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{Since the Heavenly Trade Is the Best Trade…
Exhortation and Counsel to Strangers to the Heavenly Trade
Reasons to Pursue the Heavenly Trade
Strangers to the Heavenly Trade Are in Great Danger}
The danger of your present condition should cause you to quickly change it for something better. You are [spiritually] poor and that exposes you to scorn, contempt, oppression, trampling down, crushing, and being devoured and destroyed. You are not safe from ruin at any time. The next knock at your door may be a call to judgment (Proverbs 17:5; Amos 4:1; Proverbs 11:4; Revelation 21:8).435 When you lie down, you may be making your bed in Hell. When you awake, you may see God on the throne, your soul before the Judge, your accusers standing by you, the evidence in your conscience, and the sentence written in capital letters: GO, YOU ACCURSED. Under your feet there is a bottomless lake of fire and brimstone.436 The cruel demons are standing around you and ready to lodge your guilty condemned soul in your eternal home437 (Matthew 24:51).438 You have been wastrels, wasting what is not your own, and are in danger every day of a charge against you.
You are deeply in debt and in danger of an arrest every hour.439 When you leave your house, death may be at your heels and when you return, destruction may enter with you. Oh sinner, how uncertain is the time of your death and entrance into eternity! Your death will be the absolute ruin of your immortal soul if you go to judgment before you begin the heavenly trade. Do you not thus have reason to quickly attend to your great concern and burn no more daylight in works of darkness?
435“He who mocks the poor taunts his Maker; He who rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 17:5 NASB). “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, Who oppress the poor, Who crush the needy, Who say to your husbands, Bring wine, let us drink!’” (Amos 4:1 NKJV). In current usage, to call a woman a cow is to imply ugliness. But the cows of Bashan were famous for being well fed from rich pastures. “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death” (Proverbs 11:4 ESV). “But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8 NKJV). Ashwood also referenced Habakkuk 3:14 and Proverbs 10:15, but these do not seem to fit the context of the text. The editor thus substituted Proverbs 11:4 and Revelation 21:8. Ashwood made a number of errors in references in this book, and the editor has generally been able to discern Ashwood’s intent, but not here.
436brimstone: strictly, an old name for the element sulfur, but in the context of hellfire, burning sulfur with the resultant noxious, highly irritating, and choking fumes.
437Scripture is silent as to the degree of interpersonal interaction that may occur in Hell between people and people or demons. If there is any such interaction, it will be entirely unpleasant.
438“And will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:51 NASB).
439The reference is to the old practice of debtor’s prison.
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