Required reading
Sure Guide to Heaven (Puritan Paperbacks) by Joseph Alleine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Chapter 5 (Points 1 to 3)
My notes and thoughts
Hopefully after the previous chapters the reader recognises that they are unconverted. But such a recognition is not enough: 'But I find by sad experience that such a spirit of sloth and slumber possesses the unsanctified that, though they are convinced that they are yet unconverted, often they carelessly sit still.'
So the battle for the heart of the unregenerate reader continues with chapter 5 emphasising the miseries of the unconverted in an attempt to awaken them. Today's reading involves three particular miseries:
1) The infinite God is engaged against you. He is not neutral, either he is friend or foe: 'Of if God would stand neutral, though He did not own nor help the poor sinner, his case were not so deeply miserable.....There is no friend like Him, no enemy like Him.' How many people in our neighbourhoods are happy to acknowledge they are not one of God's but do not realise that this means God is their enemy!
2) The whole creation is against you. This is a nice use of Romans 8:22. I particularly like the dialogue of creation with God to seek the destruction of the man that is abusing them: '...your food would say, "Lord, must I nourish such a wretch as this, and yield forth my strength for him, to dishonour Thee? No, I will choke him rather, if Though wilt give commission.'...His poor beast would say "Lord, must I carry him upon his wicked designs? No, I will break his bones...'" Powerful, powerful imagery. To think, your food would choke you rather than feed you if God gave permission.
3) Satan has his full power over you. Alleine desires to shock the reader with the truth that if they are not God worshipers they are devil worshipers. There is no in between.
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