By Dr. W. B. Hinson

November 1920 issue of THE KING’S BUSINESS

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ISAIAH 3:10, 11 "Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him ... Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him…"

That is the summing up of the whole revelation of God. And so His last word as He closes the long disclosure of His will is, "Say ye to the wicked it shall be ill with him, and to the righteous, it shall be well with him."

Now is that true? Ask Adam as he turns his back on the fairest garden ever made-for you know God was the first gardener-"Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Cain as he staggers out with bowed shoulders from the presence of God and exclaims, "My punishment is greater than I can bear," "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask the antediluvian as the great floods drop, and the fountains of the deep are broken up, and the scream and the wail and the curse blend, "Is it ill with the wicked ?" Ask Egypt as at midnight there rises up over the doomed land the sob that tells of the death of the first born in every un-blood protected house, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Pharaoh as the Red Sea waters fall back into their channels, and the wild scream of the drowning horse mingles with the hot imprecations of the drowning men, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Kohah, Dathan and Abiram, as holding the scoffers' fire in their hands they go down alive into hell, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Achan as he and his are stoned to death outside the camp for disloyalty to the mandate of God, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Saul as his massive form bends down upon the upturned sword of the suicide, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Sennacherib as the bugle calls sound to raise an army to its daily duty and the whole army lies still in death, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Nebuchadnezzar, leaving a palace to go out and eat grass like an ox because of his stupid pride, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Belshazzar, calling for the profanation of the sacred vessels of the temple and his red blood mingling with the red wine on the white floor of the palace, while along the drained Euphrates bed the Persian comes to slay, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Herod, elate, making his wonderful speech, and hearing the plaudit, "It is not the voice of a man. but the voice of God," and he suddenly writhes and is eaten of worms and dies, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Judas, falling because of a broken rope, and landing so heavily that his very bowels gushed out-the loathing and scorn of twenty centuries-"Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Julian, the apostate emperor of Rome, as he bowed his head in the drift of the wild world's pride, and "Thou hast conquered Galilean," he said, and died, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Napoleon eating out his heart on the island of' St. Helena after he boasted God was always wise enough to get on the side of the heaviest battalion, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Go into your jails, and asylums, and some wards of the hospital, and see if God told the truth when He said, "It is ill with the wicked." Read your Shakespeare and watch a man as he looks at his murderous fingers, and they flame red while he cries, "All great Neptune's waters cannot cleanse the blood from that hand,"Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Browning as he tells you how Guido the murderer must have the lights about him for the darkness is full of ghastly weird shapes, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Coleridge as in his "Ancient Mariner" he writes:

"The very deep did rot, O Christ,
That ever this could be,
And slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon a slimy sea,"

"Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask Jack Johnson in Chicago jail, put for loathsome filthiness in the murderer's cell, making such a wild racket in the dead of the night that they had to move him to another cell, and all his reason was, "The spirits of the murdered are about me! "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask the men I have known, I can see one of them dying in delirium tremens, and I buried another who bore his intolerable life as long as he could and then took it with his own hand, "Is it ill with the wicked?" And you ask the men you have met. Said a man to me only last night as he told of the stories of the men he had known. and added, "They are all dead," "Is it ill with the wicked?" Hear the curses pealing and reverberating down the pages of that Book telling what is the effect of sin here and there, now and then, and say, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Ask the men grown old, and every year, a year of shame, friendlessness, hopelessness, uselessness and doom, "Is it ill with the wicked?" Hear the text and then I say listen to the voices of Adam, the drowned of the flood, Egypt, Pharaoh, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, Achan, Saul, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Herod, Judas, Julian, Napoleon and ten thousand times ten thousand others, who all in solemn chorus assert God told the truth, "It is ill with the wicked."

But what about the other half of my text? "Say ye to the righteous, ‘well.’" Start again where you started before, even when the world was young. Hear the voices of the first man to die, before he goes out to his God. Better still, hear his eulogy pronounced four thousand years after he was killed: "God had respect unto the offering of Abel, and he being dead yet speaketh," "It is well with the righteous." Or the seventh from Adam, Enoch; who had this testimony that he walked with God and he was not, for God took him, "It is well with the righteous." Hear Noah, rising hourly on the breast of the tumultuous waters nearer to heaven and God say, "It is well with the righteous." See Abraham-called today by even Muhammadanism "the Friend of God," known wherever there is a Bible as "the Father of the Faithful," "It is well with the righteous." Think of Moses, looking at the treasures of Egypt, and then turning disdainfully from them away to the treasures of Christ; and the lengthened shadow of the man is Judaism, the platform upon which God built the cross of Cavalry, "It is well with the righteous." Or think of David, the most widely known utterance in the Christian world trembling from his lip. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want;" and ere he died he said. "I have been young and am now old, but I never saw the righteous forsaken. "It is well with the righteous." Or see Paul as the executioner's sword gleams against the light of the sparkling sun, and the man about to die said, "There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness." "It is well with the righteous. " Or hear Polycarp, led out to lions, as he said "Eighty and four years have I served my Lord Christ, and I know of no reason why I should forsake him now," "It is well with the righteous." Or hear Rutherford in Edinburgh, "Daughters, I think I am going to leave you. I cannot see, and I feel so strangely. Get the Book. Put my fingers on the verse in Romans 8 that says, 'I am persuaded that nothing, neither death, nor life, nor angels, principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God,' put my fingers on that verse," and they said, "Father, you are touching it," and he answered, "Good-bye, daughters, I breakfasted with you this morning, I shall sup with my Lord Christ tonight," "It is well with the righteous."

