"There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God." - Jonathan Edwards

God lacks no power to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong when God rises up. Though hand join in hand, and all the vast multitudes of God's enemies combine together against him, they are most easily broken in pieces. No fortress proves a defense from the power of God, nor can any deliver out of his hands. Like piles of light chaff before the tornado, or fields of dry stubble before devouring flames, they are instantly consumed. If the earth trembles before him and the boulders are thrown down violently, how then can the wicked stand before him?

They deserve to be cast into hell. Justice can make no exception, no objection against God using his power at any moment to destroy them. Rather, on the contrary, justice cries aloud for their punishment. The sword of divine justice hangs every moment over their heads, and it is nothing but God's will that holds it back.

They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell, by the divine decree of the Law of God, so that presently they wait on death row. Every unconverted man properly belongs to hell and thither be is bound; it is the place that justice and the sentence of God’s unchangeable Law assign to him.

They are presently the objects of God’s wrath, the same wrath that ends in judgment and destruction in hell. Why do they then not go there immediately? It is not because God has forgotten his anger against them. It is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.

The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; they are under his dominion. The devils watch them; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back. If God should withdraw his hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them; hell opens its mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily swallowed up and lost.

If God did not restrain them, wicked men, in whose hearts hell is kindled, would soon consume the world in hellish torment. They would soon break out, they would be engulfed in flames after the same manner of damned souls, and would kindle in others the same wickedness that consumes them. The souls of the wicked are in scripture compared to the troubled sea, Isaiah 57:20. For the present, God restrains their wickedness by his mighty power, as he does the raging waves of the troubled sea, saying, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further." But if God should withdraw that restraining power, it would soon carry all before it. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature, and if God should leave it without restraint, it would immediately turn the soul into a furnace of fire and brimstone.

Wicked men have no security, though death is not in sight. The natural man may be in present good health and surrounded by every expectation of its continuance. But the manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages is contrary to this expectation. If he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident, he is on the very brink of eternity, and the next step will be into another world. The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Ignorant men walk daily over the pit of hell on nothing more than a rotten covering that barely holds their weight. The arrows of death fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight cannot discern them. God has so many hidden ways of taking wicked men out of the world that the strangest death can happen to any wicked man, at any moment.

ºAlthough a natural man takes all care and wisdom to preserve his life, and he enlists the care of others to help him, his life is not secured for a moment. To this, divine providence and universal experience do also bear testimony. There is much evidence that men's own wisdom is no security to them from death. Otherwise, why do wise men see no difference in the statistics between the practical and shrewd men of this world and those who seem liable to early and unexpected death? But how is it in fact? Eccles. 2:16, "How dieth the wise man? Even as the fool."

ºEven if the wicked believe in hell and take every pain and contrivance to avoid it, if they continue to reject Christ, they are not secured from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. In hell, they will lift up their voices and cry, "I intended to take effectual care; but death came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief: Death outwitted me: God’s wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying, Peace and safety, then suddenly destruction came upon me!"

ºGod is under no obligation to keep any natural man out of hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death, but what are contained in the covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ, in whom all the promises are yea and amen. But surely they have no interest in the promises of the covenant of grace who are not the children of the covenant, who do not believe in any of the promises, and have no interest in the Mediator of the covenant. A natural man may imagine or pretend he is seeking and knocking, but whether he prays or takes pains in religion, until he believes in Christ, God is in no wise obligated to keep him one moment from eternal destruction.

APPLICATION

The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons who associate themselves with Christianity. What you have heard will come upon everyone of you who pretends to love God, but are unconverted. You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it; but look at other things, like the good state of your bodily constitution, or your care of your own life and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing: if God should withdraw his support, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. If God did not prevent it, the solid earth would not bear you one moment from sinking to hell. The sun does not willingly shine upon you; the fields do not willingly yield their increase to satisfy your lusts; the air does not willingly serve you for breath, while you spend your life in the service of God's enemies. God's creatures are good, and groan when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their nature and end. They want to serve God; you want them for your own corrupt pleasures.

The wrath of God builds like great waters behind a dam; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, until outlet is given. The longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.

