THE DEATH-BED OF THE WICKED

THE Word of God declares that “it is appointed unto me once to die,” and “after this the judgment.” Death is a change that must come over all who ever breathed in this world, whether they are righteous or wicked. That same Word of God declares that “the righteous hath hope in his death,” and with equal clearness reveals that the wicked has no such hope. In considering the death-bed of the wicked we find a sinner about to be ushered into the presence of God. There are no well-grounded assertions of a knowledge of God in Christ, nor any traces of a Spirit-wrought confidence that He is able to keep that which is committed to Him, neither do we find the joyous expressions which are the fruits of a Pisgah view of the Heavenly Canaan; instead we find nothing but gloom and “an horror of darkness” which chills to the very heart’s core.

In looking back from his death-bed the wicked can view his life as a life of sin. He was born in sin and shapen in iniquity, and, therefore, came into this world, carrying with him a corrupt fountain of original sin, from which flowed all his actual transgressions. He took not God’s Law as a lamp to his feet, or as a light to his path, but every minute of his life transgressed that Law in thought, word and action, so that he earned for himself that the thunders of Sinai would be directed against him, for “cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” That law which is holy, just and good, is to the wicked an object of hatred, and his attitude towards it during his whole life is that he would trample it under foot if he could, thus showing his enmity not only to the law but also to the Law-giver.

The wicked also has to look back from his death bed on a life coming short of the end of his creation. “Man’s chief end,” says the Catechism, “is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.” Truly none of the human race can glorify God by anything they can do themselves, but all who are enabled to embrace Christ as their own personal Saviour are, through Him, aiming at fulfilling the end of their creation and thus they are aiming at conformity to the exhortation which says, “Whether, therefore, ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” The wicked, having despised and rejected Christ, never aimed at glorifying God, and, therefore, has to look back from his death-bed on a life of coming short of the end of his creation.

Again, he has to look back on a life in which he did not realize that he was a responsible and an accountable creature. God put a difference between man and the brute creation in that He endowed man with reason, and, therefore, man is responsible for his actions, be must render an account to God for all things “done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad,” together with all the privileges bestowed on men in the world. Alas! the life of the wicked is one in which this day of account is lost sight of.

Further, the wicked from his gloomy bed has to look back on a life of mis-spent privileges and neglected opportunities. Jesus of Nazareth had been passing by in the means of grace. He had been coming very near to the wicked in this world. In His Word and in the preaching of that Word, He had been saying: “Look unto me and be ye saved,” giving the clearest demonstration of the fact that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but the wicked on his death-bed will have to look back on these opportunities as times when he said in effect: “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him.”

For the wicked to look back from his deathbed on such a mis-spent life is a mournful matter indeed, and if he takes his eye from the past to the present he can see nothing there to cheer him. There is a consciousness of the near approach of death, and alas! for him death with a sting. That meeting with the King of Terrors, which for many a year he was putting far off, has now come. The grim messenger has now laid his chilling hand on his frame and commands him to leave those pleasures of sin of which he was often warned that they were but for a season. There is no use in pleading for more time; the appointed time has come, the messenger has strict orders which he must obey, the tenant must, however unwilling he may be, quit the tabernacle of clay, the pins are being removed, the cords are being loosed, and very soon the “silver cord” shall be loosed, the “golden bowl” broken, the “pitcher” shall “be broken at the fountain,” and “the wheel broken at the cistern.”

With this consciousness of the near approach of death, there is a struggling in its agonies. What desperate remedies will at times be tried as a “last resort” to turn away the final blow of an already victorious foe. In spite of all these remedies the body is getting weaker and the mental powers are giving away. Is this a time to prepare for death? Can the wicked in this condition concentrate their minds on anything but on their agonies? Oh! wicked man, who art still enjoying health and strength, continue in your evil way and this will be your death-bed— a death-bed where there is not a ray of hope. The Lord’s people, too often for their comfort, have to witness such death-bed scences. They cannot, they dare not, hope that it shall be well at last with those dying in their sins, and how often in such circumstances is their experience that of the psalmist when he was saying, “my prayer returneth unto mine own bosom.” But who are the unseen attendants who are round the deathbed of the wicked? We read of Lazarus that when he died, the angels carried him to the bosom of Abraham, but no such glorious attendants wait on the wicked. Although there is no explicit statement in the Scriptures that fallen angels in like manner wait to carry away the souls of the wicked, yet, Hell being at the end of the life of the wicked, the fallen angels are not far away from his death-bed.

