die in the Lord.
But that was not the picture which John had before his mind. It was quite another—a picture grim and black to mortal eyes. The sounds which meet the ear are not those of music, nor the whispered consolations of friends, but quite the reverse. All is painful, terrible and the very opposite of blessed, so far as strikes the eyes and ears. Therefore it became necessary that there should be a Voice from Heaven to say, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.” I will give you the picture. The man of God is on the rack. They are turning that infernal machine with all their might. They have dragged every bone from its place. They have exercised their tortures till every nerve of his body cries with agony! He is flung into a dark and loathsome dungeon and left there to recover strength enough to be led in derision through the streets.
Upon his head they have placed a cap painted with devils and all his garments they have bedizened with the resemblance of fiends and flames of Hell. And now, with a shaveling priest on each side, holding up before him a superstitious emblem, and bidding him adore the Virgin or worship the cross, the good man, loaded with chains, goes through the streets, say, of Madrid or Antwerp, to the place prepared for his execution. “An act of faith,” they call it—an auto da
fe—and an act of heroic faith it is, indeed, when the man of God takes his place at the stake, in his shirt, with an iron chain about his loins, and is fastened to the stake where he must stand and burn “quick to the death.”
Can you see him as they kindle the wood beneath him and the flames begin to consume his quivering flesh till he is all ablaze and burning—burning without a cry—though fiercely tormented by the fire? Now assuredly is that Voice from Heaven needed, and you can hear it, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord”—blessed even when they die like this! “Here is the patience of the saints” and, in the esteem of angels and of glorified spirits, such a death may, under many aspects, be adjudged to be more blessed than the peaceful deathbed of the saint who had some fellowship with Jesus, but was not made to drink of His cup and to be baptized with His Baptism, as to die a painful and ignominious death as a witness for the Truth of God.