24 SEPTEMBER (1876)
Why the heavenly robes are white
‘These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ Revelation 7:14
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Thessalonians 2:13–3:5
I do not think that the text refers to some one great persecution, but to the great conflict of the ages in which the seed of the serpent perpetually molests and oppresses the seed of the woman. The strife began at the gates of Eden when the Lord said to the serpent, ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’ Satan takes care to nibble at the heel, though his own head has been broken by our great Lord. There is an hereditary conflict, a great tribulation, always to be suffered by the saints below, for ‘as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.’
The enmity takes all sorts of shapes, but from the beginning even until now it is in the world. The white robed ones had come out of that continuous and general conflict uninjured, like the three holy children who came out of the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon them. Some of them had been slandered: men of the world had thrown handfuls of the foulest mud upon them, but they ‘washed their robes and made them white’. Others of them had come out of remarkable temptations from men and devils: Satan himself had poured his blasphemies into their ears, so that they truly thought they should themselves blaspheme; they were tried by the most defiling of temptations, but ‘they overcame … by the blood of the Lamb’, and were delivered from every polluting trace of the temptation by the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice. Some of them were cruelly persecuted and trodden down as mire in the streets, yet they rose to glory white as snow. They went through fire and water, wandered without a certain dwelling-place, and were made to be as ‘the offscouring of all things’, but they came uninjured and unspotted out of it all.
FOR MEDITATION: Tribulation cannot separate Christians from Christ’s love, but in it we through him can be ‘more than conquerors’ (Romans 8:35, 37). It is unnatural to seek tribulation, but in it the Christian can glory (Romans 5:3), be patient (Romans 12:12), be comforted (2 Corinthians 1:4) and rejoice (2 Corinthians 7:4).
C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 278.
Why the heavenly robes are white
‘These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ Revelation 7:14
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Thessalonians 2:13–3:5
I do not think that the text refers to some one great persecution, but to the great conflict of the ages in which the seed of the serpent perpetually molests and oppresses the seed of the woman. The strife began at the gates of Eden when the Lord said to the serpent, ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’ Satan takes care to nibble at the heel, though his own head has been broken by our great Lord. There is an hereditary conflict, a great tribulation, always to be suffered by the saints below, for ‘as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.’
The enmity takes all sorts of shapes, but from the beginning even until now it is in the world. The white robed ones had come out of that continuous and general conflict uninjured, like the three holy children who came out of the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon them. Some of them had been slandered: men of the world had thrown handfuls of the foulest mud upon them, but they ‘washed their robes and made them white’. Others of them had come out of remarkable temptations from men and devils: Satan himself had poured his blasphemies into their ears, so that they truly thought they should themselves blaspheme; they were tried by the most defiling of temptations, but ‘they overcame … by the blood of the Lamb’, and were delivered from every polluting trace of the temptation by the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice. Some of them were cruelly persecuted and trodden down as mire in the streets, yet they rose to glory white as snow. They went through fire and water, wandered without a certain dwelling-place, and were made to be as ‘the offscouring of all things’, but they came uninjured and unspotted out of it all.
FOR MEDITATION: Tribulation cannot separate Christians from Christ’s love, but in it we through him can be ‘more than conquerors’ (Romans 8:35, 37). It is unnatural to seek tribulation, but in it the Christian can glory (Romans 5:3), be patient (Romans 12:12), be comforted (2 Corinthians 1:4) and rejoice (2 Corinthians 7:4).
C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 278.
24 SEPTEMBER (1876)
Why the heavenly robes are white
‘These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ Revelation 7:14
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Thessalonians 2:13–3:5
I do not think that the text refers to some one great persecution, but to the great conflict of the ages in which the seed of the serpent perpetually molests and oppresses the seed of the woman. The strife began at the gates of Eden when the Lord said to the serpent, ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’ Satan takes care to nibble at the heel, though his own head has been broken by our great Lord. There is an hereditary conflict, a great tribulation, always to be suffered by the saints below, for ‘as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.’
The enmity takes all sorts of shapes, but from the beginning even until now it is in the world. The white robed ones had come out of that continuous and general conflict uninjured, like the three holy children who came out of the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon them. Some of them had been slandered: men of the world had thrown handfuls of the foulest mud upon them, but they ‘washed their robes and made them white’. Others of them had come out of remarkable temptations from men and devils: Satan himself had poured his blasphemies into their ears, so that they truly thought they should themselves blaspheme; they were tried by the most defiling of temptations, but ‘they overcame … by the blood of the Lamb’, and were delivered from every polluting trace of the temptation by the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice. Some of them were cruelly persecuted and trodden down as mire in the streets, yet they rose to glory white as snow. They went through fire and water, wandered without a certain dwelling-place, and were made to be as ‘the offscouring of all things’, but they came uninjured and unspotted out of it all.
FOR MEDITATION: Tribulation cannot separate Christians from Christ’s love, but in it we through him can be ‘more than conquerors’ (Romans 8:35, 37). It is unnatural to seek tribulation, but in it the Christian can glory (Romans 5:3), be patient (Romans 12:12), be comforted (2 Corinthians 1:4) and rejoice (2 Corinthians 7:4).
C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 278.
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