Did God mean what He said, Or was He playing a prank on royalty? Did pay-day come? "Pay-daySomeday" is written in the constitution of God's universe. The retributive providence of God is a reality as certainly as the laws of gravitation are a reality.
And to Ahab and Jezebel, pay-day came as certainly as night follows day, because sin carries in itself the seed of its own fatal penalty.
Dr. Meyer says: "According to God's constitution of the world, the wrongdoer will be abundantly punished." The fathers sow the wind and the children reap the whirlwind. One generation labors to scatter tares, and the next generation reaps tares and retribution immeasurable. To the individual who goes not the direction God points, a terrible pay-day comes. To the nation which forgets God, pay-day will come in the awful realization of the truth that the "nations which forget God shall be turned into hell." When nations trample on the principles of the Almighty, the result is that the world is beaten with many stripes. We have seen nations slide into Gehennaand the smoke of their torment has gone up before our eyes day and night.
To the home that has no room for the Christ, death and grave clothes are certain. "Ichabod" will be written about the church that soft-pedals on unpleasant truth or that stands not unwaveringly for "the faith once delivered"and it will acknowledge its retribution in that it will become "a drifting sepulchre manned by a frozen crew."
A man can prostitute God's holy Name to profane lips if he will, but he is forewarned as to the pay-day in the words: "The Lord will not bold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain" (Ex. 20:7).
A man can, if he will, follow the way of some wicked woman; but God leaves him not without warning as to the pay-day, in the words:
He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life . . . For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death (Prov. 7:22, 23, 26, 27).
People can drink booze, if they will, and offer the damnable bottle to others, if they will, but the certainty of "Pay-day Someday" is read in the words: "No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God," and in the words: "At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." The certainty of "Pay-daySomeday" for all who regard not God or man is set forth in the words of an unknown poet:
You'll pay. The knowledge of your acts will weigh
Heavier on your mind each day.
The more you climb, the more you gain,
The more you'll feel the nagging strain.
Success will cower at the threat
of retribution. Fear will fret
Your peace and bleed you for the debt;
Conscience collects from every crook
More than the worth of what he took,
You only thought you got away
But in the night you'll pay and pay.
Churchill expressed the certainty of God's retributive justice when, speaking of Mussolini, he said:
Mussolini is swept into the maelstrom of his own making. The flames of war he kindled burn himself. He and his people are taking the stinging lash of the whip they applied to Erhiopia and Albania. They pay for Fascist sins with defeat, despair, death. Mussolini's promise of life like a lion turns into the existence of a beaten cur!
Years before the statesman, Winston Churchill, spoke these words, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his Compensation wrote:
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed, for the effect already blooms in the cause. The end pre-exists in the meansthe fruit in the seed.
Paul Lawrence Dunbar showed wisdom as great as the wisdom of Churchill and a knowledge of Nature's laws as great as Emerson's knowledge when he wrote the autobiography of many individual sinners in these poetic and potent words:
This is the price I pay
Just for one riotous day
Years of regret and of grief,
And sorrow without relief.
Suffer it I will, my friend,
Suffer it until the end,
Until the grave shall give relief.
Small was the thing I bought,
Small was the thing at best,
Small was the debt, I thought,
But, O God!the interest.
All these statements are but verification of Bible truth:
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him (Prov. 26:27).
Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them (Prov. 1:31, 32).
Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same (Job 4:8).
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7).
The gods are justand of our vices make instruments to scourge us.
When I was pastor of the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, all that I preached and taught was sent out over the radio. In my "fan mail" I received letters from a young man who called himself "Chief of the Kangaroo Court." Many nasty, critical things he said. Sometimes he wrote a nice lineand a nice line was, in all the vulgar things he wrote, like a gardenia in a garbage can. One day I received a telephone call from a nurse in the Charity Hospital of New Orleans. It was about this fellow who so often dipped his pen in slop, who seldom thrust his pen into nectar. She said: "Pastor, there is a young man down here whose name we do not know, who will not tell us his name. All he will tell us is that he is chief of the Kangaroo Court. He is going to die. He says that you are the only preacher in New Orleans that he has ever heardand he has never seen you. He wants to see you. Will you come down?" "Yes," I replied. And I quit what I was doing and hurried down to the hospital.
The young nurse met me at the entrance to the charity ward and took me in. A glance around showed me cots on the north side, cots on the south side, beds on the east side and beds on the west sideand clusters of cots in the center of the huge ward. In a place by itself, somewhat removed from all other cots and beds, was a bed on which lay a young man about nineteen or twenty years of agebig of frame, though the ravages of disease had brought a slenderness. The nurse, with little ado, introduced me to the young man, saying: "This, sir, is the Chief of the Kangaroo Court."
I found myself looking into two of the wildest, wierdest eyes I have ever seen. As kindly as I could, I spoke, saying "Hello." "Howdy do?" he answered in a voice that was a discourteous and furious snarlmore like the voice of a mad wolf than the voice of a rational man. "Is there something, I can do for you?" I asked as kindly as I could speak.
"No. Nothing! Not a thing. Nothin' 'tall!unless you throw my body to the buzzards when I am deadif the buzzards will have it!" he said, with half a shout and with a sort of fierce resentment that made me wonder why he had ever sent for me.
Then his voice lost some of the snarland he spoke again. "I sent for you, sir, because I want you to tell these young fellows here something for me. I sent for you because I know you go up and down the land and talk to many young people. And I want you to tell 'em, and tell 'em every chance you get, that the Devil pays only in counterfeit money."
Oh! I wish I could tell all men and women and all boys and girls everywhere to believe the truth that Satan always pays in counterfeit money, that all his pearls are paste pearls, that the nectar he offers is poisoned through and through. Oh, that men would learn thetruth and be warned by the truth that if they eat the Devil's corn, he will choke them with the cob.
I stayed with this young man nearly two hours. Occasionally he spoke. There was a desperate earnestness in the young man's voice as he looked at me with wild eyes where terror was enthroned. Afterwhile I saw those eyes
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