The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow. All you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin to a state of new light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things and may keep up a form of religion in your families and in the house of God; however unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were allowed to awake again in this world after you closed your eyes to sleep; and there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, over which you are held in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against any of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment. And consider here more particularly,

1.Whose wrath it is. It is the wrath of the infinite God. If it were only the wrath of man, though it were of the gathering of the most terrible and powerful kings, it would be comparatively little to be regarded. The wrath of the great King of kings, is as much more terrible than theirs, as his majesty is greater. Luke 12:4, 5, "And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, Fear him."

2. It is the fierceness of his wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the fury of God; as in Isaiah 59:18, "According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay fury to his adversaries." So also Isaiah 66:15, "For behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire." And in many other places as in Revelation 19:15, we read of "the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." The words are exceeding terrible. Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state: the implication from God’s fierceness is that he will inflict wrath without any pity. When you are in hell, when your torment is so vastly disproportionate to your strength and your poor soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom, God will have no compassion upon you; he will not forbear the executions of his wrath. Nothing shall be withheld, merely because it is so hard for you to bear. Ezek. 8:18, "Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them." Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any regard to your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery; you shall be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel, but to be filled full of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him, that it is said he will only "laugh and mock," Proverbs 1:25, 26, Psalm 2:4, etc.

3. God has continued at length to display both how excellent his love is, and also how terrible his wrath is. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and haughty monarch of the Chaldean empire, showed his wrath when enraged with Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego; and accordingly gave orders that the burning fiery furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was before. The great God is also willing to show his wrath, and magnify his awful majesty and mighty power in the extreme sufferings of his enemies. Rom. 9:22, "What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endure with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?" When the great and angry God hath risen up and executed his awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is actually suffering the infinite weight and power of his indignation, then will God call upon the whole universe to behold that awful majesty and mighty power that is to be seen in it. Isaiah 33:12-14, "And the people shall be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire. Hear ye that are far off, what I have done; and ye that are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites..."

4. It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. When you look forward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable, for, "who knows the power of God’s anger?"

How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul reading this that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it, whether you be young or old! If we knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation who was to be the subject of this misery, how might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell? You have reason to wonder that you are not already in hell. It is doubtless the case of some whom you have seen and known. Their case is past all hope; they are crying in extreme misery and perfect despair; but here you are in the land of the living and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor damned hopeless souls give for one day's opportunity such as you now enjoy!

And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him, and pressing into the kingdom of God. Many have come who were in the same miserable condition that you are in, that are now in a happy state, with their hearts filled with love to him who has loved them, and washed them from their sins in his own blood. How awful is it to be left behind at such a day! To see so many others feasting, while you are pining and perishing! To see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart and howl for vexation of spirit! How can you rest one moment in such a condition?

Senior citizens, your case, in an especial manner, is extremely dangerous. Your guilt and hardness of heart are extremely great. Can’t you see how that God has mercifully passed over you year after year? You have need to consider your situation and awake thoroughly out of sleep. You cannot bear the fierceness and wrath of the infinite God!

And you, young men and young women, will you neglect this precious season which you now enjoy, when so many others of your age are renouncing all youthful vanities, and coming to Christ? You especially have now an extraordinary opportunity; but if you neglect it, it will soon be with you as with those persons who spent all the precious days of youth in sin, and are now come to such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness.

And you, children, who are unconverted, do not you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that God, who is now angry with you every day and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted, and are become the holy and happy children of the King of kings?

And let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle aged, or young people, or little children, now harken to the loud calls of God's word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, a day of such great favours to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others. Men's hearts harden, and their guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if they neglect their souls; and never was there so great

danger of such persons being given up to hardness of heart and blindness of mind. God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great out-pouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles' days; the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded. If this should be the case with you, you will eternally curse this day,

and will curse the day that ever you was born, to see such a season of the pouring out of God's Spirit, and will wish that you had died and gone to hell before you had seen it. Now undoubtedly it is, as it was in the days of John the Baptist, the axe is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root of the trees, that every tree which brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down and cast into the fire.

Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation: Let every one fly out of Sodom: "Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed!"

Adapted from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," written in 1741.

Chris Simonson

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