As if to aggravate the wicked’s present misery the conscience usually awakens at death. That witness which God left for Himself in the bosom of fallen man was for many a day performing its work of accusing the wicked, but being considered very troublesome it was smothered, so that its voice got fainter and fainter till at last it could not be heard at all. Will its voice ever be heard again? The wicked on his death-bed knows to his cost that it will. When all his past sins pass before his view, conscience will speak that day and its voice will not be faint, but louder than thunder; it will make itself be heard in the throes of the final struggle, reverberating through the faculties of the soul, giving the wicked an assurance that it will have its place there as “the worm that dieth not” throughout eternity.

In looking to the future the prospects are black indeed for the wicked. He has to face the Jordan of death alone. He despised the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the best Friend, and no other friend can help. No godly father or mother, brother or sister, can enter death with the wicked. He must die alone for he despised the “Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” There is none that he can look to, in order to uphold his head going through the dismal waters of death. Oh! what desolation for want of the encouragement that comes to the Lord’s people through hearing a “still small voice” saying unto them, “Fear thou not: for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.”

On his death-bed the wicked has “ a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” The moment he closes his eyes in death there is an entering in into the sorrows of the lost as far as his soul is concerned, and for his body there is not a glorious resurrection as there is for the righteous. His body shall rise at the resurrection and be joined to his soul in order that body and soul shall jointly share the miseries that follow the sentence to be pronounced by the Eternal Judge: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”

The wicked on his death-bed has to look forward to a joyless eternity. He is forever shut out from God who is the source of all real joy, for only at His right hand are pleasures for evermore. Eternal happiness is reserved for God’s people, but misery, eternal misery, for the wicked without the smallest mixture of mercy. If the shortest moment of happiness ever enjoyed by any of God’s people in this world would be granted to the lost in eternity it would alleviate their misery, but even that will be denied them. When the rich man prayed to Abraham that Lazarus would be sent to dip his finger in cold water to wet his tongue, he was reminded that in this world he had his good things; so all who spend their lives in this world delighting themselves in its vanities, can expect no delights in eternity. Even the remembrance of these pleasures of sin which they had in this world will add to their miseries.

As it is a joyless eternity that the wicked is looking forward to from his death-bed it is also a hopeless eternity. The Word of God, which must be our only guide in these matters, knows nothing of the “Larger Hope” which is the gospel of the Modernist. The Holy Spirit clearly tells us that “there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grace,” and this causes the wicked to be faced on his death-bed with a hopeless eternity. If there was even one opportunity given—but no. There is no gospel there, no raising up of a Saviour to give repentance and remission of sins, and no invitations sent out in love to sinners. That has forever come to an end, and the eternity of the wicked with all its utter hopelessness must be the portion for ever of all who, in a day of mercy, despised the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, it is an endless eternity that is presented to the view of the wicked on his death-bed. Time will come to an end, but not so eternity. It is endless in its duration. It is true that no finite mind can grasp its meaning, and the most graphic descriptions of it come infinitely far short of what it is. In this connection it is probable that there is no better description of it in any language than that given by Dugald Buchanan in his poem on the Day of Judgment:—

“If I should count each glimmering star,
Each leaf and blade that ever grew,
All drops in ocean’s store that are
And sands that ocean’s shore bestrew,
And if, for each, I counted so
A thousand years had passed away,
Eternity would be as though
It had begun but yesterday.

It is to this endless duration that the wicked is looking from his death-bed as that which he is soon to experience.

Truly, such a death-bed is a solemn matter indeed. None would wish it to be their death-bed, but alas! many are like Balaam of old when he said: “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,” but like Balaam they are not careful to live the life of the righteous. They prefer their lusts to peace with God, and the pleasures of sin for a season to the eternal pleasures at God’s right hand, and this in face of God’s solemn declaration and invitation, “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways’ for why will ye die?” Therefore, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”—J. C.

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