Come to my study on the hillcrest beyond, and let me show you a cane and a Greek testament given me by one of the best men I ever knew in my life, who was dead half an hour after he gave me the stick and the book; but who looking at the sun setting over the Pacific, said in his quaint old time way, "Elder, when it comes up in the morning I shall be seeing the King." "It is well with the righteous." And I will stop and think of my father singing the last night I ever heard his voice, as the moonlight slanted over his mane of white hair, while he sang.

"Oh that home of the soul, in my visions and dreams,
Its bright jasper walls I can see,
Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenes
Between the fair city and me,"
"It is well with the righteous.""

Or I will pause again, and you think of your mother. She had weathered many a storm with Jesus; she had been in many a bit of lonely road with Jesus; but man, woman, God grant you to get to the heaven that holds your mother; "It is well with the righteous."

Or let me sharpen this by a contrast. A minute ago you saw Saul of the Old Testament dying a suicide. Less than a minute ago I showed you Saul of the New Testament, exultingly, triumphantly, rejoicingly facing death. "It is well with the righteous." Or again, Jezebel in the Old Testament is flung from a window, and the dogs lick up her blood. And Mary of the New Testament is honored the whole world over, and has the unique distinction of being the mother of Jesus, "It is well with the righteous." Or yet again, there lies Judas, and the loathsome spot where he burst asunder shall be called Aceldama, place of blood. And there is John, who writes, "I saw the new heaven and the new earth; I saw its citizens and they hunger no more, nor thirst; and there is no more sickness, nor pain, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor death; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;" "It is well with the righteous. "

Do you hear the chorus? God says, "It is well with the righteous;" and beginning with Abel, and coming all down the weary centuries till it gets so near to us as my father is to me, and your mother to you, and all these voices say, "God was right and not wrong; truthful and not lying, when He said, 'It is well with the righteous.’"

And where do I stand as this study nears it close? It is indeed "Ill with the wicked." Who are the wicked? "Hear O heavens, and give ear O earth, I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me." Ah that sounds like Eve's scream as she leaves Eden; or the shriek of those dying folk of the flood; or those doomed ones of Egypt. For we are wicked. But how did anybody ever get righteous? "For there is none that doeth good, no not one, and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and there is no difference. I am quoting the Bible. Then how does there come to be any distinction between the wicked and the righteous? What is it separates one from the other? What is it so transforms the man in the camp of the wicked that he passes over into the church of the righteous! What is the bridge that spans this dividing gulf? If all great Neptune's waters will not wash the sin from the soul, what will? If man is powerless to effect his own salvation, who can do it for him? Why they tell me down in the Unitarian church you do not need a divine Saviour. Well what in the world do you need then? Who is going to do this? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots? And how? The question is thousands of years old, "How can mortal man be just before God?" By Jesus Christ! I am always glad in my heart when I hear, as I sometimes do, the criticism, "He knows nothing but Jesus Christ." I wish it were true. I am trying hard to make it true. But just now it is true. There is the wicked, and it is ill with him, God says. There is the righteous, and it is well with him, God says. Now how can I get over from that side to this? Mr. Unitarian, how are you going to do it? And fool Christian Scientist, how are you going to do it? And speculator talking of salvation by character, where are you going to get the character from? You can do without the Christ? It does not look like it. You have outgrown the cross? Who has? Speak for yourself.

Now then let God say another word ere we stop.

"Though your sins be as scarlet
They shall be as snow,
Though they be red like crimson,
They shall be as wool."

How? "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." So you see once more how as moving water rushes up against a dividing boulder, so you come to Christ's cross and it separates the audience. And he that believeth on the Son hath life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

A word, and I stop. Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power, and been washed in the blood of the Lamb? Hear the affirmation of God. "It shall be well with you." But you are poor. "It shall be well with you. " But you are sick. "It shall be well with you." But you are growing old. "It shall be well with you." But you feel that your power is declining. "It shall be well with you." But you have nothing laid up for the rainy day. "It shall be well with you." But you may be overtaken and prostrated by some illness. "It shall be well with you." But-Listen! "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth be removed, and the mountains be cast into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof." And why should we not fear? Because God is in the midst of us. Jehovah Jesus, Emmanuel, the Saviour, Christ the Lord. But you have got to die. "It shall be well with you." You have got to face judgment. "It shall be well with you." You have got to appear before God. Why then, it certainly must be well with you. Oh hear Him again as He says, "Say ye to the righteous, It shall be well with him."

But I am compelled to add ere I close, the same God says, "To the wicked, it shall be ill." You said the other day, we have got rid of hell. Who has? The Bible has not. Jesus Christ has not ceased to mention it. I am preaching for a long day that will never know noon, daylight, nor dark, the endless day of eternity; and by the help of God there shall be no one of you say to me in the day we stand before the throne, "You suppressed part of the truth." I set before you the way of life and the way of death, and I stop, and let God say His text, "Say ye to the wicked, it is ill with him. Say ye to the righteous, it is well with him."

A VERY SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT DR. W. B. HINSON

Thinking of the fullness and duration of this wonderful life, W. B. Hinson, a great preacher of a past generation, spoke from his own experience just before he died. He said, "I remember a year ago when a doctor told me, 'You have an illness from which you won't recover.' I walked out to where I live 5 miles from Portland, Oregon, and I looked across at that mountain that I love. I looked at the river in which I rejoice, and I looked at the stately trees that are always God's own poetry to my soul. Then in the evening I looked up into the great sky where God was lighting His lamps, and I said, ' I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be alive when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running toward the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your sockets in the great down pulling of the material universe!' " 

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BELOVED, IS IT WELL WITH YOUR SOUL?

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THERE'S NO CHANCE IN ETERNITY TO CHANGE YOUR DESTINY!!!

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John 11:40